It’s a lonely thing to sell a haunted house.
Ask Paul Sciaraffa, the owner of Carousel Gardens restaurant.
The once-active hollows of the 20-room mansion on North Street have settled down since Sciaraffa closed the restaurant in January.
No more karaoke tunes belted out in the restaurant’s bar.
No more diners seated in the home’s closed-in patio.
But gone, too, are many of Sciaraffa’s sightings of paranormal activity, which became a mainstay at the mansion, once the home of a prominent and wealthy Seymour family.
No more mysteriously discarded dimes throughout the house — something Sciaraffa said he found for years. He believes they were placed throughout the home by its spirits.
And the ghosts appear to him less often than they used to, said Sciaraffa, who made his home on the top two floors of the mansion, while the restaurant took up the entire first floor.
Sciaraffa said his sensitivity and energy make him more in-tune to the paranormal activity than the average person.
It’s that energy that, for years, made the restaurant a favorite of people looking for some adventure with their meals.
Sciaraffa wasn’t just selling ghost stories: he really believed in them.
But with the stress of selling the large home on his shoulders, things have changed slightly for Sciaraffa.
“My energy is different now,” Sciaraffa said. “I’m really disappointed with the way things are going.”
Retirement
Sciaraffa and his wife, Deborah, had been approached in the past to sell the restaurant and home, and had always declined, he said.
But as they aged, the hectic restaurant life became less appealing. In January, they decided to take one interested buyer up on his offer.
But the talks fell through in May, when the person had trouble getting money to purchase the property.
Sciaraffa said he’s pulled the listing from his first real estate agency, and is now trying to sell the home on his own.
He wants $500,000. He said each of his four children is also trying to get buyers and may ask for different prices.
“The haunted house aspect takes a few customers away,” Sciaraffa said.
But mostly it’s the bad economy and overwhelming task of buying an old house that keeps the home from being sold, Sciaraffa said.
“It’s just a large building,” Sciaraffa said. “It’s just more work than what someone wants to take on.”
Is It Really Haunted?
The 20-room mansion has a long history to fuel stories about spirits.
The Wooster family moved to Seymour in 1878. William Henry Harrison Wooster was an industrial leader, founding the Seymour Manufacturing Company, the Seymour Trust and the Seymour Water Co. He was a Civil War soldier and was active on boards and commission in town.
The family had six children – five girls and one boy. Sciaraffa said the youngest two — Helena Ruth and Horace — still haunt the home with their father’s spirit.
Stories that circulate among ghost enthusiasts include the time a cash register fell off a counter by itself, or when a cook was faced with spontaneously banging pots and pans in the kitchen.
Carousel Gardens was always decorated with items, such as a painting of William Henry Harrison Wooster, that paid homage to the home’s past or the stories of hauntings. A display case used to hold a bowl filled with the dimes Sciaraffa and patrons found. An old photograph of the home hung in the hallway.
Other details at the former restaurant highlight Sciaraffa’s personal paranormal stories, and his interest in love stories. For example, he has an antique painting of a baby that he claims is him in a past life. The bookshelves in the home are lined with Danielle Steele novels. A portrait from the 1980 movie “Somewhere in Time” hung in the bar room.
But now, many of those items are up for sale – laid across tables throughout the home for shoppers to peruse on weekends.
Even the portrait of Wooster is facing the wall – Sciaraffa says because the two are mad at each other.
Paranormal Investigations
It would be easy to write off Sciaraffa as crazy, but he isn’t the only one who believes the ghost stories.
Since he opened Carousel Gardens in 1993, ghost hunters and spirit seekers alike have flocked to the restaurant.
And though the restaurant has been closed for seven months, activity from the paranormal groups that frequent the home has remained steady.
Last Wednesday, for example, three area paranormal groups converged at the home, sharing ghost stories and looking for spirits.
The Cosmic Society, led by Donna Kent, held its monthly meeting in the former bar at Carousel Gardens. It’s where “karma” used to make regular customers sound more like the real singers during karaoke matches, Sciaraffa said.
“It’s my haunted home away from home,” Kent said Wednesday.
Throughout the other rooms of the 9,000-square-foot home, members of the CT Soul Seekers and C.P.E.A.R. laid down wires for infrared cameras, set out audio recorders and looked for paranormal “hot spots” for an investigation into the spirits that are said to haunt the home. (Click on the play button to hear them talk about the investigation.)
On Aug. 21, the Enfield Paranormal Society will conduct its own investigation into the home, which will be broadcast live on the group’s Web site.
Sciaraffa lets the groups continue to use the house while he tries to sell it. Despite Sciaraffa’s claim to fewer sightings in the home, many people in the groups said they felt spirits in the house.
Even Sciaraffa can’t deny feeling something — like when the ghost Ruth made herself known to him recently. Back in January, Sciaraffa traced her name on a clean mirror, only to return several weeks later to find that portion of the mirror clouded up. It remains that way today.
