The Castle (Joseph Johnson House)
Built in the 1850s by Dr. Joseph Johnson in an Italian Renaissance style, this riverfront mansion in Beaufort's Point neighborhood is the town's most famous haunt. Its resident spirit is Gauche, a French court jester and dwarf said to have arrived with explorer Jean Ribaut's 1562 expedition and stayed behind when Ribaut sailed home.
Generations of the Johnson family describe him as a playful presence, rearranging furniture overnight, ringing the bells on his costume, and leaving small red handprints on the windowpanes. Johnson's daughter Lily reportedly played tea party with him, and seances here are said to have tapped out messages in archaic 16th-century French.
After Union troops occupied Beaufort in 1861, the unfinished house served as a Civil War hospital, deepening one of the Lowcountry's oldest documented hauntings.
📍 411 Craven Street, Beaufort, SC 29902, Beaufort, SC · Get directions