History & local legend
Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson lived at Graeme Park in Horsham during the eighteenth century. After the Revolution, she struggled to recover the property, which had been confiscated because of her husband Henry Hugh Fergusson’s Loyalist allegiance. Her close friend Betsy Stedman lived with her and helped support her during that period.
The earliest ghost tradition recounted by Graeme Park concerns Stedman. Shortly after Elizabeth died in 1801, Stedman reportedly returned to the property and passed her on the Keith House stairs.
Later stories also place Elizabeth in familiar rooms. In one account preserved by the site, a young girl on a tour said she saw a dark-haired woman smiling from a chair in Elizabeth’s bedroom. The portrait usually hanging there had been removed for conservation, so the child could not have been looking at it during the tour. Volunteers have also told of returning to the locked house after lunch and finding Christmas greenery scattered from a windowsill in the same room.
