Inside New Hampshire's 300-Year-Old James House: History, Haunting Legends & What We Found Before We Investigated

Some locations stop you before you even walk through the door. The James House in Hampton, New Hampshire is one of them — a First Period colonial home with origins that predate the American Revolution by decades, and a reputation for unexplained activity that has followed it just as long as its history has. Before I brought my team in to investigate, I sat down to learn everything I could about this place, and what I heard was enough to make even a skeptic lean forward in his chair.

I've been doing this long enough to know that the best investigations start long before you ever set up a piece of equipment. If you walk into a location blind, you're doing yourself — and the people who live or work there — a disservice. That's why, before TAPS ever set foot inside the James House, I wanted to understand what we were actually dealing with. Not the ghost stories on their own, but the full picture: the history, the people, the layers of life that have been lived inside those ancient timber walls. When a structure has been standing for roughly 300 years, the human story is always as important as the paranormal one.

The James House is recognized as one of New Hampshire's finest surviving First Period homes, and honestly, just learning that context changes the way you approach a place. We're not talking about a Victorian mansion or a 20th-century property with a spooky reputation. We're talking about a structure whose foundations were laid when America was still a collection of British colonies — before the Revolution, before the Constitution, before this country even had a name for itself. Generations of families lived, loved, worked, grieved, and died within those walls. Sitting down and hearing the history of that home — the painstaking preservation efforts that have kept it standing, the families connected to it across centuries — you start to understand why so many people believe something of that energy might linger. I'm not ready to call it paranormal yet. But I am ready to listen.

What struck me most in our pre-investigation conversation was the consistency of the experiences people have reported inside the James House. Unexplained sounds. A sense of presence in certain rooms. Objects that seem out of place. The kind of encounters that, on their own, I'd be the first to explain away — old houses settle, acoustics in timber-frame construction can be genuinely bizarre, and the power of suggestion in a historically charged environment is real and measurable. But when you hear these accounts stacking up across different people, different time periods, and different circumstances, it at least earns a serious look. My job isn't to walk in already believing. My job is to walk in with open eyes and rigorous standards, and let the evidence — or lack of it — tell the story.

This video is the 'before' — the conversation, the history, the legends, and the context that shapes how we'll approach the investigation itself. I wanted to share it because I think it matters. Understanding why a place feels the way it feels, who walked those floors before us, and what the people closest to the location have experienced — that's the foundation of everything we do at TAPS. The James House has stood for 300 years. The least I can do is take the time to understand it before I start pointing equipment at its walls. Stay tuned — the investigation is coming, and I have a feeling this one is going to be worth the wait.

The James House earned its reputation long before any ghost hunter showed up — three centuries of history will do that to a place. I'm going into this investigation the same way I go into every one: looking for natural explanations first, and only following the evidence where it actually leads. Whatever we find inside those colonial walls, I can promise you it's going to be one of the most historically significant locations we've ever had the privilege of investigating.