{"id":1491,"slug":"belmont-hall-smyrna-delaware","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Belmont Hall is the house of the First State's president — the Georgian mansion Thomas Collins built on Pearman's Choice in 1773, the sheriff and brigadier and eighth president of Delaware who called the Dover convention that made his state the first to ratify the Constitution. The patriots met in its rooms — Rodney, McLane, Haslett, Dickinson, McKean — the Delaware that led the ratification gathered in Collins's hall.","The house stayed in the family through the generations — the wings going back to the Penn grant of 1684, Caroline Speakman's gardens and Gothic porch, the 1922 fire that her son rebuilt from, the state acquiring it with the Route 1 project in 1987. The gambrel and the captain's walk are there; the house that the First State's president built is the state's conference center now, one of Delaware's best colonial rooms still standing.","The file keeps Belmont Hall: the Collins presidency, the Dover convention, the ratification meetings, and the Georgian that survived the fire and the highway.","Belmont Hall is the archive's Delaware file — the First State's president and the house where the patriots met."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Belmont Hall is the archive's Delaware file — the 1773 Georgian, the Collins presidency, and the ratification connection.","A president's house keeps its hall — the file's suggestion being that Belmont's hold is the First State: the rooms where Delaware's ratification was planned, and the Georgian the family kept for two hundred fifty years."]}],"name":"Belmont Hall","aliases":[],"type":"HISTORIC_HOUSE","type_label":"Historic House","cats":["HAUNTING"],"groups":["hauntings","historic-sites"],"desc":"Historic house associated with published local folklore.","full_desc":"A historic house in Smyrna, Delaware, Belmont Hall is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Historic house associated with published local folklore. The archive files it under haunting reports. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 legend, every one filed as account rather than fact. Visitor status is unverified; confirm before making the trip.","address":null,"city":"Smyrna","county":null,"state":"Delaware","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":39.295295,"lon":-75.608707,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"UNKNOWN","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Fatal-shooting narrative remains legend pending archival confirmation; 2009 source.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"LOW","score":43.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0,"source_quality":0.6,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":719,"type":"APPARITION","description":"WHYY recounts a Revolutionary-era guard haunting the house. Belmont Hall in Smyrna, Delaware is the kind of old house where every sound eventually gets a name. It's a documented legend: the telling is real, the contents remain folklore. Whatever walks there, it walks often enough to keep the reports coming.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.75,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Haunted Locations of Delaware","url":"https://whyy.org/articles/haunted-locations-of-delaware/","publisher":"WHYY","type":"LOCAL_JOURNALISM","authority":3},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"WHYY recounts a Revolutionary-era guard haunting the house. Belmont Hall in Smyrna, Delaware is the kind of old house where every sound eventually gets a name. It's a documented legend: the telling is real, the contents remain folklore. The account appears in 'Haunted Locations of Delaware'. The tale is the site's other archive — oral, embroidered, and outlasting the documents.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Haunted Locations of Delaware","url":"https://whyy.org/articles/haunted-locations-of-delaware/","publisher":"WHYY","type":"LOCAL_JOURNALISM","authority":3}}],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Haunted Locations of Delaware","url":"https://whyy.org/articles/haunted-locations-of-delaware/","publisher":"WHYY","type":"LOCAL_JOURNALISM","authority":3}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Belmont Hall (Smyrna, Delaware)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belmont_Hall_(Smyrna%2C_Delaware)","desc":"Historic house in Delaware, United States","extract":"Belmont Hall is a Georgian house located in Smyrna, Delaware, built about 1773 by Thomas Collins, who would become the eighth governor of Delaware. The front façade faces US 13.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Belmont_Hall_Smyrna_DE1.jpg/330px-Belmont_Hall_Smyrna_DE1.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":90,"lat":39.294501,"lon":-75.595902},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":0,"legends":1,"entities":0,"sources":1}}