Ghost Town Goes Up for Auction Again

May 31, 2017

For those in search of something grander than a mere home to buy, a celebrated New England ghost town is up for sale—for the third time in three years.

The property in question is Johnsonville, located in the Moodus section of East Haddam, Conn. Johnsonville was a 19th century mill community that was repositioned in the mid-1960s as a tourist attraction before being shut down in 1994.

Meyer Jabara Hotels, a hotel management firm based in Danbury, Conn., purchased Johnsonville in 2001 for $2.5 million and initially planned to demolish its abandoned structures in favor of a mixed-used development. But local zoning problems proved to be too onerous, and Johnsonville remained largely forgotten until it was featured on a September 2012 episode of the National Geographic Channel show “Abandoned.”

Meyer Jabara Hotels conducted an online auction in 2014 and the property sold for $1.9 million, but the winning bidder failed to complete the purchase. The town was listed for sale again in 2015 for $2.4 million, but there were no takers. It is now online for sale again at $1.9 million via William Raveis Luxury Properties, which described the property as an “incredible investor opportunity.”

And if you are looking for ghosts in this ghost town, you are out of luck. The horror-hunting Web site DamnedCT.com described Johnsonville as being “like a weird dead spot in an otherwise regular Connecticut neighborhood.”

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Phil Hall

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May 31, 2017

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