No one would buy this Connecticut ghost town that’s on sale for $1.95 million
Johnsonville, Connecticut, is a small town that has been abandoned for 20 years and no one wants to buy it.
It is located on 62 acres off the Connecticut River and can be bought for $1.95 million.
The ghost town is home to green pastures, old-timey buildings and the former owner’s mansion, which is rumoured to be haunted by Emory Johnson himself, as the Business Insider reports.
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Apart from a caretaker and a security guard who keeps wannabe ghost hunters and urban explorers from snooping around, nobody lives there.
The town was established in 1802 and became and industrial center for twine production. A community began to rise around the mill, with homes, a church, a store and a post office.
Nobody knows how many people lived there at its peak.
In 1972, lightning struck the mill. “The mill burned down and that was the end of the town,” Sherri Milkie, a real estate agent overseeing the listing, tells Business Insider.
After the mill burned town, Raymond Schmitt, a rich man who made his fortune in aerospace manufacturing, transformed the town in his personal playground.
“He purchased [Johnsonville] just for the heck of it,” Milkie said. He tried to restore the town hoping that it would trap in time the simplicity of old times.
He found buildings along the Eastern seaboard and had them dismantled and brought to Johnsonville. The buildings include a general store, a clock and toy store, a church and a school.
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He rarely let outsiders in, with few exceptions. He rented the town out for weddings, because the white Victorian church with a cornflower blue offered a romantic setting. All of the buildings sit vacant today, overlooking the pond.
In 1988, the New York Times printed an ad that invited the public to celebrate Johnsonville’s history and restoration at a one-day Festival of the Forgotten Arts.
Visitors were able to tour the buildings Schmitt resurrected, as well as Emory Johnson’s original house.
In 1994, Schmitt closed Johnsonville and hung “For Sale” signs at the entrance. He tried to sell it for $3.5 million, but failed.
In 2001, the hotel group Meyer Jabara, based out of Danbury, Connecticut, wanted to convert the town into a retirement community, but “got distracted by other projects”, according to Milkie.
The town has sit unoccupied ever since. In 2015, Meyer Jabara put the town on sale, slashing the price from $2.4 million to $1.9 million.
A group of mediums have showed interest in buying the town. The possibilities for Johnsonville are “unlimited”, as Milkie says. It could be anything from an event venue to a solar and wind farm.
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