The Baleroy 'chair of death'

THE OBJECT

A blue wing chair, said to be about 200 years old (and, by claim, Napoleon's), in the Blue Room of Baleroy Mansion, a 32-room house in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, owned by the Easby family from the mid-1920s. The house and its antique contents were sold in 2012.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

LEGEND, OWNER'S ACCOUNT. George Meade Easby told visitors that people who sat in the chair died, and blamed a ghost he called Amanda; he roped the chair off. Accounts give three or four deaths — a housekeeper, a cousin, and Paul Kimmons, a friend or curator — of which the Chestnut Hill Historical Society holdings corroborate three deaths, not their cause.