Walking toward it, the modest, two-story house may not impress the contemporary East Greenwich person, especially as many houses in the area today are as large and some much larger.  But volunteer Neil Dunay will tell you, 300 years ago it was one of the grandest homes anywhere, especially in the wilderness of southern Rhode Island. “We can’t fathom today how much land [the men] owned,” he said. “Thousands of acres.” (In 2008, just 22 acres are left.)
 For history buffs, Smith’s Castle is interesting due to its founder, Richard Smith, (1596 - 1666) a very successful 17th century trader with the Narragansett Indians and a land-owner; his son, trader, farmer and slave-holder Richard Smith Jr., (1630 – 1692) and his nephew, a plantation owner named Daniel Updike (1694-1757) who was a long-serving Attorney General of Rhode Island. 
But for ghost fans, there’s just as much to appreciate and imagine, especially with Halloween upon us. 
Dunay is president of the Cocumscussoc Association, named after what the Indians called the land before the whites took over. And Dunay is loaded with stories and rumors about the past, factual or fanciful.
Probably the best loved ghost sighting, or rumor thereof, is the 17th century soldier who walks the grounds with a musket, protecting his territory. Numerous people over the years have claimed to see him, Dunay said, which has lead the Castle volunteers to assume it’s probably Richard Updike, a nephew of Richard Smith, Jr.
A former caretaker said he has seen a ghost-man going down the staircase, musket in hand, Dunay said, while a former president of the association said that once, when he was in the dining room, he could see a soldier outside, who then walked through the wall, into the room, and evaporated.
The Castle has a great visual of another rumored ghost, Phebe Congdon, whose portrait hangs in one of the upstairs rooms. She was the wife of Bengiman Congdon, who, people think, hung himself on a hook in 1815 in the dining room downstairs.
Despite her husband’s gruesome end, we may assume that Phebe was a fairly happy lady, because the caretakers, docents and visitors who claim they’ve seen her say she walks around benignly, with no dark intentions. Once a widow, she married his Congdon’s brother, Joseph, Dunay said, another one of those awkward traditions of our ancestors that you couldn’t fathom happening today.
The other ghost who has gotten some attention is a party guest of the Updike family from the 1700s. This lady supposedly fell down the entry staircase or over a balcony (no one is really sure) and died, and is said to haunt the place to this day, although Dunay is suspicious, as he’s never heard of any party-girl sightings firsthand. 
Whether you believe Elizabeth’s spirit still hangs around, her image has been restored, thanks to the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Conn., and she can be seen in a portrait dating back to the mid-1700s, hanging on a wall in the house’s staircase.
People may not have seen Elizabeth-as-ghost, Dunay said, but many people say they’ve heard the house making an “enormous noise,” as though a party was still going on, with footsteps, glasses tinkling, fabrics swishing, banging doors, and all the usual signs there’s a party in progress. In the 90s, in fact, when the house was undergoing a restoration, a man working on the construction said he clearly heard “tons of people” making merry.
 Another ghost story of the haven’t-seen-her-but-believe-in-her strain would appeal to the lonely romantics. Hannah Robinson, niece of Lodowick and Abigail Updike, fell in love with her French tutor, to her family’s disappointment, who forbade the relationship, Dunay said.
Their disapproval didn’t affect Robinson’s amour, though, and the night of one ball, the story goes, she arranged a coach switch, into the coach her tutor was in, and they headed for Providence to elope. 
But the story turns badly from there, Dunay said: the young lady got sick, her love didn’t work out, and she came back home alone, to her family, only to die, serving a lesson to all young women who go against their parents’ wishes in their pick of boyfriends. 
One of the more recent ghost stories is perhaps one of the saddest, because it’s a reminder of slavery’s history in Rhode Island. Smith’s Castle had its share of slaves over the generations: Richard Smith Jr. had eight slaves, according to the literature provided, while his nephew, Daniel Updike, had 19.
The house’s most recent caretaker said she saw a young slave reading a book at the top of the cellar stairs. 
Dunay said he’s never had the privilege of bumping into a ghost, though he jokingly suspects that being descendant of Richard Smith may have let him off the hook
But Dunay doesn’t seem to mind; the history itself is good enough for him. “There’s so much history, it’s so interesting, and this is one of the most historically important places in Rhode Island,” he said.
The greatest reminder of history is the 40 soldiers who are buried here from The Great Swamp Fight against the Indians in 1675, during King Phillip’s War. There’s a story that the spot where soldiers were buried, cows wouldn’t graze, Dunay said. A monument remains in their memory.