Over two decades, one prospective buyer after another passed over the abandoned village in the Connecticut countryside. There were requirements to preserve its historical character and problems with the septic system, not to mention rumors that it was haunted.

So when a Filipino church came forward and bought the deteriorating collection of Victorian-style buildings last week, local officials were elated the village would be saved from rotting away. An official with the church, Iglesia Ni Cristo, says it is not daunted because it has a history of repurposing shuttered buildings for its fast-growing membership.

“We purchase a lot of abandoned worship buildings and restore them,” Joji Crisostomo, a district minister who oversees 32 congregations and missions for the church in the northeastern U.S., said in a statement. “That way people can use them again to reconnect with God.”

The relief in East Haddam has been mixed with curiosity over what exactly the church has planned for the community known as Johnsonville, which was home to twine mills in the 19th century before becoming a tourist attraction in the 1960s. The church bought the 62-acre property from a hotel group for $1.85 million.

No plans for the Connecticut property have been finalized, but a chapel will probably be restored as a new house of worship, and the church expects to keep the four residential properties and possibly add some more. If possible, he said in a statement, all the buildings will be restored, and there is also discussion of opening a Johnsonville museum.

The church bought an abandoned town – Scenic, South Dakota – in 2011, but it hasn’t offered any clues for its Connecticut plans. Officials with the county in South Dakota say the church’s intentions remain unclear.

Iglesia Ni Cristo, founded in 1914, has a mainstream profile in the Philippines and has gotten deeply involved in recent decades in issues such as land reform, according to Smita Lahiri, a professor of anthropology at the University of New Hampshire. The Roman Catholic-inspired sect rejects Catholicism in its ritual practices and recently has been conducting more outreach in India and Africa, she said in a statement.

It has millions of devotees in the Philippines and more than 7,000 congregations worldwide, including three already in Connecticut.

The Connecticut property was first developed as the Neptune Twine and Cord Mill Factory in the 1800s. An industrialist who acquired it in the 1960s bought old buildings including a schoolhouse and stable and moved them here with aspirations of recreating a 19th century village, but it never became a major tourist attraction.