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Introduction

WELCOME TO Ghosthunting Virginia!

When I was asked to write this book, my editors knew me to be an established author of nonfiction books; to have a strong background in history, research, and fieldwork; and to live in Virginia and just outside of Washington, D.C. They had no reason to believe I’ve had an abiding interest in the paranormal for some thirty years. Nor, indeed, could they have known that I had been a “ghosthunter” some years before that term would have meant anything to most people.

Since moving to Virginia in 1991, I had not spent much time contemplating whether it was a particularly haunted state, much less undertaken nearly as many ghosthunting expeditions as I would have liked. My interests in such subjects had largely been subordinated by school, work, and family, and the unseen world I had once relished exploring was out of sight and, increasingly, out of mind. So, when I had the opportunity to turn my attentions to it once again through this book, I eagerly accepted.

Two years after I arrived in the Old Dominion, there occurred something that moved my interest in the paranormal from the realm of the esoteric into that of the mainstream: The X Files. There had been television shows and plenty of movies about the paranormal before this nine-season program—my favorite being Kolchak: The Night Stalker—but nothing before had been quite as successful or universally known. Though the show’s success probably was due in part to our culture’s increasing interest in the topics the show explored, I suspect that other shows about ghosthunting and similar esoteric subjects would not have been as popular in its absence.

My own affinity for the show stemmed from my longstanding interest in the supernatural, which lay not dead but dreaming within me, and I never lost my awareness that there are innumerable things in this world beyond the realm of the mundane. My guiding principal has long been that incisive phrase spoken by Hamlet to his friend Horatio (while holding a skull, no less).

“There are more things in heaven and earth,” Shakespeare wrote, “Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” In short, there are countless things in this world that cannot be adequately explained by any single conventional system of beliefs.

Despite an ongoing awareness of the unseen world and knowledge of things like the ghost tours held in historic Virginia towns such as Alexandria, Fairfax, and Winchester, I was surprised to discover upon starting to research this project just how many haunted sites there are in the state and adjacent Washington, D.C. To say that this book could have a hundred chapters devoted to publicly accessible haunted sites would be a marked understatement, and to say that it could have a thousand if private venues were also included would not be inaccurate. Distilling all of the possible choices into a mere thirty chapters was not the smallest challenge associated with this project.

Suffice it to say, Virginia and the District of Columbia are fertile ground for ghosthunters and have no shortage of potential venues for investigation. And I have spared no efforts to make this guidebook as useful a resource as possible for those interested in visiting haunted sites.

In any event, my goal with this book has not been to prove or convince anyone that any of the places I visited are indeed haunted. It has been, rather, to identify sites that have ghostly phenomena associated with them, visit them, and compile their history and my experiences into a book that other people with an interest in the subject could use as a guide for their own visits. That said, I am willing to go on the record as saying that I believe any of the sites covered in this book could be haunted and am firmly convinced that at least five of them certainly are. Which those are I will leave to readers to determine for themselves.

Ghosthunting as a pursuit has certainly come into its own over the past few years, and it and associated phenomena have become the subjects of numerous television shows and movies. In my experience, however, real ghosthunting bears very little resemblance to what is depicted even in “reality” shows related to the subject. The real thing is generally much less manic, a lot quieter, and—despite the absence of noise, running back and forth, and jerky camera angles—much more intense. It also does not result in evidence of haunting on every expedition.

Many ghosthunters today use a wide variety of electronic equipment, and there can certainly be some value associated with this approach. I do not believe, however, anyone should hesitate to engage in ghosthunting based on a lack of equipment, and am myself more of a “naturalistic” ghosthunter. For various reasons, I use a minimum of equipment in my investigations and not much more than I have ever used as a writer and reporter: a microcassette recorder, a digital camera, a pen and notepad, and a flashlight. I have also found a full tank of gas and some food and water to be useful when heading into relatively isolated areas.

I also think a ghosthunter’s innate senses are just as critical to an investigation as any sort of equipment. While I make no claims here to be a “psychic investigator,” I do believe that most people have access to certain paranormal senses that they can draw upon if they choose to and are aware of them. People who can use such abilities reliably, of course, have generally spent many years honing them and learning to differentiate exterior phenomena from internal thoughts. People without such experience should probably err on the side of caution and in the absence of corroborating evidence assume that whatever they are “sensing” could very well be a product of their imaginations.

While investigating Devil’s Den in southwestern Virginia, for example, I came virtually face to face with what I believe to have been a spirit entity of some sort and had the distinct impression of an Indian shaman. While it is a pretty sure bet that this site was, indeed, visited and possibly even used by Indians, I have no actual evidence to support this supposition, and am thus not willing to accept as a true psychic impression.

Beyond experience, a good attitude is crucial. While the following chapters include a lot of information that can be useful when visiting the specific sites, there is one bit of general advice I would like offer to prospective ghosthunters: show respect for both the rights of any relevant living people (i.e., property owners) and for the dignity of any spirits that might be lingering at a particular site. I believe that ghosthunting is an endeavor fraught with its own potential hazards, and my sense is that anyone who acts inappropriately for too long is ultimately going to suffer some unhappy consequences—whether legal, spiritual, or otherwise.

For a good example of what not to do, check out a recent episode of the British ghosthunting show Most Haunted, during which the cast visited a purportedly haunted shipyard named Cammell Laird. Especially appalling was the behavior of the female host, who kept snapping orders at any ghosts that might have been present. Members of the crew said demeaning things about them, and a narrator made reference to “goading” ghosts into revealing themselves. The capacity of ghosts to visit various misfortunes upon people is limited, but if it is at all possible to call them down on oneself, this sort of behavior is probably the way to do it. Beyond that, people who act this way are creeps.

Determining exactly what ghosts are is beyond the scope of this book, and throughout it terms like “ghost,” “phantasm,” “specter,” and “spirit” are used fairly synonymously and are not intended as technical terms indicating manifestations with specific and differing characteristics. This is, after all, primarily a travel guide, not a tome devoted to the classification of earth-bound spirits, which would be of little practical use to most readers.

That said, the term “ghosts” runs the gamut from nonsentient residues of spiritual energy that can be detected by various means, to intelligent manifestations that can make their presences felt in various ways. My sense is that the vast majority of hauntings are of the lower order and that it is quite possible to have subtly haunted sites that are never identified as such due to a lack of investigation.

All of the places described in this book are believed to be haunted. Some people were quite forthcoming about discussing haunted places while others were more tight-lipped for whatever reasons.

One thing I have encountered while investigating potentially haunted places is the phenomena commonly known as “orbs,” which are sometimes captured in digital photographs. No one can be involved with ghosthunting for too long without stumbling across the ongoing debate over these spherical objects and what they might be. Some people believe orbs are manifestations of spiritual energy. Others—including many veteran ghosthunters—dismiss these phenomena for a various reasons, a common one being that orbs are nothing more than a byproduct of low-light photography and represent an improperly developed spot on an image.

I am definitely of the former school of thought. In short, in the years since I have been using a digital camera, I have taken tens of thousands of pictures under all sorts of conditions. Of all those pictures, the only ones that have displayed orbs are ones I took at fewer than a half dozen locations, all of them reputed to be haunted. To me, these phenomena are compelling evidence of what I believe to be some sort of spiritual energy and a hallmark of haunted sites.

But the point of this book is not for me to convince anybody of anything. It is, rather, to provide a tool that prospective ghosthunters can use to help them find haunted sites, conduct their own investigations, and draw their own conclusions. I wish you the best of luck and look forward to hearing from you as you conduct your own visits to the sites listed in this book!

Michael J. Varhola

Springfield, Virginia

July 2008