With a history so old it predates the formation of the United States by over 100 years, many stories of eerie places and strange spirits have arisen over time in Virginia, throughout Virginia--but particularly in the Fredericksburg area. These stories are particularly popular to tell in October, the month of Halloween and of ghost tourism. Your library’s collection is a great place to learn about all of Virginia’s hauntings! This article tells tales of Fredericksburg ghosts, shares some purportedly haunted places in Virginia, and provides a list of Virginia ghost tours.
Books on haunted places and ghostly tales from Virginia! Some titles are available to read only in the Virginiana Room at Fredericksburg Branch (librarypoint.org/virginiana). Others are available as eBooks to check out with no waiting through hoopla Digital. Go to librarypoint.org/hoopla for more information on accessing this collection.
Strange Spirits in Fredericksburg
Fredericksburg has many interesting sites for those interested in ghost tourism. Several commercial companies offer ghost tours of the Fredericksburg area, but it can be just as fun to plan a trip on your own if you know the best locations. One of the most notoriously haunted buildings in Fredericksburg is the mansion known as The Chimneys. Home to many businesses over the years, including Billiken’s Smokehouse. The Chimneys is associated with several accounts of hauntings. It is most known for “Nicodemus,” the spirit of a man fleeing slavery on the Underground Railroad. He supposedly perished in a fire in either 1799 or 1823 while waiting for a train to take him to freedom. “Nicodemus” is associated with a sudden scent of acrid smoke in the air. Another spirit remains nameless, but is said to be attracted to music. When a young girl was playing the piano, she heard the front door open and the sound of footsteps crossing the room to where she was sitting. She briefly felt a touch on her shoulder as she played, but could not see anyone in the room with her during the event.
Fredericksburg’s ghostly history can also be found at Chatham Manor. Ghost stories from this mansion center around the legendary Lady in White. In life, she was said to be a young woman who was separated from her lover and sent back to England by General George Washington. After the end of her affair, she was unhappy for the rest of her natural life. Her unnatural life began on the night of June 21, 1790, when guests at the manor saw a floating woman clad in a long, white wedding gown. Her spirit is said to return to the manor every seven years from that day, always appearing on the day of her death. Her next “Ghost Walk,” which will take her from Chatham Manor to the river, would be expected on June 21, 2028.
Kenmore Plantation is another Fredericksburg-area plantation with tales of hauntings. This historic mansion was originally built in the 1770s as the home of George Washington’s sister, Betty, and her husband, Fielding Lewis. The Lewis family was said to house over 80 enslaved people during their time living in the mansion, but they still faced difficulties making profit from the plantation. Lewis died in Fredericksburg in 1781, but was financially struggling after he had lost money during the Revolutionary War and from making an unpaid loan to Virginia’s government to build a gun factory. The ghost of Fielding Lewis is still said to reside at Kenmore Plantation today, spending much of his time obsessing over financial records. Doorknobs turning on their own are sometimes reported at Kenmore and are associated with the spirit of Lewis becoming agitated.
Fredericksburg’s Rising Sun Tavern is said to be haunted by the ghost of its devoted owner of old. John Frazer and his wife leased the building after the Revolutionary War and operated it as the Old Eagle Tavern. Frazer enjoyed visiting his tavern frequently. On one of these visits in 1793, he became ill and was taken to a room upstairs in the tavern, where he died. After his death, tavern visitors began to report unsettling phenomena, such as sudden light flickers, a lingering cold in the air, and objects moving without being touched. These strange occurrences have become associated with the spirit of John Frazer.
Other ghosts are said to haunt the Rising Sun Tavern as well. The most notorious of these is an unknown spirit said to be fascinated by electric lights. When a curator was turning off the lights after a long day, the unknown spirit turned them back on. After the curator turned them back off once more, she yelled at the spirit, and promptly found the rug pulled out from under her! Although she was injured, the curator never scolded the spirit again.
Perhaps the most haunted place of all in Fredericksburg is Sunken Road. This place was the site of a particularly vicious battle during the Civil War, on December 13, 1862. Union troops under General Ambrose Burnside clashed with Confederate forces under James Longstreet for control of the city of Fredericksburg. Sunken Road was a natural depression that had been worn down to a low ground from years of wagon travel. The Confederate troops were stationed at Marye’s Heights from a higher vantage point, allowing them to fire downwards at the attacking Union forces. The area became known for a bloody defeat of the Union and high troop losses. The Sunken Road area became associated with the memories of Civil War-era violence, and residents reported seeing ghosts along the walls for many decades. One reported ghost was that of Richard Kirkland, a Confederate soldier from South Carolina who offered lifesaving aid to Union troops.
Haunted Places Across Virginia
Virginia is dotted with many locations associated with ghosts and spooky events. One of the most infamous of Virginia’s haunted places is the Peyton Randolph House in Wiliamsburg. This historic plantation has gained a dark association over the years with hauntings by the spirits of people who died in its walls over the years. The Randolph family had a history in Virginia’s elite dating back before the Revolution; Peyton’s father, John Randolph,, opens a new window was a house speaker and attorney general, and Peyton was the first president of the Continental Congress. The house began to gain an unsavory reputation during the Revolutionary War, when it was used as a makeshift hospital. The plantation became associated with the screams of suffering Revolutionary soldiers and blood that soaked deep into the wooden floors in the minds of those who lived there.
After Randolph died in 1775, the house eventually came to be owned by the Peachy family. It was then that a series of tragedies would happen that came to define the Peyton Randolph House in the popular imagination. William Peachy died in 1810, not long after the family took ownership of the house. His wife, Mary Monro Peachy, was left to raise their children on her own. One of her children died after a fall from a tree on the estate; others died of fever and other illnesses. The mansion’s association with ill omens deepened in October 1824, after the Marquis de Lafayette described having his sleep interrupted by the sounds of strange, unknown voices. In 1858, the mansion was sold once more, this time to Richard Hansford. During Hansford’s ownership, the Peyton Randolph House was used as a hospital for both Union and Confederate troops during the Civil War. As many as 30 people died in the house, but the most commonly cited ghost is believed to be Mary Peachy herself mourning the deaths of her children.
Another infamous place in Virginia is the St. Albans Sanatorium in Radford, Virginia. This building was not originally built as a mental hospital. It first opened in 1892 as a Lutheran-affiliated private school for boys, but it quickly gained a troubled reputation. George W. Miles, the school’s headmaster, created an environment where athletic success was pursued aggressively at the expense of students’ mental health. Several students died by suicide as a result of the bullying and pressures that were part of the St. Albans environment. After nearly 20 years of operation, the school closed in 1911.
The two buildings that the private school had operated out of were bought by Dr. J.C. King in 1916 and combined into one facility which he operated as the St. Albans Sanatorium. It was at this point that the building became cemented in the public’s imagination as a haunted house. Treatment of the mentally ill in the earlier part of the 20th century was very cruel by today’s standards and could potentially leave the patients lobotomized, wrapped in ice-cold towels, or confined in a vat of steaming water. The building became so infamous for cruel, experimental techniques that one of its rooms is still known as the Suicide Bathroom. It continued to operate as a hospital until 1995, when the building was bought out by Carilion Clinic. In 2004, Carilion abandoned the building and slated it for demolition, but it was bought out by a former patient and has been operated as a haunted house tour since 2010.
Richmond is home to one of Virginia’s most infamous haunted places, Hollywood Cemetery. This cemetery has existed in a once-rural area in Richmond since 1847 and has become the subject of many ghost and haunting stories. On October 2, 1925, people reported seeing a hideous fanged creature in the cemetery’s Church Hill tunnel. It was seen shortly after a major cave-in and was covered in blood and ruined skin. A group of people supposedly chased this “Richmond vampire” until it disappeared into a mysterious tomb. In reality, the Richmond vampire was most likely Benjamin Mosby, a man who was working in the Church Hill tunnel when it collapsed and became fatally burned by his firebox. Although accounts at the time described Mosby’s death truthfully (including his death in a hospital), the fact that he was buried in Hollywood Cemetery afterwards distorted people’s memories of the event and caused them to transform him into a mythic vampire. The Richmond vampire myth remains popular in cemetery tours to this day.
The legendary vampire is not the only tale of hauntings from Hollywood Cemetery. The 90-foot tall Confederate Memorial Pyramid was finished in 1869, four years after the Civil War’s end. The monument had been under construction for a year before its completion. Construction workers for the project included inmates from local prisons who were forced to work on the pyramid. Various workers became injured or disappeared in unusual circumstances, including Thomas Stanley, the man who placed the capstone on the pyramid. A horse thief serving a considerable sentence at the state penitentiary, Stanley received a transfer two days afterwards that did not mention where he was sent. Tales of mysterious moans coming from the pyramid are common; depending on the teller of the tale, the noises may be thought to have come from just Stanley’s ghost, all the prisoners who worked on the pyramid, or the 18,000 Confederate soldiers buried at Hollywood Cemetery.
A statue of a dog at Hollywood Cemetery has inspired haunting tales of its own. The Iron Dog is a statue of a Newfoundland dog that stands guard over the grave of Florence Rees, a girl who died in 1862. The statue was cast by the Bartlett-Hayward Company of Baltimore, Maryland. The dog was originally made to resemble the two mascots of the company, the dogs Sailor and Canton. The iron dog was believed to have been particularly beloved by Florence during her short life, so her father put it in the cemetery to watch over her grave. Some visitors claim they hear growling and snarling noises coming from the dog as they approach the little girl's grave. A few people say that the dog’s eyes will move to watch them while they are close to the grave, or that the position of the statue will shift in-between their visits to the cemetery.
This Halloween, consider going on a ghost tour in Fredericksburg to experience its haunted places. Several companies offer these specialized tours in the city, including Olde Towne Carriage Tours, Fredericksburg Hauntings, Forbidden Frights, History Walks FXBG,, opens a new window and one tour available through TripAdvisor.
If you want to visit on your own time and schedule, feel free to plan your own expedition and experience Fredericksburg’s haunted places for yourself, keeping in mind that trespassing after hours should not be done.
