by Mark Nesbitt
Uniquely, the pews in St. George’s were permanently installed, rendering them immovable by hospital orderlies or Union soldiers. Some of the pews in other churches in town were cut up and used as headboards for gravesites. As well, three Tiffany stained-glass windows are set in the church walls. The church was damaged in the Union bombardment of 1862 and was used as a hospital during the campaigns of 1862, 1863, and 1864. The church remained in service for both Union and Confederate soldiers, depending upon who occupied the town during the war. During the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, one wounded Northerner described what he saw outside the building along the stairs: “Dead soldiers piled on either side as high as the top step, and the fence hanging full of belts, cartridge boxes, canteens, and haversacks.” The fence and the steps are the originals.
But it is what has been seen inside the church, dating back to 1858, that interests ghost hunters. The original 1858 story, found in Virginia Ghosts by Marguerite DuPont Lee, relates that a Ms. Ella McCarty was a singer in the choir of St. George’s. She had arrived at the church at night with a gentleman and found that they were early; only the organist was present. The church was still dark, lit only by one candle in the choir loft, then located over the vestibule. The two men left Ms. McCarty sitting in the church while they looked for more candles. As she sat and her eyes became more accustomed to the dark, she saw a female figure, appearing to be dressed all in white with a veil over her face, kneeling at the rail in the front of the church, apparently in prayer. Within a short time the woman in white arose, and then, almost as if she were floating, turned to face Ms. McCarty. She looked at her with a forlorn, desperate expression. Ms. McCarty began to speak to the woman, and she then vanished.
It is remarkable to find a ghost story in a Civil War town that predates the war. More common are those more recent, such as this one from the current century. A young woman was in the church and went into the restroom. From inside one of the stalls she heard the door to the restroom open, and then the door to the next stall opened. Moments later when she was leaving, she began to realize something strange. Although she had heard someone walk into the restroom, move across the floor, and open the stall door, she heard no one leave and there was no one in the room with her. Cautiously, she pushed open the stall door and realized that she had been alone in the room.
According to the local police, their K-9 dogs are especially nervous inside and outside of the church. The dogs especially react at the door to the balcony. According to one officer, “There aren’t too many police officers who haven’t had an experience in St. George’s.” Police officers will check the doors at night to make sure they are locked—and they are. An hour or so later, they’ll check again, and they will be unlocked. Officers will hear footsteps walking through the sanctuary when there is no one visible, and they will hear the benches creaking as if someone was sitting in them. The caretaker was working in the cemetery and felt someone come up behind him and touch him on the shoulder, but when he turned around to see what the person wanted, no one was there.
Certain professions produce the most believable witnesses to ghost stories. Among those are police, who are trained observers. One night, a rookie and a seasoned officer were patrolling together. They stopped at St. George’s for a second time to make sure the doors were locked. The rookie said, “I’ll handle this,” and walked from the car to the door. He tried opening the door, which had been locked the first time they visited the church, and it was unlocked. The rookie waved for the other officer to stay in the car, indicating that he would enter the church and make sure everything was in order and then secure the building. The other officer waved his consent.
Five minutes passed. And then ten minutes passed. After twenty minutes, the seasoned officer was concerned. Just as he was about to get out of the car, the rookie exited the church, locked the door behind him, and hopped back into the car.
“Everything okay?” asked the veteran officer.
“Yep. Checked all the doors and all the rooms. Even that weird room where everything is painted red.”
The veteran officer was silent and waited until a few days later to tell the rookie. There is no red room in St. George’s.
The Chimneys
The Chimneys, a large historic building on the corner of Caroline and Charlotte Streets, was built around 1770 by an immigrant Scottish merchant, John Glassel. Loyal to the crown, when the Revolution broke out, he left his property to his brother and returned to Scotland. The property has changed hands many times and has assumed many reincarnations since then.
Ghosts at the Chimneys are nothing new. Although some of the stories predate the Civil War, Dr. Brodie Herndon, who owned the house in the mid-nineteenth century, contended that the house was haunted. Some of the paranormal events he recorded continue to this day, such as doorknobs being turned by invisible hands and doors opening by themselves. Apparently in Mr. Brodie’s time, a woman saw her uncle standing in one of the rooms across the hall. By the time she entered the room, it was empty. This apparition was a harbinger, because her uncle died three days later.
Apparently, one of the early occupants, probably a young woman, played the harp in the parlor, for it is from that area that the sweet strains of a phantom harp are heard upon occasion, playing a melody many decades removed from the list of popular songs. Sometimes the refrain is accompanied by a ghostly singer.
Years after the harp and its player left, some occupants of the house brought a piano. One evening a young woman sat down and began to accompany herself on the piano. She heard the front door open and close. She was surprised to hear footsteps approach. She knew there were guests out front, so she asked the person obviously trying to frighten her to identify himself. The only answer was the plodding footsteps, which by now had reached the doorway. She turned apprehensively toward the sound, but as the footfalls entered the room and approached her, she could see no one. Her piano recital suddenly came to an end when someone, quite invisible, sat down on the piano bench next to her and placed an unseen, icy hand upon her shoulder.
One particular night when the Chimneys was still a residence, a woman was awakened by a chill in the air. The chill grew perceptibly colder as she approached her youngest son’s bedroom. She took a blanket from a closet and entered his room. To her astonishment, there was another male child apparently asleep in the bed next to her son. She could not identify him because his face was half covered with the sheet, but she assumed that perhaps her sleeping husband had invited one of the neighbor boys to spend the night. She covered the two, and went back to bed herself. The next morning when her husband awakened, she asked who the boy was he had invited to spend the night with their son. She was met with an incredulous look and the affirmation that he had not invited anyone to spend the night. At that moment, her son came down for breakfast, by himself, and confirmed that indeed, he had slept alone that night. And while the woman’s original mission was to cover her son to ward off the cold, that night—at least in the rest of the house—had been overly warm. A quick examination of her son’s bed revealed to the woman that only one child—one living child—had spent the night there.
Auditory apparitions, the most common kind, also occur here. The sound of china crashing to the floor is heard, but upon inspection of the room, nothing is amiss. Heavy footsteps are detected in the hall when no one is there. Doors are heard slamming.
Occasionally, someone will see a rocking chair start moving back and forth with no one seated in it. One of the owners of a restaurant that was located in the house would come in at 4 A.M. to do his preparation for breakfast. The sound of silverware falling on the floor—with no actual silverware apparent anywhere—was so frequent, that he had to holler at the ghosts to leave him alone, because he had work to do. The ruckus abruptly stopped.
Some of the more recent activity involves child ghosts. The apparition of a little boy is seen roaming about upstairs. There is the rumor of a little boy who fell from the balcony to his death
many years ago. He also apparently doesn’t like a certain door upstairs to be closed, because as often as they close it and leave at night, the next morning the door is open. A little girl also walks the floor upstairs and then is seen to vanish, as well as the apparition of a grown woman. Several years ago, the owners of the bakery that was once housed in the Chimneys spent their first night in Fredericksburg in an upstairs room. They had cats—animals are often more sensitive to the paranormal than humans—and the cats did not sleep all night. As well, the two woke the next morning to find that each had dreamed all night long—of children.
Nicodemus
The stories about the famous Underground Railroad, that clandestine matrix of people, routes, and safe houses for runaway slaves in antebellum America, are as mysterious as they are romantic. Most of what we know about the system of transferring slaves from slave-holding states to freedom comes from after the Civil War, since harboring escaped slaves, throughout most of American history, was a crime, and those involved were reluctant to speak about it. In spite of that, the Virginia Abolition Society was formed in the 1780s.
That’s right: the Virginia Abolition Society. So much for all the evil Southern slaveholders. As a matter of fact, only about 7 percent of all Southerners owned slaves, which makes one wonder why some eighteen-year-old Southern boy, whose family owned no slaves, would sign up to fight in the Civil War and possibly die for the rich man on the plantation to keep his slaves. He wouldn’t, and he wasn’t fighting just for slavery. American history is never as simple as some would make it.
Legislators representing slaveholders fought to keep the institution. In the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, rights to slaves as property became constitutional. Regardless, by 1830, the Underground Railroad was in full operation in both the North and the South. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made it a violation of Federal law to assist escaping slaves and slaves were forced to be returned to their masters, inflicting heavy fines and jail terms upon those aiding slaves’ escape.
Railroad terminology was used to throw off slave-catchers: Safe houses were depots or stations located one nights’ walk apart, conductors were guides to escaping slaves, agents offered their homes as day shelters for escapees, and superintendents controlled the operations in an entire state. During the day, slaves were hidden in barns, beneath floorboards, in false rooms, within the cog pits of mills, and down in damp cellars. They often waited days for forged “documents of passage” to arrive. Nighttime escapes were made on foot, in false bottoms in wagons, on the top of railroad cars, and by canoe, schooner, or steamer. The Chesapeake Bay was sought because of its access into the North, so the waterways draining into the bay, such as the Rappahannock, were desired routes. Indeed, several maps of the routes of the escapees on the Underground Railroad show Fredericksburg in the center.
At this writing, there is no documented evidence that the Chimneys was ever used as a depot on the Underground Railroad. There is, however, evidence from the other world that someone, desperate to escape, remained in the cellar of the building far too long. This is a story of two kinds of escape: one from slavery, the other from death.
On the evening of April 21, 2006, Julie Pellegrino, the spirit liaison I often use during paranormal investigations, explored the Chimneys, along with several others interested in the paranormal history of the building. After getting her impressions of several of the rooms, including the strong presence of a seafarer, Julie descended into the cellar.
The cellar of the Chimneys is currently used as a storage area for the businesses in the building. Julie approached the main area of the cellar and commented, “I feel like I can’t leave, but I’m not a prisoner and I’m not locked in.”
Channeling is a psychic phenomenon wherein mediums become conduits for the deceased—feeling, moving, and speaking as if they were dead people. Julie was later asked if she was channeling someone dead from the past, and she answered no, that she was merely repeating verbatim what she was hearing in the cellar that night. According to my wife Carol, who accompanied her into the cellar, after passing through the door into the room, Julie received the name “Nicodemus.” Julie’s commentary went as follows.
Don’t know where I am, came with others.
They got papers. They left.
Can’t leave without papers. Miss Hattie bring papers.
Can’t read, can’t write, don’t know what in papers. Need papers to leave.
Others come, get papers, leave. Don’t understand . . . .
Julie interjects at this point that she sensed that there was something wrong with his one hand, that his hand was crippled or injured in some way. When he speaks again, Julie points to some objects piled in the corner.
I work, back strong, I carry things.
I carry that . . . I work, need papers, don’t understand.
People in house don’t know I here.
Carol asks Julie if his name is Nicodemus.
No, just what they call me. Hattie not her name, just what they call her.
Hear music, must be quiet . . . dark, Miss Hattie bring papers.
More came. They got papers, left, said they’d come back for me.
Never came.
Music stopped, quiet . . . scared, can’t leave
Julie suddenly says she thought she smelled smoke and was on the verge of tears at this point. She also had the sense that he had died there, in that cellar.
Julie’s olfactory impression of a fire is interesting because the records show that in 1799 a huge fire destroyed much of the neighborhood near the Chimneys. It was rebuilt, but burned again in 1823. This may give us a clue as to which approximate period Julie was tapping into.
Carol called me into the cellar and Julie asked me to attempt to get some EVP. My technique is to ask a question pertinent to the past into a digital recorder, then pause with the recorder set on voice activation. In complete silence, the machine begins to record.
One other thing: I have never considered myself sensitive in any way to paranormal effects. Perhaps it’s because I was trained as a writer to be objective; perhaps it says something about the fact that we’re all different, with different sensitivities. Some of us are born with sharper hearing or better eyesight than others. Possibly it is the same with sensitivity to ghosts: some people are, some are not. I think I fall into the latter category. My mind was to change in a few short minutes.
Two sessions were attempted. The first session yielded rough, growling, staccato answers to my questions. Prior to the second session, Julie recommended that I tell “Nicodemus” that he could go now, that he didn’t need his papers, and that he didn’t need to wait for Hattie. I did just that. As I stood there in the darkened cellar in my short-sleeved shirt, I felt an extremely cold spot touch my right arm and remain there for about five seconds. Then it was replaced by a hot sensation, and then it returned to regular temperature. The rest of my body was normal temperature. After the session, I mentioned this to Julie. “That was Nicodemus,” she said. She, too, had felt him leave the cellar. “He passed between us.”
The Kenmore Inn
The Kenmore Inn was built in 1793. George Washington no doubt spent some time here. Fielding Lewis once owned the property, and Lewis most certainly would have entertained his brother-in-law George. Lewis may have lived in the building while construction of Kenmore Plantation was going on.
During the Civil War, Union soldiers used the basement as stalls for their horses. There is a garage that has been remodeled into a casual dining area, but it was used as a hospital during the battle. Employees have found bullets and buttons in the yard, as well as a whiskey flask and some vertebra that might be human.
There is a great deal of paranormal activity at the Kenmore— perhaps the unsettled spirits of the wounded who passed away at the inn during the conflict.
On Halloween 2005, one of the managers of the Kenmore, Gretchen, and two of the waitstaff were standing in the front hallway at the main entrance, where there are two chandelier
s. They were talking, and Gretchen happened to mention something about ghosts. Just at that moment, the light in the chandelier over her head flashed. They all looked at each other incredulously and moved out of the room. About five minutes later, they were talking again, mentioning that the flashing light seemed kind of odd. Gretchen mentioned the word “ghost” again and the same chandelier flashed. It had never flashed before and hasn’t since. Of course, Gretchen admitted that she refuses to used the word “ghost” in the hallway since the weird occurrence.
Before she started working at the Kenmore, Getchen visited Fredericksburg as a tourist. One night she was staying in Room 208. She had gone to bed, but was awakened at 3:00 A.M. by the sound of something very large and heavy being dragged down the hall past her room. It passed her room but didn’t go down the stairs. At first she thought maybe it was a guest who had an argument with a roommate and was leaving in the middle of the night; however, it didn’t sound at all like wheeled luggage rolling down the hall, but more like something being dragged, and upon checking the next morning, she found out that no one had left the Kenmore in the middle of the night.
She later stayed in Room 107 downstairs. She was in the bathroom and went out to the bed to get something from her suitcase. When she went back in the bathroom, the light had been turned off. She now rents that room out to guests, who report the medicine cabinet door pops open often and the bathroom door will not stay closed, even when the door is latched.
In Room 207, she hung an old picture on the wall above the commode on a nail driven into plaster. A week later a guest had reported that the picture had fallen off the wall. She never had any pictures fall off the walls because they are very securely nailed into plaster. She went and nailed it back in. About a month later it fell off again. The strange thing is that it never breaks—neither glass nor frame. It’s almost as if someone gently removes it from the wall, nail and all, and places the picture on the floor.
