First, neither of them actually died within the house or even owned it very long, which would have limited their emotional or spiritual attachments to it.
Second, neither appears to have left behind unfinished business or to have been tormented by an unfulfilled life. Weems in particular seems to have been very satisfied with himself, and to have successfully and zealously devoted the greater part of his intellectual, emotional, and spiritual life to his deity (who, by all accounts, was Washington, “the HERO and the Demigod,” who he characterizes as “Jupiter Conservator” or “Jupiter the Savior”).
No, two far more tragic and unfulfilled lives are associated with the house and seem to be the source of the unhappy spirits who continue to dwell within it. And, as Beth Cardinale was to explain to us, their names are Mamie and Violet, a pair of sisters who lived in the house during the last century. Their stories are as strange and gothic as any I have found associated with a purportedly haunted site.
In 1869, four years after the Civil War ended, Richard Merchant purchased the Weems-Botts house and for the next century his family lived in it. Whether he was married to his wife Annie at that time, who then would have been about thirteen, is unclear.
Richard and Annie Merchant’s first daughter, Mamie, was born around 1883. She suffered from some sort of epilepsy and, with the hardened propriety of that era, the family kept her confined within an upstairs bedroom to hide her condition from the public. She was never allowed to leave the room, taking her meals at a small table and even performing hygiene functions within the room’s confines. It is not surprising that her intellectual development was supposed to have been stunted, and that she was to remain childlike her entire life—which was not long, as she succumbed to a seizure in 1906, at the age of twenty-three.
Violet’s life was to be more prolonged but, in its way, equally grim. She was apparently blessed with good health, both physically and mentally. She lived away from home somewhere outside of Dumfries, had a job, and a fiancé. When her father, Richard, died a few months before Mamie, her mother demanded that she return home and take care of her. Dutifully, she left behind her husband-to-be, her job, her life, and returned to the family home in Dumfries (presumably in time to be present for Mamie’s convulsive demise).
There is some suggestion that Violet thought her mother might not live long and that she might be able to return to the existence she had enjoyed elsewhere, but that hope waned, slowly but surely, one long, lonely year after another, until nearly half a century had passed. Annie hung on until 1954, when she died at age ninety-eight. Violet herself lived on just another thirteen years, many of them in a nursing home, and died in 1967. (Violet’s life could almost have been the inspiration for Eleanor in Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House—adapted for the screen in 1963 and 1999 as The Haunting—the main difference being that the literary character cared for her mother just eleven years.)
A few years after Violet died, the city of Dumfries acquired the house and, in cooperation with the Historic Dumfries nonprofit association, has operated it as a museum since 1976. It was around the time they were renovating it for this public use that ghostly phenomena were first recorded at the house.
Beth showed me and Jason around the Weems-Botts house during our visit and told us about some of the strange experiences she has had at the house. She had her first, in fact, during one of her initial visits to it several years ago, at one of the sleepovers the institution allows each year in October.
“Throughout the night I would wake up occasionally, because I heard creaking, groaning, old house noises, pipe-rattling noises,” she said. “I’ve been in old houses; I’ve heard the plumbing rattle, so it was not an unfamiliar sound.” She was sleeping in what is called the “Weems Room,” she said, and most of the noise was coming from the nearby parlor.
“The next day, the curator asked me how I’d slept,” she said. When Beth described to the woman what had disturbed her sleep throughout the night, “she smiled and said to me, ‘There’s no plumbing in this house!’”
Beth went on to describe another incident, which occurred during a visit by a group of high-school students after Beth had begun working at the house. They were in the upstairs bedroom used by Violet, which is in the oldest part of the house, and has a window that used to look out onto an open area prior to the building being expanded but now faces only a brick wall. She and one of the students were talking in the room and the window, just a few feet away from them, was closed.
“I turned to point to the window to explain something and it was open,” she said. “We both kind of looked at it, and I said, ‘Oh, that’s just our ghost saying “hello,”’ and he chuckled. I talked some more to him, and when we looked back at the window it was closed again.” None of the other windows were open and there was no breeze and no one else had been present.
“The next day, I was in the room with two young ladies, and asked if they knew about the ghost.” They did not, and seemed to be a little taken aback by this information. “‘We didn’t know anything about a ghost!’ they said. I told them not to worry and that nothing usually happened there. All of a sudden, the window rattled, and the girls started heading for the steps!”
Another story predated Beth by about a decade, and had been related to her by people who worked at Weems-Botts at the time. It involved an officer from nearby Marine Corps Base Quantico, who was there with a group of Boy Scouts touring the house. They were in the other upstairs bedroom, the one in which Mamie had been confined, and the docent was speaking to the group. Turning to the Marine scout leader, she could see that he was visibly shaken and looking toward the far corner of the room.
“She needs her chair,” he said in a quavering voice, sweat breaking out on his forehead, and then abruptly rushed from the house. He could not be induced for any reason to return to it, and the museum guide had to gather up the scouts and lead them out herself.
Other stories Beth told us involved minor but strange episodes involving various artifacts displayed throughout the house. In a parlor, for example, a doll that had belonged to Violet is normally left sitting on one of the chairs. And there it would be when the staff locked up at night, but when they returned in the morning, the doll would be elsewhere in the room. This continued until one of the docents made a firm declaration that whoever kept moving the doll should stop—after which they did. Yet another episode in recent memory involved a mislabeled photograph that would not stay on the wall until the proper name was affixed to it.
A very recent episode occurred just a few days before our visit. A woman had come by the museum to talk to Beth and had gone to the Weems-Botts house, rather than the annex where the administrative offices are located. When she finally made it to the right place, she told Beth she had seen a woman looking out of an upstairs window—the window to Mamie’s room—but had been unable to get into the locked building or induce the woman to come down and let her in. Somewhat disquieted by this, Beth verified that none of her people had been in the building at all that day, and that whoever the visitor had seen had not been one of them.
Beth told us several more stories about strange occurrences at the museum during the following hour that we spent with her, both firsthand and as recounted to her by others. There seemed to be little doubt in her mind that it was, indeed, thoroughly haunted.
Neither Jason nor I experienced any sort of overt paranormal phenomena during our visit to Weems-Botts, but the atmosphere in Mamie’s little room started to grow oppressive during the fifteen minutes or so we spent in it, despite its neat, bright appearance. It was easy to see how someone with severe health issues would not have been improved by a lifetime of confinement in it, and how a spirit deranged by such seclusion might have become trapped within it, unable to escape in death the prison that it had occupied in life. So, too, was it all too easy to understand how Violet, deprived of a normal existence and trapped by bonds as solid as any walls, might be dismally continuing her gri
m vigil.
Strange events that occurred at the Weems-Botts Museum include a doll being moved from the chair where it is normally kept and tags attached to and hidden under some irons being pulled out and left hanging.
Something unseen certainly seems to be dwelling at Weems-Botts, and it seems likely that it is the women who spent within it their unhappy lives. Whether they are trying to establish in death the relationships they were deprived of in life or instead reacting to the unfamiliar intrusion of strangers into their solitude is yet a mystery.
CENTRAL
Danville
Wreck of the Old 97
Gordonsville
Civil War Museum at the Exchange Hotel
Petersburg
Trapezium House
Pittsylvania County
Berry Hill Road
Richmond
Poe Museum
CHAPTER 8
Berry Hill Road
PITTSYLVANIA COUNTY
Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power … The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country.
—Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
BERRY HILL ROAD AND THE AREA through which it wends are creepy under the best of circumstances, and it is easy to see how someone visiting them in darkness might conclude they are haunted. In addition, the stretch of country road and the rural thoroughfares branching off it are also home to a number of other reputed paranormal phenomena.
This road does, in fact, have a widespread reputation for weirdness in the Danville area, as my wife, Diane, and I discovered while ghosthunting there the week between Christmas and New Year in 2007. We had gone in search of ghosts associated with the wreck of the Old 97, a train that had derailed in 1903, but nearly everyone we talked to dismissed it and directed us instead to Berry Hill Road.
It was an unseasonably bright, sunny, and warm afternoon as my wife and I headed east on Riverside Drive out of Danville, following the directions we had been given by various people. We had, in fact, spent part of the previous evening drinking martinis with Colie Walker, night manager for the restaurant at the hotel where we had stayed the night, and he had given us an earful about the place. His stories included accounts of ghostly little girls jumping rope near the willow tree under which their bodies were buried; a span dubbed “Satan’s Bridge” where the spectral form of a young man who supposedly hanged himself there has reportedly been seen; a stretch of highway in front of a witch’s house on which cars will roll uphill rather than down; and the slaughtered carcasses of animals hung from trees. It is also reputedly an active stomping ground for the Ku Klux Klan. In short, Sleepy Hollow, Southern style.
Just a few miles past the line for Pittsylvania County, we came to the intersection with Berry Hill Road and turned left. From where it begins at Riverside Drive, Berry Hill Road twists about seven-and-a-half-miles, generally heading southwest, until reaching the North Carolina state line, where its name changes to T. Clarence Stone Highway. In its relatively short stretch through Virginia, however, the road has a markedly distinct character, which became obvious to us almost immediately.
Near its start, a number of other roads lead off in either direction from Berry Hill Road: those to the north generally past older, modest, relatively small houses, and those to the south past larger, more affluent homes and farms. Soon after passing these, however, the road begins to run through dense woodland punctuated by miles-long stretches of devastated-looking blight, mostly on the south side of the road. Periodically, tucked back in the wood line, we could see abandoned, vegetation-choked farmsteads and rutted dirt roads (that probably don’t appear on any maps) twist away into the forest. Many were blocked by makeshift gates emblazoned with signs warning visitors away. To say that the area felt ominous and unwelcoming would be an understatement.
At the intersection with Oak Hill Road, we went north for awhile, and eventually came to a small country church, the first thing we had seen in several miles. We decided not to go any further at that point, and turned around. Approaching the intersection with Berry Hill Road again, we noticed at the side of the road the mangled carcass of a large animal, possibly a deer, with its exposed and bloody ribcage turned skyward.
We continued on Berry Hill Road, and soon after saw, at the left side of the road, a large rock painted with a white cross. Overhead, both in the air and perched on nearby utility poles and trees, an uncannily large number of vultures watched over the place and regarded us as we passed.
At the intersection with Stateline Bridge Road, just past a set of railroad tracks, we went south. We turned past a pickup truck stopped at the three-way stop that was turning onto Berry Hill Road, and I noticed the driver, a white guy with a mustache and baseball cap. As we moved down the road, I saw him make a U-turn and begin to follow us.
Rock with cross by the side of Berry Hill Road
As we sped down the road, the creep in the pickup stayed behind us, and after about a mile we broke out of the wood line onto a low concrete span over a river. As we reached the other side of it, we passed a sign welcoming us to North Carolina, and the name of the road changed to Berry Hill Bridge Road. We went about another mile, until we reached an intersection near a farm where we could turn around, and as we did the pickup truck passed us and continued on its way.
Returning to the bridge from the other direction, I was stunned to see that it was completely covered with graffiti, something that while driving into the sun and keeping an eye on my rear-view mirror I had not noticed previously. Colie Walker had described “Satan’s Bridge” as being tagged (an urbanized term for “painted” that, when I explained it to my wife, both baffled and annoyed her). Its location corresponded exactly with the directions Walker had given us, and so it seemed we had found the cursed bridge.
Driving back across to the Virginia side, we went a few hundred yards to a spot where the road widened adequately for me to safely turn off and start to get my equipment ready for a walk back to the bridge. “I’m just going to wait in the car,” my wife said as I started to get out of the vehicle, repeating a mantra that for her was as automatic and unanalyzed as “bless you” would have been in response to a sneeze. The creep with the pickup was on the other side of the river and I would see if he was coming back, so I didn’t argue with her.
Heading toward the bridge along the left side of the road, I could see that the nearby woods were choked and tangled with heavy vine growth and had an almost quintessentially haunted look. I also had a growing sense of unease, and as I came nearer to the bridge I became increasingly aware of a sound like a howling wind, somewhere in the distance, that became more and more audible as I neared the span.
Walking out onto the sunlit bridge, I could hear a low, shrieking noise somewhere in the distance, like a wind ripping through the woods around me. Glancing at the wood line on either side of the river, I could see that it was perfectly still and could not feel so much as a light breeze. It sent a chill up my spine. It would have scared the hell out of me and made me feel like I was standing on the threshold to the netherworld if I’d been there at night, possibly alone, or under the influence.
I quickly walked to the far end of the bridge and, with the light at my back, got some photos. Most of the graffiti I passed seemed to be of the “X loves Y” and “Class of Z” variety, but there were a few pentagrams and devilish epithets mixed in with it. I also saw burnt-down candle stubs lying among the detritus of broken beer bottles on either side of the bridge. No one passed by during my time there, and I was completely alone as I looked down into the swirling ochre water of the Dan River and contemplated where the young man would have hanged himself if such an incident really had occurred here. The low, concrete bridge didn’t look like it would be very convenient for that purpose—and his dangling specter would not have been visible by anyone on or at
either end of it—and I wondered if he might not have used one of the trees in the surrounding vine-choked forest. It would have been, in any event, a morose and dismal place to die.
My need and desire to stay at the bridge sated, I trotted back toward the car and we resumed our exploration of the area.
Turning back onto Berry Hill Road and continuing southwest on it, we soon reached the point where it crossed the North Carolina state line. Almost immediately afterward, we heard a shrieking exactly like that of a jet engine, pulled over to the side of the road, and looked up, expecting to see an aircraft passing overhead and the noise to fade. There was nothing above us, however, and the noise remained steady for awhile longer before fading away.
We could see that the land across the road was fenced off and make out a small cluster of pipes and utility infrastructure. While we could not see anything that could have been making the great noise we heard, and while no signs offered an explanation for them or the fenced-off area from which they emanated, it seemed pretty obvious that we had stumbled onto some sort of industrial test facility—and that it had accounted for the distant noises I had heard at Satan’s Bridge (a later perusal of maps and satellite imagery, however, did not reveal anything of that nature in that particular area). This new mystery being far beyond our purview, and with the sinister aspect of the neighborhood starting to weigh on us, we decided to leave it unexamined.
Heading back up Berry Hill Road toward where we had started, we made a few more exploratory stops before reaching the highway. We never did see the willow tree Walker had told us about, and we weren’t sure of the exact location to try putting our car in neutral to see whether it would roll uphill. We saw so many dilapidated antebellum houses that we could not be certain which one was reputed to be the lair of the witch. But a couple of hours on Berry Hill Road were enough to convince us that there is probably a good reason for its reputation in the local area—and that we did not want to be lingering on it after dark.
Ghosthunting Virginia Page 6
