I Digress

OK, my self-imposed due date has passed and I failed miserably to meet my commitment...but, no one is reading this, so it really doesn't matter. My last post told tales of a Catholic high school in Ohio where I worked. There are many more stories from that school later. For now I am going to move on to a residential investigation in Northern Virginia.

The 16-room, antebellum mansion was originally the home of the prominent Harrison family of Leesburg, Va. In its day, the Harrisons hosted many notable citizens, including Robert E. Lee and General "Stonewall" Jackson. It was owned by the Harrison family until the mid-1950s when the three full floors and over 5000 square feet of living space were converted into a spacious rental. James Dickey, famed author of Deliverance, moved his family into the house in the mid-1960s. According to his son, Chris Dickey, James wrote most of his notorious novel in the Harrison House while serving as the poetry consultant at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. The Magnolia tree that still stands in the backyard was his inspiration for the book's cover. Chris Dickey, himself a distinguished writer, was 16 the summer of 1967. He chronicled his days in the Harrison house in his memoir Summer of Deliverance.

By the mid-1970s, the house had fallen into disrepair. A fire caused it to be declared uninhabitable and the stately home was slated to be demolished. Firefighters clearing rubble from the upper floors, entered the attic through a rough ceiling cutout. To their surprise, they discovered a cache of confederate money, a ceremonial confederate sword and the 1861 diary of a teenage girl, Miss Virginia "Jenny" Miller. The historical artifacts raised pubic awareness and the mansion was restored to its former glory and turned into a thriving career consulting business. For more information on Virginia's diary and the Harrison House, now known as Glenfiddich, visit the Miles Lehane website at mileslehane.com.

David and Melanie Miles now own and operate Glenfiddich. Although stories of ghostly encounters go back many years, it is the Miles encounters with which I am most familiar. I brought in the only paranormal team allowed to investigate the property, recorded the Miles' stories in my book, Lore of Loudoun, and connected Melanie with descendants of the Confederate colonel who passed in a second-floor bedroom. The descendants, in turn, supplied her with a portrait of the colonel that now hangs in the entryway.

The Miles purchased the business from their partner and close friend Lou Lehane in the 1990s and soon after took up residence in the house, operating the business out of the basement. They were already familiar with stories of the ghost of Colonel Erasmus R. Burt - an officer from the 18th Mississippi regiment who was brought to the palatial antebellum home after being mortally wounded in the nearby Battle of Ball's Bluff - and it did not take long for the congenial colonel to introduce himself to Melanie. While stocking the fridge in the lounge, she felt someone press close against her as if he too were peering into the fridge's contents. Unshaken, Melanie said, "Hello, Colonel Burt. My name is Melanie and my husband and I are the new owners of the house." The formal introduction bonded their co-existence and most of the more recent encounters center around Melanie.

While working in the basement offices on a couple of lazy Sunday afternoons, the family German Shepherd, Bacchus, sprinted up the stairs to the first-floor parlor, only to return moments later with a worried and confused expression. On the third Sunday, David, working in the basement directly beneath the parlor, was startled by a loud commotion overhead. Bacchus, however remained lazily on the basement floor as if to say "Go look for yourself." Newspaper accounts confirm Melanie's suspicion that the people of Leesburg, along with numerous Confederate regiments, filed through the home's parlor paying their respects to their slain hero before a 200-man entourage accompanied the colonel's body back to his widow and eight children in Mississippi. Over 150 years later, the residual imprint of mourners paying their last respects replays itself on many Sunday afternoons in the Genfiddich parlor.

In 2005 the Miles shifted the office operations and personal residence to two buildings at the back of the property, converting the mansion into a guest house for clients. For a month after the move, the Miles experienced unexplainable technical difficulties, including cables cleanly cut in two in a locked building."Colonel Burt was trying to get me to move back to the house," is Melanie's reasoning.

Prior to moving to Glenfiddich, David considered himself a nonbeliever in the paranormal, but he soon changed his mind. While testing the new security system, David did a sweep of the house and made certain he was the last to leave. When he returned a couple hours later, he noted a body-size imprint in the new bedding of one of the guest rooms that he was certain wasn't there prior to locking up. Guests frequently report an indentation in the bed, which has since been determined to be the room Colonel Burt died in.

The history of Glenfiddich and its unexplainable phenomenon have become so intertwined that Melanie recalls both almost as an amendment or afterthought of each other, piggybacking story upon story, recounting paranormal and historical accounts as if she were witness to both. Mention of the antiquated doorbell system invented by Thomas Jefferson leads Melanie to the story of the only time she saw Colonel Burt. The scorched floorboards of the second-floor hallway remind her of the time the Colonel kept her from over sleeping.

Alone in the building, Melanie was left the task of locking up for the evening. Standing in the front foyer, she glanced down the hallway toward the kitchen. Standing next to the coils and bells of the doorbell system was the very solid figure of a confederate officer. The colonel, looking directly at Melanie, tipped his hat as if in greeting. A distinguished and established doctor and politician from a respected family, it is characteristic of the colonel to acknowledge a lady's presence. After all, Melanie and her staff acknowledge Colonel Burt's presence every day, offering salutations as they enter and exit the building. Because of the encounter, Melanie hung the portrait that the descendants of Colonel Erasmus Burt presented to her next to the doorbell for all guests of Glenfiddich to see.

While reviewing photos taken on a preliminary visit, I noticed unusual shading in two photographs, so I returned to Glenfiddich to ask Melanie's opinion. She immediately focused on the portrait above the mantle and exclaimed, "That's who I saw in the hallway."

The portrait is of an unidentified man dressed in a 1940s era business suit. He is in a seated position, 

leaning against his right hand, which is casually propped on the back of the chair. To the right of the painted man, some see a gray blur - strokes in the finish that aren't visible to the naked eye but captured in the camera's flash. Others see the form of a soldier gazing intently into the room with his long-barrel resting in the crook of his arm.

As for her morning rousing, while still living in the mansion, Melanie chose to sleep in a third-floor bedroom when she had a head-cold so her sniffling wouldn't wake David. She forgot to set the alarm to awake her for a 9am meeting, but Colonel Burt came through for her. She awoke to the cadence of boots marching up and down the hallway. Jumping out of bed, she thanked the colonel for waking her and rushed to her meeting.

Like the Catholic school stories, this post has grown very long and there is still much more to tell, so I shall break it into more than one post. Future posts will tell of the time a paranormal investigation team visited the house, the experiences of tour guides and employees, and the times Colonel Burt wandered from the property.

Ohio Catholic school

There is a haunted Catholic high school in western Ohio. Most everyone that has worked late nights has had an experience in this building...including me.

The school president, the principal, administration, secretaries, custodial staff and many of the teachers have stories to share about the school. When the final bell rings at the end of the day, many of the school's dedicated employees stay behind to catch up, some working late into the evening hours. And many believe they are not alone.

Mike was the former principal for many years and his encounters are the most frequent and the most personal. He believes that the spirits of former employees and benefactors often visit the school. One of those lingering spirits is the much-loved, former basketball coach, also named Mike. It is the basketball coach's ghost that the veteran principal enteracts with on a regular basis.

For over a decade, Coach Mike and Principal Mike left the building together, locking up the old gym and the exterior doors behind them. "Good night, Mike." was their unison salutation before heading across the parking lot to their cars. After a brief battle with cancer, Coach Mike's memorial service was held in the old gym where he had spent uncountable hours leading numerous teams to state championships. Soon after the gym was renamed to honor him.

A new state-of-the-art gymnasium attached to the west end of the building was nearing completion and it saddened Principal Mike that the coach who had worked so hard to build the basketball program had not lived to see the new gym completed. He continued his nightly ritual of locking up the building and each night before pulling the wooden doors to the old gym closed, the principal would say aloud, "Goodnight, Mike." The sound of his voice reverberating off the concrete bleachers and absorbing into the velvet curtains on the stage.

Nearly a month after the coach's death, Mike was running late for a meeting downtown and rushed to lock up the building and set the alarm. As he slipped the key into the lock of the front door, he could see that the gym doors remained open. Throughout the meeting, Mike was distracted by the image of the open gym doors. When the meeting concluded, he returned to the school. He peered through the glass front doors and into the dimly lit hallway; the gym doors were securely closed. He was certain that he had been the last one out of the building and he was positive that he had not closed the gym doors that night. Shrugging it off, he gave a quick tug on the front door, double checked the alarm system, and hurried back to his car.

The closed doors were easily explained away because many people had keys to the building and knew the alarm code, so Mike kept his suspicions to himself. After another late evening alone in his office, he once again began his rounds of securing the building. When he reached the old gym, he gave his usual "Goodnight Mike" before closing the doors. But this time there was a response in the gruff timber of the former coach - "Goodnight, Mike," he heard loud and clear.

The former pricipal's stories do not end with tales of the old basketball coach. He also believes that a former custodian remains in the basement of the building. Now used for storage, the basement once housed an office complete with a desk, seperate phone line, and a cot for the nights that the custodian stayed too late to safely drive home. One morning in the mid-1960s the day staff came in and found the custodian had passed away in his sleep on the cot. New custodians were hired, but none stayed on the job for long, so eventually the school switched to a night and day staff that only put in late night hours when there was a special event at the school. Since there was no "head" of the custodial staff, there was no longer a need for the basement office; all of the equipment was moved upstairs and the phone lines disconnected.

When Mike took the job as principal, he quickly adopted the habit of working late at night when there were no interruptions. Soon calls came into his office and the light indicated the caller was from the basement. Mike would answer the phone and there would be nothing but silence. He asked around and learned that there were no active phone lines in the basement. Thinking a wire must be crossed, he called the phone company to double-check the school's wiring, but they found nothing wrong and no active line tagged "basement."

Nightly the calls from the basement to Mike's office continued until, in frustration, he picked up the phone and shouted "I'm trying to get some work done. Would you please stop calling?" and slammed down the phone. There was an eerie silence throughout the building for about five minutes. Mike held his breath, waiting for the phone to ring again. And then BANG! a loud crack as if a gun were shot in the hallway broke the silence.

Mike grabbed his coat and rushed out the door to his car without securing the building. He sat in his car for what felt like an eternity, knowing that he had to either return to the building to lock it up and set the alarm system, or humbly call someone to lock the building for him. He crept back to the building, entering as quietly as possibly, set the alarm and rushed back out, locking the door behind him.

The next evening after everyone left, Mike called the basement number. The disconnected line did not ring and he was met, once again, with nothing but silence. "Hello," Mike said. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm sorry I yelled at you last night and it's really important for me to get my work done at night when noone else is around. So if you want to come up to my office and visit me, that's fine, but could you please stop calling?" The calls from the basement have not rang since.

There are more stories, but I do not want to overwhelm you, so I will post them later.

Naked Men

I met a fascinating woman this past weekend. She's now a grandmother and fits the role perfectly, but she is a constant reminder that we all have past lives. This is her story (in her words):

I was a trunker, that's a girl who sits in the trunk of an elephant, and that's how I saw my first naked man. Part of my circus job was to take care of the monkey, you know the little kind that you see cranking the organ on the street. Our monkey was used in a lot of movies and Hugh Heffner wanted to meet it to see if he could use it in his movies. It was the 70s and we were invited to the Playboy mansion with our monkey.

We saw the whole mansion, well most of it. Hugh was with Barbi Benton at the time and they never came out of his bedroom, so we didn't see them or that part of the mansion. It took hours to see the whole thing and they told us to stay as long as we wanted.

The most amazing part is the swimming pool 'cause it has this cave that you can swim into. So we're hanging out at the pool and this good looking guy comes walking out in a robe. "O my gosh" I said. "That's John!" He was like this soap star and he was really hot. Next thing I know, he drops his robe and he's butt-naked.

"I'm only 17!" I screamed it real loud but he was already in the pool. If that's the first time you're gonna see a naked man, you really can't get any better than that and after a while I got used to it!