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.