Eiffel Tower

A quick trip back to Leesburg, Virginia, brought back a lot of memories. For old times sake, my husband, daughter, and I retraced the ghost tour of downtown Leesburg to see how many of the stories I remembered from guiding tours a number of years ago. In those days, my husband or one of my sons would often accompany me to act as a sweeper, the person that makes certain everyone crosses the road safely, and to act as a bodyguard. I have always said I fear the living much more than the dead!

Our recent return not only reminded us of the great stories that thrive in historical Leesburg, but also of our own experiences on the tours. Interaction with other tour guides, area businesses, paranormal enthusiasts, and tourists has provided some of the best fodder to my insatiable story gathering. Allow me to preface this story with an adamant My husband is a skeptic. Let me reiterate and emphasize - my husband is the most skeptical person I know, to the point that I do not bother to share stories with him because he will analyze and criticize the life out of a good ghost story (pun intended!) However, as he served as sweeper on one of my tours, he experienced something that even he could not fully explain away.

On a pleasant spring Sunday evening, I accepted a last-minute request from some Penn State students to give an impromptu tour. They were departing early Monday and had only just heard of the tour. My husband was willing to accompany me, so we headed downtown to meet the group at a local restaurant. The small group consisted of three guys and a couple of local girls they had met in the bar. All had imbibed and were in high spirits. As a rule, I discourage alcohol consumption before a tour, but the group was very polite and promised to be respectful.
The tour progressed smoothly and they stayed true to their word, but, as often happens to people who choose to drink before a two-hour tour, nature came calling. Late on a Sunday evening, it is very difficult to find an open toilet. By our third stop, one of the patrons couldn't wait any longer. As I said, they were a polite group and stepping into the bushes was not an option.

Across the road from the old stone house, the Eiffel Tower restaurant appeared to be serving in a courtyard behind the building, so we sent our potty-dancing tourist across the road to use their bathroom. The lights and noise were actually a private party being held at the upscale Thomas Birkby House, but we did not learn that until our humbled, and noticeably sobered, college student returned to tell us he had just asked a large gathering of well-dressed, upper class party-goers if he could crash their party to use the toilet. In his words "They were really nice people!" While he did his business, I continued on with the tour and my husband stayed in front of the stone house to help our wayward guest catch-up with the group.

My husband is a very patient person, but he became a bit concerned when the young man was not returning. Unaware that the student was unable to get into the restaurant and had to cross half a city block to go into the Birkby House, my husband peered intently into the darkened windows of the Eiffel Tower from the security of his side of Loudoun Street. The building was obviously empty, except for a man standing in the shadows of the window looking just as intently at my husband. Their eyes locked and the man in the Eiffel Tower restaurant, realizing he had been spotted, nodded politely at my husband. Just then the student returned from his bathroom break. "What you looking at," he asked?

"The guy in the window of the restaurant." The student scanned the windows of the building but could see no one.

"What guy?"

"The guy wearing the fancy clothes and top hat. In the bottom left window. He's got on a white shirt and a black jacket. Looks like a tux."

"I don't see anybody, man."

"He's gone." It was only later that my husband shared with me that the man didn't back away from the window or turn and walk away. He was just gone. There one minute and gone another. By week's end, he was rationalizing that a party guest had slipped into the restaurant or an employee was doing some late night clean-up. It wasn't until our recent visit to Leesburg that he brought the incident up again and admitted that the whole thing puzzled him.

Prior to that night, I knew very little of the Eiffel Tower's reputation. I had heard rumors that it harbored a ghost, but the stories had not caught my interest enough to merit investigating or adding to my tour. It was only after my husband's experience that I learned that the haunting of the Eiffel Tower involved a well-dressed gentleman who sat silently at a table in the corner of the upstairs dining room. His description is eerily familiar: white shirt, black tails and a dignified top hat sitting casually on the table top.

The Traveling Vacuum

My daughter and I stopped at the Courthouse Deli for lunch and I casually chatted with Tony and his staff about local ghost legends. Conversations with business owners always generate interesting leads and Tony had hinted to some potential stories on a previous visit. A customer jumped into the conversation with his own personal experiences, prefacing it with “You’re not going to believe this.” Despite my daughter’s rolling eyes – she’s so over this whole “ghost thing” - I was unwilling to miss the opportunity. So I invited him to join us for lunch.

Dave Hazard is a long-time Leesburg resident. He recently switched careers and began a cleaning service, catering to area businesses and specializing in deep-cleaning. He usually cleans when the buildings are empty, working alone or with another employee. The best time to work is over the holidays, in the evenings and on weekends. It was on a two-day cleaning job in a lawyer’s office between Christmas and New Years that Dave had his most memorable experience.

The law office is an 18th century house that was added to and modified over time to accommodate families and businesses. Dave and an employee arrived early on a Saturday morning and began cleaning the second-floor rooms with the intention of working their way down to the main floor. As they moved from suite to suite, lights kept going out. Annoyed, they would flip the circuit breaker and continue working, blaming the electrical problems on the “Leesburg Blackouts” out-of-date electric systems. But the power failures were inconsistent. They seemed to be connected to their room-to-room movement, not to the power surge of the sweeper.

Leaving the employee to continue working, Dave joined his friend Jeff for lunch. They returned together later that day to check on the progress and organize supplies for the next day’s work.

Jeff, who considers himself a sensitive, and Dave, who considers himself a skeptic, both felt the building shake with an audible groan as they entered. Jeff exclaimed “There’s definitely a spirit here” and was immediately drawn to a large portrait hanging in the entryway. Apparently the man in the portrait is still in the building overseeing the operations and it is his spirit that was trying to make contact. Dave organized the cleaning supplies in the hall so he could continue working in the morning.

The next day was New Year’s Eve, so Dave was eager to finish the job. He arrived at the law offices early and the first thing he noticed was that his vacuum was gone. Assuming someone else was in the building and had moved it, he figured he could look for it after going to the bathroom. When he came out, the vacuum was sitting outside the bathroom door. Also, the cellar door was open and the light was on. Certain that one of the lawyers or paralegals had come in to catch up on some work, Dave gathered some cleaning supplies and moved to a back office to begin cleaning, leaving the vacuum in the hallway.

Just as Dave crawled under a desk to wipe the baseboards, the lights went out. Not again, he thought. He flipped the circuit breaker and returned to the office, but the lights were still out. Again he flipped the circuit breaker and again no lights. That’s when he noticed that the wall switch was in the off position. Dave rationalized that whoever had moved his vacuum did not see him under the desk and had turned off the light, so he flipped the switch and crawled back under the desk. This time he heard a click as the light went out.

That cinched it for Dave – Jeff is right! The building is haunted. Going to the hallway, he discovered that once again his vacuum cleaner was AWOL. More annoyed than afraid, the paranormal activity was keeping him from getting his job done. He called Jeff, asking him to come tell the entity to leave the lights on and give him back his vacuum cleaner.

When Jeff arrived, he and another sensitive friend, Marcia, immediately picked up on a dominant male figure following their movements through the building. Marcia’s psychic abilities are visual and Jeff perceives things through auditory clues. While Jeff received a barrage of jumbled messages, Marcia visualized activity, including a gentleman dressed in a business suit from the 1950s. Apparently he was an authoritative figure and was not used to being ignored. Now that he had an interactive audience, he had a lot of things to say. The unlikely foursome made their way to the attic.

At the top of the attic stairs, blocking their path, sat a vacuum cleaner, but it wasn’t Dave’s. “He says you’re not doing a good enough job,” Jeff noted with a chuckle.

Hoping that Jeff and Marcia would keep the entity busy so it wouldn’t interrupt his work any more, Dave left them to continue their walk-through while he returned to cleaning the offices on the main floor. As he passed through the doorway into a first-floor office, his hopes of working in peace vanished. The temperature changed drastically: “It was like walking through a curtain of cold air.” Something, or someone, preferred Dave’s company.

The need to complete the job outweighed any fears and Dave returned to the task of wiping baseboards. This time he was interrupted by a scream from upstairs. Rushing up the stairs to Jeff and Marcia, he found the two noticeably shaken. Jeff held out his cell phone. 

“It rang,” he explains, “and when I looked at the text message, this is what it said.” A message inexplicably from Jeff to Jeff said I don’t want them in my house.

Unsure how Jeff’s phone could text itself, the three began to wonder what they were dealing with. They decided to see if they could find any answers in the basement.

A portion of the basement is finished and houses law records and case files. A back section, which is original to the house, is unfinished and is “dark and nasty.” At the bottom of the stairs in the finished section sat Dave’s vacuum cleaner. Dave has no idea how the heavy, upright Hoover had silently traveled the flight of stairs. Jeff remained with the vacuum, listening to the male entity repeat “I don’t want them in my house,” but Marcia was drawn to the dark, unfinished section.

When she returned, Marcia claimed that a young, black girl was cowering in the back of the basement, crying uncontrollably. It was suddenly clear to Jeff who the male entity didn’t want in the house. Decades of incessant crying had grated on the nerves of the undead and the undead had enough. He had finally found someone to listen to him and he wanted the crying girl out of the house.

Jeff got the impression that the young girl hid in the basement to avoid beatings. “They hurt me,” she said through her sobs. As they pieced the mystery together, Marcia’s cell phone rang.

Within Marcia and Jeff’s intuitive circle is a friend that specializes in cleansing homes of spirits that need to move on. Marcia had not heard from this friend in a long time, but on the morning of New Year’s Eve he tells her that he has been thinking of her for the past hour and felt he needed to call her. Between the two of them, they decided that the building needed more than baseboards cleaned.

Marcia was talked through her first cleansing and she believes that they successfully helped the sobbing girl move on. They ask the male if he would also like to move on and Jeff clearly senses that the male is content to remain in the house. Almost as an afterthought, Jeff receives the distinct impression that the male would like it if they could bring his deceased wife back to the house to be with him. “We just send them toward the light,” says Jeff. “We don’t bring them back!”

Prior to the spiritual cleansing, Dave went back upstairs to finish the office cleaning. Strange lights from a front office caught his attention and he went to the doorway to find the cause. A chandelier in the front room was swinging in a circular motion. As he watched, it stopped swinging. So much had happened this New Year’s Eve that Dave was unfazed by the house’s newest paranormal activity.

Dave returned to cleaning and again noticed strange light patterns dancing around the room. He went back to the doorway and the chandelier was again in motion, this time in a pendulum swing. As he watched, the light alternated between rotating in wide circles and swinging in a broad pendulum arch.

There is a pause in Dave’s story-telling as he watches me carefully. We both know that he’ll have to repeat everything at another time because I’ve become so engrossed in the story that I have neglected my notes. My untouched sandwich sits in a nest of cold fries, but I’m too fascinated to bother with being hungry. We took a break for a couple of bites and to recharge the parking meters before settling in to hear the rest of Dave’s stories.

“Jeff says I’m a bridge-personality,” Dave tells me. “I create a safe space where people and entities feel comfortable.” As a mother and daughter who just spent the previous hour chatting with a complete stranger, we had to agree that Dave’s amicability encourages open communication. Obviously we are not the only ones that think so.

The Honicon Spirit
Two years ago, Dave invested in a home on Edward’s Ferry Rd. with his friend, Michael. The house was built in the early 1950s by the popular developer, Claude Honicon. They loved the intricate detailing and craftsmanship of their stone bungalow so much that they took the time to investigate the architect. The deeper they delved into Claude’s story, the more attached they became to the house.

According to Honicon’s obituary, he was once the wealthiest man in Loudoun County, known not only as a developer, but also as the owner of a majority of the stone quarries in Loudoun County. He arrived in Loudoun County in the early 1940s and quickly established himself as one of the largest landowners in the area. Through uncertain circumstance, when he died in 1975 he was basically homeless and penniless, living in the stone pump house that he had built for his Market Street subdivision, Honicon Court.

The more Michael and Dave learned about Claude Honicon, the more empathetic they became to his financial and social ruin, speculating what had caused such a wealthy man to fall. Interviews with people who remembered Honicon led them to believe that his ex-wife and a zealous lawyer had something to do with his downward spiral. One woman claims to have fed Honicon in his final days. According to her, he retained the manners of a Southern gentleman until the very end.

Michael and Dave began thinking of Honicon in personal terms, chatting with him as they moved about the bungalow. Michael claims he feels a presence walking through the house and he once felt someone brush up against him while he was painting the living room. Although Claude Honicon never lived in the Edward’s Ferry Rd. house, the men’s empathy seems to have drawn him to the house.

One afternoon, Dave worked in the basement office while Michael did yard work. Suddenly Dave heard a metallic BOOM, like a hammer hitting the side of a hollow barrel, followed by footsteps in the hallway directly above him. He went upstairs to make sure Michael was OK only to discover that Michael was still in the yard and had been there for at least an hour. They both searched the house and found nothing suspicious. The front door was still locked from the inside, the windows were all secure and the only way out was through the yard where Michael was working.

Last year Dave’s kids gave him a necklace, a silver knot hanging from a black cord that symbolizes their belief in and support of their father. Dave established a nightly ritual of placing his glasses on the windowsill and hanging the necklace on the back of the chair. He woke up Easter morning and the necklace was not hanging from the chair.

Desperately searching the bedroom and then the entire house, Dave dreaded admitting to his kids that he lost the necklace. When his kids arrived, his son also helped him look for the necklace, retracing their steps again and again. They finally gave up and decided to take a walk around Leesburg, stopping at Esoterica to replace the lost necklace. When they returned to the Honicon bungalow, the necklace was hanging on the back of the chair, just as it should be.

Dave doesn’t consider himself especially intuitive to either of these instances and tried to explain everything rationally. It was only after he exhausted all rational explanations that he finally admitted to himself that he had experienced something extraordinary.

Originally printed in "Lore of Loudoun."

The Silversmith's Cabin

Stephen Donaldson was the first builder on lot 16, Leesburg, Virginia. Soon after purchasing the lot in 1763, he constructed a sixteen feet by twenty feet diamond-notch log cabin for his silversmith shop. In the mid-1970s, Donaldson’s cabin, disguised as an aluminum-clad dry cleaner, was scheduled to be demolished to make room for a city parking lot. The Loudoun Restoration and Preservation Society stepped in to save the 200-year old building and, using public and private funds, they moved it to make room for the parking garage and reconstructed it to its original condition. The utilitarian central stone chimney is a testament to its early life as a blacksmith or silversmith shop. It has stood the test of time, bearing witness to centuries of America's history.

After the success of Ball’s Bluff, much of Northern Virginia’s Confederate Army headed into Leesburg to celebrate. As recorded in Robert Stiles diary, Leesburg was known for its hospitality:

Leesburg, the county seat of Loudoun, was at this time, perhaps, the most desirable post in our lines, on account of the character both of the country and its people--the former beautiful and rich, full of everything needed by man and beast, and the latter whole-hearted and hospitable, ready to share with us all they had. If ever soldiers had a more ideal time than we enjoyed at Leesburg, then I cannot conceive when or where it was. During the war, in hunger and thirst, in want and weariness and blood, our thoughts would often turn fondly back to our bucolic Loudoun paradise. "When this cruel war was over" more than one of our boys went back there to get "the girl he left behind him" from '61 to '65, but would never leave again; and to-day many a grizzled, wrinkled, burdened man feels his heart grow young again and breaks into sunny smiles when a comrade of the long ago slaps him on the back and reminds him of the good times we had at Leesburg...

Legend has it that the bugler of the 8th Virginia, a young boy about 13 or 14 years old, walked the streets of Leesburg, looking into the shops and chatting with other soldiers. Revelers partying atop a nearby building shot off a couple of celebratory rounds. A stray bullet hit the young bugler on the street below.

Fearing the Yankees had returned, the boy ran into the empty silversmith shop and took refuge on the second floor, bleeding steadily from his wound. Hours later, the shop owner returned. He noticed a puddle of liquid on the shop’s floor. Looking for the source, he realized that blood was dripping between the cracks of the floorboards above. He hurried upstairs and discovered the body of the young bugler. Although his wound was superficial, the boy bled to death, huddling in fear in a corner of the cabin.

Much of the paranormal mischief that people experience in the log cabin seems to be the pranks of a young boy: knick-knacks that move or disappear, doors and windows that open and close on their own, papers that slide off of table tops.

The building was formerly used as a gift shop for the Loudoun Museum. Many museum employees, volunteers and visitors can attest to the strange events in the log cabin. A frequently witnessed occurrence is the opening and closing of doors and the audible movement of the doors’ antique latch hardware.

When Lynda, a gift shop manager, took her breaks she locked the cabin from the outside, making it impossible to enter or leave the building without a key. One day, she shouted to workers on the second floor that she was going to the main building and would be back in twenty minutes. For safety reasons, she flipped the “closed” sign and locked the cabin. The two ladies continued working upstairs, chatting casually as they inventoried period costumes. Assuming Lynda had returned to the log cabin, they barely took notice when the door latch clicked three times and the door at the bottom of the stairs opened.

Soon their task was done and they made their way downstairs, calling out to Lynda that they were heading to lunch. To their surprise, Lynda was not downstairs and they were still locked in.

The workers called the museum to be let out of the building and learned that no one had entered the cabin in the previous half-hour. They realized that they had joined the ranks of cabin visitors to experience the unexplained opening of the stairway door, which is a combination of the latch clicking three times followed by the sound of the door swinging on its squeaky hinges.

Ghost tours attract all kinds of people, even skeptics. Most nonbelievers understand the entertainment value of ghost tours and appreciate the history behind the legends. But some join the tours for the sole purpose of arguing their point. One such gentleman joined a "Hauntings" tour whose final stop was the museum’s gift shop, then located in the log cabin. His wife and daughter remained outside, while he and his son browsed through the merchandise. In a conversation with one of the tour guides, he expressed his skepticism, more accurately, his complete disbelief in anything paranormal. As he spoke, the latch on stairwell door directly behind him clicked three times and swung open, revealing nothing but a dark empty staircase. Without another word, he grabbed his son and quickly left.

Paranormal investigators classify repetitious activity, such as the latch clicking three times and then the door opening, as a residual phenomenon. An event that was done repeatedly in a person’s life or an event that occurred with great emotion can generate residual energy that imprints into the atmosphere or conducive materials. It is believed that areas with a high geological concentration of limestone are more prone to residual energy imprinting. The elements of limestone are similar to those used in magnetic recording devices.

Another sound that is heard regularly in the log cabin is the procession of five steps across the upstairs wooden floor. According to legend, a man operated his business from the cabin, using the center chimney to fire his tools and forge the irons. His father, who was suffering from dementia, lived with him in the upstairs quarters. As the father’s mental state deteriorated, it became more difficult to keep him away from the dangers of the open flames and molten metals. He was eventually forced to lock his father in an upstairs room while he worked downstairs.

In his demented state, the father lost all sense of place and time While he tried to make sense of why he was locked in this strange room, he took up the habit of pacing the room, crossing from the far wall to the window, turning around and repeating his steps back. Five steps across. Five steps back. A noise that has been experienced by many people working in the cabin.

Originally printed in "Lore of Loudoun"

Street Scenes

What sets Leesburg, Virginia apart from other American towns - other than the pungent autumn shedding of the numerous Ginko trees - is an abundance of ancient buildings that actively share their interiors with living and ethereal inhabitants. But the ghostly goings-on of Leesburg aren’t confined to the houses and businesses. Apparently some of Leesburg’s ghosts prefer the freedom of the streets, alleys and yards. 

Before passing away in 2006, Joe Holbert, known to locals as “The Ghost Guy,” led tours around Leesburg’s most popular haunts, entertaining his audiences with scientific theories for cold spots, electromagnetic fields and voice phenomenon. His 90 minute tour began at a local eatery on Market Street, strolled along the main streets of old Leesburg and concluded in the courthouse yard. 

One warm autumn evening, Joe led a group through the wrought iron gates of the courthouse lawn. He launched into his spiel on the ghost of a convicted slave and a clerk’s frightened dogs, but his audience’s attention was elsewhere. 

They were watching a young, soldier dash across the lawn less than twenty yards from where they stood, frantically glancing over his shoulder as if being pursued. As the group stared in disbelief, the soldier disappeared behind a large tree. The startled onlookers searched the fenced courtyard for a rational answer, but the soldier was nowhere to be found. All that remained was a current of charged energy.

Today, a bare patch marks the spot where ghost seekers stand and stretch their hands under the branches of a massive Oak tree, searching for the current of residual energy as it dashes through the courthouse gates and across the yard. 

Wandering Ladies On the southwest end of town, a young girl strolls up the Loudoun Street hill, happily going about her daily business, the rustle of layers of petticoats swinging from side to side. She presses against a wooden gate to peer into side yards and gardens. Occasionally she pauses to touch the tiny, beaded purse that dangles from her wrist, anticipating how she’ll spend her hard earned pennies, unaware that her carefree shopping days ended over a hundred and fifty years earlier. 

The pretty, young girl in the yellow, pre-Civil War dress has been seen wandering throughout Leesburg. She happily floats along Wirt Street on her way to an afternoon tea. She gazes longingly into the King Street shop windows undaunted by the noise of 21st century vehicles and pedestrians that crowd the sidewalks. Content to pass her time revisiting the streets where she spent many happy days, she occasionally pauses to materialize and smile at an unsuspecting passer-by, leaving them uncertain if they have seen a re-enactor or something paranormal. 

A similar apparition is seen in the yard of the Elijah Viers White house. Although the current owners believe there is nothing unusual about their home, previous occupants claim to have seen her. Neighbors have seen her. There are even reports that a postal worker and a police officer saw her. This young lady in the yard of the White house is wearing a late 18th century dress. Her brown hair is neatly pinned up and she has piercing, blue eyes. Her eyes are the consistent feature that every witness remembers. 

Despite the frequent sightings, no one has determined who the young girl is. She strolls along the porch, playfully waving at passers-by. Like her wandering counterpart, she enjoys the local gardens and will often lean over the picket fence to admire a stray blossom. Both ladies are obviously replaying the happy moments of their lives. 

A local couple enjoys spending their evenings amongst the haunts of Leesburg’s graveyards and nearby battlefields. An ever-ready digital tape recorder captures their conversations, nature’s night noises and, if they’re lucky, the occasional voice from beyond. One of their favorite places to record EVPs is Ball’s Bluff where they capture the agonizing moans of desperate souls facing an untimely death. Another favorite destination is cemeteries. 

While walking through the Old Stone Church cemetery they recorded melancholy sighs and subtle half-whispers engaged in muted conversations. But the most astonishing recording was at the St. James Cemetery, a tiny plot wedged between the county jail and a row of cottages on Church Street. Lean in close to the recorder and listen carefully. You will hear the couple conversing about the dates and conditions of the deteriorating headstones when a young, female, Irish brogue clearly proclaims in a melancholy tone, “Existence, not for me.” 

Is it the murmurs of the wandering young lady in the yellow dress? Despite her care-free demeanor, does she understands her ethereal condition but can’t bear to part from her quaint hometown?

The Alley Hag Not everyone is eager to share their ghostly street encounters. Some ridicule the belief that ghosts exist, others fear being made fun of. A story that is whispered among downtown retailers but unknown to the public is the tale of the old woman in the alley. 

As Leesburg grew, the half acre lots were subdivided and multiple buildings began crowding the spaces. Narrow alleys run behind and between the buildings to allow deliveries and back entrances. During hard times, the dank, dark spaces were crowded with "alley dwellers" who had nowhere else to call home. 

In modern days, some alleys, like the one adjacent to the city parking garage, have been broadened to accommodate traffic and delivery trucks. Others are sealed off from the general public and are only used by shop owners for trash containers and equipment overflow. 

And then there is the alley that employees refuse to venture down alone. 

In the early morning hours, when the smell of frying bacon wafts from the Leesburg Café and the Courthouse Deli preps for the lunch hour rush, the apparition of an elderly woman huddles in the shadows of the alley. Clothed in dirty rags, her busy hands tend to an unseen task as she mutters incoherently under her breath. Unsuspecting workers approach her to offer their assistance, but as they get nearer she looks up with her gaping, toothless smile and fades away right before their eyes. 

Colonel Burt Wanders Glenfiddich’s Colonel Burt is known to have left the comforts of home on two occasions. 

A Glenfiddich guest once invited the Colonel to come home with her and he apparently took her up on the offer. When the guest returned to her apartment, she incurred a week of unexplainable activity. The phone rang constantly, but no one was on the other end. The TV turned itself on and off, lights flickered, objects moved or disappeared all together. 

Having a ghostly roommate wasn’t as much fun as she thought it would be. The lady thanked Colonel Burt for being her guest, but informed him it was time for him to return to Glenfiddich. The unusual activity in her apartment ended immediately. 

The Miles received a letter describing the recent activity in the apartment of their former guest. Thinking back over the previous week, they realized things had been unusually quiet around Glenfiddich. But soon the shenanigans resumed. The Miles and their employees gladly welcomed Colonel Burt home. 

Every October, the Miles open Glenfiddich for the annual "Hauntings" tours. On one occasion, an attractive female guide finished her tour, got into her car, left the Miles/LeHane parking lot and pulled up to the stop sign at the King Street intersection. As the car rolled to a stop, the automatic seat belt on the passenger side moved forward as though someone was trying to free himself to get out of the car. 

Back at Glenfiddich, an employee was securing the building. As he double-checked the basement offices of the main house, a sudden gust of air rushed by him. There were no open windows or doors in the basement, so the blast of air caught him by surprise. 

When the guide returned the next day and shared her seatbelt story, they were able to put two and two together. Colonel Burt had once again ventured outside the house, but this time he thought better of it when he was only a half-block away and rushed back to the house as quickly as possible. 

If we could silence the streets of Leesburg, what would we see? What would we hear? If we stopped the traffic and removed the parked cars, would the Virginia Army come charging down King Street with their 1200 captured horses or the 700 Union prisoners captured at Balls Bluff? What are we not seeing because of our noisy, fast-paced lives? Are ghost really more active at night, or is that the only time the living quiet down long enough to appreciate the residual energy imprinted on the core of Loudoun County?

Peek-A-Boo

Just down the hill from the Loudoun Museum on Loudoun Street and across the street from McCabe’s Ordinary is a grey house referred to on tours as the “Peek-a-Boo” house. A sign on the door announces that the current owners do not have any forwarding addresses or contact information for previous tenants. Apparently tenants are in such a hurry to vacate the building that they often leave personal possessions behind. They are in such a hurry to disassociate from the building that they leave no means of contact. 

What frightens a tenant so badly that they will abandon clients and boxes of paperwork, and not provide a forwarding address? Potential legal issues aside, some believe it is the persistence of a resident ghost. The current occupant has not had any experiences, but she is familiar with haunting stories that surround her building. 

On more than one occasion, people sitting in the front room are startled by a woman peeking at them from around the corner of the doorway. She appears to be in her late 30s, barefoot, and wearing a white nightgown. Her blond hair hangs loosely around her shoulders and she is very pale. The most memorable feature of the apparition is her innocent blue eyes. She seems curious about the goings-on in the front room and, if you acknowledge her, she steps into the room only to dissipate seconds later. 

On a tour of popular haunts in downtown Leesburg, an older woman interrupted the guide and said “I know who the ghost is in this house?” The guide was startled by the woman’s claim. How do you know, he asked? “I used to live in the building across the street. That was my room up there.” She pointed to a second-floor window that looked out onto the street. 

She now had the full attention of the guide and the rest of the tourists. Was she sad? They asked. Did she die tragically? Is she buried in the house? 

“No, she was very happy. In fact this is the only place she was happy.” The scripted tour was forgotten as the guest told the sad tale of the Peek-a-Boo ghost:

Ellen lived on the north side of Loudoun Street for twenty years. In the summer of 1945, when Ellen was sixteen, a quiet woman with a sad smile moved into the now-haunted house to stay with relatives. Although nearly twice her age, Ellen befriended her. One day the mysterious woman confessed to Ellen that she had a son who could not love her. 

At the time, the young girl didn’t understand why the son couldn’t love this beautiful woman. The woman explained to her that her son had a disease that made it impossible for him to be touched. His mother could not hold him or kiss him. When he fell, she could not sooth his pain. When he cried, she could not wipe his tears. They did not joke and laugh together; they did not play games of tag or build snowmen. She felt completely alienated from her only child; deprived of the opportunity to be a mother. 

Then she was diagnosed with cancer. Her husband didn’t want to deal with a handicapped child and a terminally ill wife, so he shipped her from their Ohio home back to her Leesburg family to die. The woman was treated as an invalid confined to the house. Spending her days in her nightgown, she was free to roam barefoot throughout the house. Her family doted on her, enjoying what little time they had left with her. 

Ellen enjoyed having a new friend. They shared sliced cucumber sandwiches and tea, giggling together like school girls. “May I braid your hair?” the woman asked. She was finally allowed to do the things moms do. She was allowed to touch and love and share.

And then the woman died and her body was returned to Ohio to be buried next to her estranged husband's family. The woman did not suffer. The woman was not unceremoniously buried in the dirt floor basement. Contrary to any negative energy trapping the woman in an endless search for redemption or peace, her energy is re-experiencing the happiest days of her life: the summer innocence of braiding hair and cool cucumber sandwiches shared with a cherished friend from across the road. 

Originally printed in "Lore of Loudoun."

The Loudoun Museum

Most Leesburg, Virginia, residents are familiar with the ghost stories of the silversmith’s cabin on Loudoun St. and the Loudoun Museum’s October Hauntings tours are well known throughout the metro DC area. However, it often comes as a surprise to learn that the museum also hosts its own ghosts. As one of my favorite places in all of Leesburg, it is the only location that I can say without a doubt that I personally experienced something unexplainable.

By 1877 adjoining two story structures dominated most of the corner lot on Loudoun and Wirt Streets and the front building was utilized as a funeral home, while the back served as a casket and furniture making shop. The original Colonial Funeral Home prepped bodies on the second floor before bringing them downstairs for the formal viewing. Negotiating the sharp turn to get the bodies and caskets down the staircase was too difficult, so a chute was built between the second floor and main floor to slide the bodies from the prepping area to the first-floor viewing area. The opening has been bricked over and is still visible on the staircase wall.

One morning, a museum employee arrived early to open the building. He let himself in the side door and turned off the alarm, but made sure to lock the door behind him. As was his habit, he began the day in a back room on the first floor. He went about his business, but was startled by a loud scraping sound as if a large object were being dragged across the floor of the front room. Assuming the rest of the staff had arrived and were moving display cases, he continued his business. When he finally made his way to the front, he discovered that he was alone in the building and all the doors were still locked. The next day, the scraping noises were repeated. This time, he hurried to the front of the building expecting to find someone playing a trick on him. Again, he was alone and the building was secure.

In an effort to increase business, many furniture makers also learned the trade of embalming. The smell of formaldehyde and decaying flesh permeated the poorly ventilated workrooms. Unlike today’s commercialization of floral arrangements, the use of fresh flowers at funerals dates back to ancient times as a means of masking unpleasant odors.

Many people, usually first-time visitors to the museum, experience the smell of flowers at the top of the stairs - perhaps residuals of the Colonial Funeral Home’s choice of air freshener. It is an occurrence that is so frequent and diverse that even hard-core skeptics can’t disregard it. 

On my first visit to the museum, I paused at the top of the stairs debating if I should compliment Eric, the rugged, no-nonsense curator, on the overwhelming scent of roses coming from his cubicle. Five minutes later I was completely astounded when, as part of the tour, I learned that the building was previously a funeral home and many people experience the smell of flowers. There are no air fresheners on the second floor. Air fresheners are prohibited in the entire museum.

In 1848 the rear building along Wirt Street was purchased as a meeting hall for the Loudoun Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Meetings were held on the second floor and members climbed the winding staircase to a waiting room, now used as the museum’s library. A peep hole in the door allowed members to identify who was in the waiting room before admitting them into the meeting hall. The hall operated continuously for 50 years until it moved to 5 Royal St. SE. On a pre-investigation tour, paranormal investigators discovered the long-forgotten lodge sign in the basement of the building.   
According to a visiting psychic, an ethereal elderly black man, possibly the keeper at the Odd Fellows door, enjoys pacing the upper floors and peeking down the back staircase into the children’s area. A picture of an investigator sitting at the bottom of the staircase shows the trail of a red ball of light completely encircling him, with a definitive starting point and ending point.

The most frequent sightings and encounters are around 9 pm in the evening, as if the ghostly caretaker goes about his rounds securing the building. If someone is still working in the upstairs office, they are often startled by the sound of footsteps steadily crossing the hardwood floors as he checks on the late night workers. Although there is nothing ominous, the sound of footsteps crossing the second-floor collections room toward the museum’s office space has hastened an employee’s exit on more than one occasion.

Originally printed in "Lore of Loudoun"

Leesburg Stone House

The little stone house on the north side of Loudoun Street, historically linked to many notable people and events, is also architecturally significant. To understand the paranormal activity at the Stone House, you must first understand its history, which is perpetually entangled in the history of Leesburg and Loudoun County, Virginia. 

Characteristic of the Scots-Irish and Pennsylvania Quakers, these center-entrance, double-dormer stone houses are made of indigenous rubble stone randomly positioned where the mason could find the best fit, filling the gaps with mortar and stone chips. The layout is simple: a single room on the main floor with chimneys at each end and a narrow staircase leading to a two room second-story. The basement is a dugout cellar with two double-pane windows. Mortared rubblestone has sealed one window for decades; the other is diminished by layers of sidewalk and street renovations. The construction date of the Leesburg stone house is uncertain, possibly predating the 1757 establishment of Leesburg. 

In the 1950s Joan Brown’s interest in the house increased every time she passed it. She lived in Washington DC with her husband Ray Brown, a prominent Loudoun doctor, but they frequently traveled through Leesburg on their way to visit an aunt in Lincoln. Assuming the unkempt building was abandoned, Mrs. Brown mustered the courage to peek into a dirty window and was startled by a pair of eyes staring back at her. 

“Do you want to look at the house?” the elderly gentleman asked. The Browns accepted his offer and they were soon the new owners of the Stone House.

The house was in disrepair, having passed for over 100 years through various members of Leesburg’s Birkby family and used as a rental for decades. Joan Brown undertook the loving task of restoring the original floor plan of the stone house and adding a modern kitchen and sitting room to the back of the house with a wide breezeway to merge the old with the new. 

The inconvenience of commuting between DC and Leesburg eventually outweighed the benefits of their small-town retreat. Although the Browns retained ownership until the mid 1990s, by 1967 they continued a long-standing pattern of leasing the house. One renter, Kat Imhoff, had some interesting stories to share about her life in the Stone House. 

As director of planning for the town of Leesburg in the early 1980s, Kat liked that the home was within walking distance to her work downtown. Returning home late one evening, exhausted from a day of meetings, Kat let herself in the side door. A glowing, white vapor in the shape of a medium-sized ball appeared from the backroom, pausing in the hallway before darting into the front room. The orb had no distinguishing features, but it seemed startled by Kat’s appearance. It paused briefly as though looking at Kat before shooting into the front room. 

Unnerved, Kat ran to a local pay phone and called her husband. He reassured her that she was just tired from the recent move. Her husband’s commonsense approach was of little comfort. She knew she had witnessed something paranormal; an unearthly presence that shared their house. 

Pushing her fears aside, and thanks to Mrs. Brown’s tasteful renovations, the Imhoffs quickly settled into their new home. They outfitted the front room with comfortable furniture, including a sleep sofa for company. But each evening the Imhoffs avoided the front of the house, preferring to relax in the rear rooms of the newer addition, away from the street noise and an unspoken uneasiness that pervaded the front room. Even before she witnessed the glowing orb, Kat and her husband felt unwelcome in the front room, as if they were uninvited guests. 

Kat’s parents and grandmother were the first overnight guests in their quaint, new home. After an evening of story-telling and reminiscing, everyone retired to their rooms. The strong, Catholic, no-nonsense grandmother chose the sleep sofa, while everyone else retired to second-floor bedrooms. 

Just before dawn, the household was awoken by the sounds of the grandmother’s screams. Rushing downstairs to the front room, they found her in hysterics. Kat’s grandmother awoke to a ball of light hovering over her. It lingered directly above her face as if it were watching her sleep. Startled, the grandmother sat up and the mist dissipated. That’s when she began screaming. After calming her, the Imhoffs moved her to an upstairs bedroom for the remainder of her stay. 

Neighbor Roger Healey affectionately calls the Stone House's ethereal occupant “Annie,” unaware that one of the home’s longest occupants was a spinster aunt by that name. Ann Donohoe leased the home in 1800 where she remained for 25 years. She died of pneumonia in the front room in the care of her nieces, who, ironically, lived next door in the house now occupied by Roger Healey.. 

Both of the Imhoffs avoided going into the basement to do laundry. Kat insisted the door to the basement always be securely closed and locked, sliding the antique deadbolt in place. It became a compulsion for her to check the door. When they retired for the evening, she repeatedly asked her husband if he had secured the basement door. Neither of them talked about their qualms until after they moved. When they finally opened up about their fears of the basement, they were surprised by the similarities.

Soon after moving into the Stone House, Kat began having recurring dreams that the basement was filling with blood; a thick red lake climbing the stairs and threatening to spill into the hallway. In her dream, the blood only overflowed if the door was unlocked; hence, her compulsion to always deadbolt the door. When she discussed this fear with her husband, he confessed that he had also envisioned the same climbing red lake.

The Imhoffs unsuccessfully tried to purchase the little Stone House. Despite their initial uneasiness, they had grown fond of the home’s peculiarities and loved the convenience of living in Leesburg. When the commute to her new position as director of Mt. Vernon became too much, they finally bid a sad farewell to the historic house. 

On an extended stay in Leesburg, Kat revisited the Stone House. She accurately remembered everything except the basement. Her memory was a large room with white-washed walls, open spaces and high ceilings. In stark contrast, the area is small with a low ceiling. 

The majority of the basement sits under the oldest part of the house and is carved from dirt. A person of short stature can barely stand upright. Just to the right of the window that has been filled with field stone, the basement ends abruptly. It shows the scars of digging but was never completed, as though the task became too difficult, or the digger ran into something that should not be dug up. Historical records and a 1700's map note a slave cemetery on the lot prior to a residence building there.

Before the Brown family saved it in 1959, the Stone House was a forlorn shadow of its former glory. The house seems to be aware of the preciousness of the passage of time and its effect on body and souls. A temperamental clock beside the front door ticks loudly when people stand in the slate hallway that connects the old stone house to the new addition, but as soon as anyone steps into the front room, the ticking stops. Step back into the hallway and the steady tick-tock resumes. The sporadic ticking and tocking became so infuriating that the clock was eventually removed. 

The current owners understand if a few of its former residents are reluctant to leave the comforts of their little stone house and they look forward to having their own ghostly encounters. Originally printed in "Lore of Loudoun."