Murder Will Out

The proverb “murder will out” became a reality for one Leesburg woman. She had harbored the secret of her murderous deed for twenty-five years and refused to die until she confessed all her sins. An 1811 edition of The Lady’s Miscellany carried her deathbed confession.

In 1786, the body of nineteen-year old Joseph Hoge was found in the dense forest just outside of Leesburg. In the dark of the night, his throat was slashed from ear-to-ear, his life blood draining quickly and silently into the forest floor. The vicious act was the work of a strong, angry, unstable person and the surrounding community was immediately afraid that a madman was among them.

The case remained unsolved for twenty-five years. Although a jury of inquest was unable to determine the murderer, suspicion fell on the boy’s mother, Betty Hoge, whose physical strength from years of hard labor surpassed that of many men. When Betty ran to a neighbor’s shouting “Joe is bleeding to death,” her short gown was splattered with blood and a bloody handprint stained her left sleeve as if she had attempted to wipe the guilt from the hand that committed the act.

Betty Hoge died in 1811. As was the Scottish custom, three attendants took turns waiting for Mrs. Hoge to draw her last breath. Late into the night, an attendant determined that Mrs. Hoge had finally passed and called in the other two to help lay her out in preparation for burial.

Mrs. Hoge suddenly revived and “said she could not die until she had communicated something that lay heavy on her mind.” She asked that everyone except one attendant leave the room so she could confess her sins before dying. That person was very afraid of Mrs. Hoge and refused to be left in the room alone with her. The other two huddled in the safety of the doorway as the feared woman confessed her sins.

Years earlier Mrs. Hoge suffocated her husband with a feather bed, but it was not this act that weighed heavily on her guilty conscience. It was the murder of her son, her own flesh and blood, that kept the old woman from resting in peace.

As a young child, Joseph Hoge witnessed his father’s murder. The years passed and the son grew into a strong, formidable man. He threatened to tell of his mother’s evil deeds if she did not give in to his every whim and fancy. On the night of his death, Joseph left the cabin for his usual evening activities at the nearby grog. His mother lay in wait a short distance from the cabin in the dense forest lining the path to town. When young Joe passed, she jumped him from behind, slashing his throat from ear-to-ear in a cut so deep it nearly decapitated him.

For many years Betty Hoge lived feared and suspected by the residents of Leesburg. Her guilt festered and grew as she lived out her days isolated in her cabin in the dense forest on the edges of Leesburg, until the day she revived herself from the cold grasps of death to confess her sins. Twenty-four hours after her grisly confession, she finally died. The undertakers took no chances of her once again reviving and quickly buried her.

An Officer Beside My Bed

I am extremely skeptical of all paranormal claims and hope to someday have an undeniable experience that eliminates all skepticism. I jokingly say that I want an apparition to materialize in front of me, proclaim “Do you believe me now?” and then disappear. I have had numerous experiences that I can’t fully explain, but I retain the back-of-the-brain inkling that there is a logical explanation that I have yet to discover. Scratching noises are usually scurrying insects and varmints. Knocking noises can be snakes rubbing against rafters and floor joists to shed their skins. Popping and footsteps are probably temperature fluctuations expanding and contracting wood, grout and caulking. Shadows in the peripheral are tangled eyelashes, while other shadows are legitimate movement outside casting a shadow inside. Being held down in a bed is sleep paralysis. Clothing or hair are naturally tugged or pulled all the time when they tangle, but our senses are heightened in a scary environment. The following experience can be logically attributed to my sleepy state – even though I still believe I was fully awake.

Colonel Burt had been such an integral part of my life while I was researching all things “Burt” that I began speaking of him in the present tense, relaying researched familial anecdotes as if he and I had just shared tea and crumpets on the lanai. My husband half-jokingly referred to him as the other man in my life. During my Burt phase, I was six hours into a seven-hour drive from Ohio to Northern Virginia when I made a pact with Col. Burt that if he wanted to make himself visible to me, I promised to not be frightened. Around midnight, I pulled into my garage and quietly fumbled through the dark house so I wouldn’t wake anyone. Barely taking the time to change clothes and brush the travel grime from my teeth and face before I collapsed in bed, all thoughts of my pact with Col. Burt were immediately forgotten.

A couple of hours later I startled from deep sleep to full awake. Standing next to my bed was a bearded soldier in a Confederate officer’s uniform.

The only problem is he didn’t look like the Col. Burt that existed in my mind’s-eye. At that time, I had not seen a picture of Erasmus Burt, so my image of him was one-hundred percent conjecture, but I envisioned him attractively aging, dark complexion, tall, thin with chiseled features and an approachable yet commanding demeanor. The apparition was in full regalia; a steel grey jacket, possibly woolen, hung crisply to mid-thigh and stretched tight across an ample chest and mid-section. The uniform had a dark belt, brass buttons that ran down the front and a high, stiff color made from a darker material. He carried no weaponry and was bare-headed. His well-groomed beard was a salt and pepper grey and his longish hair was almost completely white with a high forehead and a bit of a curl at the ends. The hair was molded close to his head as if he had just removed a hat or used a gel to hold it in place. He didn’t glow. He wasn’t transparent or translucent. He just looked like an elderly gentleman, respectfully standing beside my bed. He wasn’t looking at me; instead he looked across the bedroom toward the opposite wall. Although I couldn’t see his eyes directly, from the side they appeared to be a light grey or blue.

My reaction was neither fear nor excitement. His appearance was exactly what I had asked for, but when I made my request I didn’t realize that 1.) he would oblige so quickly, and 2.) I would be so completely exhausted from my drive that I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the experience. I roused myself, leaned up on one elbow and said, “Ugh, could you come back later? I’m really tired.” Then I laid back down and went back to sleep, never knowing if he acknowledged me or if he reacted in any way. The entire encounter could not have been more than 15 seconds and the memory of it returned to me the next morning in full detail. I still believe that I was not dreaming because, unlike my dreams, which evaporate as soon as I open my eyes, I remembered it the next morning and the memory is still vivid. I am pretty certain he was disgruntled that I had dismissed him after he put so much time and energy into appearing because I never saw him again.

(sidenote: The day we moved into our Northern Virginia home, I picked up a corroded glob from the flower bed. It turned out to be a Civil War era bullet.)