Link to Interview on X Zone Radio Show

My interview with the X Zone Radio Show was posted so you can hear it. https://www.spreaker.com/user/xzoneradiotv/xzrs20181113ep1empamelakkinney

Supernatural Friday: You Can Build A Place Anyway You Want, but Can It Be Haunted, Or Just Weird?

It can be fascinating, but it can be strange too. Most homes are built of lumber and brick. But others are made most differently. Some even are haunted.

Like a house of tombstones. Like the one in Petersburg,Virginia that is in Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-Cities Area  from Schiffer Publishing. It was built in the 1930s, using tombstones from the Poplar Civil War Cemetery. This house’s exterior walls are fashioned from the 2000 marble tombstones of Union soldiers killed during the Siege of Petersburg. Sixty thousand people were killed during the siege, which lasted ten months during 1864-65.

To save money, the city sold these tombstones to the builder, O. E. Young, for forty-five dollars. The ones used to build the house were put in facing inwards, and then Young plastered over the inscriptions. He even made the walkway out of the tombstones too, facing down. Wooden markers were placed upon the graves at Poplar Grove at first. But wood is not a very durable material and the weather destroyed them over a couple of years. In 1873 the government replaced them with marble ones. The soldiers’ names, states, and ranks were inscribed upon these new markers. Poplar Grove is the only cemetery in a national park where the tombstones lie flat. Besides being creepy enough to live in a hose of gravestones, the place is also haunted. To find out more about that, you have to buy Haunted Richmond II, to find out by whom or what.

Though this is the only place made of markers from graves I found, other materials a builder wouldn’t think of using nor ally, are used to build buildings. 

The Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple in Thailand is constructed from a million glass beer bottles. Decorative mosaics at the temple are constructed from beer bottle lids. The mixture of brown and green glass allowed the incorporation of intricate patterns within the temple’s walls. Since the walls are colored glass they allow for privacy but also a beautiful but diffuse light to spread throughout the buildings.

The monks who built the temple wished to highlight the wasteful nature of consumption and the possibility of reclaiming beauty from rubbish. Since glass is rather too brittle to make a complete structure, the temple does have a concrete core to support its weight.

Not beer bottles, but made of more than 50,000 beer cans adorn John Milkovisch’s Houston home in Texas.  It also includes bottle caps, bottles and other beer paraphernalia. The project began in 1968 when Milkovisch, a retired upholsterer was tired of mowing grass and covered his front and back yards with concrete, inlaying thousands of marbles, rocks and other glittery items to create a unique lawn.

He then turned to the house and began decorating it with flattened beer cans, covering the walls and roof, and even creating beer-can wind chimes. Garlands made of cut beer cans hanging from the roof edges not only made the house sing in the wind, but also lowered the family's energy bills.Today the Beer Can House is a museum. Find out more on how you can visit it at http://www.beercanhouse.org/.

It was in Rockport, Massachusetts, in 1922 that mechanical engineer Elias F. Stenman constructed his two-room home, planning to insulate it with newspaper. Before long, he made the entire house out of paper, and two years and 215 layers of newspaper later, he moved in. At that, he went on to make all of the home’s furnishings — including the desk and the piano — out of newspaper as well. He worked on the project until his death in 1942. Although the frame, floor and roof are made of wood, the rest of the home is composed entirely of newspaper, all donated by Stenman’s friends and family. Although the Paper House is completely sturdy, it does need to be revarnished every few years to keep it well-preserved. Of course, you can visit it. You can learn more at http://www.paperhouserockport.com/index.html.

In the southern part of Virginia, actually in Hillsville, there’s a house made up of all things, bottles. In 1941, pharmacist John “Doc” Hope commissioned a builder to build for his daughter a playhouse made out of bottles. Glass containers that had contained castor oil to soda pop were used in construction of this place. But unlike most children’s playhouses, this one stretched from fifteen to twenty-five feet.

Nicknamed the “House of a Thousand Headaches” due to the wine bottles also used in its construction, unlike many homes today, this one has stood the test of time. It is said that unlike other homes made of bottles in the world, this one had all its bottles arranged backwards, making the inner walls green. Green bottles form an "H" pattern (for Hope) on one of the side walls. There is also a blue bottle chandelier. 

Icehotel is the world’s first hotel made of ice and snow. It was founded in 1989, and is reborn in a new guise every winter, in the Swedish village of Jukkasjärvi – 200 km north of the Arctic Circle. Yngve Bergqvist, that later founded Icehotel, got an idea. Inspired by the Japanese ice sculpting tradition and with the help of two professional ice sculptors from Japan as instructors; he invited artists to attend a workshop in Jukkasjärvi in 1989. This marked the start of a more than two decade long journey with the Torne River- the world’s first hotel made of ice and snow. Want to stay here for your next vacation? Check out their website for more information: http://www.icehotel.com/

The Winchester House was built to placate the spirits, build in a most unusual way. 

On September 30, 1862, at the height of the Civil War, William Wirt Winchester and Sarah Pardee had gotten married in a wedding ceremony in New Haven, Connicut.

Four years later, Sarah’s daughter contracted an illness known as "marasmus", a children’s disease in which the body wastes away, and died on July 24. Shattered by this, she withdrew into herself and teetered on the edge of madness for some time. It would be nearly a decade before she returned to her normal self, but she and William never had a another child.

Not long after Sarah returned to her family and home, another tragedy struck. William, now heir to the Winchester empire, was struck down with pulmonary tuberculosis and died March 7, 1881.  Sarah inherited over $20 million dollars, an incredible sum, especially in those days. She also received 48.9 percent of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and an income of about $1000 per day, which wasn’t taxable until 1913.

Sarah grieved deeply, not only for her husband, but also for her lost child. A short time later, a friend suggested that Sarah might speak to a Spiritualist medium about her loss. "Your husband is here," the medium told her and then went on to provide a description of William Winchester. "He says for me to tell you that there is a curse on your family, which took the life of he and your child. It will soon take you too. It is a curse that has resulted from the terrible weapon created by the Winchester family. Thousands of persons have died because of it and their spirits are now seeking vengeance."

The medium told Sarah to sell her property in New Haven and head out west. She would be guided by her husband and when she found her new home in the west, she would recognize it.  "You must start a new life," said the medium. "Build a home for yourself and for the spirits who have fallen from this weapon. You can never stop building the house. If you continue building, you will live. Stop and you will die."

Shortly after the seance, Believing that she was guided by the hand of her dead husband, she didn’t stop traveling until she reached the Santa Clara Valley in 1884. Here, she found a six-room home under construction belonging to a Dr. Caldwell. She negotiated with him and got him to sell her the house and the 162 acres it stood on.  She tossed away any previous plans for the house and started building whatever she chose to. She had her pick of local workers and craftsmen and for the next 36 years, they built and rebuilt, altered and changed and constructed and demolished one section of the house after another. She kept 22 carpenters at work, year around, 24 hours each day. 

As the house grew to include 26 rooms, railroad cars were switched onto a nearby line to bring building materials and imported furnishings to the house. The house was rapidly growing and expanding and while Sarah claimed to have no master plan for the structure, she met each morning with her foreman and they would go over her hand-sketched plans for the day’s work. The plans were often chaotic but showed a real flair for building. Sometimes though, they would not work out the right way, but Sarah always had a quick solution. If this happened, they would just build another room around an existing one.

The house continued to grow and by 1906, it had reached a towering seven stories tall. Sarah continued and expansion of the house, while living in solitude with only her servants, the workmen and, of course, the ghosts. It was said that on sleepless nights, when she was not communing with the spirit world about the designs for the house, Sarah would play her grand piano into the early hours of the morning. According to legend, the piano would be admired by passers-by on the street outside, even though two of the keys were badly out of tune.

The most tragic event occurred within the house when the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 struck. When it was all over, portions of the Winchester Mansion were nearly in ruins. The top three floors of the house had collapsed into the gardens and would never be rebuilt. In addition, the fireplace that was in the Daisy Room (where Mrs. Winchester slept the night of the earthquake) collapsed, shifting the room and trapping Sarah inside. She became convinced that the earthquake had been a sign from the spirits who were furious that she had nearly completed the house. She boarded up the front thirty rooms of the mansion so that the construction wouldn’t be complete - and also so that the spirits who fell when portion of the house collapsed would be trapped inside forever.

The workmen toiled to repair the damage done by the earthquake, although the mammoth structure fared far better than most of the buildings in the area. A few of the rooms had been badly harmed, although it had lost the highest floors, and several cupolas and towers had toppled over. The expansion on the house began once more. The number of bedrooms increased from 15 to 20 and on to 25. Chimneys were installed all over the place, although strangely, they served no purpose. Some believe that perhaps they were added because the old stories say that ghosts like to appear and disappear through them. On a related note, it has also been documented that they only installed two mirrors in the house, because Sarah believed the phantoms to be afraid of their own reflections.

On September 4, 1922, after a conference session with the spirits in the seance room, Sarah went to her bedroom for the night. In the early morning hours, she died in her sleep at the age of 83. Her possessions left to her niece, Frances Marriot, who had been handling most of Sarah’s business affairs for some time.  Little did anyone know, but by this time, Sarah’s large bank account had dwindled considerably. Rumor had it that somewhere in the house was hidden a safe containing a fortune in jewelry and a solid-gold dinner service with which Sarah had entertained her ghostly guests. Her relatives forced open several safes but found only old fish lines, socks, newspaper clippings about her daughter’s and her husband’s deaths, a lock of baby hair, and a suit of woolen underwear. They never found the solid gold dinner service.

The furnishings, personal belongings and surplus construction and decorative materials removed from the house, the structure iwas sold to a group of investors who planned to use it as a tourist attraction. One of the first to see the place when it opened to the public was Robert L. Ripley, who featured the house in his popular column, "Believe it or Not." Initially advertised as being 148 rooms, but so confusing was the floor plan that every time a room count was taken, a different total came up. The story said that the workmen took more than six weeks just to get the furniture out of it and the moving men became lost because it was a "labyrinth." told to the American Weekly, in 1928. The rooms of the house were counted over and over again and five years later, the counters estimated that 160 rooms existed, although no one is sure if even that is correct. Today, the house has been declared a California Historical Landmark and is registered with the National Park Service as "a large, odd dwelling with an unknown number of rooms."

There is the Trapezium House is located at 15 West Bank Street in Petersburg. It is like the Winchester House in California, it too was built by Charles O'Hara in 1817 with ghosts in mind. but on a much smaller scale.

The legend concerning the house incorporated his West Indian servant’s beliefs that a trapezoid-shaped building would ward off ghosts and evil spirits. The workmen must have thought him loony when he had them build it. 

Charles O’Hara left Ireland at the age of nineteen and immigrated to the West Indies while amassing a large fortune. History does not record the reason why he came to Petersburg, or even how many West Indian servants came with him. It is known that he did bring a West Indian woman named Jinsie Snow with him. It is she who is believed to have told him to build the unusual house.

With no right angles and no parallel walls, the stair steps to the upper floors are set at odd angles with the wall. There is supposedly only one room on the first floor and two rooms each on the other two floors. The interior is elongated, which could be an accident of the house’s irregular shape or a deliberate plan. The windows, fireplace and staircase are all off center. There is only one door in the front. The oddest feature is that the cellar where the cooking had been done could only be reached by a trapdoor under the stairwell. The ceiling is only four feet high which must have made it difficult for anyone over that height to walk around.

O’Hara dressed up in a full British uniform and would sit on the front porch on important English and Irish holidays. This is most peculiar as it is said that the man never served in the military, so why the uniform? Because of this, he became known as “the General.”

He only lived on the first floor and never swept or cleaned the floor. The house earned the nickname, “Rat Castle.” Not just because of the obvious mess, but because he also kept rats along with parrots and monkeys

When he died, some people being nice, took up a collection to mark his grave as the state got his fortune and the house. A tombstone with a harp as a symbol of Ireland marks his grave at Blandford Cemetery on Cockade Avenue. I found his grave and the stone at Blandford on Monday, June 9, 2014. It lies at the corner of Cockade Avenue and Crater Road.

These are just  a few of places built from unusual materials and not the normal wood or brick. Though some weird places were built with wood or brick. Google to see if any are near where you live. They may even have ghosts, or a curse.

My Interview Tuesday, April 18th on Haunt Jaunts

I will be interviewed on a paranormal radio show, Haunt Jaunts, on Tuesday, April 18, 2017, at 7-8 p.m. CT, 8-9pm EST. You can learn more about the show at http://paramaniaradio.com/SHOW.php?showid=101 and listen to sheo live Tuesday at http://paramaniaradio.com/ . Afterwards, if anyone cannot listen to it live, it will be at OnDemand at http://paramaniaradio.com/On-Demand.php

From Haunt Jaunts: ParaMania Radio has a chat room.

The show encourages anyone o come hang out and ask questions and interact with the other listeners.

All you must do is show up to http://www.paramaniaradio.com/ to hear the show and participate in the chat room. Then they can log on as a guest or via Facebook and they’re good to go!

Use this link: http://www.paramaniaradio.com/chat/ during the show. (It’s “silent,” whereas the chat room from the main page plays the show which will cause feedback.)

Supernatural Friday: Where Does Edgar Allan Poe Haunt?

“Even in the grave, all is not lost.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe has written horrific and otherworldly stories and poetry. Some are those coming back to haunt the main character. The question here is, has he been seen in specter form?

I’ve been to the old Stone House where the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia is housed. It is haunted by children. As for him, maybe where some of his personal affects are. Near his childhood bed I gotten my EMF meter to go off once. Is it him? Or the others that haunt the buildings? No clear answer. I’d returned a second time  with the Richmond Paranormal Society, but got nothing concerning Poe. Another spot he has been seen in Richmond is what had been the home of his love and last fiance and there are claims his ghost has been seem in Shockoe Cemetery. 

There is a famous and unsolved mystery concerning Poe’s gravesite in the Old Western Burial Ground. The remains of people like Edgar Allan Poe, the son of Francis Scott Key, the grandfather of President James Buchanan, five former mayors of Baltimore and fifteen generals from the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 are buried here.  Few years ago, my husband and I drove pass it to another destination at the time. We never stopped, or gone back to visit it—someday, I hope to. A story about Poe’s grave involves a man seen in the graveyard for more than fifty years. Dressed completely in black, including a black fedora and a black scarf to hide his face, he carries a walking stick and strolls into the cemetery every year on January 19, the birth date of Edgar Allan Poe. On every occasion, he has left behind a bottle of cognac and three red roses on the graveside of the late author. After placing these items with care, he then stands, tips his hat and walks away. The offerings always remain on the grave, although one year, they were accompanied by a note, bearing no signature, which read: "Edgar, I haven’t forgotten you."

Tales claim the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe haunts his graveside, but the man in black is alive, just no one knows for sure who he is. He has brought roses and cognac to the cemetery every January since 1949. This past January 2013, he hasn’t. I can only assume he has passed away and is now a ghost himself if anyone sees him.

Legend has it that the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe has been seen near his grave and in the catacombs of the church. At the catacombs, it is said there are cold spots, sounds of footsteps, disembodied whisperings and some visitors have felt the touch of unseen hands too. The author died mysteriously in Baltimore and thus came to be buried there Poe was found barely conscious and lying in a gutter on East Lombard Street in Baltimore. He was rushed to a hospital but he died a short time later.

Some said Poe's death was caused by alcohol, others say that he was in a psychotic state and even rabies has been blamed. Other writers believe that he may have been drugged and murdered as the clothes that he wore were not his own and the walking stick he carried belonged to another man. There have been literally dozens of theories posed as to what caused Poe’s death but no one will ever know for sure. Perhaps the fact that his death remains unexplained is the reason why Poe’s ghost remains in the Old Western Burial Ground.
Poe’s house in Baltimore now a museum is haunted. There are cold spots and people have felt something tapping them on the shoulder. Windows fly open and shut by unseen hands. Witnesses have reported seeing an overweight grey haired woman dressed in clothing of the 1800s. People have heard mysterious voices. An actress was getting dressed for a play based on Berenice, a horror story Poe wrote. A window suddenly fell and crashed to the floor. It had been secure and there were no wind gusts.

During the riots that followed Martin Luther King’s assassination, people saw lights in the house and called the police who also witnessed the lights that moved from floor to floor. They could not get into the house and did not want to break into it, so they surrounded the building and waited for the curator. No one had been in the house. 

His phantom has been seen at Fort Monroe.  Witnesses claim to have seen his ghost writing away at a desk; he penned some minor poetry collections while on base.

Another possible building for Poe to haunt would be at Hiram Haines Coffee and Ale House in Petersburg, Virginia that his friend owned in 1830s and invited Poe and Virginia Clemm to spend their honeymoon there. I investigated the second floor suite where they stayed, but did not get any EVPs or voices from the ghost box from him nor from his bride. Does he haunt there? I never heard any stories of his spirit there neither. Only a legend of Virginia seen at a window on January 39th. (Reopened and in my nonfiction ghost book, Paranormal Petersburg, and the Tri-Cities Area, it closed before my book was released and for sale.)

Other Spots Poe Is Claimed to Haunt

Washington College Hospital: this is the Baltimore hospital where he died in 1849, it's been said that Poe's ghost has been seen roaming its hallways.

Eutaw House: There are a myriad of eerie tales concerning the old Centre County, Pennsylvania, Inn. One is that Poe stopped by, fell in love with a local girl, and was spurned. A spook that physically resembles him has been spotted there, although the local lore seems to associate the apparition with a ghost family haunting its halls

Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-Cities Area Nominated in Nonfiction Category of Library of Virginia Literary Awards

Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-Cities Area is nominated for the nonfiction category of Library of Virginia Literary Awards. I won't know until August if it makes it. See all the nominees I both the fiction and nonfiction categories here. http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/litawards/2016_nominees.pdf

                    Find the book at Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Books A Million, 

                    your  local independent bookstore, and online stores everywhere.

Live Author Appearance and Book Signing march 26th in Midlothian, Virginia

I will be signing copies of Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-Cities Area and my collection of short horror fiction, Spectre Nightmares and Visitations on Saturday,  March 26th at 2nd & Charles 12244 Chattanoga Plaz, Midlothian, Virginia from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. I wil also be dong a giveaway of an Easter basket full of goodies and a gift cert from the store. You must come and buy a copy of one of my books and then enter to win. I will draw the winner fifteen minutes before 4:00, You must be there to win, or be able to get to the store same day to pick up your prize.

 

Interview I Did With Paranormal Underground Now on Podcast

If you did not listen to my interview with Paranormal Underground live January 21st, the podcast for it is now available HERE. They mentioned it will also be on iTunes soon, if not already available there.

Paranormal Petersburg and Stories in Top Ten of Preditors and Editors Readers Poll 2015!

Final tallies of winners for the Preditors and Editors Readers Poll 2015 are up, and my nonfiction ghost book and two short stories made the top ten of their categories! 

Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-Cities Area made #3 in the Nonfiction books category.  

My short horror story, "Silence," that appeared in the Nightmares and Echoes II: The Return anthology made #10 in Short Horror Story category.  Nightmares and Echoes II: The Return itself made #10 in Top Ten for Anthologies category.

The erotic horror short story, "Pick Up Date," I wrote under the pseudonym, Sapphire Phelan, and that appeared in the anthology, Shivers and Lace,  made #6 in All Other Stories category. 

My Live Interview Tonight on Paranormal Underground Radio

Tonight, I will be interviewed by Paranormal Underground, a paranormal radio show.

It begins 9:30 p.m. Eastern and ends at 10:40 p.m. For Pacific it will be 6:30 p.m., Mountain: 7:30 p.m. and Central: 8:30 p.m. You can listen live at http://mixlr.com/paranormal-underground-radio/.

If you wish to do the forum chat, you must sign up to do that at the Paranormal Underground Radio's Mixlr page.

It will not just be about my latest ghost book, Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-Cities Area, but also two of the Paranormal World Seekers DVDS, Return to Fort Magruder and Investigation at the Bistro in Petersburg.

Two Appearances This Week: Chesterfield Historical Society and Marscon

I am doing two author appearances/signings this week.

I am doing a talk about ghosts of the Tri-Cities area, selling and signing copies of my book, Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-Cities Area and selling copies of The Bistro in Petersburg Paranormal World Seekers DVDs afterwords. It will be this Wednesday, January 13th, at the Colonial Heights Historical Society meeting from 7:00-9:00 p.m. The meeting will be held at the Colonial Heights Library, 1000 Yacht Basin Drive, Colonial Heights, Virginia 23834. For directions, you 

can call the library at 804-520-0384.  http://www.colonialheightsva.gov/library

I will also be a guest at Marscon, a science fiction,fantasy and horror convention at the DoubleTree Williamsburg, 50 Kingsmill Road Williamsburg VA. 23185. It will be from January 15-17th.  For more information  http://www.marscon.net/wp/  and to see what panels and programming will be held:  http://www.marscon.net/wp/index.php/programming/

My Ghost Book and Short Story Nominated at Preditors and Editors 2015 Readers Poll

Preditors and Editors Readers Poll 2015 is now up through January 14th. 

Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-Cities Area was nominated at Preditors and Editors Readers Poll 2015. If you read it or even to help, vote for it at http://critters.org/predpoll/nonfictionbook.shtml

An anthology I have a story included, Nightmares & Echoes 2: The Return was nominated. http://critters.org/predpoll/antho.shtml

My story in the anthology, "Silence" was also nominated at http://critters.org/predpoll/shortstoryh.shtml

If you read any of them, please vote for them. Thank you.

Author Appearance at Read Local at Chesapeake Central Library November 14, 2015

I will be at "Read Local" at the Chesapeake Central Library tomorrow, November 14th, from Noon to 4:00 p.m. I will be there for readers, selling and signings copies of my books (including a copy of The Witch and The Familiar and two copies of Shivers and Lace anthology I have a story included (Shivers and Lace premiering for the first time)--both by me under the pseudonym for paranormal romance and erotic horror, Sapphire Phelan). I will be there for  budding authors, talking about my process and how I gotten published by published, and encouraging.  I will also have some Paranormal World Seekers DVDs with me that I will be selling.

I have will have a giveaway concerning Shivers and Lace, plus Nightmares and Echoes 2 I have a new story included, Author Susan Schwartz will be selling these at her table, so bring a copy of N&E to me to sign my story and to enter the giveaway. If you win, you must be able to pick up the giveaway before I leave at 4 p.m. or at front desk of the library forbore they close at 5 p .m 

The address for the library is 298  Cedar Road, Chesapeake, Virginia. If need more information or directions: 757-410-7100.

Author Appearance and Book Signing November 7, 2015 in Colonial Heights

I will be signing Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-Cities Area from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. tomorrow, November 7, 2015, at Books A Million, 1891 Southpark Circle,

Colonial Heights, VA 23834  In shopping center across from 

Southpark Mall.  Their phone number is

804-526-7068 if need directions and anything else.


 

Halloween is Coming: Petersburg May Be More Haunted than Williamsburg!

   (The photos are copyrighted and included in my ghost book, Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-CitiesArea, so please share the link and not them, Thank you.)

When one thinks of the most haunted spot in Virginia, they think Williamsburg. Well, after researching and writing books for each area, I am here to say, I think Petersburg has gotten Williamsburg beat!

But Williamsburg has Jamestowne, which began in the 1600s and before that the Powhatan Indians. Well, the Powhatan natives scattered as far as Chester and the Tri-Cities area and there is the second English settlement, the Citie of Henricus Sir Thomas Dale started after Jamestown and Fort Henry (became Petersburg later) was established by Abraham Wood in 1645 that later in 1675 Peter Jones took over and established his own trading post.  So, the area was as long living as Williamsburg.

Plantations in the area were built as early as 1600s and 1700s, like Weston Plantation in Hopewell.  The death of Powhatan and the ascension of Opechancanough as paramount chief brought about the 1622 Massacre that hit parts of the area, even the Falling Creek Ironworks March 22, 1622, killing all but two children.  In Petersburg, their wooden buildings burned down in a great fire July 16, 1815. More than 350 buildings were destroyed with an estimated $3,000,000 in damage. After that, they rebuilt, using brick.

During the War Between the States, there was the nine-month ling Siege of Petersburg, plus a battle raged on outside the city (in what is now Petersburg National Battlefield-the Eastern Front and in Dinwiddie County, the Petersburg National Civil War Battlefield—Five Forks (plus Battle at Sutherland Station and Dinwiddie Courthouse). 

Slavery happened here. A slave auction was held right in the old Town Petersburg! Petersburg’s first enslaved African- Americans were brought here in 1732 to work in John Bolling’s tobacco warehouses. Bolling owned haunted Centre Hill Mansion. It was subdivided and named Wittontown in 1750, but was renamed Pocahontas when it became a town in 1752. This town became the oldest free black community in the United States, settling Pocahontas Island—and it is still there today. Pocahontas Island is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Clemm had their honeymoon here--staying at Hiram Haines Coffee and Ale House. Haines was friend and colleague of Poe and invited them. No one can pinpoint when Poe and Haines became friends, but Haines’s wife was the daughter of a wealthy Richmond merchant, and she had known Poe as a child.

The Revolutionary War is connected to Petersburg. My husband and I attended a 233^rd anniversary of the reenactment of the 1781 Battle of Petersburg at Battersea April 19-20, 2014. It did not happen at Battersea, but nearby. You can read about it in the chapter for Battersea in my ghost book, Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-Cities Area.

Someone once told me that he’d heard a ghost story for every building in old Town Petersburg, along with many spots on the streets, too. Add to that, other parts of Petersburg, Dinwiddie, Sutherland, Prince George County, Colonial Heights, Hopewell, and add in nearby Chester, Enon and Ettrick-Matoaca, so much has added to a very paranormal section of Virginia.  

At this time of the year, with the leaves on trees and some bushes changing colors, the air generally more cooler, pumpkins on doorsteps, some already carved with faces on their flesh, and Halloween decorations on homes and in store windows and inside them, too, it is not hard to believe ghosts are watching you as you walk the streets of Petersburg, or tour Weston Plantation house or stalk the battlefields. It may not be as full of opulence as Williamsburg or hold ghost tour upon tours that fill the streets (after all, Williamsburg has more practice at accepting their spirits and using them to attract the history and paranormal buffs), but Petersburg with its gently tattered costume has a more haunted past that still persists, no, demands, to be seen and heard.   

 

So take their ghost tour in the city, check out the ghost tour at Blandford Cemetery Halloween night, or join the ghost tours held at Pamplin Park for their Voices from the Shadows. You just might catch glimpse of a gentile lady in hooped skirts or see a Civil War soldier, even a black one, at a restaurant as you eat a meal. Snap a few photos at night of Centre Hill Mansion or the buildings in town, or Colonial Height’s Violet Bank Museum from the street. Drive the streets of Screamerville in Enon after the trick-or-treaters are all inside and with your window rolled down, you just might hear someone screaming. It might be someone living, but again, it might not, And maybe, just maybe, with the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead thinnest on Halloween, you might be fortunate to see why Petersburg and the Tri-Cities are more haunted than Williamsburg can ever attain to be.

Enjoy an excerpt from the Peter Jones Trading Post sub chapter in Old Towne Petersburg’s Other Haunted Places chapter of my book,  Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia,and the Tri-Cities Area.

The Investigation

The night of the investigation at The Bistro at Market and Grove on July 12, 2014, across the street, Carol Smith, Julia Ogle, Leonard Price, and I met in the parking lot. A full moon hovered in the sky above.

Since we weren’t supposed to go into the Bistro restaurant until 10 p.m., we gathered our equipment and made our way over to Peter Jones Trading Post. Our recorders already on, I turned on my ghost box and began asking questions to see if any spirits still lingered. Carol and the other two used their flashlights to read the posted signs for tourists about the ruin’s history.

I asked, “Is there any spirit still here?”

A male voice came across the scanning waves. “Jacob.”

I said, “Is Peter Jones still here?”

Peter Jones did not reply, so I said, “Jacob? Can you talk to me?”

He answered, “Jacob.” Two other, different male voices followed his.

“Phillip.” “Harry.”

I pressed, “Peter? Is Peter here?”

Nothing from Peter Jones came across the box.

We wandered down the street, ending up by a stone bench with bars crossing the front. I dropped all but my ghost box on the bench.

“Jacob? Jacob, are you one of the Confederates or Federal soldiers held prisoner here during the Civil War?”

“Yes.”

“Tell us anything you want us to tell us. Are you a Confederate soldier? A Union soldier?”

The box stopped scanning. Occasionally, I found spirits could turn off the ghost box, whether due to not wanting to talk to us or some other reason. Sometime, I wondered if they were maybe drawing the power from the batteries and electronics.

Julia asked: “Who was here during the War? Confederate? Federal?”

A man with a deeper voice than the others said, “Both.”

“Was Jacob one of the Federals or a Confederate?”

“Yes.” That did not answer my question, just that he was a soldier.

Then the same man’s deep voice came across the box, saying, “You must…”

I questioned, “You must what? We must go?”

I heard the man say, “Yes.”

I asked if we could take picture and then we would leave them alone. I searched in my pink bag for the camera in its soft case, but it was not inside. It had to be still in my car, so I told my friends that I was heading back to the parking lot to fetch it. Carol’s equipment was still in her vehicle, so we all left the structure. (We had a freaky paranormal experience in the parking lot that you can read about in The Bistro at Market and Grove chapter.)

What is left of the building can be found at the corner of Old and Market

Streets in what might be called a small park setting. It doesn’t cost to visit

and who knows, maybe the phantom of Peter Jones or some Civil War prisoners might talk to you. You never know.

 Book Blurb for Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia, and the Tri-Cities Area:

Travel to Petersburg, Virginia, and the surrounding areas of Colonial Heights, Hopewell, Prince George, Dinwiddie, and nearby Ettrick-Matoaca, Enon, and Chester to discover what spirits, monsters, UFOs, and legends await the unwary. Why are the Union and Confederate spirits still fighting the Civil War in the battlefields? Who is the lady in blue who haunts Weston Plantation House? Learn what the phantoms at Peter Jones Trading Post will do to keep from being photographed. Drink tea with runaway slaves still hiding on the top floor above the Blue Willow Tea Room. Are Edgar Allan Poe and his bride still on their honeymoon at Hiram Haines Coffee and Ale House? Why does the Goatman stalk young lovers? Meet the ghosts of Violet Bank Museum that greet guests at the house. Hauntingly active as they share space with the living, the dead refuse to give up their undead residency.