Investigating Colonial Williamsburg for National Ghost Hunting Day, er, Night

National Ghost Hunting Day was Saturday, September 30, 2017, this year. The day part, I spent at Paracon at Ferry Plantation, as a vendor, selling my ghost books, the new fictional urban fantasy, How the Vortex Changed My Life and Paranormal World Seekers DVDs. It was a nice day in the 70s, spent with friends and I sold books, as did my PWS investigator, Carol Smith, had sold some of hers. But by 4:30 p.m. we'd left for Williamsburg for dinner and for Carol and her husband to check into the haunted Fort Magruder Hotel for Saturday night. Paranormal World Seekers had been invited as guest investigators for the Original Colonial Williamsburg Ghost Tour for that night. They would also be using a medium psychic, Bree, too.

After dinner at the Dog Street Pub, Carol’s husband drove back to the hotel and Carol followed Bill and me down the street to the

Bruton Parish church, stopping for me to take a couple of pictures along the way. Like at Dora Armistead’s house. The house was once in the area of the Colonial Williamsburg homes, but it was moved to its current location because it was built in the 1800s and not the 1700s. It is claimed that this did not sit well with Doris, whose spirit followed the house to its new location and now haunts the place. The bright moon hung in the sky, in a waxing gibbous phase.

We met a tour outside of the church, but it wasn’t the one with Angela Travetti. Eventually, she appeared. Once everyone for the tour made it, plus a few guides and the psychic, Bree (a very nice lady), they talked to us about live streaming, warning anyone not wanting to be live streamed on Facebook knew this when they paid and about what we would do. Bree was introduced and I was and we talked. Then, we began to walk. We stopped by the field beside the colonial courthouse. My camera caught what rarely happens, but in a couple of other paranormally active places, purple lines across the screen, that I saw first on my viewfinder. 

The next place would be some orbs, things like that. Some, nothing at all. We stopped at the Ludwell house. Where Lucy Ludwell supposedly haunts. The tour guide told he stories about it. The tour guide had me do a ghost box session, which I recorded with my digital recorder, will later upload and listen off my laptop, along with the couple of EVP sessions I did. Bree talked about her impressions, one that she did not get that Lucy was there. Using my ghost box, I didn't get any EVPs of Lucy talking. I snapped more pictures of the house.

This repeated until we came to the Peyton Randolph House— the most haunted house in Colonial Williamsburg. The house stood dark and imposing. Threatening. Something drew me, like someone calling me to come to it, and yet, fear clutched my heart, squeezing. “You’re not an urban legend,” I muttered to it. “You’re the real deal.”

I looked up at the roof and blinked, unsure at first what I saw. Mist filled the area, near the chimney, all this on the left side of the house. The stuff began to thicken and grow bigger, becoming like a cloud. Though the tour guide was telling the stories about the house to the tour group, I asked, “Anyone else seeing it? The mist? I see mist forming on the roof, by the chimney.” Carol admitted to not seeing anything up there, but Bree turned to me and said that she saw it too. Suddenly, it was gone. But before it had vanished, I took a couple of pictures. Sadly, the mist or cloud never appeared in them. Worse, during this time, I felt something trying to draw me closer. Bree said she was frightened of the place, but stepped onto the lawn. A guide told us it was private property (Colonial Williamsburg does own it)—though later, they did let the group come up to the side door on the side of the house. Personally, I wasn’t sure if it would have been a good idea for me to approach it, be at its side. Something wanted me there that night. I was asked once if I would let my team investigate a place with a demon. I said never. I didn’t think it was demonic, but something bad did haunt the place. My inner feelings warned me. I think it knew I had the energy for it. Later, at the side of the house, I harrowed my camera at the top windows in the dark above the people, particularly the one by the tree. Something glowed in that window and a guide assured me nothing was in that window. “You got something for sure,” he said. Later, on my laptop, I saw a figure. Zooming in, I saw her. A woman. One side of her face—what would be the left side—solid white, an eye, maybe the nose, her right side on the other side of the pane not there, but mist forming. Not as substantial as her face, I could see on her left side, what appeared to be the kind of gown a wealthy woman of the 18^th century would wear, her hair put up too. She stared down at the tour group. If this was Mrs. Randolph; was she upset (I felt she was) at all, or only at the psychic and the male tour guide telling them the stories, both African American, as she had owned and abused slaves? I think I also caught not as glowing, a figure in the far-left window at front of the house, plus one first floor window two from the door on my right, had glowing stuff, plus one of the pictures had what appears like an animal’s face—maybe a dog?  It appears to me that way anyway. We eventually left the place and stopped at the big tree down the street, where the guide told us another story and I did get some orbs in one photo. The last place was the George Wythe House. The guide told the legend of Ann Skipwith. The one I debunked in my book, Virginia's Haunted Historic Triangle: Williamsburg, Yorktown, Jamestown, and Other Haunted Locations. The excerpt from the chapter in the book:

She and her husband took up the residence in Mecklenburg, Virginia, but they visited the Colonial capital many times, sometimes for weeks at a time. During one of these visits, they attended a gala at the Governor’s Palace. The couple had an argument there when Ann thought her husband was consorting with her sister. She took off in a bad mood.

She bolted for the Wythe House, losing one of her slippers during her flight. Not stopping to find it, she rushed on through the front door of the house and bounded upstairs. The clock struck twelve at that moment. With only one shoe on, she made an odd clicking noise all the way up the stairs in that dark and empty house. The most interesting thing about this tale is if no one was inside the house at the time, how did they know she made a clicking noise, especially when years later the ghost stories started up with that sound being the focus? Some witnesses thought the sound came from someone with a peg leg.

Besides the fact that no one was home to even see how she entered or what she did, there are those who speculated that she committed suicide over her husband’s infidelities. But the actual truth is she died in childbirth in 1779. Peyton did marry her sister, Jean, eight to nine years after her death. Why wait that long after they were involved as supposedly they were? Another myth laid to rest is the fact that though Peyton and Ann paid extended visits to Wythe House, they never lived there. So, it is doubtful that Ann haunts the house. Whoever does, it’s not her. (Not concerning Ann, but a possibility who might be the one haunting his house, since he’d own it.). A short excerpt from the same chapter: How the owner of the house itself, George Wythe, died has spawned a story worthy of Edgar Allan Poe himself. It is told that his grandnephew poisoned him on anticipation of a great inheritance. But Wythe remained alive long enough to write this nephew out of his will. And George did not die in Wythe House but passed away in Richmond in 1806.

I did bring up my ghost box and got a male voice twice (no scanning radio waves either). I will have to listen to see what he said. We did leave there, and true last stop was the graveyard of Bruton Parish, so, some people took pictures over the wall. I did too—nothing supernatural oriented in any of those.

Below are the rest of the pictures—ones I did get something or suspect I did. The ones with nothing are not here.

Now, for the possible Mrs. Randolph picture, I might have captured. First one as I took the second one has the circled window. I tried to zoom in to make the window bigger and show her with my Word/publisher. Sadly, I didn’t. Sorry. 

And finally, thanks to a friend, the ghost woman in the portrait:

And a portrait of Mrs. Randolph can be found here and looks like the face of the spirit: http://www.peytonrandolph.com/p/betty-randolph.html I assume the spirit is of her older, of course, as she passed away January 31, 1783, and the portrait was done in 1755. 

The Paranormal Investigation at Edgewood Plantation in Charles City, Virginia-Pictures Only, Right Now)

On Friday, December 19, 2014, my husband drove me to Charles City, Virginia, to Edgewood Plantation Bed and Breakfast, for a paranormal investigation.

I had been there twice before, once when I was writing Virginia's Haunted Historic Triangle: Williamsburg, Yorktown, Jamestown, and Other Haunted Locations, and New Year’s Eve 2011 for a paranormal investigation then. Nothing happened to me during the interview, but during the investigation, plenty, including a photo of a ghost dog (maybe two—you decided, since I can not be honest in saying I see two, just the one on the left).

Now for this past Friday's investigation:

                         (Glow or mist on the right side of the dining room
                    photo, not there in others of the room.)

Though it was to be in the 20s later that night, Bill remained in the car to read his new science fiction novel. Two other and I made one team and began on the third floor since that was where I started on New Year’s Eve 2011. Earlier, before the rest arrived and even after, my EMF meter would flash a second light and even a third light in the hallway and in the kitchen especially. I checked to see if not due to an electrical interference, but except for the fire detector, nothing else set it off. Plus the lights did not go on in the same spot the second or third time I tried.

The third floor got two names we could hear from the ghost box (at this time, need to download and listen to all the recording to see what else was said, but not loud enough and due to static could not be heard). At one point, I asked for a tap on the walls to let us know they were with us. A rap resounded on the wall behind me and one of the other two investigators with me heard it too, same time as me.

Others wanted to try the third floor so we left the area and clattered downstairs to the second floor where four bedrooms awaited.  We got an angry man in Victoria’s room, who wanted the “investigators to get out!” I asked, “You do not want us here? Why?” He answered, “I hate it! Yes.” In Lizzie Rowland’s room, he told us to “Go home.”  At one point, in Victoria’s room, an overwhelming sadness overcame me and I began to cry. This was because I asked if he had died in the house (suspecting he was the man who committed suicide (along with a woman earlier-his wife). I called on the little girl spirit who had talked to us too and even giggled, to make me happy. She said, “Yes,” and I was able t stop the crying.

When we went to Lizzie’s room, one partner joined others in another room across the hall, while the remaining one and I joined this woman who had filmed a video of glowing orbs flying through the room. While spirits talked to me through my ghost box, she caught the curtains at the window behind me flapping, as if someone was playing with them. They thought it was Lizzie, but one male entity said the woman spirit was not on the second floor, but elsewhere in the house. I believed it to be the little girl.

                    (Glowing mist between bed's head and dresser.)

The last session of the ghost box and an EVP session happened in the parlor downstairs. We got the little girl ghost and another. They said ten ghosts were inside the house that night. The little girl said, “Three,” but I asked her did she mean how the ghosts were in the house as a male spirit had said ten, or her age, when she passed away was three? I will have to listen to the recording then to see if she said anything.

                              (Photos of the area with a shadow before and 
                     several afterward without any shadow. The ghosts
                     through the ghost box said six were with us--is this
                     all of my ghost box said six were with us--is this all
                     of them and why there might have been so much
                     shadow?)

                                       (Freaky. I swear I see something of a skull 
                            looking in through the window when I
                            enlarged the photo closer.)

                                          (Photo darker in the hallway, not in others I
                             shot of it from Lizzie's room.)

                                   (I did not see any shadow of half ring there
                                    with my own eyes, as evident in the
                        photo to left)

                                (Even though flash went off, this room remained dark. They

                                 say darkness like this is considered due to spirits.)

                              (Doorway from Parlor to Hallway Went Dark Even With Flash.)

                                       (Orb above piano on the wall.)

My husband and I were on our way home by 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, December 20^th.

Rest of the photos-outside Between 1-1:30 a.m. All mist you will see, I held my breath so not to jar the photograph taken. Yeah, something odd I do.

                                   

                               (Orb in Pool and Mist above the bathing house.)

                                       (Light mist.)

                                 (What is the ghostly mist trying to do here?)

(Another person and I were taking photos of one field and I turned around 

and took this one. It seemed as if they were close to me.)

                                   (Mist appears to be leaving the top windows to left.)

                                (Mist, plus going close to one window, I suspect a face?)   

                                                     (Mist.)

                                           (Looks like mist becoming a figure?)

                                   (More mist caught.)                

                                     (Orbs in the photo above and the one beneath.)

                                     (No light lit from the ground in real time, yet this thin line

                                      of light from ground to second-floor window is there in the

                                     photo. I never saw any light. By this time all the lights in the

                                     parking lot were off and very dark. Had to get Bill to come

                                     from the car with a flashlight to guide my way to the car.)

   

                    (Mist covering the whole side of the house. None in

                the second photo was taken with a second of this one.)

I took three videos, but I couldn't them upload at this time, as Blogger wouldn't do it from my hard drive. *sigh*