Ghosthunting Virginia. Michael J. Varhola
encountering spectral spoor at his establishment. I decided to just enjoy my Gadsby’s ale and the ambience of the place, which included wait staff dressed in garb reminiscent of the Colonial era, pewter place settings on the tables, and dark wood paneling that in some cases dates to 1792.
“That’s original,” Carbé said, indicating the wooden fireplace mantle in the first of several tidbits of information that he congenially bestowed upon me on his way back and forth from the back of the restaurant and the front, where he dutifully greeted everyone who came through the door. Eventually, however, he decided to bestow something more substantial upon me.
“Come with me,” he said, and led me to the back of the restaurant and into its kitchen. There, he proceeded to tell me about three strange episodes that some would take for evidence of a ghostly presence—all of which had occurred in the previous month!
In the first, he said, one of his waitresses walked into the kitchen and asked if anyone knew where beverage napkins were. As if in response, a package of beverage napkins pitched off a nearby shelf and landed on the counter next to the stunned young woman.
The second incident took place in a dining room that had been set up for a dinner party. With no apparent cause or prompting from anyone, a spoon from one of the place settings slid off the table and clattered onto the floor.
And, in the third incident, three or four of the wait staff were working in the tavern after it had closed when they all distinctly heard a candle in the main dining room—where none of them were—being blown out.
As is the case with most ostensibly haunted sites, none of these incidents necessarily mean anything in and of themselves. Even when they are considered as elements in an ongoing pattern of similar incidents, they prove nothing. But they do reinforce to those willing to acknowledge them that there is more in this world that can easily be explained by most philosophies, to paraphrase a famous playwright.
That was what I thought to myself, in any event, as I finished up my pint of ale and snapped a few more pictures of the tavern. Collecting up my things, I thanked Mr. Carbé for his helpfulness and stepped outside into a late afternoon that had turned from gloom to drizzle.
Turning back toward Gadsby’s Tavern as I walked away from it, I looked up at some of the upper-story windows, hoping I might catch a glimpse of the ghost of the “female stranger.” But I did not prolong my gaze. After all, if you stare at something long enough, you can end up seeing just about anything, whether it is really there or not.
CHAPTER 4
Manassas National Battlefield Park
PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY
A friend of mine does Civil War reenactments, and he was at Manassas, Va., while a tour guide was enlightening a group of little kids. “He was telling them about how the 5th New York Zouaves had been wiped out right near where they were standing at Second Manassas,” my friend said. “He asked them if they knew what a Zouave uniform looked like,” my friend went on, “and one little girl said they wore baggy red pants and blue jackets and funny red hats. When the guide asked how she knew that, she pointed to a cannon at the top of a nearby hill and said, ‘One of them was standing up there.’ “We looked, but nobody was there.”
—Jim Goldsworthy, Cumberland Times-News
BACK IN THE 1990s when I was running Living History magazine, I heard any number of stories from Civil War reenactors about ghosts on the Manassas Battlefield, and, if memory serves, many of them described spectral formations glimpsed in the misty darkness of predawn. I also talked or corresponded with a couple of psychic researchers in those days, and they confirmed their impressions of lingering spiritual energies at the site of the first major clash between Union and Confederate forces.
It certainly makes sense that if any battlefield were haunted it would be Manassas. After all, it was the site of two bloody confrontations within the space of a year—the second one far larger than the first—and thus has a double layer of psychic trauma associated with it.
Like most Civil War battles, each of the ones fought at this location has two names, one bestowed by the North and one by the South, a convention that can cause some confusion for novice historians or those with only a casual interest in the subject. Union commanders usually named battles for the nearest rivers, streams, creeks, or “runs,” while Confederate leaders generally named them for towns or railroad junctions. It is thus that the two battles fought at this site are variously known as the First Battle of Manassas and the Second Battle of Manassas for nearby Manassas Junction (a practice often adopted to this day by those sympathetic to the Rebel cause), and as First Battle of Bull Run and the Second Battle of Bull Run for a neighboring stream (the official names given them by the U.S. government). We will use the former term here not because of sympathies one way or the other but because it corresponds with the name of the park associated with it.
The First Battle of Manassas was fought July 21, 1861, by formations of enthusiastic, brightly uniformed volunteers who on both sides were confident that their opponents would turn and run and that they would that day witness the end of the war. Despite a favorable outlook for the 35,000-strong Union forces early in the day, some 32,500 Confederate troops ultimately drove their opponents from the field in rout. Credit for much of this victory has been accorded to Brigadier General Thomas Jackson, who that day earned the nom de guerre “Stonewall.” Both fledgling armies were left disorganized and bloodied, with Northern casualties of 460 killed, 1,124 wounded, and 1,312 missing or captured, and Southern casualties of 387 killed, 1,582 wounded, and 13 missing. Many illusions as to the nature and duration of the war were shattered that day in the chaos, fear, and death of combat.
The Second Battle of Manassas was fought August 28–30, 1862, between experienced armies that were considerably larger, with some sixty-two thousand men clad in Union blue facing fifty thousand in Confederate gray over an area of more than five thousand acres. It concluded in a solid Southern victory, taking the Confederacy to its high-water mark; the prospects for the rebel cause would only become steadily bleaker over the ensuing three years. Casualties far exceeded those of the earlier battle, and for the Union were about ten thousand killed and wounded and for the Confederacy about thirteen hundred killed and seven thousand wounded.
It is little wonder then that so many ghost stories should be associated with the place, especially in the decades since 1940, when the park was officially established by the National Park Service. These have been so widespread as to periodically catch the attention of various local news organizations.
“Visitors … have reported seeing house lights where there is not a house, smelled the scent of black powder and once ‘the smell of burning flesh,’” reported the Washington Post in a 1989 article, for example. “Park employees have also testified to sudden drops in temperature on muggy days and baffling noises in the battlefield Stone House.” Any number of accounts of personal experiences, sightings, or investigations can be found in numerous articles, books, and online postings.
Many of the most prolific and convincing ghost stories involve the 5th New York Volunteer Infantry regiment, dubbed “Duryée’s Zouaves,” a Union unit that in August 1862, according to historian Bruce Catton, “lost 117 men killed and 170 wounded, out of 490 present—the highest percentage of loss, in killed, suffered by any Federal regiment in one battle during the entire war.” In the years especially since the park was established, many people have reported seeing one or more apparitions clad in the distinctive uniforms of this ill-fated formation at various locations in the park, especially near the monument dedicated to the fallen soldiers.
“There, at dusk, images of members of the 5th New York Zouaves—who were cut to pieces during the Second Battle of Manassas—have been seen beckoning by the woods at the western end of the park, clad in their red pantaloons, white leggings, and nightcap hats,” wrote Diane McLellan in Washingtonian magazine in a characteristic description of what other witnesses have attested to. Variations on this story have involved a headless Zouave searching for his head, a lost companion, or possibly his way off