Ghosthunting Virginia. Michael J. Varhola
Stories concerning the Stone House, built in 1824 and run as an inn for drovers before the railroad largely supplanted them, are even more disturbing and gruesome. Used as a Confederate hospital during the Second Battle of Manassas, an account from a northern surgeon at the site states that Union troops were not just neglected but deliberately treated badly at the facility and that many of them died lingering or degrading deaths as a result.
“These inexperienced surgeons performed operations upon our men in a most horrible manner,” testified Dr. J.M. Homiston of Brooklyn. “The young surgeons, who seemed to delight in hacking butchering [our men], were not, it would seem, permittde to perform any operations upon the rebel wounded.”
With trauma like that associated with the place, it should not be surprising that so many reports of paranormal phenomena are associated with the Stone House, and written accounts from at least the early twentieth century claim that it is cursed in addition to anything else. It would seem that some sort of unquiet spirits occupy the place, and incidents people have reported include hearing footsteps in the unoccupied rooms above them and having glasses knocked off their faces.
I have only visited Manassas National Battlefield Park once, and that was relatively recently, in November 2006, with my daughter Hayley, grandma Val, and grandpa Jim. I will not say it is unfortunate that it has been unseasonably bright and sunny during my visits to a great many of the places described in this book. But, suffice it to say, such seemingly ideal conditions have certainly allowed me to assess the odds of various sites being haunted without atmospheric distractions like wind, rain, cold, darkness, or any number of other factors that could enhance the appearance that they are. And so, for a day near the end of the year, it was strikingly warm and clear during our trip to the battlefield.
After touring the exhibits in the Henry Hill Visitor Center and watching an orientation film titled “Manassas: End of Innocence,” we decided to walk the one-mile loop trail that meanders across the rolling terrain corresponding to where the first battle was fought. During the walk we passed a number of interesting features, including a recreation of the Henry House, which had been blown up during the battle—along with the old woman living in it, who became the first civilian casualty of the war. We were also able to look northwest from a point on the trail to the Stone House, the most characteristic landmark at the park, which was used as a field hospital for soldiers of both sides during each of the battles. It was all very pleasant and informative (especially the revelation that the remains of the now-vanished village of Groveton lie within the park, a whole separate source of potential investigation for ghosthunters).
It was not until we reached the end of the trail, back again near the visitor center, that I spotted something that gave me some pause. It was a statue of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson that had been erected in the 1930s and was in a style that I recognized but knew was not familiar to most Americans. In it, the mounted Jackson was almost ludicrously muscled, his chest outthrust in a heroic pose, his overall appearance suggesting Superman in a kepi and beard. He was, in fact, depicted in a style of art frequently characterized as “heroic realism” that is most commonly associated with the Nazi, Communist, and other totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. It had been erected, I suspected—considering the era when it had been dedicated—by people who, like Jackson himself, had attitudes toward civil war, race, and any number of other subjects completely alien to my own. It, more than anything else at the Manassas Battlefield, gave me a sense that the dead might yet have cause to walk the ground where they fought a century-and-a-half before, the issues for which they died still unresolved.
Statue of Stonewall Jackson
CHAPTER 5
Historic Occoquan
OCCOQUAN
There still are a number of old houses and buildings at Occoquan which have survived the damages of time and nature … Also surviving, and quite active today, are a host of ghosts from Occoquan’s past, so many, in fact, that it almost seems there is a haunt of one kind or another in just about every other building.
—L. B. Taylor Jr., “A Village Full of Spectral Visions”
DURING THE TIME WE HAVE LIVED in northern Virginia, my wife and I have visited Occoquan, an old and storied riverside village seven miles due south of our house, perhaps a half dozen times. It is surprisingly close for such a historic place, and always fun to walk around in and have a drink at, but is outside the sphere of our day-to-day activities, and years often go by between visits.
In the seventeen years that we have lived just up the road from the village, of course, we have driven past it hundreds of times on Ox Road, a historic thoroughfare that, from where we pick it up, runs north into Fairfax and south through Occoquan to an entry point onto I-95 that is convenient for trips to points south.
When my kids were young, I used to explain to them that the town was named for the schools of octopus that would migrate up through Chesapeake Bay and into inland waterways like the Occoquan River. As we would speed over the bridge that passes over both the river and the town, I would tell them to keep their eyes open for the octopuses frisking through the water below and leaping through it like eight-armed dolphins.
My youngest daughter, Hayley, was always a good sport about it all, and invariably claimed to see the tentacular beasts as they breached the water on their spirited romps. My oldest daughter, Lindsey, who might not have actually had a sense of humor when she was growing up, may never have truly looked to see if the creatures were there, preferring to indignantly insist that they could not be.
Ghost stories, presumably, would have not met with much more approval from Lindsey, and—if they were good enough—might very well have unnecessarily scared the hell out of Hayley. But there are ghost stories aplenty associated with Occoquan, and it would not be stretching the case much to say I might have been able to tell a different one every time we drove past the waterfront village.
“Occoquan” actually means “at the end of the water” in the language of the Doeg Indians, the aboriginal inhabitants of the area, who subsisted by fishing the local waters, hunting for the ducks, geese, and other waterfowl, and by growing corn and other vegetables in the fertile riparian soil. They were there when the first English colonists explored the area and occupied it until near the end of the 17th century, when they abruptly disappeared, probably as the result of epidemic disease, genocide, or forced migration.
Settlers, fortunately, did not let the premium location go to waste, and it soon grew into a significant commercial and industrial community that made full use of its proximity to Chesapeake Bay. A warehouse for tobacco was built in the 1730s, and the community grew steadily over the following decades. By the end of the century, Occoquan was home to forges, water-driven grist mills, saw mills, cotton mills, bakeries, shipyards, and numerous storehouses, as well as dwellings of many sorts. One of its most significant industrial sites was the Merchant’s Mill, the first automated grist mill in the country, which could be operated by a single man and used to remove grain from ships and barges, process it into flour, and return it to the vessels for transport to locations throughout the Americas. It operated for 175 years, until it was destroyed in 1916 by a fire that ravaged the town.
That fire, along with silting in the river, ruined Occoquan as an industrial and commercial district. It survived, however, and today has an economy based largely on weekend tourism, which it serves through numerous restaurants, galleries, boutiques, jewelry stores, and a marina. And many of the historic buildings in which those businesses are located are reputed to be haunted.
About midway on Mill Street, the main thoroughfare along the river on which most of the town’s restaurants and shops are located, is the Occoquan Inn, which has one of the greatest reputations for being haunted. It is a very old establishment, and its middle section and brick fireplace are part of a residence that was originally built in 1810 and which its owners opened up to travelers, so that it gradually became known as an inn. Today, it is a