Ghosts of Virginia’s Tidewater

Church Hill is a large frame house that stands on an elevation just above the Ware River in Gloucester. It is here where one of Virginia’s most tragic stories occurred. In the 1700s, when the Throckmorton family owned the place, they had a beautiful young daughter, Elizabeth. Her father once took her to London, where she met a handsome English gentleman with whom she fell deeply in love. The couple vowed eternal faithfulness to each other and arranged to complete plans for their wedding by correspondence. Elizabeth’s father, however, was staunchly against the match and intercepted the letters so that neither ever again heard from the other after Elizabeth returned to Gloucester.

In time, as Elizabeth longed for her lost love, she fell ill and apparently died. Friends contended that she had lost the will to live and pined away. On a blustery November afternoon, near sunset, they buried her in the family graveyard at the foot of the garden.

According to longstanding legend, an evil butler, angered by some slight accorded him by the family, dug up the grave site that night and opened the coffin to steal valuable jewelry that had been buried with Elizabeth. One particular ring would not slip off her stiffened finger, so in his haste the servant severed the finger. To his horror, he suddenly found that the girl was not dead. She had lapsed into a deep cataleptic coma and had been presumed dead. The shock of having her finger cut off roused her. The terrified butler ran off into the night and was never heard from again.

Somehow, the frail girl, barefoot and thinly dressed, managed to climb out of the grave, crawl past the last dead stalks of the garden and drag herself through a driving snowstorm to the front of the house. There, in a weakened condition, she scratched feebly at the door. If her father, sitting inside before a roaring fire, heard her, he dismissed it as one of the dogs trying to come in out of the storm. Lost in his grief, he ignored the sound.

The next morning, Elizabeth’s body was found at the doorstep beneath a blanket of snow. She had frozen to death. There was a trail of bloody footprints leading from the garden.

For years afterward, succeeding generations of Throckmortons swore that the spirit of Elizabeth remained in the house. Whenever the first snow fell each year, there would be sounds of a rustling skirt ascending the staircase, followed by the distinct sounds of the placing of logs in fireplaces and the crackling of a hearty fire in various rooms. Investigations would find no such logs and no fires. There also would be traces of blood in the snow following the route that Elizabeth had taken from the graveyard to the house. Such sounds and sights were experienced not once but rather many times and were attested to by various members of the family and their servants.

Church Hill in Gloucester County is the site where the spirit of a young girl, who froze to death on the front doorstep, returns each winter to stoke the flames in fireplaces.

On one noteworthy occasion, generations later in 1879, Professor Warner Taliaferro, then head of the house, left home one evening to spend the night at a friend’s house. Neighbors reported that in the midst of a fierce storm they saw Church Hill ablaze with lights. Junius Brown, passing by on horseback, rode up to the house to see if his sisters, visiting in the neighborhood, had sought shelter from the storm there. There was no one home. Servants, living in their quarters on the property, also saw the lights and assumed that Mr. Taliaferro had returned. He had not. The mystery was never explained.

The most telling psychic phenomenon, though, concerns the violets that grow in lush profusion near the steps to Church Hill. They are finer and more beautiful here than those in any other section of the grounds. It is said that they are watered by the tears of a dying girl seeking refuge from the season’s first snow.

You have probably seen White Marsh in the movies and not realized it. This magnificent white-portico mansion, described as the epitome of southern plantations and known as the “Queen of Tidewater,” has, in fact, been the exterior setting for a number of major films over the years. Situated strategically back from the Ware River in Gloucester, White Marsh stands amid a grant of land originally made in the 1640s. The Georgian Colonial house itself was built about a century later.

At one time, the estate included more than three thousand acres and was worked by 300 to 500 slaves. There are 1,500 slaves buried in a graveyard near the peach orchard. This vast expanse included forests, farmland, manicured lawns and gardens and rich fruit orchards, plus excellent crops of corn and soybeans. Eventually, the land passed to Evelina Matilda Prosser, who married John Tabb. After adding his wife’s fortune to his own, Tabb was said to have been the richest man in Gloucester. Evelina has been described as a woman of great dignity, often gowned in black moiré antique.

Despite all of this splendor, however, Mrs. Tabb was not happy with the bucolic life. She had lost two of her children in infancy and wanted to move to Norfolk or Williamsburg to enjoy a gayer social life. Mr. Tabb did not want to move, and he told his wife that if she would make herself content and remain in the country, he would create the finest garden in Virginia for her. It was then that the splendid terraced gardens were built, and many rare trees were planted in the park. The house also was remodeled, and wings and a pillared portico were added.

The perfect setting for an antebellum movie scene, White Marsh in Gloucester County is allegedly haunted by the wife of a former owner whose pride was a paranormal rosebush.

While Evelina, also affectionately known as “Mother Tabb,” was pleased, there are indications that she was never totally happy at White Marsh. The deaths of her two infant children sent her into long periods of mourning. It was shortly after she and John died that the strange “occurrences” began. Phillip Tabb inherited the plantation from his parents, and as he lived in Baltimore, he placed it under the care of James Sinclair, returning only occasionally, with guests, during the fox hunting season.

Late one evening, Sinclair, returning to the house from town on horseback, was astonished to find every window ablaze with light. Fearing that his boss had come back without notice, he stabled his horse and rushed up the steps. The house was now dark and no one was inside. Curiously, the next year, the same thing happened to a caretaker named Franklin Dabney. He, too, approached White Marsh after being away one night, and he not only found every window lit but also clearly heard music and the sound of dancing. A bachelor, he bounded up the porch steps to participate in the merrymaking, but when he opened the door, there was only darkness and silence.

Years later, Reverend William Byrd Lee, then rector emeritus of Ware Church, and his wife paid a call to the mansion and were greeted by Catherine Tabb, granddaughter of Evelina. As they prepared to leave, the reverend went to bring his buggy to the door, and Mrs. Lee was seated alone in the hall. She happened to glance up the staircase, and her heart froze. She saw an elderly lady of stately and distinguished appearance descending the stairs. She was dressed in an old-fashioned costume of black moiré antique! The woman crossed the hall and disappeared into the dining room. It was then that Mrs. Lee suddenly realized that the figure was “not that of a mortal.”

She called to her hostess and excitedly told her what she had witnessed. To her surprise, Catherine Tabb laughed and then explained that it was just Mother Tabb, who was often seen by members of the family. They also reported occasionally seeing Evelina enter a certain bedroom, open the lowest drawer of a bureau and remove all of the infant clothes inside it. Ever so carefully, she would take each article, shake it, refold it, place it back in the bureau and then slip quietly out of the room.

Finally, there was the resistant rosebush. This occurred some years later, after the home had passed from the Tabbs to Mr. and Mrs. Hughes from New York. The pride of the garden was the proliferation of magnificent rosebushes. One May, they were full of buds, and on the second terrace was an especially luxuriant bush on which Mrs. Hughes found a full-blown rose with rich, creamy petals.

As she reached out to pick it, a most extraordinary thing happened. The bush began swaying violently, as if whipped by a strong wind. Mrs. Hughes looked around in dismay. There was not a breeze stirring. She tried again and again, but the bush trembled as if being shaken by unseen hands. Perturbed, she grabbed the stem firmly, but the bush was snatched from her hand and began swaying again. At that moment, the shutters of the house commenced banging sharply.

She fled to the house in terror and told her husband about it. He confidently approached the bush, but the same thing happened. A prudent man, he left it alone, fearing that if he did pluck the rose something disagreeable might happen. In time, the story of the incident spread throughout the county, and many visitors came to see the reluctant bush. Servants contended that it was the hand of Mother Tabb that had intervened. They said that it had been her favorite rose and that she allowed no one to snip it. Mrs. Hughes eventually grew nervous over the phenomenon, coupled with the banging of the shutters, and she ordered that the bush be destroyed.

Soon after, as she was making her rounds of the garden one morning, she found the rosebush gone, roots and all. She asked the gardener if he had dug it up as she had commanded. He told her, “No!”

Today, nearly three centuries after its construction began just off the northern shore of the York River in Gloucester County, the name Rosewell still evokes excitement, even though it has stood in ruins since being gutted in a 1916 fire. The accolades of this once magnificent mansion continue to ring true. Says Claude Lanciano, author of Rosewell, Garland of Virginia: “This masterpiece at the height of its glory in the mid-eighteenth century knew few rivals and has been called the finest example of colonial architecture in the country.” Possibly the finest tribute was paid by noted American artist and author James Reynolds, who said, “I regard Rosewell as the finest house in Palladian style I have ever seen. I would rather own it, ruinous as it stands, than any other in the United States.”

Construction on this palatial brick masterpiece began in 1725 under its landowner, Mann Page. It stood four stories high, with white marble casements and two turrets on the roof, inside of which were little rooms. The interior had five rooms on the first floor and a huge apartment used as a ballroom on the second. In all, the house consisted of thirty-five rooms, three wide halls and nine passageways. It was full of beautifully carved staircases, mantels and paneling that was said to have been exquisite beyond description.

Unfortunately, Mann Page never lived to see his great house finished. His son, Mann Page II, completed it in 1744. A generation later, Thomas Jefferson spent a great deal of time at Rosewell as the guest of his friend, John Page. Some historians believe that Jefferson may have penned a draft of the Declaration of Independence here.

The ruins of Rosewell in Gloucester County, once one of the most majestic manor homes in Virginia, have been the scene of a number of disturbing psychic encounters.

In its time, Rosewell was known throughout Virginia and the East Coast for its lavish parties and balls, attended by aristocratic gentlemen and hoop-skirted, velvet-dressed southern belles. Casks of the finest French wines and magnums of champagne were brought in by boat to wash down gourmet meals fit for a king. Scores of garlands of flowers, especially roses, richly decorated every room, and dances lasted until dawn. It was a grand time.

But Rosewell has its dark side, too. Many Gloucester natives have told stories of strange sightings and noises emanating from the rose-red brick foundation ruins. Some claim to have seen young servant boys standing beside the great pediment doorway at night, lighting the way for arriving phantom guests, who vanish ascending the Corinthian pilaster stairwell. Others swear that they hear violin and harpsichord music rising above the towering, still-standing chimneys.

Ronnie Miles, a native of neighboring Mathews County, had two scary psychic experiences at Rosewell about forty years ago. Once, he and a friend were exploring the ruins at night when they stumbled onto what may have been an old entrance to a wine cellar. Miles’s friend lit a match to see better, only to have a flung brick knock the match out of his hand. “I have to admit, it frightened the hell out of us,” Miles said. “We had always heard a slave had been buried in the walls.”

On the second occasion, Miles, another friend and two girls were all walking through the old Rosewell cemetery at night. He and his friend saw what appeared to be a light coming from the house ruins. Not wanting to scare the girls, they walked back to the site alone to investigate. “As we reached the perimeter of the ruins,” Miles recalls, “we both were overcome by the most all-powerful stench I have ever smelled. It was potent. It literally drove us away.”

Another chilling encounter was experienced by John Gulbranson—an amateur psychic investigator—his sister and some friends. One night about thirty years ago, they decided to go to the ruins. They drove down to the edge of two cornfields near the entrance road and got out there because the road had been blocked with a chain to discourage visitors. They had two guard dogs with them, but the dogs immediately began howling wildly and refused to budge. Previously, the dogs had never exhibited fear.

The dogs were tied to a tree, and the group walked through the cornfields and down the entrance road. A couple of the young men swore that they heard the sounds of a drummer coming from the Rosewell site, but when they got there they found nothing. They then retraced their steps back to the car. Just as they did, the dogs began barking furiously at the back window, and the hair on the dogs’ backs stiffened. John and the others looked out the window, and a few yards away they all saw an African American man—suspended four or five feet above the ground! John’s sister, Carol, began screaming hysterically, and they drove off, spinning the tires in the dirt. They had the distinct feeling that the man, or whatever it was, was following them, so they sped up.

A mile or so down the road, they stopped, got out and looked back. The man was gone. There was one small tree, only about an inch in diameter, at the side of the road, and it leaned out over the lane. Without warning, the tree began shaking violently, but there was no breeze, and they could see no cause for it. Terrified, they jumped back into the car and raced away. This time they didn’t stop until they got back to civilization, and they pulled up under a streetlight. They got out and walked around the car. It was covered with dew. One of the group called the others to the rear of the car. There, in the dew, were the crystal-clear impressions of a baby’s hand and a man’s hand with a missing index finger.

Perhaps the scariest phenomenon of all at Rosewell was experienced by Raymond West, a local maintenance worker. He and a friend were joy riding with two young ladies when they decided to visit the ruins. It was about two o’clock in the morning, and the story is best told in West’s own words:

There was an old dirt road that ran for about half a mile leading up to the place. As we made the last turn, there before us was an old black car with 1930s license plates blocking the driveway. It had old half-moon windows in the back and was facing away from us. It stunned us. I slammed on the brakes. You could see the car real well in the headlight beams. It was eerie.

Then, as we sat there in silence, we saw the head of a woman rise up in the rear window, and she stared at us. She had coal-black hair and a deathly ashen white face. We panicked. I tried to get the car in reverse, but the gears kept sticking, and all the time that woman kept looking at us, unblinking. Finally, I got the car in gear, and we burned rubber getting out of there. We pulled back a few hundred yards and then stopped. We were pretty shook up, but we decided to wait until daylight and check things out. There was no other way out of there, no other roads, paths or anything. If that car left, it had to go right past us.

At daybreak, we drove back down the driveway to the spot where we had seen it, and there was nothing there! The car and the woman had flatly disappeared. There were no tracks or anything. We looked everywhere but could find nothing. I tell you, I never believed in ghosts or anything like that, but to this day I can’t explain what we saw or why.

All these and other mysterious manifestations possibly help explain why the artist-author James Reynolds once wrote: “Certainly, tremendous doings took place within the fire-riven walls of Rosewell. And what stories one hears of hauntings! All I hear seems in keeping with the magnificence and stature of this barren, deserted house.”

Of all the ghostly legends of Tidewater Virginia, perhaps none is more widely known—or has been told, retold, written and rewritten more often—than that of Old House Woods, also called Old Haunted Woods, located near the tiny crossroads town of Diggs in Mathews County, northeast of Gloucester. The colorful stories that have been passed down from generation to generation for more than two hundred years about this fifty-acre patch of pine woods and marshlands near the Chesapeake Bay contain some of the most bizarre and unusual psychic phenomena ever recorded.

Consider, for example, swashbuckling pirates burying stolen gold; retreating British soldiers hiding colonial treasure during the Revolutionary War; a full-rigged Spanish galleon that vanishes in thin air; skeletons in knights’ armor wielding threatening swords; mysterious groups of shovelers digging furiously late at night; and ghost horses and cows that appear and disappear before one’s eyes.

“Yes, it’s true. All those tales and more have come out of Old House Woods,” says Olivia Davis, a lifelong resident of the area. She should know. Her great-great-grandfather, James Forrest, bought this land in 1838, and it was kept in the family and farmed for more than a century. Old House Woods got its name, simply enough, from a large frame house that had a wood-covered plaster chimney and stood in the midst of the surrounding forest in the late 1700s. Later, after being abandoned for years, it fell into disrepair and thereafter became known as the “Old House.”

“In the days before television, computers and even radio, telling stories was a popular pastime here,” Olivia says. “Old-timers used to gather in the woods on Sundays and swap yarns. I can well remember my grandfather, Silas Forrest, talking about ghosts, and it was spellbinding.” There are scores of others, residents and visitors alike, who also swear by them. And then there are those who have personally experienced the phenomena in one form or another. There is no way they will ever be shaken from their beliefs.

There are, allegedly, three reasons why Old House Woods are haunted. According to one legend, the crew of a pirate ship came ashore here in the seventeenth century, buried their treasure somewhere deep in the woods and then returned to sea, where they perished in a furious storm. That explains, say proponents of this theory, why mysterious figures have been seen digging in the woods on dark nights by the lights of tin lanterns. They are the pirate ghosts returning to claim their loot. In 1973, Richmond Times-Dispatch staff member Bill McKelway wrote, “Some say Blackbeard, the infamous Edward Teach, intercepted the treasure and then murdered the men who were hiding it.”

A second possible reason may also have occurred in the second half of the seventeenth century. After being defeated at the Battle of Worcester in 1651, Charles II of England was said to have considered coming to Virginia. In preparation for his trip, a group of followers dispatched several chests of money, plate and jewels to the colony by ship. However, for some unexplained reason, the riches never reached Jamestown. Instead, the ship sailed up the Chesapeake Bay and anchored in waters at the mouth of White’s Creek near Old House Woods. There, the treasure was offloaded, but before it could be safely hidden, the Royalists were attacked and murdered by a gang of indentured servants. In their rush to escape, these bondsmen took only part of the spoils, planning to come back later for the rest. But they, too, ran afoul of the elements. A sudden storm struck the bay, and all hands on board drowned when their ship capsized.

It may well be that the storms that took the lives of both the pirates and the renegades account for one of the many Old House Woods ghost traditions—that of the “Storm Woman.” She has been described by those who claim to have seen her as “a wraith of a woman in a long nightgown, her long, fair hair flung back from her shoulders.” Reportedly, whenever black clouds gather over this section of the bay, foretelling a coming gale, her figure rises above the tops of towering pine trees, and she wails loudly to warn watermen to take cover.

A third theory about the hauntings concerns an event that supposedly happened in late 1781, just before Lord Cornwallis’s army was defeated by George Washington at Yorktown. The legend is that two British officers and four soldiers were entrusted with a huge amount of money. They slipped through enemy lines and headed north, hoping to find a British ship on the Chesapeake Bay. They managed to bury their riches in Old House Woods before they were found and killed by a unit of American cavalry. Thus, it may be their spirits that still hover over the site in eternal guard.

Whether one subscribes to one or more of these theories, or to none at all, they do offer some possible thoughts into why certain sights have appeared to a host of people in the area over the years. And the sightings have been prolific and explicit, however far-fetched they may sound today. One of the most celebrated incidents is attributed to Jesse Hudgins, described as a respectable merchant of unquestioned integrity, who ran a store in the town of Mathews Court House in the 1920s. Hudgins told of his experiences to a Baltimore Sun newspaper reporter in 1926, and he swore to its authenticity:

I do not care whether I am believed or not. I am not apologetic or ashamed to say I have seen ghosts in Old House Woods. I have seen them not once but a dozen times. I was 17 when I first actually saw a ghost. One October night I sat by the lamp reading. A neighbor whose child was very ill came asking me to drive to Mathews for a doctor. We had no telephone in those days. I hitched up and started to town. The night was gusty, clouds drifting over the moon, but I could see perfectly.

Nearing Old House Woods itself, I saw a light about 50 yards ahead moving along the road in the direction I was going. My horse, usually afraid of nothing, cowered and trembled violently. I felt rather uneasy myself. I have seen lights on the road at night, shining lanterns carried by men, but this light was different. There was something unearthly about it. The rays seemed to come from nowhere, and yet they moved with the bearer…

I gained on the traveler, and as I stand here before you, what I saw was a big man wearing a suit of armor. Over his shoulder was a gun, the muzzle end of which looked like a fish horn. As he strode, or floated along, he made no noise. My horse stopped still. I was weak with terror. I wasn’t 20 feet from the thing, whatever it was, when it, too, stopped and faced me. At the same time, the woods about 100 feet from the wayfarer became alive with lights and moving forms. Some carried guns like the one borne by the man or thing in the road; others carried shovels of an outlandish type; while still others dug feverishly near a dead pine tree.

As my gaze returned to the first shadowy figure, what I saw was not a man in armor, but a skeleton, and every bone of it was visible through the iron of the armor, as though it were made of glass. The skull, which seemed to be illuminated from within, grinned at me horribly. Then, raising aloft a sword, which I had not hitherto noticed, the awful specter started towards me menacingly.

I could stand no more. Reason left me. When I came to it was broad daylight and I lay upon my bed at home. Members of my family said the horse had run away. They found me at the turn of the road beyond Old House Woods. We could not lead Tom [the horse] by these woods for months afterwards.

Hudgins’s story, strange as it may seem, was corroborated some years later, according to newspaper accounts. One report noted:

A Richmond youth had tire trouble at a lonely spot along the road near the haunted woods one night very late. As he knelt in the road, a voice behind him asked, “Is this the king’s highway? I have lost my ship.” When the youth turned to look, he beheld a skeleton in armor within a few paces of him. Yelling like a maniac, the frightened motorist ran from the spot in terror and did not return for his car until the next day.

Perhaps the most unusual phenomenon sighted in Old House Woods is the legendary ghost ship. It allegedly has been seen by many. One of the most vivid accounts was given more than eighty years ago by Ben Ferbee, a fisherman who lived along the bay shore early in the twentieth century:

One starry night I was fishing off the mouth of White’s Creek, well out in the bay. As the flood tide would not set in for some time, I decided to get the good fishing and come home with the early moon. It must have been after midnight when, as I turned to bait up a line in the stern of my boat, I saw a full-rigged ship in the bay, standing pretty well in. I was quite surprised, I tell you. Full-rigged ships were mighty scarce then. Besides that, I knew I was in for it if she kept that course. On the ship came, with lights at every masthead and spar. I was plumb scared.

They’ll run me down and sink me, I thought. I shouted to sailors leaning over the rails forward, but they paid no heed to me. Just as I thought she would strike me, the helmsman put her hard aport and she passed so close that I was almost swamped by the wash. She was a beautiful ship, but different from any I had ever seen. She made no noise at all, and when she had gone by, the most beautiful harp and organ music I ever heard came back to me.

The ship sailed right up to the beach and never stopped, but kept right on. Over the sandy beach she swept, floating through the air and up to the Bay Shore road, her keel about twenty feet from the ground. I was scared out of my wits. I knew it was not a real ship. It was a ghost ship! Well, sir, I pulled up my anchor and started for home up White’s Creek. I could see that ship hanging over Old House Woods, just as though she was anchored in the sea. And running down to the woods was a rope ladder, lined with the forms of men carrying tools and other contraptions.

When I got home my wife was up but had no supper for me. Instead, she and the children were praying. I knew what was the matter. Without speaking a word, she pointed to Old House Woods, a scared look on her face. She and the children had seen the ship standing over the woods. I didn’t need to ask her. I started praying, too.

Many others claim to have sighted the fabled ghost ship. One was a fourteen-year-old Mathews County boy. “There was a big sailing ship floating in the marsh,” he recalls. “It had two or three masts and was made of wood. There is only a foot of water there, but it looked like it was floating. It was the kind of ship the pirates used. We watched it for about 100 yards more and then it just disappeared. I went home and told my mother, but she just laughed. She said everyone knew of the stories about the ghosts here.”

Another who saw the phantom galleon, and many other things, too, was Harry Forrest, a farmer-fisherman who lived only six hundred yards from the edge of the woods. “I’ve seen more strange things in there than I could relate in a whole day,” he once said before his death in the 1950s.

I’ve seen armies of marching British redcoats. I’ve seen the “Storm Woman” and heard her dismal wailings, and my mother and I have sat here all hours of the night and seen lights in the woods. We have seen ships anchor off the beach and boats put into shore, and forms of men go to the woods. I would see lights over there and hear the sound of digging.

I was out fishing right off the beach one day in broad daylight when I saw a full-rigged ship headed straight for me just 100 yards away. I rowed to shore as fast as I could, and just as I got on the beach, she started drifting, and she lifted and sailed straight to Old House Woods, and you heard the anchor chain clank.

There is a site near the center of the woods known as the “Old Cow Hole.” Forrest believed that treasure was buried here. He once took a newsman to the area. The reporter described it as being a “small circular pool of gray water which seemed to swirl and yet was dead still.” “This is where they buried the money,” Forrest told him. “I think they must have killed a pirate and put him with it. There’s everything in there. You hear chains rattle sometimes.”

While Forrest claimed that he was not afraid of the dead, even though he believed that the dead come back, one experience he told of shook even him to the marrow:

Once, I went out on a brilliant November night to shoot black ducks. I found a flock asleep on a little inlet where the pine trees came down to the edge of the water. As I raised my gun to fire, instead of them being ducks, I saw they were soldiers of the olden time. Headed by an officer, company after company of them formed and marched out of the water.

Recovering from my astonishment, I ran to my skiff and tied up on the other side of the point. Arriving there, I found a man in uniform, his red coat showing brightly in the moonlight, sitting upright and very rigid in the stern. I was scared, but mad, too. So I yelled to him, “Get out of that skiff or I’ll shoot.” “Shoot and the devil’s curse to you and your traitor’s breed,” he answered, and made as if to strike me with the sword he carried. Then I drew my gun on him and pulled. It didn’t go off. I pulled the trigger again. No better result. I dropped the gun and ran for home, and I’m not ashamed to say I swam the creek in doing it, too.

Forrest also used to tell of seeing a white ox lying in his cornfield one night:

I went out to drive him away. When I reached the spot where the animal was lying, I saw that it was a coffin covered with a sheet and borne along by invisible hands just at the height pallbearers would carry a corpse. I followed until it entered the woods. The sheet only partly covered the coffin. Well, sir, the following Wednesday they brought the body of Harry Daniels ashore from Wolf Trap lightship. Harry was killed when the boiler blew up. As the men carried him up the beach to the waiting hearse, I recognized instantly the coffin I had seen borne into Old House Woods!

Still another tale that has been printed in both newspapers and books involved a farmer’s wife who lived adjacent to the woods. One evening, at dusk, she went into a pasture to bring home some workhorses. She drove them down a lane toward the barn. Arriving at the gate, she called to her husband to open it. He did not respond, and she opened it herself. As she did so, her husband came out of the barn and laughed at her, saying that he had put the team in the stable two hours before.

“Don’t be foolish,” she said. When she turned to let the team pass through the gate, instead of two horses standing there, she saw two headless black dogs scampering off toward Old House Woods. “That woman,” says Olivia Davis, “was my great-grandmother.” Over the years, there have also been numerous reported sightings of headless cattle wandering aimlessly in the woods.

Through the decades, there have been many mysterious disappearances in the region, involving both humans and animals. None has been satisfactorily explained. In 1950, Harry Forrest wrote of one:

It was near about 100 years ago that Lock Owens and Pidge Morgan came through these woods with their steer, on the way back from a cattle auction, and nothing’s been seen of them since. Steer, carts and everything disappeared in there. Lock had a little black dog and the only thing that was ever found of it was a little bunch of hair off of that dog’s tail.

There used to be a lot of cattle down on these points, but they got to wandering in here and never came out. Everything that comes in here heads for the Old Cow Hole and disappears. It’s very strange. One night that old hole will be covered with water, the next evening it’s dry. Some nights it’ll be light enough to pick up a pin in the woods, and black and storming outside. And some, you’ll come in here and it’ll be pouring down. You get wringing wet, and then you come out and you’ll be perfectly dry.

Finally, there is the tragic tale of Tom Pipkin, a local fisherman who lived in the vicinity about 1880. Fired up by the age-old stories of buried or sunken gold, he took his small boat into the woods, following an old channel—some say it was originally cut by pirates two centuries earlier—and headed for Old Cow Hole. Several days later, his boat was found in the bay. Inside the boat were two gold coins of unknown age and a battered silver cup covered with slime and mud. One coin bore a Roman head, and the letters “IVVS” were distinguishable. No one would take Pipkin’s boat, and it rotted away on nearby Gwynn’s Island. He was never heard from again.

“A thousand people have been in here after that money, but they’ll never get it,” Harry Forrest once said of Old House Woods. “The trees start bending double and howling. It storms, and they get scared and take off. The woods is haunted, that’s what it is.”