Richmond's history gives it plenty of haunted legends
Everyone loves a ghost story, especially when those stories originate with real places and real sightings.
Richmond has no shortage of its own lore, starting with The Richmond Vampire, who rose to haunt from the afterlife following his painful and terrifying death following the collapse of the Church Hill train tunnel on Oct. 2, 1925.
After a whole section of the tunnel suddenly collapsed, 190 feet of soil plunged downward to bury the crew. This triggered an immense cave-in that spread along most of the tunnel’s length, buckling roads and swaying buildings on the surface of Church Hill.
Many of the laborers dove beneath the flatcars. They were able to crawl under them and escaped through the east end of the tunnel, many covered in blood and with deep wounds.
From among this throng of disorientated workers, lore has it that eyewitnesses saw the most horrendous “creature.” In some versions of the story, the man shrieks a most inhuman sound as the eyewitnesses covered their ears; in others he crawled across town to Hollywood Cemetery in hot pursuit by some Richmonders, where they found him dead.
However, in a more accurate account, a fireman by the name of Benjamin Mosby had been shoveling coal into the engine’s furnace, and when the tunnel collapsed, it caused the train’s steam tank to explode. Though newspaper reports of the accident at the time seem to have been factual – the taxi that took Mosby to hospital had just carried a journalist to the scene – it’s likely that over the years memories of the incident became distorted into something even more sinister, including the story of the Richmond Vampire appearing as a ghost after Mosby disappeared into the mausoleum of W.W. Pool in Hollywood Cemetery.
Today, the western portal to the tunnel is easily viewed beside the Atrium Lofts at Cold Storage on North 18th Street and is part of the popular walking tour Haunts of Richmond, one of several haunted walking tours of the city, along with pub crawls and haunted dinners.
Haunts of Richmond has been run by the husband-and-wife team of Chris and Beth Houlihan for 17 years.
“We have six tours on a rotating basis,” Chris said. “They are all outdoor walking tours and are offered year-round,” noting that this time of year, around Halloween, is the most popular time for the tours. Chris touts the “Church Hill Chillers” tour as its most popular (which includes a visit to the tunnel), and also includes the ghost of a Civil War spy and “a cadre of restless spirits.” This tour meets at Patrick Henry’s Pub & Grille, considered to be one of the most haunted bars in America, and is also the location of the Haunted Dinner. The Church Hill tour also visits St. John’s, where four ghosts supposedly roam the church and graveyard.
Other tours, such as “Shadows of Shockoe,” include a visit to the Edgar Allan Poe Museum, the oldest building still standing in Richmond, built in 1737.
“The hauntings began in the 18th century,” Chris said, “when the Ege family lived there, and later when it became a museum.”
Ghost investigators have heard voices of children, along with their footsteps, as they run up the stairs of the museum.
Other tours include a visit to the Governor’s Mansion, a historic 1811 building and the oldest serving executive mansion in the United States, having been occupied by Virginia’s governors since 1813.
The building was first reported to be haunted by then-governor Phillip McKinney, who witnessed an apparition of a lady sitting at a window.
“Specters and Shades of Court End Tour and The John Marshall House” centers on the 1790 home of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, with a slew of ghost sightings, including “the brooding nun.”
“We encourage those on the tour to take pictures,” Chris said. “Many of the images taken on our tours get strange results, images that are unexplainable. The children who haunt the Poe Museum, for example, often appear in photos visitors have taken.”
He added there are plenty of other places in the Richmond area that are not part of the regular tours that have legends of being haunted, including The Byrd Theatre in Carytown, where the spirit of a little girl is seen frequently in the women’s bathroom. There's also the ghost of Mr. Coulter, the Byrd's manager from 1928 to 1971, who is mostly spotted in the balcony.
The Pump House in Byrd Park has been called one of the most haunted places in America, with several ghosts allegedly still haunting the space.
