Haunted History of Central Virginia
“Virginia may well be the most haunted state in America,” writes L.B. Taylor Jr. in The Big Book of Virginia Ghost Stories. Taylor believes that the many old manor houses and plantations that still stand, combined with the numerous Revolutionary War and Civil War battles that occurred on Virginia soil, are the sources of the Commonwealth’s haunting. “Paranormal experts contend that sites where trauma and tragedy have occurred are fertile spawning grounds for ghosts and the like,” he writes. “And no state has seen more bloodshed and early death than Virginia over the past four hundred-plus years”
Charlottesville and Central Virginia have more than their share of ghost stories. Steeped in history and shadowed by past tragedies, the region has long been regarded as fertile ground for hauntings that remain part of the local imagination.
Murder at Comyn Hall
One of Charlottesville’s most chilling crimes still hangs over Comyn Hall, located on Park Street near downtown Charlottesville. On September 4, 1904, Fannie McCue, wife of former mayor Samuel McCue, was brutally murdered in their home.
Convicted solely on circumstantial evidence, McCue never wavered in declaring his innocence, insisting burglars had killed his wife and even posted a $1,000 reward for the “real” culprit. To his children he vowed, “Do not be uneasy. I am not afraid of the consequences if I get justice. I have committed no crime.” The jury’s unusually quick deliberation of less than 30 minutes and McCue’s defense team filing 45 bills of exception during the trial raised significant concerns about whether justice was properly served in this controversial case.
Sam McCue was hanged at the Albemarle County Jail for the crime, the last public execution in Virginia. The house has since been converted to apartments, but residents report faucets that turn on and off, phantom footsteps, and muffled arguments from the couple’s former bedroom. Some even claim to have seen Fannie’s apparition in the bathroom where she died.
“It is said that Sam and Fannie still haunt the home where their lives were forever changed,” writes Susan Schwartz in her book Haunted Charlottesville and Surrounding Counties. “Fannie haunts the upstairs bathroom, and Sam haunts the basement area. Their bedroom has also been a site for many strange occurrences. Maybe when the truth is finally known, both Sam and Fanny can finally rest in peace.”
Unhallowed Grounds
The University of Virginia’s library is best known for its vast holdings, with millions of books, manuscripts, and archives that stretch across centuries. But tucked alongside those statistics is a curious entry that hints at a different kind of record: “Ghosts reported: 2.”
The first is said to be Dr. Bennett Wood Green, a Confederate surgeon whose personal library was donated after his death in 1913. Green once haunted the Rotunda, UVA’s original library, but when his books were moved to the new Alderman Library (now Shannon Library) in 1938, legend holds that he followed. Students still whisper about footsteps echoing after midnight, and one of the Rotunda alleys bears his name.
The second presence lingers in the Garnett Room, home to the family collection of Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett. Some claim the spirit is a Fredericksburg physician who often visited the Garnett home, keeping watch over the books he loved in life. When the volumes came to Alderman, the caretaker ghost came, too.
Other corners of Grounds have their own macabre lore. Behind Peabody Hall once stood the Anatomical Laboratory, known by students as “Stiff Hall.” In his 1943 book Mr. Jefferson’s University, Historian Virginius Dabney writes that the building was “carefully avoided by small boys and others who gave its gruesome contents a wide berth. It was used at times in fraternity initiations … [a student] in about the year 1918 was instructed to visit the “stiff hall” at midnight, pull one of the corpses out of its vat, and recite The Raven. He survived.”
Pavilion VI on the University’s Lawn carries equally haunting tales. One involves a professor’s widow who, in the mid 1800, dressed her late husband’s corpse daily before discovery of her bizarre behavior forced her to leave her home on the Lawn. Another tells of a professor’s daughter who died of heartbreak, her spirit still said to linger.
The University Cemetery holds its own dark chapter. Founded after a typhoid epidemic in 1828, it became a target for grave robbers supplying cadavers to medical schools. Families staged fake funerals or buried relatives under cover of night until laws eventually curtailed the practice.
No collection of UVA ghost stories is complete without No collection of UVA ghost stories is complete without mention of Edgar Allan Poe. Before leaving the University in 1826, he is believed to have etched a warning on his West Range windowpane:
O Thou timid one, do not let thy
Form slumber within these
Unhallowed walls,
For herein lies
The ghost of an awful crime.
The Moon Ghost
One of Albemarle’s most infamous hauntings unfolded between 1866 and 1868 at Church Hill, the John Schuyler Moon property near Scottsville. There, a hulking figure appeared night after night, shattering windows and casting mysterious lights into the house. Dubbed the “Moon Ghost,” accounts of its visitations spread rapidly. After the Scottsville Register published a story in 1867, the tale was reprinted in Richmond and as far away as London.
Moon’s granddaughter Mary Barclay Hancock described one chilling scene: “About dusk … a creature crawl[ed] across the yard dragging a rail behind him. He loped along like some hideous animal, but when he got to the dining room window he stood erect, and in the twinkling of an eye, raised the rail and thrashed out a number of panes.”
The ghost attracted curious onlookers, including 40 armed University of Virginia students who marched 16 miles from Charlottesville on October 30, 1867. hoping to capture the phantom. Guns were fired at a figure on the roof, yet the figure dissolved into mist.
The Moon Ghost’s reign of terror ended only when Moon awoke to find a reed on his porch with a note scribbled in pencil that read: “Master Jack…I will not pester you eny more…Jack Ghost.”
The Exchange Hotel
At first glance, the Exchange Hotel Civil War Medical Museum in Gordonsville looks like a gracious three-story structure accented by a grand veranda. Yet its walls carry echoes of immense suffering. More than 70,000 sick and wounded soldiers were treated here during the Civil War, and more than 700 lie buried nearby.
The Exchange has been ranked by A&E and the History Channel as the 15th Most Haunted Location in America and is listed by Virginia Haunted Houses as one of the state’s most active paranormal sites. Its reputation has drawn steady attention from television programs like My Ghost Story and from dozens of professional investigation teams who continue to document the unexplained activity within its walls.
The museum’s most famous spirit is Anna, once an enslaved cook whose presence is still felt in the Summer Kitchen. Visitors have reported hearing her voice and even seeing her figure moving about as if still tending her duties. Paranormal teams have photographed what appears to be her face through the window when no one was inside.
Investigators have also encountered the hostile spirit of Major Quartermaster Richards, who, after murdering his wife, vowed to keep her spirit trapped forever just before hanging himself. Guests speak of being pushed, chilled, or overwhelmed by his presence.
The third floor is said to belong to Emma, the spirit of a little girl who appears in photographs, plays with toys left out for her, and leaves child-sized footprints behind. Other apparitions include Civil War nurses climbing the stairs, shadow figures in the halls, and a Union corporal still waiting for the war to end.
Maplewood Cemetery
Charlottesville’s oldest public cemetery, Maplewood, was established in 1827 and holds more than two centuries of history. Shaded by towering oaks, the cemetery includes graves of enslaved and free African Americans, unmarked graves of Confederate soldiers, and townspeople whose names trace the history of Charlottesville.
The cemetery’s most famous apparition is the Woman in White, a misty figure seen wandering among the tombstones. Visitors describe her as mournful, clothed in wispy white garments, vanishing at the gates when approached. Photographs have captured what appear to be her standing over graves while some report whispers, phantom caresses, and quiet sobs drifting through the air.
Tragic young deaths have fueled Maplewood’s reputation. Maud Coleman Woods, voted the “most representatively beautiful woman in America” in 1901, died of typhoid fever the day after her 24th birthday. Baseball star Charlie Ferguson, pitcher for the Philadelphia Quakers, died at 25, his funeral drawing teammates and mourners from across the country. Enslaved and free African Americans are also buried here, along with more than 100 unmarked graves of Confederate soldiers
Maplewood has been recognized as one of Virginia’s most reliably haunted locations, drawing attention from paranormal investigators, and even social media ghost hunters eager to document the Woman in White.
“This cemetery is filled with so much history, especially from the Civil War,” Schwartz writes in Haunted Charlottesville. “You can definitely feel the ghosts of the past coming back to tell you how they lived and died.”