Ghosts of Virginia's Tidewater

by L. B. Taylor Jr.

  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.”

  PART II

  EASTERN SHORE AREA

  THE GHOST SAMARITAN THAT SAVED A SHIP

  The following is excerpted from Hereward Carrington’s 1920 book, Phantasms of the Dead.

  In 1664, Captain Thomas Rogers, commander of a ship called “The Society,” was bound on a voyage from London to Tidewater Virginia. One day an observation was made. The mates and officers brought their books and cast up their reckonings with the captain, to see how near they were to the coast. They all agreed they were 100 leagues from the Capes of Virginia. Upon these customary reckonings, and heaving the lead, and finding no ground at 100 fathoms, they set the watch and the captain turned in. The weather was fine; a moderate gale of wind blew from the coast; so that the ship might have run about 12 or 13 leagues in the night after the captain was in his cabin.

  He fell asleep, and slept very soundly for about three hours, when he woke, and lay still till he heard his second mate turn out and relieve the watch. He then called to his first mate, as he was going off watch, and asked him how all things fared. The mate answered that all was well, though the gale had freshened, and they were running at a great rate; but it was a fair wind, and a fair, clear night.

  The captain then went to sleep again. About an hour after, he dreamed that someone was pulling him, and bade him turn out and look around. He, however, lay still and went to sleep once more; but was suddenly reawakened. This occurred several times; and, though he knew not what was the reason, yet he found it impossible to go to sleep anymore. Then he heard an unseen vision say, “Turn out and look around!”

  The captain lay in this state of uneasiness nearly two hours, until, finally, he felt compelled to don his great coat and go on deck. All was well; it was a fine, clear night. The men saluted him; and he called out, “How’s she heading?” “Southwest by south, sir,” answered the mate; “fair for the coast, and the wind east by north.”

  “Very good,” said the captain, and as he was about to return to his cabin, something he couldn’t see stood by him and said, “Heave the lead!” Upon hearing this, the captain said to the second mate: “When did you heave the lead? What water have you?” “About an hour ago, sir,” replied the mate; “60 fathoms.”

  “Heave again,” the captain commanded. When the lead was cast they had ground at 11 fathoms! This surprised them all; but much more when, at the next cast, it came up seven fathoms. Upon this, the captain, in a fright, bid them to put the helm alee, and about ship, all hands ordered to back the sails, as is usual in such cases.

  The proper orders being observed, the ship came about; but before the sails filled, she had but four fathoms and a half water under her stern. As soon as she filled and stood off, they had seven fathoms again, and at the next cast, 11 fathoms, and so on to 20 fathoms. They then stood off to seaward; all the rest of the watch, to get into deep water, till daybreak, when, being a clear morning, the Capes of Virginia were in fair view under their stern, and but a few leagues distant.

  Had they stood on, but one cable length further, as they were going, they would have run aground and certainly lost their ship, if not their lives, all through the erroneous reckonings of the previous day. Who or what was it that waked the captain and bade him save the ship?

  That, he has never been able to tell.

  THE MYSTERY OF THE BLOODY MILLSTONE

  “Oh, she’s still around. We still hear from her every once in a while. We find things out of place, you know, where they shouldn’t be. And the stain still appears on the stone every time it rains. She’s still a part of the family.”

  Sam Nock is talking about the resident ghost at Warwick, the ancestral home of the Upshur family in the small town of Quinby in Accomack County on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Nock is a historian and a high school teacher here. The ghost is that of Rachel Upshur, who died a horribly tragic death on Christmas Day more than 250 years ago.

  Nock says that Rachel married Abel Upshur in 1725, and they had five children. Abel was the grandson of Arthur Upshur, who had arrived on the Eastern Shore as a cabin boy sometime during the first half of the seventeenth century and rose to become one of the leading citizens of the area. Abel and Rachel moved to Warwick, one of the earliest brick houses still standing in the county, in 1738.

  Eleven years later, on a bitter, blustery and rainy winter night, the couple was awakened by a loud commotion in their chicken house. Although he was ill at the time, Abel got up to check on the noise, even after Rachel begged him not to go. She told him that she had a terrifying nightmare in which a white-shrouded, grinning skeleton with upraised arms had solemnly warned her not to venture out of the house that evening. If she did, she would meet death in some horrible manner. Abel reassured her that everything would be all right and asked her to stay in bed.

  But when he didn’t return within a reasonable time, she became worried, hastily threw on a coat over her nightgown and went out to find out what had happened. She found Abel standing in the cold rain. The chickens were still making a racket, but he had not discovered why. She implored him to get back in the house.

  As they walked to the door, Rachel stepped up on an old millstone that was embedded in the ground at the foot of the steps. As she did, a fox darted out from under the steps and sank its teeth into one of her heels. Blood spurted out on the millstone as she limped inside.

  The fox was rabid, and a few days later Rachel contracted hydrophobia. There was no known cure at the time for this horrid ailment, which viciously attacks the nervous system causing a victim great pain, suffering and madness. Family members, with no choice but to put her out of her misery, smothered her to death between two feather mattresses. It was Christmas Day 1749. She was buried in the family plot at Warwick.

  The old millstone is still there today. It is a solid gray, well-worn stone. Curiously, Nock declares, whenever it rains and the stone gets wet, a large, dark-red stain appears on the precise spot where Rachel bled when the fox bit her so long ago.

  THE “ORDEAL OF TOUCH”

  Superstition was rampant in Virginia, even before the famous witch trials occurred in Salem, Massachusetts. It was brought over to the New World with the settlers: ancient beliefs in the bizarre, handed down family to family for centuries in Europe.

  One of the weirdest of these old rituals was known as
the “Ordeal of Touch.” For some unexplained reason, it was believed by some that if a murderer touched or came into the presence of the body of his or her victim, the wounds that had been inflicted on the victim would “bleed afresh.” This archaic notion can be traced to seventeenth-century England and Scotland, where it was widely believed.

  Even William Shakespeare was drawn into the tradition. He wrote the following in Act I, Scene II of Richard III, where Lady Anne, in the presence of the body of the dead king, is made to accuse Gloster in this passage:

  O gentlemen, see, see, dead Henry’s wounds

  Open their congeal’d mouths and bleed afresh!

  Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity,

  For’t is thy presence that exhales this blood

  From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells.

  There are at least two recorded instances of actual cases where the Ordeal of Touch occurred in the commonwealth. They have been documented in both history magazines and books. One such example is in the records of Northampton County: “On December 14, 1656, Captain William Whittington issued a warrant for a Jury of Inquest over the body of Paul Rynners,” suspected to have been murdered by William Custis. The jury reported: “We have viewed the body of Paul Rynners, late of this county deceased & have caused Wm. Custis to touch the face and stroke the body of said Paul Rynners which he willingly did. But no sign did appear unto us of question in the law.” Custis was freed.

  The second incident involved the alleged murder of an infant, born of Mary Andrews of Accomack. Mary was the unmarried daughter of Sarah Carter and the stepdaughter of Paul Carter. Both Paul and Sarah were accused of the crime and brought to trial. The following is from Accomack court records:

  Att a Court held and continued for Accomack County, March 18, 1679. The Confession of Paul Carter taken the First day of March 1679.

  Question. What doe yu know concerning a child born of Mary the daughter of Sarah, the wife of the said Paul?

  Answere. That he doth know that the said Mary had a man child born of her body and that the said Sarah assisted at the birth of the said child & that he certainly knoweth not whether it were born alive or not & that they did endeavor to preserve the life thereof and that it lay betwixt his wife and her daughter all night and that ye next morning he saw it dead & he and his wife carefully buried the said child but that his wife carefully washing and dressed it.

  The body of the baby was exhumed so that it could be “stroaked” by the accused couple. A jury consisting of twelve women was seated. Paul Carter was found guilty of the crime, because while he was “stroaking” the child, “black and sotted places” on the body grew “fresh and red.”

  It was not specified what punishment Paul was given. This, however, is said to be the last instance of trial by Ordeal of Touch on record in Virginia.

  PART III

  WESTERN AREA

  STRANGE LIGHTS IN THE NIGHT

  Most forms of psychic phenomena are quite limited in scope. Generally, whatever the manifestation—be it the sighting of a milky apparition, the sound of muffled footsteps in the attic or a bloodstain that cannot be scrubbed clean—the particular characteristic is experienced only by a relatively few people. In most cases only one person, usually psychically sensitive, is involved. Often in old ancestral homes just the immediate family members encounter the extraordinary. Only in rare instances are the occurrences seen, heard, smelled, felt or tasted by appreciable numbers of people.

  That is why the mysterious light at West Point, Virginia, west of Williamsburg, is such an unusual example of unexplained phenomena. Over the past one hundred years or so, literally thousands of Tidewater residents swear that they have witnessed the light that appears and disappears before their eyes. In fact, this sensation is so well known and so reliable in its recurrences that for decades area teenagers considered it a cool thing to drive to the site late at night and wait for it to show up. As often as not, they were not disappointed. It is a legend that has been retold from generation to generation, with many common threads but with conflicting accounts as to the actual source.

  Skeptics scoff that what is seen is marsh gas, which is common in the area near West Point at a crossroads called Cohoke. Others say that many of those who come looking for the light are well fortified with “liquid courage” and are likely to see anything. But the majority of those who have been there don’t buy these explanations.

  “There definitely is a light there,” says Mac Germain, a local mechanic. “I’ve seen it and I wasn’t drunk and it wasn’t marsh gas. If it was swamp gas then why would people have seen the light at all times of the year?”

  “I’ve seen it and it’s real,” claims Mrs. Thomas Whitmore of West Point. “It was so bright. When it got close to us we got off the railroad tracks real fast, but nothing came by.” Ed Jenkins of Gloucester says, “We used to go up there when we were teenagers. It was the thing to do. I saw it. It would come closer and closer and would almost get to you, then it would vanish. Was I scared? Absolutely! One time I shot at it with a shotgun and it disappeared. But it always came back.”

  “I’ve seen it a hundred times,” says John Waggoner of Newport News. “It was just a big old light, and it came straight down the tracks, but when it got to you there was nothing there. It used to scare the hell out of the girls I took there. That’s what I liked about it.”

  One person who firmly ruled out any spectral source was the late Lon Dill, a local historian who wrote extensively of the area. “Oh, there is something there,” he said. “There is a light, but it is some form of luminescence which can be caused in several ways. Your eyes can fool you at times, especially at night.” Another person who has tried to downplay the supernatural aspects of the light is former King William County sheriff W.W. Healy. He recalls that in the 1960s and 1970s “[i]t was almost like a state fair down there. People would come by the carload to see it. It got to the point where the road was blocked.” Healy did his best to discourage curiosity seekers.

  Maggie Wolfe, a former reporter for the Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg, tells of the time when she and her husband were driving by the area late at night: “We were taking some back roads, and when we got near West Point I got the strangest feeling that is hard to describe. It was overpowering, as if we were in the midst of a superstrong presence. We were paralleling the railroad tracks, and when we looked over, there was this light. It seemed to be following us. And then it was gone. There was no train, no noise or anything.”

  Bruce Johnson is a local farmer who grew up in the Cohoke vicinity and still lives there. His father’s farm is within a stone’s throw of where the light is most often seen. “A lot of people have gone to see it,” he says. “I’ve seen license plates from all over the country. It seems like it is most frequently seen on cloudy or rainy, dismal nights. I only saw it once. I was driving home alone. I stopped at the tracks, and I definitely saw some type of light. It had a gaseous-type glow. Actually, it was kind of scary. I didn’t stay long.”

  Most everyone who has seen the light is pretty much in agreement as to its method of appearance. It first shows up far off, maybe several hundred yards down the tracks. Then, noiselessly, it approaches, glaring ever brighter as it nears, until its frightening closeness scares off viewers. Its relentless journey can only be impeded by the foolhardy actions of those who either try to run it down or shoot at it. Also, although many have tried, including a national magazine film crew, no one has successfully photographed the light.

  The source of the light, however, remains a mystery and stirs heated arguments. Many believe in the “lost train” theory. They have heard that after an 1864 battle near Richmond during the Civil War, a train was loaded with wounded Confederate soldiers and dispatched to West Point, where they could recuperate. The train left Richmond amid a soft chorus of moans but never reached its destination.

  The train theory was given some support by the experience of the late Tom Gulbranson and members of his family in
1967. Tom was an amateur psychic sleuth who investigated scores of alleged haunted houses and sites. He had visited the Cohoke location several times and had seen the light during a few of them. This time he was with his mother, father, brother and a friend.

  As they drove up and parked at a strategic point, they noticed another car that had parked on the tracks opposite of them. Tom got out his camera and tape recorder equipment, set them up and waited. It was a bitterly cold night, and after four hours of nothing but silence and darkness, they decided to leave. Just as they were packing up, the light appeared.

  “This time it was brighter than I had ever seen it,” Tom recalled. “It was an intense light, and it came closer and closer. As it neared, the other parked car’s occupants flicked on their headlights, and when that happened, we all clearly saw the outline of a locomotive engine pass by!”

  Apparently, whatever mission the ghost train is on, it hasn’t yet been fulfilled because stories of the eerie light persist to this day.

  The Brakeman’s Lantern

  Not to be outdone, residents of Suffolk, near Norfolk and Virginia Beach, say that they have their own spectral light and their own railroad tradition behind it. This, too, is a story that has been around a long time. Its setting is a bleak stretch of railroad tracks on the outskirts of the Great Dismal Swamp near Jackson Road, a gloomy and deserted lane close to the North Carolina border.

  Larry Parker, an insurance agent who grew up in Suffolk, remembers seeing the light one night. “It lasted only a few seconds,” he says, “but it felt like days. It was right on top of us. It lit up the front of the car and then was gone. It could be a will-o’-the-wisp, which is a cloud of swamp gas that can become fluorescent under certain atmospheric conditions. All I know is that for sure there is something out there. I’ve seen it a dozen times.” Others have said that the light sort of “danced” down the tracks and that from a distance it looked like an old-fashioned lantern.