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UMW student Sarah Smethhurst guides a group on the 25th annual Ghost Walk in downtown Fredericksburg yesterday evening.
Joe Buonannata portrays a dead Union soldier outside the Willis House on Princess Anne Street during the UMW Historic Preservation Club's Ghost Walk in Fredericksburg.
Molly Ellis (left) and Emily Crawford portray the ghosts of two maids thought to be responsible for an 1807 fire at the Wheeler House. |
About a dozen University of Mary Washington students gathered around tables at the entrance to Fredericksburg's Market Square on Friday night.
Some wore black T-shirts and jeans, and others donned Revolutionary and Civil War period costumes, along with a heavy helping of white and grayish face paint.
For the 25th year, UMW's Historic Preservation Club was preparing to lead families on its Ghost Walk tour, an annual fundraiser.
The tours, which stroll past many historic downtown buildings, ran Friday and Saturday nights, and club member Tara Lescault said they fit the club's mission well.
"It's a way to introduce people to Fredericksburg's history," she said.
Cities all over the world offer ghost tours and haunted walks to tourists.
Most are wrapped around major historical disasters or other notable events.
Chicago ghost tour guides have the Great Fire of 1871 to work with. New Orleans reaches into its history of voodoo and pirates.
In Fredericksburg, at least two other ghost walks are offered in addition to the UMW Preservation Club's annual fundraiser.
Mark Nesbitt could be called a pioneer of the urban ghost walk in America.
He started the Ghosts of Fredericksburg tours in 2006, more than a decade after starting a similar venture in Gettysburg, Pa., where he lives.
Nesbitt has been a ranger for the National Park Service, and had written several books on ghost tales he'd collected about Gettysburg when a town councilman there asked him to start a ghost tour.
"He thought ghost tours would help bring people into the downtown area," Nesbitt said.
That was 1994, before most of the other ghost tours in the U.S. had been started.
But it seemed that Nesbitt was on to something. He said the number of ghost tour operations in Gettysburg has exploded since he started the first one. Now there are more than a dozen, some more authentic than others.
A few years later, Nesbitt was asked to give a talk about "ghosts as a product" to a tourism and public relations conference.
It was there that he and Fredericksburg tourism director Karen Hedelt started talking about the possibility of his starting a tour in Fredericksburg.
When he got here, he learned he wasn't going to have any problem finding tales to tell.
He had some references to work with. Author Marguerite du Pont Lee wrote "Virginia Ghosts" in the early 1900s, and L.B. Taylor published "The Ghosts of Fredericksburg and Nearby Environs" in the 1990s.
Everywhere Nesbitt and his wife went in Fredericksburg, though, they found new stories to tell.
He said a worker at Eileen's Bakery and Cafe's former location at The Chimneys on Caroline Street told him about an eerie experience he had early one morning when he went to start baking bread.
"He was alone in the building and kept hearing silverware rattling and someone going up and down the stairs," Nesbitt said. "Finally he just said: 'Cut it out! You can't be disturbing me like that.' And the activity stopped."
Nesbitt has performed deeper investigations into tales of spirits in some city buildings.
He hosted a "ghost quest" weekend last winter at the Richard Johnston Inn, where owner Bonnie DeLelys says she has seen evidence of the energies of those departed.
"Guests will come in and ask me if there's ghosts. I'll just say, 'We have energy in the house,'" she said. "I'll have people send me pictures they've taken here, and there's figures in the pictures."
In Gordonsville, tour guides at the Exchange Hotel, which houses the town's Civil War Museum, have been putting on a ghost tour through the building for nine years. This year's tours were Friday and Saturday.
Guides set up a different scene in each room of the old hotel, which served as a hospital during the Civil War, and dress in period costumes.
Tour guide Lynn Compton said ghost-related inquiries are the most common question visitors ask when they visit the museum.
"The whole issue about paranormal activity is common here," she said, adding that the building has been listed on the Travel Channel's list of America's Most Haunted places.
But don't get the wrong idea. While Hollywood associates ghosts with bloody horror-movie scenes, Nesbitt said there's nothing to fear.
"I've collected thousands of stories, and no physical harm has ever come to anyone because of a ghost," he said. "All the major religions of the world talk about a life after death. That's why ghost stories, I think, are so fascinating to people."
Emily Battle: 540/374-5413
Email: ebattle@freelancestar.com
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Many area ghost tours ran this weekend only, but Mark Nesbitt's Ghosts of Fredericksburg Tours will be leading walks on Halloween weekend. Tours are Oct. 30 and 31 from 8 to 9:30 p.m. Tickets are $10; children 7 and younger are free. Visit ghostsoffredericksburg .com for details. |
