Virginia Ghosts

Book excerpt: This collection of more than 100 ghost stories has entertained lovers of Virginia genealogy, history and folklore for generations. Mrs. Marguerite du Pont Lee, daughter of Eleuthere Irenee du Pont, humanitarian and campaigner for women's rights, was also a great student of psychic phenomena. This interest in the unexplained led her to gather tales of ghosts and the paranormal from around her adopted state, many of them dating back to the colonial period. Charmingly written and illustrated throughout, most of the tales (like the encounter of Warner Taliaferro of Belle Ville in Gloucester County with the spirit of his neighbor, Mrs. Tabb, on the night of her death) deal with ghosts sited at the venerable homesteads that proliferate in Virginia. Thus, for example, we have stories set at The Anchorage and Gunston Hall in the Alexandria area, Federal Hill and Traveller's Rest near Fredericksburg, Mount Airy and Woodlawn in the Tidewater, Edgewood and Westover near Richmond, Ash Lawn and Fairfield within the Piedmont, Carter Hall and Elmwood in the Shenandoah Valley, Ivanhoe and Ellerslie in Southside, and still other tales from the Eastern Shore, Southwest Virginia, and West Virginia. Many of the ghost stories, of course, concern early Virginians who materialize on the family trees of Virginia researchers.