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Overview
Roanoke, in the heart of southwestern Virginia, is one of the most haunted cities in the commonwealth. The Star City is brimming with eerie and unexplainable stories, such as the legendary “Woman in Black,” who appeared several times in 1902, but only to married men on their way home at night. There are also macabre stories in many of Roanoke’s famous landmarks, such as the majestic Grandin Theatre, where a homeless family is said to have lived—and the cries of their deceased children can still be heard. Travel beyond the realm of reality with author L.B. Taylor Jr. as he traces the history of Roanoke’s most unique and chilling tales.
Includes photos!
“I like the ghost story books of L.B. Taylor, Jr., a Virginia author, because he blends history and true ghost stories so wonderfully. He doesn’t make judgments about each ghost story, but presents the facts and lets you decide for yourself. . . . So if you’re in a ghostly mood this October—or if you’re just a history lover—Taylor’s books are well worth your time.” —Eagle-Eyed Editor
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781614239741 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcadia Publishing SC |
| Publication date: | 10/20/2018 |
| Series: | Haunted America |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 131 |
| Sales rank: | 278,347 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Roanoke's Phantom Woman In Black
She appeared out of nowhere. One witness "victim" described the unnerving experience like this: "It was as if she had arisen out of the earth." Her voice sounded real. Her touch felt real. She appeared to be real, although quite a few of the gentlemen involved had great difficulty looking her in the eye. A peripheral glance was the best some of them could manage in their fright. She never caused any physical harm, or at least none was reported. It seemed obvious at the time that for every man who summoned up enough courage to report her presence, there probably were three or four others who, for a variety of reasons, kept the mysterious meetings quiet.
Those who did look at her, and did come forward, were unanimous in at least one phase of her description: she was breathtakingly beautiful. One man said she was tall and handsome, with "dancing eyes." Another said she was about five feet, nine or ten inches tall, dressed entirely in black, "with something like a black turban on her head." It was, he added, fixed in such a manner so that it was drawn around her face just below her eyes, forming a perfect mask. She also wore a long black raglan cloak. "Her eyes," the man said, "were huge and her brows and lashes heavy, and if her forehead and eyes are proper index of that portion of her face concealed, she was very beautiful."
And then, in a flash, she would be gone. She would simply disappear, evaporate, vanish, leaving the men she escorted stunned and speechless. This was the legendary "Woman in Black," who, for a brief period in March 1902, struck terror into the hearts of the citizenry of Roanoke. The Roanoke Times reported, "Her name was on every lip; strong men trembled when her name was spoke; children cried and clung to their mothers' dresses; terror reigned supreme!"
Who was this woman of dark intrigue, and what was her mission? Why was she so feared? As the newspaper pointed out, "Just why the Woman in Black should be so terrible has never been known. She made no attack on anyone. It was probably due to the unexpected appearance in places unthought of, and at hours when the last person of the city is expected about should be a woman."
She apparently had gone north from the city of Bristol, which, the Times reported, "is just recovering from the effects of the scare produced amongst the citizens of the town by what was known as the 'Woman in Black.' Hardly a day passed for weeks that the press of the town failed to have a long account of the antics and performance of the 'Woman in Black' on the night before." On March 18, 1902, the Times noted that
for the last ten days she has been unheard of; has completely disappeared from the city of Bristol; and expectation has been rife as to where she would make her next manifestation.
More or less anxiety has been felt by a few people of Roanoke, who through necessity or otherwise are kept up until a late hour at night, lest she make her appearance before them; and true to the presentiment, to Roanoke she has come and in a quiet way is beginning to stir up some uneasiness and not a little excitement. Just what her mission here can be, what her object is in waylaying certain parties, has not exactly been figured out, but of one thing there seems to be a unanimity of opinion, and that is, she has a proclivity for attacking the married men, if "attack" is the proper word.
The Times reported that there had been several recent encounters with the mystery woman. Here was one:
The most recent instance is that of a prominent merchant of the city, who, on the night after payday, having been detained at his store until after midnight, was making his way home, buried in mental abstractions, when at his side the woman in black suddenly appeared, calling him by his name. The woman was only a couple of feet behind him, and he naturally increased his pace; faster and faster he walked, but in spite of his efforts, the woman gained on him until, with the greatest of ease and without any apparent effort she kept along side of him. "Where do you turn off?" she asked of him. He replied in a hoarse voice, "Twelfth Avenue." Ere he was aware, she had hand upon his shoulder. He tried to shake it off, but without success. "You are not the first married man I have seen to his home this night," she spoke in a low and musical voice.
Reaching the front gate, he made certain she would then leave him, but into the yard she went. This was a little more than he bargained for. It was bad enough to be brought home by a tall and handsome woman with dancing eyes, but to march up to the front door with her — well, he knew his wife was accustomed to wait for him when he was detained, and he did not dare to go to the trouble of making an explanation to her; besides, such explanations are not always satisfactory. The merchant admits that he was a nervy man, but that in spite of his efforts, he could not help being at least a little frightened. "Twas the suddenness of the thing," is the way he expressed it.
But as he reached the door, he looked around. She was gone! Where she had gone, and how, he didn't know. But he didn't tarry on the doorstep either.
Two others who experienced these strange visitations were a porter and a young telegraph operator. Both were married, and in both cases, the woman appeared to them late at night on deserted streets. Each said that she moved over the sidewalk with an "almost noiseless tread." The porter was terrified by the apparition. He ran "two squares as fast as his legs could carry him" and "fell into the door almost in a fit." The telegraph operator said that she called out to him to "wait a minute," but like the porter, he ran hard all the way home. Both men later said that the woman had called them by name.
Whoever she was, she stayed in Roanoke only a short time. Within a few days, the reports of her appearances had ceased altogether. But soon there were accounts of her nightly sojourns in the town of Bluefield. Curiously, in that same month of March 1902, the Roanoke Times carried a short article from Alma, Nebraska. It was headlined, "Prominent Men See Ghost." The story noted, "The spirit form of a young woman is walking the streets of Alma. She exudes from the depths of some dark alley and rushes past lone pedestrians." One man said he saw "it" vanish in the moonlight, and another was chased by "it" after he scoffed at it. The dispatch added, "The Alma ghost is remarkable in that instead of being garbed in proverbial white, it walks about clothed in deep black."
Who was she? Why did she appear only to well-known married men, always late at night while they were on their way home? It has been speculated that perhaps she was a wife herself once who had found her husband unfaithful. Thereafter she returned to make sure potentially wayward males did not succumb to the temptations of the night.
CHAPTER 2Virginia's Most Haunted Hotel
It's no longer a hotel. The venerable building at 617 Jefferson Street in downtown Roanoke has been renovated, modernized and turned into luxury apartments, upscale offices and fancy restaurants. All this began in 2009 when a developer purchased the ailing, debt-ridden property and began a $20 million restoration. But for more than seventy years, this was the site of one of Virginia's most majestic and popular hotels: the Patrick Henry.
It first opened its doors to the public in 1925 and catered to the thousands of traveling salesmen who covered southwest Virginia. Upon entering the ornate, opulent lobby in years past, one got the feeling that he or she had somehow slipped into a time machine and been sent back to a scene of the 1920s. If ever a hotel in the commonwealth was remindful of the one depicted in the classic horror film The Shining, the Patrick Henry was it.
A glance around inside promoted the feeling that Jack Nicholson himself might materialize at any moment, complete with his flapper-era dinner jacket and slicked-black hair. It's not that such an entrance evoked chills; rather, it engendered a warm feeling of bygone elegance and the rich traditions of a time long past. In today's world of plastic motels, fast-food eateries and chain franchises, the Patrick Henry was a lone holdout of Victorian refinement and elegance, with all its attendant courtesies, politeness and class splendor. That's how it should be; that's how it was originally designed. The 117-room hotel opened to rave expectations, and for years, it was a sparkling showcase in regional circles of high society.
In the 1930s, though, it fell victim to the Great Depression. To survive, its rooms were converted into apartments and, later, offices. Regrettably, its luxurious lobby was carved into cubicles, occupied by armies of clerks and stenographers. In 1991, however, new owners arrived and began renovations that brought it back to at least a close resemblance of its onetime magnificence. Elegant wrought-iron railings and accents of brass encircled the lobby. Ornate carvings embraced ceilings and walls. Beautiful chandeliers hung from ceilings that towered thirty feet overhead. But alas, these developers also fell on hard times, and the building stood abandoned for some time.
Under its new ownership, however, sincere efforts have been made to once again restore its original grandeur. The antique chandeliers have been painstakingly cleaned. The ballroom looks new, with replastered cornices and gleaming floors, and the old faux skylight above the atrium, which had been hidden by a newer ceiling, has been uncovered, adding a sense of space and light.
One thing that has not changed — something that the new residents, office workers and others may well soon discover — is the alleged fact that the old Patrick Henry is haunted. For decades, during its heydays and in between, there have been multiple reports of paranormal manifestations: lights inexplicably turned on and off, cold spots provoked shivers for those who walked through them and phantom footsteps were heard in darkened corridors.
In the latter days of the old hotel, groups of amateur ghost investigators set up their equipment here and rarely were disappointed. Gobs of orbs were seen flitting about on shots taken with digital cameras, and dozens of raspy, whispered EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) have been recorded, supposedly uttered by long-dead tenants. According to various reports these teams filed, three men dressed in tuxedos have been sighted in the ballroom. They vanished when approached. A predominant legend persists of an old lady named Lucy who long ago died in her room at the hotel but who still roams about at night in a long, flowing white gown. A former night auditor working late at the hotel one evening swore that he saw the apparition of a man dressed, like Nicholson, in clothes from the 1920s, standing on the terrace above the lobby. He also evaporated.
The most pronounced activity seems to center in what was once room 606 in the hotel. This was, in the early 1980s, the room where a young airline stewardess was brutally murdered. She was stabbed to death, and her bloodied body was stuffed into the bathtub. The killer was never found. In years afterward, room 606 became a hotbed of psychic phenomena.
According to former front office manager Doug Hall, the encounters peaked a few years later. "We had a woman guest staying in that room," he recalled in an interview with the author.
Suddenly, she showed up in the lobby late in the evening, dressed in her night clothes. She was obviously very upset. She said she had been asleep in her bed when she awoke and saw the ceiling above her open up. A spiral wrought iron staircase then descended from the opening, and a lady with dark hair, wearing a long black skirt with a magnolia blossom at the waist, a bonnet, and an old fashioned high collared blouse, came, down the staircase, glided over to the edge of the bed, and caressed the hair of the frightened guest. (In fact, there had been a staircase there years earlier, when the building had been converted into an apartment complex.)
"We offered to move the woman to another room," Hall continued, "but she steadfastly refused. She said there was no way she was going upstairs again after that. She spent the night in the lobby."
It is to room 606 that Deborah Carvelli used to take her students a few years ago when she taught parapsychology classes at Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke. A psychic, Carvelli and her students visited suspected area haunted sites to see what they could sense. She never told the class members the background history of the places they viewed. They went in ice cold. In room 606, Deborah turned out the lights and had everyone sit in the dark and concentrate.
Incredibly, some of the more intuitive students described the identical scene the female guest experienced. They visualized the ceiling open, the staircase descend and the apparitional woman come down the stairs. They accurately described her clothing as well. Carvelli said that the figure looked like the late Greek opera singer Maria Callas.
On a January night in 2002, the author accompanied Carvelli and one of her classes on a visit to room 606. The lights were turned off. There was a stony silence. Carvelli asked if anyone sensed anything. Again, no one had been told anything about what had happened in the room. Several students responded. Some were drawn to a closed closet door. "Someone was hiding in there," one said. They felt that a "major struggle" had occurred. Others were drawn to the bathroom and said that something terrible happened there. A few students said that they envisioned the bathtub being full of "blood and water." "Something is in here," one cried out. The intense atmosphere proved too oppressive for two of the students. They had to leave the room.
After everyone had volunteered what they had felt, Carvelli told them the facts of the case. She said that investigators had believed that the attacker had, in fact, hidden in the closet. After a fierce struggle, the girl was dead, and her body had been left in the bathtub. There was blood all over the bathroom. Some of the students said that they got the feeling that the victim knew her assailant. The police thought so, too.
Carvelli taught three each semester and said that students in each class had similar feelings about room 606. And despite the tragedy that took place there, former manager Doug Hall said that the room was often specifically requested by incoming guests. "I guess they had heard about it and had a keen interest in the paranormal," he surmised.
Whether one encountered a ghost or not at the Patrick Henry, the hotel, in its sunnier days, was well worth a visit, either as an overnight guest or just to walk through the sumptuous lobby and reminisce about the magnificence that once was.
CHAPTER 3Spirits Still Perking at the Coffee Pot
Motorists in southwest Virginia traveling north on state highway 221, as they enter Roanoke, suddenly come upon one of the most bizarre man-made sights in the state. To the uninitiated, it first comes as a shock, but this is quickly followed by sheer curiosity. What they see is a fifteen-foot-high wooden coffeepot on top of a locals-favorite roadhouse restaurant. The building has been a beloved fixture of the city for more than seventy-five years, and it is proudly listed as a Virginia historical landmark.
For the initiated, Roanoke natives, the Coffee Pot has long been and remains a favorite watering hole; here one can dine on homemade barbecue or southern fried chicken while listening to a broad range of down-home music provided by bands representing everything from jazz and bluegrass to country and blues, with an occasional appearance by a national star such as Richie Valens, Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers or even Willie Nelson himself. And for an enticing encore, patrons may be treated to a ghostly manifestation or two; as the owner and staff members aver, fun-loving spirits lurk here.
Built in 1936 by Clifton and Irene Kefauver, the structure opened as a filling station and tearoom and soon after was converted into a restaurant. Architecturally, it is similar to a log cabin house topped by the towering coffeepot. For years, steam would rise from the pot's spout from a furnace located in the storeroom below, a welcoming beacon that could be seen for miles around.
Scores of bands, big and small, famous and obscure, have performed here over the years in what has been called "the biggest small stage in the South." In the late 1970s, a surprise guest showed up here late one night. After singing to an audience of thousands at the Roanoke Civic Center, Willie Nelson appeared and gave a spontaneous encore to a thrilled group of local patrons. "I think he enjoyed the session more than his fans," said longtime owner Carroll Bell.
As to the paranormal activity, Bell, like many of his bartenders and servers, added, "We've got all kinds of ghosts. It's been interesting to say the least. I believe in spirits, and I'm convinced they are here. There are just too many strange incidents that occur to dismiss them all as coincidences." Bell, who has been owner here, off and on, for more than thirty-five years, said that both he and staff members have had personal encounters, usually when they are alone in the restaurant late at night.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Haunted Roanoke"
by .
Copyright © 2013 L.B. Taylor Jr..
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Roanoke and Its Ghosts 5
Roanoke's Phantom Woman in Black 7
Virginia's Most Haunted Hotel 11
Spirits Still Perking at the Coffee Pot 17
Murder at the Mortician's Mansion 21
The Paranormal Wedding Dress 25
Home but Not Alone 27
Recollections of a Psychic Family 31
Conversations with a Dead Man 35
The Sad Ghosts of the Grandin Theatre 39
Embodiments of Evil 43
The Man Who Was Buried Standing Up 47
The Man Who Was Buried Three Times 51
The Ghost Buster of Roanoke 53
The Paranormal Paintings of Eddie Maxwell 63
Stark Fear Strikes the City 69
Diary of a Haunted House 73
Apparitions in Academia 83
A Closure at the Alms House 87
A Passel of Paranormal Vignettes 91
Doc Pinkard's Dark Secrets 99
By the Grave's Early Light 103
A Host of Haunting Humor 105
Cemetery Creepiness 109
The Highwayman Who Saw the Light 111
Watchdog of the Valley Frontier 113
Fragments of Folklore 117
The Last Public Hanging in Virginia 121
The Little Rag Doll 123
Bibliography 125
About the Author 127