Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 27, 1994 TAG: 9410270040
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CRYSTAL CHAPPELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
``Yes," William Goodlett said. "But I've never seen them.''
Gooing, from Oregon, was visiting her friend Goodlett in Salem 10 years ago when she saw the spirit. She said she knew the spirit was good because she was not afraid.
Since then, Goodlett says he has felt and heard the spirits. He says he has been tucked into bed and patted on the shoulder - only to find that no one was there. He has heard the distinct sound of a horn honking in his closet.
"How it happened I don't know, except it woke me up," said Goodlett, 86, an art teacher at the Salem Senior Citizen Center who says he is psychic and a telepath.
Like Goodlett, many Roanoke-area residents are looking for ways to explain the inexplicable. They have come to the same conclusion: Spirits live in their homes.
In an area rich with history, lore has helped keep ghost stories alive. Virginia ranks No. 1 among states with the largest ghost population, according to the Ghost Research Society in Oak Lawn, Ill., as listed in Harper's Index.
Seven homes in Roanoke, Salem, Fincastle and Bedford County have been checked for paranormal activity - unusual psychic or mental phenomena - by Deborah Frashure, a parapsychologist at Roanoke's Virginia Western Community College. Frashure studies psychic phenomena, such as telepathy, extrasensory perception and clairvoyance.
Frashure described her work as "helping people, finding things that are necessary, that are important and are very meaningful to them. When you're working with people, these things are very real."
The ghost at Goodlett's home may be the spirit of Anna Marion Brand, the grandmother of Cabell Brand, executive president of Total Action Against Poverty, Cabell Brand said. Brand's grandfather, W. Lee Brand, built the house at 109 Union St. in the 1890s.
Brand family lore has it that Anna Marion Brand, who died in Maryland in 1931, is supposedly trying to get back to the house in death, said Ninevah Wygal, Cabell Brand's secretary, who has studied the family's genealogy.
Many more spirits may be dwelling in the Bellvue Plantation on Old Mountain Road because of the house's long history, said Linda Selfe, who has lived in the Northeast Roanoke County house for seven years. Because of strange happenings there, Selfe says, she will not stay alone at night in her home.
Selfe has heard a child running up the stairs, hitting the rungs of the bannister with a stick, she said. She has also heard footsteps in the hall.
Eerie feelings are part of living in a house in which so many people have passed through, Selfe, 49, said. The plantation was established in 1854 as the Kyle Hotel, later serving as a residence and a school for the disabled.
``If these walls could talk, I would love to hear what they have to say,'' she said, though she has never delved into studying the mysterious occurrences.
``I believe in God very much so it's just hard for me to say that there aren't any [spirits], because there are so many unexplainable things in the world, whether good or evil,'' she said.
A few houses down from Bellvue, the owners of Belle Grove Plantation say the spirit of Mary E. Dunn may be causing curious events. Dunn died in 1827 and was buried in a field near the house.
Objects in the house have been moved and rearranged, and doors that were supposed to be shut were opened, said a resident who asked not to be identified. But after living there for a year and a half, the family is no longer scared.
``We jokingly say, 'Ah ha! Mary's been here,''' whenever a peculiar event happens, he said.
On the Hoha Farm in northwestern Franklin County, a spirit sighting has added to the stories about the property. In one, an original resident, a Mrs. Calloway, supposedly witnessed scorpions while on her death bed - because she had been so mean to her slaves, owner Henry Hopkins said.
In addition, when Hopkins was a boy in the 1940s, he saw the spirit of a boy who looked like a slave walking down to the river. Hopkins had been playing hide-and-seek in a barn with a friend. When he looked again, the boy was gone.
"Back at the time, I didn't feel like playing anymore," he said.
Five or six years ago, the friend told Hopkins that he, too, had seen the boy while hiding in a stall. The boy ran through a wall, he said.
A Victorian home on Pennsylvania Street in Salem has created a legend for itself, according to two people who have occupied the house.
Both residents say they encountered a spirit at the house, which was built in 1887. Peggy vanBlaricom's mother was awakened by what felt like someone pulling back the covers and sitting beside her. Then Emily Brady's former fiance felt something cold brush against him, even though it was a hot summer day.
Lights mysteriously turned on and off for both families. While watching over the home when vanBlaricom was vacationing, a neighbor walked to the house twice to turn off the light - only to find it turned off when she arrived.
When the woman crossed the street to return home, the light was back on. The incident happened to vanBlaricom eight or 10 times between 1974 and 1980. Lights turned on and off for Brady about once a month, even though the wiring had been checked, she said.
Brady named the spirit Chester, a "user-friendly ghost name." And vanBlaricom called it a ``friendly presence in the house watching over us.''
Down the street at 360 Pennsylvania Ave., a less friendly phenomenon disturbed William B. Victorine. He was tuning a piano and felt as if he was being watched. Suddenly he felt a draft on his right arm that stayed there for a minute or two.
Victorine checked several times for a draft coming from somewhere in the house or for people entering, but didn't find either.
Once after he sat back down, he felt as if someone had almost touched his right arm, he said.
"It actually raised the hair on my arm, which you know was a queer feeling," said Victorine, 71.
In the old City Cemetery on Tazewell Avenue, the Lady in White is said to come out at night and weep on a ledge near the Greenwood plot. The woman, a "real Southern beauty" who died in 1918, wears a white dress and has a pompadour hairstyle, said Nancy Connelly, director of the Roanoke Valley History Museum.
The woman weeps because she died of influenza, leaving her small children motherless, Connelly said.
Only a legend surrounds Black Horse Tavern, which is now a home on Old Mountain Road, said the owner, who asked not to be named. Andrew Jackson is said to have stayed at the tavern, which was established in 1782, on his way from Nashville, Tenn., to Washington, D.C.
A man on a white horse comes out of Read Mountain near the tavern and rides toward Hollins College, according to legend.
"He lost his love, and he's looking for her," the owner said. "He's got a hat like J.E.B. Stuart with a feather in it."
But the owner and her neighbors have not seen the spirit, though workers at a horse barn once said they saw him.
"There have been all kinds of stories and rumors and ghosts. Maybe, Maybe not," said the owner. "They don't bother me."
Most area spirits have been friendly. Only one place Frashure visited had a potentially violent poltergeist, which eventually left, she said.
"I think there should be a large allowance in our lives for mystery and magic," added Brady. "It's more fun that way, and there's just so many things that can't be explained."
by CNB