What visitors on ghost tours through Williamsburg frequently want to know: Will we see a ghost tonight?
During the Halloween season the colonial city’s ghost activity appears to increase, but not much more than other times of the year. Ghosts apparently have no seasons, the guides seem to suggest.
No matter the season, visitors want to “look for ghosts and have those experiences or to hear some dirty history that you don’t hear about during the day,” said Austin Pike, one of the guides for Colonial Ghost Tours, one of many ghost tour companies in the Historic Triangle.
Tours are available year-round throughout Colonial Williamsburg and Yorktown, but around Halloween, interest seems to pique. One of the main questions visitors often have is whether the guides have had a personal experience with a ghost.
A ghostly apparition appears in the window of the George Wythe House in Colonial Williamsburg. (Kimberly Dynia)
“I haven’t seen a ghost, but some people see them all the time,” said Trish Thomas, co-owner of Williamsburg Walking Tours. “They maybe see a face or silhouette in a window or next to a house.”
Pike said he once had an experience at Colonial Williamsburg’s Peyton Randolph House, which is considered haunted even by ghost “specialists.” That includes L. B. Taylor, a nationally known writer about ghosts who explained in his book, “The Ghosts of Williamsburg,” that the house was a “hotspot for paranormal activity caused by the many souls who died tragically within the walls …”
“I heard footsteps on the second floor,” Pike recalled, except he wasn’t on the second floor and neither was anyone when he checked.
Kimberly Dynia, manager of evening programs for Colonial Williamsburg,, said she’s also had ghostly encounters in the Randolph House. CW’s ghost tour, Haunted Williamsburg, is the only one that goes inside historic buildings.
“I’ve felt someone standing on the staircase and watching the tours,” said Dynia, who’s been a ghost tour guide for 17 years. “I know the home has the reputation as the most haunted in Williamsburg.”
But for Dynia, the most interesting ghost experiences are related inside the James Geddy House and the George Wythe House. Her own experiences have come “from the woman in blue in the Wythe house. I have seen her walk out of Wythe’s office and across the hall and into a bedroom.”
A strange light appears in a window of the Everard House in 2022. (Kimberly Dynia)
Dynia stressed that the vision is not of the woman who reportedly committed suicide in the house after learning of her husband’s infidelity.
“We know without a doubt that the story of Lady Skipworth is not true. It was created in the early 1930s,” she said.
Also probably not true is the story of the Marquis de Lafayette, who supposedly felt ghosts around him the night he slept in the Randolph house during his October 1834 visit to Williamsburg. Reportedly, the Lafayette story was made up around the 1930s — the 100th anniversary of Lafayette’s trip. It is, however, still related today by some ghost guides.
Pike said the Wythe House is his favorite Williamsburg ghost house.
For Thomas, the Palmer House is a close second for her in terms of ghost house favorites. As the story goes, Lt. William Disoway, the federal provost marshal in Williamsburg late in the Civil War, was murdered by one of his own men in front of the house, Thomas said. He died inside several hours later.
A dark figure is caught in a photograph of the entry to the Governor’s Palace in Colonial Williamsburg. (Kimberly Dynia)
“He seems to like it there,” Thomas added, relating that in 1896 “a Mrs. Tucker, who lived in the house, saw a spirit sitting in a chair making himself comfortable. She wanted him out. But a neighbor suggested he was just making himself at home.”
Apparently, the lieutenant is still there.
Thomas also said lights in the Governor’s Palace have attracted attention. “Someone seems to be walking with a candle behind a row of windows. Maybe it’s a nurse still on duty taking care of her patients during the Revolutionary War when the building served as a hospital.”
During her years as ghost guide, Dynia said employees have frequently come to her with ghost experiences. “They relate how they’ve heard steps and doors slamming shut without anyone else in the building. Employees even have called our security, but no one has been found after exhaustive checks.”
Perhaps the strangest phenomenon was the occasion “when strange things went on inside a house one night. Checks were made and nothing found out of the normal,“ Dynia said. “The next morning, the knick-knacks on the mantel were found turned around and were facing the wall.”
So the next time you’re walking around Colonial Williamsburg at night — regardless of the time of year — don’t be surprised to see a face in a window one second and gone the next. Probably the house won’t be occupied.
There, you’ve seen a ghost!
Wilford Kale, kalehouse@aol.com
