Haunted Roanoke

L.B. Taylor

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781609499433
• eBook ISBN: 9781614239741
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The author of The Big Book of Virginia Ghost Stories focuses on the "Scare City": "If you believe in ghosts, this is the book for you" ( The Roanoke Times).
 
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

THE GHOST BUSTER OF ROANOKE

The late John Reiley was known for more than fifty years as the “Ghost Buster of Roanoke.” His regional reputation as a “spirit detective,” in fact, was so widespread that he got calls, letters and e-mails from people all across southwestern Virginia imploring him to come investigate and rid them of their resident ghosts. For decades, he traveled to every section of the city and to the hills and hollows bordering it to exorcise unwanted entities. And he did it with innovative and unusual methods, sometimes imitating or challenging the ghost to cause a reaction. Such creative means could well serve as lessons to today’s plethora of amateur spirit hunters. Paranormal experts at Longwood College, Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia contacted him for consultation and advice on the supernatural. Reiley was happy to oblige and never charged a cent for his services. He loved doing it.

Over the years, Reiley collected hundreds of spectral legends across the commonwealth. He told, for instance, of a “haunted garden” along a fire trail on Catawba Mountain, where an eccentric millionaire and his wife once lived in a secluded home. There he found the remains of an ancient rock garden where the wife once spent most of her time. He said witnesses have reported that at the right time of the evening, they had seen the apparition of the millionaire’s wife walking through the garden, talking to flowers that were no longer there.

When the historic Hotel Roanoke was closed for five years for renovations, Reiley said that staffers told him that one elevator would start on its own each morning and mysteriously rise to the fifth floor. A man in a neighboring county once invited Reiley to visit his home where, the man said, whenever he moved a chair in one room to the middle of the floor, the chair slid back on its own to its original position. Another time, a local man told Reiley to visit his stables. There was one stall there that no horse would enter. The legend was that a former owner once beat a horse to death in that stall.

The late John Reiley, known as the “Ghost Buster of Roanoke,” investigated scores of ghostly legends in and around the city for more than half a century. Photo by the author.

The Hotel Roanoke has been a favorite lodging, dining and entertainment center for decades. Photo by Ruth Genter.

Here is a sampling of some of the strange cases Reiley has personally experienced. In April 2000, he was called to a large house in the Roanoke suburbs by a woman named Ann Lucas. She said that the ghost of her late husband, a former vending machine executive, had returned to taunt her. She also said that she knew he had left a fortune of $350,000, but she couldn’t find it.

She was a beautiful woman with long black hair. Her husband didn’t treat her right. She called the ghost “Bam Bam” because it exhibited some poltergeist-like activities—you know, doors that slammed shut, lights that flickered on and off, that sort of thing. When I arrived, the lady said the house had ten rooms, and if I was any good, then I should be able to pick out which one her husband’s ghost haunted. Well, I started out by putting a lighted candle in each room. A ghost will blow out a candle. I felt a cold spot in what was used as a lounge room. The candle was out. I said this is the room, and she said, “You’re right.” I knew I was right because when I entered the room a vase of flowers flipped over and two pictures on the wall crashed to the floor. One was a portrait of the lady.

Reiley said that to bring out the spirit, he began bouncing up and down on a bed and hollering “Bam Bam” as loud as he could. He said that something he couldn’t see steadied the bed and kept it from moving. Then, when he picked up the candle that had gone out, hot wax burned his hand. He examined it. Curiously, no wax had gathered on the side of the candle. “How could this have happened?” he asked.

“I cursed the ghost, and the lights started blinking,” he said. “The more I fussed, the more they blinked. I recorded the whole thing on video tape.” Reiley said that he never did uncover a clue as to where the money might be, but Mrs. Lucas did call him some time later and said that she hadn’t heard from her dead husband anymore.

THE BELL THAT WOULDN’T RING

Cindy and Chip Harper of the nearby town of Buchanan called Reiley one day and asked him to come to their house and rid them of the ghost of a woman named Louise, whom they said was a nuisance. “She” would steal the baby’s pacifier, turn lights on and off, start up appliances and things like that. When Reiley arrived, he found that Louise had been a teacher who had died in the house at about age eighty. He had an idea. Since Louise sometimes bothered the baby, he wrapped a doll in a blanket. He previously had tape recorded the voice of an infant crying. He played the tape over and over, and it apparently upset Louise, because the lights went on and off.

“I said if Louise is really still in this house, I’ll find her,” Reiley noted. He walked down a hallway and said that he entered a severe cold spot in front of the Harpers’ son’s room.

It was a hot day, and I walked right into that spot and then out of it. I figured this was where Louise hung out. Now, this is going to blow your mind. I asked for a bell. I thought since Louise had been a teacher, the bell would draw her out. So I walked down the hall toward that spot, ringing the bell as loud as I could.

Now this is where it really gets good. When I got to that cold spot, no sound came out of the bell! There was not even a tinkle, although I was shaking the bell as hard as I could. Then something grabbed my arm. It wouldn’t let me ring the bell. It got real cold. I thought I was having a heart attack! I got frightened. She had a strong hold, and when I finally got loose, even though it was icy cold, I was sweating.

Just as suddenly as the bell was silenced and Reiley’s arm was held, the grip loosened and the bell began ringing again. The cold spot evaporated. “I told the Harpers that Louise had been here, but she is gone now,” Reiley said. “They called me later and told me they hadn’t experienced her presence since. You see, ghosts are caught between two worlds. I try to find out the reason they are still here, and if you address that you can send them on. With Louise having been a teacher, for example, the bell was like a school bell and that’s what drew her out.”

THE LONELINESS OF JULIA

Several years ago, Reiley got a call from a woman in nearby Franklin County. She said that there was a ghost of a woman who lived in her house a long time ago. Reiley learned that the name of the spirit was Julia. She had lived in the house her entire life and had died when she was about eighty. As some point in her youth, Julia had fallen in love with a man of the sea. They were to be engaged, but after he left for a voyage, he never returned. Julia pined for him the rest of her life and apparently did after her death. Her ghost, the lady said, was still waiting for her lover’s return.

The manifestations were many. Julia’s apparition often descended the stairs in the late afternoon or early evening. Residents of the house both heard the footsteps and saw the figure. As her soft footsteps were heard, so, too, was the heavy tromping of booted feet coming up the walk outside the house. Julia would then seat herself at the dining room table, set with fancy cups and saucers. The trod outside was heard coming up the porch steps and approaching the front door. Then the sounds diminished, as if the “visitor” had disappeared. At this point, the image of Julia dematerialized.

Reiley checked out the house and found that a number of mirrors inside were broken. He attributed this to the fact that Julia was in the house by herself for a long time, and if she saw a fragment of a person (herself) in broken pieces, she wouldn’t feel alone. To reach this particular spirit, Reiley came up with an ingenious scheme. He decided to dress himself in a style and manner reminiscent of the 1880s, supposedly when Julia’s love affair took place. “I was going to dress up in an old sailor’s uniform and sing old sea songs, like ‘Blow the Man Down,’” Reiley recalled. “If the apparition saw and heard me, she might assume I was her missing lover, and this would complete her reason for staying here, and she could move on.”

Alas, however, Reiley never got the chance to try his theory out. At the last minute, the woman who had called him told him not to do it. Her husband and children had grown to like Julia’s ghost and were afraid that he would drive the spirit away.

THE “WHITE LADY” OF AVENEL

One of Virginia’s most famous ghost legends is about the “White Lady” of Avenel, a historic house in the town of Bedford. Avenel was built in 1836, and like so many others in the commonwealth, the name comes from a novel written by Sir Walter Scott (such as Ivanhoe). In Scott’s book The Monastery, he describes a most lively spirit, the White Lady of Avenel, who materializes at the site of a once majestic castle in Scotland. The White Lady’s alleged first appearance in America is said to have occurred at the Bedford home in 1906 and was witnessed by, among others, Peggy Ballard Maupin, who lived in the house for more than eighty years.

“When we first saw her,” Mrs. Maupin once said, “my mother and a whole crowd of us were at the end of the porch. It was about dusk when the White Lady walked up the lane that passed in front of the house. My mother said, ‘Do you see what I see,’ and just then the apparition disappeared in an old oak tree.” Mrs. Maupin added that she and several others witnessed the figure, but no one could explain it. The vision was described as being a very fashionably dressed woman, but in clothes of an earlier era. She was carrying a white parasol. Mrs. Maupin believed that the figure might have been that of Frannie Steptoe Burwell, who lived in the house generations ago.

John Reiley had another theory as to the origin of the spirit. He thought that it may well have been the original ghost that Sir Walter Scott wrote about in the early 1800s. “Scott wrote about a castle that actually existed in Scotland,” Reiley said. “And it was believed that when the house in Bedford was built, some of the bricks from that castle were imported. Could not the spirit of the White Lady have come with them?”

Armed with this novel idea, Reiley was invited one day several years ago to visit Avenel in Bedford in the hopes of resurrecting the ghost of the White Lady. He decided that his best chance of raising the spirit would be to read chants used in Scott’s book. So he went to the majestic tree (which he said was a magnolia tree, not an oak), the spot where the White Lady had vanished in the 1906 sighting.

Reiley said that just as he finished the chant lines, he felt a strange sensation, as if an unseen presence was there. He looked up. Shocked, he saw a huge magnolia pod from high in the tree falling straight at his head. He dodged, and the pod hit his foot. “Was that a sign from another world, or what?” he exclaimed. He took the pod home with him to Roanoke and put it in his freezer. He showed it to anyone who asked.

Three years later, Reiley went back to Avenel in Bedford to attend the wedding reception of a friend of his at the house. In the dark that evening, he went out to the same magnolia tree, picked up another pod and hid it. Later, as he was leaving, he went to retrieve the pod, but it had vanished.

A MOST FEARFUL ENCOUNTER

John Reiley was not afraid of ghosts. In fact, he found them most fascinating creatures. He would go anywhere, on a moment’s notice, in search of a spirit. But there was one time, in 1996, when he was terribly shaken by a harrowing experience at an old barn. He had been invited by the owner of a farm to visit what had been described as a “haunted barn.” He had not been told anything about the past history of the place. So, armed with his camcorder, he drove over to the abandoned plantation.

As he approached the barn, he said, “The back of my hair started coming up. I could feel a pressure I had never felt before. When I opened the door to the barn, an overwhelming odor nearly knocked me out.” When he passed through the dark doorway, he later told Roanoke Times staff writer Mike Allen, “I was so completely smothered, like something was trying to get inside of me, to take over my body. I could feel sort of moans and cries of pain. It was like some kind of unseen force was trying to take over me.” Reiley added that he had never been so scared in his life. “I had to think hard of pleasant things to get out of the grip of this evil spirit,” he said.

He didn’t wait around. He got out of the barn as fast as he could. Later, he contacted the owner and learned that when the plantation had been an active farm, in pre–Civil War days, the overseer had been cruel to the slaves there. He had beaten several slaves to death in the barn. When the owner found out about this, he was so incensed that he killed the overseer. “That is what I felt when I entered that barn,” Reiley said. “To this day, the restless spirits of the slaves still linger there. I won’t go back there. No sir!”

SOME MYSTERIES ENDURE

There are some cases that Reiley said may be unsolvable. “Let me tell you one that will knock your socks off,” he once said. “There is an old church, Mount Olive Church, in Ivanhoe, near Fort Chiswell, where in 1938 a woman was to get married there. The groom to be had just said his vows, and as the bride to be was about to say hers, the church doors suddenly sprang open, the wind blew out all the candles and the lights went out. It got dark quick. It took about five minutes to get the lights on again, and when they came on, the bride had vanished and was never seen again!”

THE GOLD EARRING

John Reiley was once given a photo of an old house on Maple Avenue in Roanoke, between Third Street and Franklin Avenue. It was taken by a local doctor. There supposedly was no one in the house at the time, but as the picture was being snapped, there appeared to be someone or something peering out an attic window. The doctor told Reiley that he then searched the house to see who it was, but there was no one there.

Reiley had the photo blown up and examined it carefully. “I believe it is the spirit of a large black woman, probably a nanny, who may have been a servant in the house long ago,” he said. “She is wearing a white turban and one gold earring. Now, I have done some research, and I found that it was common for such servants, and even slaves of an earlier time, to wear two gold earrings if they were married. However, if they were widowed or divorced, they were allowed to wear only one earring. The only other thing I can tell you about this picture is that there is a very sad expression on her face. I could tell this by looking through a powerful magnifying glass.”

DISPELLING A DARK RUMOR

In 2001, Tricia and Kelly Scott bought a century-old house on Oakland Boulevard in the northwest section of Roanoke on land formerly known as the Nininger estate. There had been some dark rumors about the house, and Tricia wanted to find out about them, so she called John ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Roanoke and Its Ghosts
• Roanoke’s Phantom Woman in Black
• Virginia’s Most Haunted Hotel
• Spirits Still Perking at the Coffee Pot
• Murder at the Mortician’s Mansion
• The Paranormal Wedding Dress
• Home but Not Alone
• Recollections of a Psychic Family
• Conversations with a Dead Man
• The Sad Ghosts of the Grandin Theatre
• Embodiments of Evil
• The Man Who Was Buried Standing Up
• The Man Who Was Buried Three Times
• The Ghost Buster of Roanoke
• The Paranormal Paintings of Eddie Maxwell
• Stark Fear Strikes the City
• Diary of a Haunted House
• Apparitions in Academia
• A Closure at the Alms House
• A Passel of Paranormal Vignettes
• Doc Pinkard’s Dark Secrets
• By the Grave’s Early Light
• A Host of Haunting Humor
• Cemetery Creepiness
• The Highwayman Who Saw the Light
• Watchdog of the Valley Frontier
• Fragments of Folklore
• The Last Public Hanging in Virginia
• The Little Rag Doll
• Bibliography
• About the Author