Does stone absorb memories? Ask anyone who lives near a castle. Many times the residue of misdeeds and human drama are
imprinted
upon the stone face, making it possible to playback visions of the
past,
what we know as hauntings. Such is the case for Ft. Monroe,
Virginia,
where the infamous and the innocent are found. This moated
heptagonal stone fort faces the Chesapeake Bay on three sides, the
water
making escape remote and the isolation of its prisoners complete.
It’s lonely casemates held one of the most illustrious prisoners of the
Civil War, the President of the Confederate States, Jefferson
Davis.
Brought here in shackles after the war, Davis slowly grew weak within
its
walls. His wife, Varina, followed him here and pleaded to have
him
removed from the cell to a private apartment to die in peace.
Both
of their ghosts can be found at Ft. Monroe still, Davis in his cell and
Varina is sometimes found gazing from a bedroom window
What’s a good haunting without a good love story?
Camille Kirtz,
or the “Light Lady,” was murdered by her husband on Matthew Lane within
the fort. While meeting her French lover, Camille’s secret was
discovered
by her much older husband. Hot-blooded and fast-acting, Camille’s
husband shot at the pair, intending to wound the man but killing his
wife
instead. The Frenchman ran off and Camille now wanders “Ghost
Alley”
and a nearby copse of oak trees searching for her lover in vain.
She has been seen many times since the Civil War as a radiant mist in
the
form of a woman. Children have also found a home within these
walls,
serious illness was a fact of life in the early days of our nation, and
many children did not live to see their tenth birthdays. Their
innocent
spirits are often trapped within the walls that sheltered them in life,
as they unknowingly continue their journey after death. Two small
boys have been reported at the fort, one in the upstairs of an old
house
next to the moat wall and the other in the basement of an enlisted
man’s
home. The latter child sometimes seeks out other children to play
with when they visit the house, ghosts get lonely too…
|