Virginia

Historic, haunted, chilling tales of the town of Richmond as told by one of Virginia's most respected paranormal investigators!

With over four hundred years of history, Richmond abounds with ghostly tales and ghastly deeds from the past. Step into the shadows and take a tour of thirteen of Richmond's most haunted sites. Visit Church Hill, home of the famous St. John's Church, and discover the events that led to the tragic tunnel collapse of 1925.

Discover the long-forgotten Civil Warhospitals of Shockoe Bottom, where hundreds of wounded soldiers met their end. Feel the icy chill at the bottom of a staircase where a young apprentice was murdered in cold blood by his jealous master in 1826.

These stories and more await as you discover the mysterious, tragic and terrifying events of Richmond's dark past.""

From seaport pubs to international cuisine, Alexandria's culinary history runs deep.

George Washington danced in the ballroom of Gadsby's Tavern, an Old Town landmark. The Royal Restaurant hung its first shingle a century ago where Market Square is today. Chadwick's has survived fire and flood in its home on the Potomac riverfront. The storefront of legendary Shuman's Bakery may be closed, but the latest generation continues to serve the famous jelly cake to loyal locals. Journalist Hope Nelson curates this tasting menu of some of Alexandria's favorite restaurants, watering holes and breweries - past and present.

Explore the historic streetscapes of Leesburg, Virginia, and how they've changed over time.

Established in 1758, Leesburg experienced steady growth in its first 200 years, blossoming from a small crossroads community into a thriving commercial, agricultural, social, and government center. Comparing historic images from the Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg Planning Department, Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority and Loudoun Museum with current views of the town, Leesburg resident and preservation planner Annie Laurie McDonald explores the town's historic streetscapes and how they have changed over time in response to growth throughout the Northern Virginia region.

While the Salem witch trials get the most notoriety, Virginia's witchcraft history dates back many years before that.

Colonial Virginians shared a common belief in the supernatural with their northern neighbors. While the witchcraft mania that swept through Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 was significant, fascination with it has tended to overshadow the historical records of other persecutions throughout early America. The 1626 case of Joan Wright, the first woman to be accused of witchcraft in British North America, began Virginia's own witch craze. Utilizing surviving records, author, local historian and Emmy Award-winning screenwriter Carson Hudson narrates these fascinating stories.

Richmond is a classic Southern city, most notable as the Confederate capitol. However, the irony of Richmond is that much of its beautiful architecture was built by Black laborers.

The city's vast and varied collection of architecture provides an archive of African American history, both of enslaved and free peoples. Author Selden Richardson explains how iconic symbols of old Richmond and the generations of Black laborers who helped assemble it are embodied in both the preserved and the forgotten architecture of the city. After you finish this book, it will be as if the buildings in Richmond tell their own stories to you.

The Chesapeake Bay has been a multifaceted engine of American history and commerce since its first settlers touched the shore in the early 1600s.

Since English settlers first touched the shore of the new country in 1607, the Chesapeake Bay has been a multifaceted engine of American history and commerce. The body of inland tidal water between the largest bay cities, Norfolk and Baltimore, was large enough to be the setting of adventure and close enough to allow smaller towns and cities to grow up on its shores. The common community came to life with the technologies of steamboats that could cover the long distances between North and South relatively quickly. Steamers filled in the nooks and crannies of the bay's geography, and by the mid-19th century, the skies over the bay were lined with dark, waterborne contrails in all directions. Strong machines built to master rough seas while moving gently enough for small harbors, many steamers had life spans that crossed whole eras in American history.

Some were drafted into distinguished service in domestic and foreign wars. The steamers plied the bay and its rivers with a feminine grace well into the mid-20th century, when they were overtaken by the rush of modern times. The last steamer sailed into oblivion exactly 150 years after the first of them appeared in Baltimore harbor.

Author and former Miller & Rhoads Snow Queen Donna Strother Deekens recounts the amazing history of the Real Santa.

After the turn of the 20th century, young Bill Strother left the tobacco farms of North Carolina to make a living climbing buildings. He became known as the ""Human Spider,"" scaling countless structures across the nation. Yet this was just a prelude to his true calling as the Santa Claus at Richmond's famed Miller & Rhoads department store. As department stores everywhere reached their golden age, Strother became one of the most beloved and sought-after Santas in the nation.

The Confederacy's lynchpin in the Shenandoah Valley, Winchester was the most disputed town of the Civil War.

As control of Winchester shifted between North and South more than seventy-five times, civilians coped with skirmishes in the streets, wracking disease and makeshift hospitals in their homes and churches. Out of this turmoil emerged heroes such as Angel of the BattlefieldTillie Russell, doctor turned soldier John Henry S. Funk and courageous mother and nurse Cornelia McDonald.

Historian Jerry W. Holsworth uses diaries and letters to reveal an intimate portrait of this war torn community, the celebrated Stonewall Brigade, its many occupations, as well as the indomitable women who inspired legend.

Each year, thousands of visitors visit Colonial Williamsburg to learn about the past and walk where the Founding Fathers walked.

The fact that the same ground was later soaked with the tears and blood of their children and grandchildren during our tragic Civil War is frequently forgotten. In this expanded and revised version of Yankees in the Streets: Forgotten People and Stories of Civil War Williamsburg, local historian Carson Hudson tells the stories of this hallowed ground and the people who walked it.

Under the Clock documents the fascinating historical chain of department stores Miller & Rhoads through its many transformations.

Under the Clock tells the story of Miller & Rhoads, from its incarnation as a little dry goods store in 1885 through more than a century as a beloved Richmond landmark. Earle Dunford, longtime city editor for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and George Bryson, a Miller & Rhoads veteran for thirty-nine years, usher us behind the scenes at the famous department store, sharing anecdotes they have collected from the many devoted shoppers and loyal employees who remember the good old days at Miller & Rhoads. Meet them ""under the clock"" to read about the famous Tea Room, Book and Author Dinners, fashion shows, Sara Sue hats, Christmastime with Santa Claus and countless other memories of a bygone era in shopping.

A collection of hidden tales that explore George Washington's home base of Northern Virginia.

Had General George Washington lived anywhere other than Mount Vernon, Virginia, Washington, D.C., might not exist. In this exciting collection of hidden tales from Northern Virginia, author Charles Mills highlights the important role that this region played in our nation's history from colonial to modern times. Read about the Rebel blockade of the Potomac River, the imprisonment of German POWs at super-secret Fort Hunt during World War II and the building of the Pentagon on the same site and in the same configuration as Civil War, era Fort Runyon. Meet Annandale's "bunny man," who inspired one of the country's wildest and scariest urban legends; learn about the slaves in Alexandria's notorious slave pens; and witness suffragists being dragged from the White House lawn and imprisoned in the Occoquan workhouse. Mills masterfully relates these and other colorful tales of the people and events that left their imprints on Northern Virginia and the nation.

The lesser-known tales of the personalities who shaped the capital's past are unearthed from the archives by Richmond Guide writer Walter S. Griggs Jr.

The course of Richmond's history as it emerged from the Civil War as a bustling economic powerhouse is well recorded. Yet there are some stories that have all but vanished from recollection. From the hushed whispers of an entire congregation as Robert E. Lee prayed with a slave at communion to the donation of over two hundred pigeons by fellow Richmonders to serve the war effort, these are lost vignettes of Richmond. Travel with Griggs to the bygone days of the twentieth century to test-drive the first successful automobile manufactured in Richmond, the Kline Kar, or witness the first airplane to fly over Richmond, the Gold Bug soaring over the Diamond. Hidden History of Richmond is a fascinating collection that reveals the city's forgotten but most remarkable histories.

Compiled for the first time in this volume, this selection of articles by Harry Kollatz Jr. sheds light Richmond's lesser-known history.

Richmond, Virginia's beautiful capital on the James River, has seen more than its fair share of history. Although it is probably best known as the site of one of the first English settlements in America and its role as the Confederate capitol in the Civil War, the city's past has much more to offer. Since 1992, Harry Kollatz Jr. has been recording the lesser-known heritage of Virginia's Holy City in his "Richmond Flashbacks" column in Richmond magazine. From the inauguration of the world's first practical electric trolley system an early Civil Rights activists, to a psychic horse and a wild ride on a sturgeon, he has covered it all.

Replete with the bizarre behavior of elevators, the numerous deaths of inhabitants and paranormal sightings by a writer in residence.

""Mayflower Apartments,"" represents just one of the extraordinary tales that Al Chewning documents in his latest book. By delving into the creepy, unexplored avenues of Virginia Beach's past, Chewning entrances the reader with the spectral details of Blackbeard's buried treasure, a deadly stretch of road inexplicably responsible for eighty-nine fatalities in the past thirty years and the untimely death of a military wife, devilishly titled ""Don't Make Mom Mad""--just to name a few.

In a collection of forty stories gleaned from newspapers and personal interviews, Chewning sheds an eerie light on the prosperous tourist hot spot that is welcoming by day, otherworldly by night. A long-time resident of the Virginia Beach area and the owner of Ghost Tours of Virginia Beach, the author tells not only of reported sightings but also of his own spectral encounters.

From a ""wailing woman"" in the old Coast Guard Station to supernatural activity provoked by the association of two friends, Chewning offers up spine-tingling apparitional tales that will shock and delight visitors and locals alike.