Colonial Williamsburg. It’s very much a town out of time. Those who visit will be greeted with brick buildings, reenactors dressed in colonial period clothing, and plenty of natural scenery that highlights how thoroughly unmodern this Virginian city really is.
In fact, the City of Williamsburg and the College of William and Mary that lies within it actually predate America itself, having been established by royal charter all the way back in the 1600s.
One of the most famous (and possibly most haunted) pre-American buildings in Williamsburg is the Wren Building. It has stood for longer than anybody in the United States has been alive and remains a fascinating tourist attraction for both colonial tourists and ghost hunters.
It has a rich history, which you can read about in detail in our blog post below. However, if you’d like to visit Williamsburg in person and see colonial ghosts, be sure to check out our in-person ghost tour with Colonial Ghosts.
Who Haunts the Wren Building?
But just who haunts the Wren Building? The answer to that may lie in the crypt below the building. Before the Wren became known as a hallowed hall of education, it served a number of purposes, including a chapel and a graveyard. Read on to see just who may have been buried here and which of those bodies may still be lurking about outside their graves.
The Wren Building History
The Sir Christopher Wren Building, as we mentioned above, is extremely old. In fact, it’s not only the oldest building at the vaunted College of William and Mary – it’s actually the oldest still-standing college building in all of America. It was built in 1695, a couple of years after William and Mary had been royally chartered, and was initially designed as the college.
Back in colonial times, colleges were much smaller institutions – physically anyway – than they are today, and the Wren Building was built essentially to serve as the College of William and Mary. According to its royal charter by King William and Queen Mary, naturally, the Wren Building was to serve as “a certain Place of universal Study, a perpetual College of Divinity, Philosophy, Languages, and other good Arts and Sciences, consisting of one President, six Masters or Professors, and a hundred Scholars more or less.”
Lofty ambitions for just one building, but its huge size and good construction helped it serve various functions until new buildings came to supplant it. Its quality craftsmanship would go on to serve it well, as the Wren Building has a curious habit – some call it a curse – of burning down.
The first fire was in 1705 and came from an accidental fire of unknown origin that started in the basement. The second time was in 1859 and was another accident although, this time, the reconstruction included an Italian redesign. The third and final fire was deliberate and occurred in 1862, as advancing Union troops set fire to the Wren Building during the Civil War. Again, it was rebuilt and, as with the other rebuild attempts, used the exterior walls that have inexplicably survived throughout all these fires and centuries.
Notable Hauntings
Whether it was a curse or not, the fires may be seen as an omen of ghosts to come. For one reason or another, the strange and the mysterious have a habit of meeting at the Wren Building. Of course, some of this has manifested into ghost sightings over the years, with many students, professors, workers, and tourists having seen some equally unexplainable things.
The most common sightings seem to be of ghost soldiers wandering the halls of the Wren Building after hours. They appear to have lost the discipline the army instilled in them, as their single-file marching has been replaced by slow shambling and occasional screams at those who dare to mock them.
Their presence would have some historical precedent, as the Wren Building served as a wartime field hospital during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. This might explain why people who have spotted these ghosts have differing accounts of what their uniforms look like – these ghosts are from multiple different wars. It might also explain why they tend to keep to themselves and not organize themselves into units – all the ghosts are from different time periods entirely. That would probably make conversation a bit difficult!
There’s a chance these ghostly soldiers explain another reported phenomenon at the Wren Building—the mysterious footsteps that echo across its corridors. Perhaps these are the ghostly soldiers, aimlessly roaming the places they did when they were alive. Or maybe this is another ghost entirely, more sure of its footing and with more purpose than the wandering troops.
A Haunted Crypt?
With all the ghosts that haunt the Wren Building, one might easily mistake it for a graveyard—one of the few places on Earth that typically hosts such a high concentration of phantasms. And that assumption would be correct as the Wren Building actually is a graveyard.
Or, more specifically, a crypt. Underneath the brick walls and academic buildings (yes, some of the classrooms in the Wren Building are still in use today as lecture halls) lies a resting place for some of early Virginia’s most important citizens.
These include some names that will be familiar to those who study the colonial period of Virginian history, such as Sir John Randolph and his son Peyton, Bishop James Madison, and Lord Botetourt. These men not only made their mark on Virginia’s history but also upon William and Mary, as several academic buildings and structures across campus are named after them.
The crypts are usually inaccessible to the public, but rumor has it that if one enters the steam tunnels underneath William and Mary’s Sunken Gardens, you can find your way into the crypts. Of course, that does involve navigating the labyrinthian maze the tunnels make. More than a few fraternity pledges and eager-to-impress freshmen have entered those tunnels to seek out the crypts. But whether any of them have succeeded and found the true source of the ghosts that haunt the Wren is anyone’s guess.
Haunted Williamsburg
Thus concludes the tale of the haunted Wren Building inside the equally haunted Williamsburg, Virginia. Beneath all of the colonial history and bricky coziness lays more than a few different haunted tales.
From sacred skeletons to blazing infernos caused by battles to haunted Founding Fathers, the cryptic crypt of the Wren Building houses many secrets and many ghosts. To this very day, students continue to report seeing these ghosts pop up.
Sometimes, they provide assistance, like giving directions to lost freshmen, but sometimes, they’re known to be a bit more intimidating, like when they scare off trespassing students trying to fulfill a dare late at night.
Whatever their motivations and moods may be on a given day, it seems clear that these ghosts aren’t going anywhere and will continue to call the Wren Building home for the foreseeable future. If you’d like to tour haunted Williamsburg and learn more about other ghost stories of Virginia, take our in-person ghost tour with Colonial Ghosts.
And, as always, keep following us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for our always-updating list of American haunted buildings, ghost stories, and tours! Keep reading our blog for more real Virginia hauntings.
Sources:
https://www.wm.edu/about/history/historiccampus/wrenbuilding/
https://magazine.wm.edu/online-exclusives/halloween-2019.php
https://www.flathatmagazine.com/blog/i-went-on-a-ghost-tour-so-you-dont-have-to
https://www.wm.edu/about/history/historiccampus/plan-your-event/weddings/guests/history/