Description:

Transcript:

The following interview discusses ghost activity in the George Wythe House, former Williamsburg home of George Wythe. George Wythe Was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, first law professor, and friend and mentor to Thomas Jefferson. Watch this interview to learn of some of the Wythe House’s hauntings.

I’ll be man enough to admit there are certain buildings I was very uncomfortable going in. The George Wythe House was the one that myself and one of the guys that still works there, a buddy of mine who is now in Newport News PD, we’re in there one night, it was slow, summertime. Decided to some ghost hunting of our own.

On the second floor we heard the air conditioning unit kick on. Couple minutes later we heard down on the floor below us a lady singing. She was just as happy as could be. I wish I could tell you what she was singing. We don’t know, but she had a beautiful voice, very melodic. We’re up there and we stood for about two to three minutes listening to her sing and then slowly faded out. It wasn’t scary; that one was actually kind of peaceful and as crazy as it may sound, but it probably would have been scary if I had been there by myself, but with two others, three of us in total it was actually pretty neat.

I have had times where I cannot get in the building, literally could not get the door to open. I called my one lieutenant up one night there. I showed him what key, turned, not opening. He goes let me try, boom, door pops right open. He has had experiences in there too.

The Wythe House, the only one that I can share with you that I was there first hand on, and I have no explanation for what happened. Employees came into work that morning, they accessed their break room through the lower bulk head door into a basement area. As far as they went in the rest of the building , they had to do it through one of the main doors upstairs on the backside, which is their primary entrance.

The front door always has a piece of wood across it for whatever reason, the way it was designed. The doors are very secure; it’s just like that extra piece of security I guess they had back in the day. The doors are locked going downstairs so if someone were dumb enough to try to break into that building and get into the basement, as far as they’re going to get is the basement. They’re not going to be able to get into the rest of the house.

One, the locks they had back then are better than some nowadays. Two, there’s a thumb bolt lock at the bottom; push it across. You’re not going to kick those doors, you’re not going to break them open. Well, that one particular Sunday morning they could not get in the backdoor of the house. We tried everything to get in, the door was locked.

Called a buddy of ours from maintenance that happened to be working there that day. He came up there and he goes there’s nothing wrong with the door he goes, but I don’t know why it’s not able to be open. Well, when I left him there he was getting ready to, he knew a window because he told me later and I couldn’t stick around then to find out the whole story because near the end of our shift. He had had one time to him about thirty years prior, he goes I knew which window I could get, popped the pin out and access.

He said I went in there, and the same thing had happened that day that happened thirty years earlier. I said that was? He goes the door on the inside of the main entrance door was not only locked, the thumb bolt had been engaged. Now these thumb bolts are not going to accidentally engage when you close the door. They’re tight enough on the tension that they have to give a little force to push into it; it’s another form like a deadbolt nowadays.

The door leading downstairs was completely locked, thumb bolt engaged as normal. The main entry door had been locked with the thumb bolt engaged. The problem is that’s the door at night time when they lock the building up that they exit. There’s no way you can push the thumb bolt from the outside. It can only be done from the inside and again it was checked. It was working properly; there was no malfunction and there was no physical way when you close that door for that thumb bolt to slide over.