“I think we’ve overstayed our welcome,” I said half-jokingly, and got in the car. We drove through the bridge, back up Colchester Road, and then home.
Other than the feeling of disquiet I had at the very end of our visit to Bunny Man Bridge, I did not get a sense that the site was much more than a place for kids to toke up and for cops to keep an eye on. So when I got home around 11:30 and downloaded my photos, I did not expect that any of them would reveal anything out of the ordinary. And on that account, I was very wrong.
Of the fifty-four pictures I took, more than twenty were simply black, revealing nothing, and about half of the others looked as if they had some merit. Two, however, were significant.
One, taken from the north end of the tunnel, showed at the left of the entrance a very clear, solid-looking, pale blue-green orb of the sort that is frequently taken by ghosthunters to be a manifestation of spiritual energy.
The other was even stranger. It was that last shot I had taken from the south end of the tunnel and showed a whole array of orbs in a variety of sizes that looked as if they were converging on the spot where I was standing. Most of these electronic phenomena were not very resilient, and when I zoomed in on them too much they broke up and became indistinguishable from foliage and other background elements: I probably would have just dismissed them as drops of moisture on my lens if any of my other shots had displayed similar effects. One of them, however, looked very strange to me and was, in fact, unlike any other sort of orb I had ever seen, and so like something else that it made me shudder. I resolved to show it to my wife the next day to see if she would see the same thing I had.
The following day, I asked Diane to take a look at the two images in which I had picked up the anomalies.
“That’s an orb,” she said confidently after scanning the first image and quickly spotting the detail in question. She moved on to the other one, noting the odd, pale orbs and then focusing on the one that had caught my attention.
“It’s a face!” she said, and that shudder ran across my back again, tingling even my face and scalp. And that is, in fact, what it looked like. More substantial than the others, it appeared to be about ten or twelve feet off the ground and to be about the size of a human head. When we zoomed in on it just enough—but not so much it began to pixilate—it looked like a small, pallid face, complete with eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.
Since then, I have opened that photo a few more times, but not often. That is because it bothers me to look at it and because it seems to me that something—the Bunny Man, or whatever it is that haunts that bridge so close to my home—had, in fact, apparently come in answer to our summons and made its presence known to us.
CHAPTER 3
Gadsby’s Tavern
ALEXANDRIA
To the memory of a Female Stranger, whose mortal suffering terminated on the 4th day of October, 1816.
This stone is erected by her disconsolate husband in whose arms she sighed out her latest breath, and who under God did his utmost to soothe the cold dull hour of death.
How loved, how honor’d once avails the not, to whom related or by whom begot, a heap of dust remains of thee ’tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be.
—Inscription on a tombstone in St. Paul’s Cemetery, Alexandria
ESTABLISHED AROUND 1785, Gadsby’s Tavern has been a quintessential Alexandria watering hole throughout most of U.S. history. And, as with most places over a certain age, it has a number of ghost stories associated with it and is one of the stops on local ghost tours.
Today, Alexandria is probably most distinguished as the home of more trade, professional, and nonprofit associations than any other city in the country, with the possible exception of nearby Washington, D.C., which is located just across the Potomac River. In the early years of the republic, however, especially prior to the founding of the capitol city, Alexandria was a vibrant port city, and Gadsby’s Tavern played host to many of the most important people in the country. George Washington celebrated his birthday at the tavern in 1797 and 1798; Thomas Jefferson held his inaugural banquet there in 1801; and the tavern served as a hub of political, business, and social interaction for many years.
Ironically, despite having lived less than seventeen miles from the tavern for more than two decades, I never found an opportunity to visit it before I started writing this book. Not until a cool, gloomy day in March 2008, after attending a luncheon in Old Town, did I actually ask for directions to the place and walk the four blocks to it from where I had been conducting my other business.
Gadsby’s Tavern consists of two separate buildings and two separate establishments. One is a museum, located in an older, two-story building, and the other a restaurant, located on the ground floor of a three-story building built as an expansion to the original structure in 1792 (at the time dubbed the City Tavern and Hotel). Having just come from a dry event, my inclination was to visit the latter.
A number of stories about incorporeal spirits, rather than the liquid ones it has traditionally served, have developed about Gadsby’s Tavern, and I had heard a number of them over the years. The most famous involves a beautiful young woman who died at the establishment nearly two hundred years ago and whose specter is sometimes purportedly still seen there.
As a common version of the story goes, the young woman and her husband arrived at the port of Alexandria in October 1816 from points unknown. She was very ill and was taken to Gadsby’s Tavern, where she received treatment from a doctor and a number of nurses. Despite their best efforts, however, she died on October 14. For reasons still unknown, her husband made everyone they had dealt with swear that they would never reveal her identity, had her buried in nearby St. Paul’s Cemetery beneath a nameless tombstone, and, soon after disappeared without paying any of his bills, including $1,500 for the stone.
Since then, visitors have reported seeing the ghost of the “female stranger” standing near her headstone, wandering the halls of Gadsby’s Tavern, or peering out its windows while holding a candle (and, possibly, awaiting the return of her apparently deadbeat husband). Explanations for who she is have included the ward of an aging English aristocrat who was accidentally slain by her lover, with whom she fled to America; the daughter of Aaron Burr, who gunned down Alexander Hamilton in a duel; and an orphan, separated from her three siblings at a young age, who inadvertently married her brother. Die nameless and leave bills behind and, specifics aside, the stories about you are pretty sure to be sordid.
Other ghost stories associated with the tavern are fairly typical of those associated with haunted sites in general, and include candles or lanterns that appear to be burning, but, upon examination, have not been recently lit.
Glancing at the upper-story windows of the buildings as I approached them, I did not see anything out of the ordinary.
The first thing I learned upon being greeted inside the entrance to the restaurant by a distinguished-looking older gentleman is that it is no longer traditional to drop in off the street for just a cold one at the tavern—the norm being to partake of a meal as well—and that I would be better served for those purposes at a nearby Irish pub (of course!). Upon seeing my disappointment, however, he graciously relented, showed me to a two-person table in the dining room, and asked his waiter to bring me a beer.
Gadsby’s Tavern and Museum
“Are you the manager?” I asked him.
“Sometimes,” he replied somewhat cagily (demonstrating a dry sense of humor that was revealed when I eventually obtained his business card and read upon it the title “General Manager”), and introduced himself as Paul Carbé. I introduced myself and briefly explained my interest in his establishment.
“Oh,