Williamsburg Ghost Tour

3. Brafferton House

Williamsburg, VA

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Built as a school to educate the sons of Native Americans in Virginia, the building has stood the test of time, being the oldest still standing building at the College. The Indian school was built in response to the first Indian massacre on March 22 in 1622 to help assimilate Indians into English culture. Called the "Indian College," life was terrible for the boys who were sent to the school. Held against their will, forced to forget about their old life, and exposed to diseases which they had no immunity against, the boys were often abused. The boys started to escape their miserable lives, so the school was locked at night. Some say that if you listen closely, you can still here the quiet sound of hands attempting to soundlessly force the locked door open from the inside. The haunting of the Brafferton includes one Native American boy who promised his father that he would complete his schooling and return to his tribe. But he was miserable, and missed his freedom. He loved to run and would sneak out of his third floor window using a rope he had kept hidden under the mat of rags he slept on. He would always return after his long runs, but one night he was missing, his rope hanging out the window. His lifeless body was found in a ditch the next morning. No one knows how he died, it could have been a gunshot wound, exhaustion, or illness, as he ran through campus late at night. Students often share stories of seeing the spirit of the boy running through campus. The third floor of the house is used as storage space, but college staff and administrators still report-hearing sounds of running footsteps above them in the unoccupied third floor where the Indian boys would sleep. Some still hear young, faint voices, chanting, and moaning. One guest of the college that slept on the third floor in the 1970s heard these sounds and claims to have been woken up by the sound of a tom-tom drum beating for nearly two minutes during the middle of the night as he lay in bed terrified. Sources: http://www.theshadowlands.net/places/virginia.htm and Penguin Press, Jackie Eileen Behrend The Hauntings of Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown: http://www.amazon.com/The-Hauntings-Williamsburg-Yorktown-Jamestown/dp/0895872102 and http://www.paranormalsearchers.com/2009/08/college-of-william-and-marys-ghosts.html and http://delayedreactionlounge.blogspot.com/2012/04/ghosts-of-william-and-mary.html and http://www.examiner.com/article/even-more-campus-ghost-stories-william-mary-gmu-and-georgetown