Williamsburg Ghost Tour

11. Governor's Palace

Williamsburg, VA

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The Home of the Colonial Governor, the Palace grounds served as an American hospital during the revolution and then later as a mass grave. When archeologists were surveying the area they came across over 150 skeletons and musket balls buried in the orchard. They found the musket balls with teeth marks in them, suggesting that to relieve the pain of amputations, surgeons had the soldiers bite hard into bullets. These men likely died a painful death in the makeshift hospital and were quickly buried right next to it. If you look at the third floor window you may see a lantern passing in front of it, likely that of a surgeon or guard stationed in the hospital, or even one of the soldiers who died of excruciating wounds or make-shift surgeries. The winding hedge maze behind the wall of the governor's palace is said to be inhabited by the spirit of the young woman brutally murdered in the early 1920s. Just several years after women were first admitted to the College of William and Mary, in 1918, a young student was strolling by the mansion with her sweetheart. Feeling adventurous, the couple decided to jump the wall and explore the hedge maze that lay beyond. The young man generously offered to boost his date over the wall first, but as he was following seconds later, his climb was interrupted by an earsplitting scream. Scrambling over, he laid eyes on his beloved, bleeding to her death from a large gash in her neck. Standing over her was a crazed looking man holding a blood-stained scythe, a great curved sword used for reaping wheat. Then suddenly, the murderer turned and rushed off into the hedge maze, never to be seen again. It is believed that the man was an escaped mental patient of Eastern State Medical Hospital, located just several miles from this spot. He was never captured, and his gruesome weapon of choice was never found. It is said now that as you walk down the path you are never to turn around for any sound, for if you do the Mental patient is waiting with his scythe to kill you. Source: iTour