Ghosts at Henricus? Who would have guessed? I’ve sat for a hundred hours to date, signing books on the bluff at Henricus for Publick Days. Knowing this was a recreated settlement, I had never considered (although perhaps should have) that the site might be haunted.

Now, whether you believe in ghosts or not, as we near Halloween, I’ll tell you about the ghosts of today’s Henricus.

Do I believe in ghosts? If you’ve ever had the disquieting experience of seeing such a thing, you (1) never forget it and (2) never doubt it again. Although I’ve had many ghost experiences personally, I’ve only actually seen two. Once I saw a ghostly white figure move from room to room in the empty plantation house at Berkeley. I was a tour guide closing up one dark winter evening. (Funny how quickly you can close up a big house when you suddenly realize you’re in a hurry to get out!)

As for Henricus, I was doing a signing this past September when the author of several ghost books approached me. “You do know this place is haunted, don’t you?”

I looked around—bright and sunny, cheerful, children running to see the river. Haunted? Really?

She told me that she herself had seen a seventeenth century gentleman in breeches. She then told me about a paranormal investigation at Henricus which would take place toward the end of October. It would culminate in a chance to sleep in Mount Malady (the recreated hospital) overnight. I was hooked.

My daughter Sarah, my son Mike, and Sarah’s boyfriend Dale decided to come along. The first experience I had occurred before the paranormal investigation had even started. I was standing near my usual signing spot on the bluff. An interpreter was telling an old ghost story. As I listened, I saw another interpreter standing off to the side. “There’s Captain Argall,” I whispered to my daughter, who was standing behind me. Captain Argall, of course, being the person the interpreter portrayed. A moment went by. Suddenly, to my left and behind me, I heard a voice whisper, “Connie!”

I turned around, startled. Was it my daughter? One look told me no. Besides, she wouldn’t call me by my first name. No one else seemed to hear it. It left me wondering: if I know many of these old settlers’ names, spending (so far) fourteen years researching their lives and stories, do they also know me? Who called my name at Henricus?

One of the directors told us an intriguing story. During the middle of the day, he was giving a tour in the corps de garde (the recreated soldiers’ quarters.) The corps de garde is a small house, just one room large. The director was facing a window giving his tour when suddenly a woman with a classic round English or Dutch face walked past the window. He saw her for a good four of five seconds, solid as could be, wearing earth tons of green and brown.

The director knew she wasn’t one of his interpreters, so he quickly looked out the door. There was no sign of an interpreter—or of a seventeenth century ghost, for that matter. “Did you see that?” he asked the tourists. No, they said. They had been facing the director, not the window. “And that,” the director told me, “changed my relationship with this settlement forever.”

In another house, investigators and staff told us they frequently hear children playing. And in the planter’s house, apparently, lives a female spirit and her two children, a girl aged about fourteen and a boy about eight. Their voices turn up on recordings, and Zach, one of the paranormal investigators, told of many a strange evening spent in that little home.

Back at the corps de garde, I stepped just inside the door and felt a strange presence. I won’t deny it. “This ghost doesn’t like electronic equipment,” Zach warned me as he stood outside, peering through the door.

The hour was about three a.m., eerie even if you aren’t standing alone inside a dark, recreated seventeenth century soldiers’ quarters! “What’s your name?” I called out. Did I expect an answer? I don’t know. It was just an impulse.

I felt something pushing me away. My feet were planted firmly, but the rest of me was somehow leaning awkwardly backward.

“I don’t think he wants us here,” Zach said. This was curious, as I hadn’t told him about being pushed.

I straightened and almost immediately felt myself leaning backward again. Hmm.

“Now I see a face just in front of you,” Zach said. “He’s an old soldier with a white beard.”

“Do you have a Van dyke?” I asked the soldier. Van dykes were what the folks of the time called that particular style of beard. Zach was young. I wondered if he even knew that this was the style, yet he had described it.

Curious, Zach asked me, “You asked his name. What did you get?”

“It probably doesn’t mean anything,” I replied because indeed, a name had popped into my mind. The name was Walter. Now, in both Dark Enough to See the Stars and When the Moon Has No More Silver, there’s an old soldier named Walter. Walter befriends Joan and Tempie the day he buries…. Well, I won’t tell you exactly, in case you haven’t read the book. But Walter does make a kind gesture in the midst of a Starving Time. And during the settlers’ move to Henricus, Walter again tries to help Joan and Tempie.

Zach didn’t know anything about my books. I’m not even sure he knew I’d authored them. He and I were standing alone at the far end of the settlement.

“I felt the name ‘Walter,’” I said at last.

Zach jumped back, visibly startled. “I got the name Walter, too!”

“You did?”

Then I stopped and pondered. I had spent a good deal of time researching my books at Henricus. Why had I named the old soldier Walter? I just remember that name had popped into my head, the same way it had popped into it tonight.

Women and children and old soldier named Walter. Henricus was sounding very much like my books…. Or maybe, my books were sounding very much like Henricus!