If I Don't Make It To Heaven, Let It Be One of Hef's Mansions

Richmond, Virginia has more ghosts per capita than any other city in the country. I don’t know why spirits like to hang around here the way they do. It could be because Virginians can be a bit snooty, and they’d rather hang around with their own kind as opposed to being in the company a bunch of no fun boorish Yankees in heaven. That, of course is assuming that Yankees go to heaven. I’ll have to check with my vicar to see if this is true. I am not sure they have spoonbread in heaven,  and if they serve the type of ham that comes in a can, I’m not sure I want to go there either.

Saturday, I went to a pig roast up in Church Hill. This is an antebellum part of town, old houses and cobblestone streets and where Patrick Henry gave his “Give Me Liberty” speech. My friend Betty invited me over for a post pig roast get together. She lives around the corner from the Sus Domesticus festival in a beautiful old house overlooking the James River. It’s common practice around here, especially in a house like Betty’s to ask if she has a ghost. It would be unusual not to have one, and indeed all the handful of guests chimed in about the ghosts in their houses. When I travel to New York or Southern California and bring up the subject of ghosts people look at me like I’m crazy, but brother, let me tell you, they’re thick as fleas around here.

In every house I’ve lived in Richmond, I knew the family that lived there generations before. In some instances, I knew their ghosts. My next-door neighbors, the McVeys lived in a beautiful limestone house on Monument Avenue. It looked like something one would see on St. James Square in London. Miss Bessie Hopson was their ghost. She was a very good friend of my grandmother’s who was born in 1888. There’s something very comforting about not only knowing generations of families that lived in your house, but also knowing their ghosts.

I grew up in a house that dated to 1678 with a broad view of the Rappahannock River. The Royal Navy shelled it during the War of 1812. I don’t know what we did to piss the Limeys off, but I guess one of my smart-ass ancestors said something disparaging about the Brits’ dental hygiene or bad food. Dad always called our ghost Captain Belfield. He was a harmless bloke, and I must say it was somewhat comforting having him around.

Speaking of Brits, a dozen years ago I lived in a house at the end of Wilton Road with a view of the James River. It was a handsome English Flemish Bond brick structure and was built in the 30s to emulate one of the James River plantation houses east of Richmond. There was a malevolent force in that house. I was recently divorced and wanted a happy home for my kids. One side of the house had a back staircase going up to a suite of rooms upstairs. They were perfect for Coleman, my 13-year-old son, but he would never sleep in his bedroom there. Finally, I asked him why,  and he said “there’s something bad in that room Dad.” Coleman has certain gifts of discernment that I don’t have, so I believed him. Two weeks later, a grandchild of the family that lived there for 65 years dropped by to see the house. As we were ascending the back staircase, he mentioned the “haunted room.” He was a writer, and mentioned that he used it as an office, but he could never stay in the room past 4:30 pm. Both my girls avoided that part of the house and to this day are a bit freaked out thinking about it. Benedict Arnold, leading British troops, came to Richmond in early 1781. It was not our finest hour, but eventually we rallied and the Virginia militia met and turned him away right where my old house stands today. My guess is the spirit haunting my old place was a British soldier, perhaps some London dandy who is still really pissed off he met his demise 3,000 miles away and could no longer pop into Whites (his Tory club) and have his mid-day Pims Cup.

Other ghosts are much nicer. I know a lady who lived in an old house in Westmoreland County. When she carried the laundry up to the third floor where the washing machine was, her hands were often full. Her ghost would flip the light switch up for her and she would thank him. He obviously was a thoughtful fellow.

My Dad was a lawyer with a HUGE personality. His office was decorated in a manner fitting his “character” status. He had his commission from the Confederate Air Force framed on the wall, a fake framed newspaper article with the headline “Marston Smith in Saloon Brawl,” various portraits and of course a well-stocked bar. He died in 1988 and for several decades, his law firm kept his office exactly the way it was when he died. Kind of creepy. About 5 years ago, I ran into one of the elderly lawyers who told me “your Dad is still in that office, he’s rustling around in there all the time.” I always figured Pop was up there chanting melodic tunes with the Cherubim and Seraphim fluttering around the Big Guy’s throne. It’s a bit disconcerting when one is told that his own father is a ghost. I always assumed Dad made the cut, but maybe not, after all he was a Democrat.

The funniest ghost stories to me center around these old tobacco warehouses we have downtown. They’ve all been turned into super ritzy apartments and condos. During the War Between the States, these old warehouses were converted into state hospitals; North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, etc., all operated their own hospitals in these buildings. There are all kinds of stories of young yuppie women living in these places who walk out of their bedroom and see a Confederate soldier sitting on the couch or making coffee in the kitchen. It’s fitting that Edgar Allen Poe is from Richmond. He had a lot of good material to work with.

All this brings me to Halloween. I’ve always been fascinated with the pre-Roman cultures of the British Isles, the “standing stones,” the Druids and the pagan rituals. The remarkable thing about Halloween is how similar it is to its original predecessor, Samhain. On this day, the Celts believed that the lines between the physical world and the spiritual world became much more blurred.  Spirits of the dead would come out. People would dress up in costumes to trick the spirits to stay away from them and often leave treats to nourish them, but also to divert them away. Huge bonfires were built. The Druids thought that during these times of very thin “thin spaces” their powers of prophecy were at their most acute.

Way before Jesus walked the earth, all sorts of cultures recognized that the dead have souls that live after the body dies. I find that comforting. Where they go, however, is another question. I am no saint, but I have experienced glimpses of the divine as well as these souls that seem to linger around and scare the bejesus out of young yuppie women in old tobacco warehouses. I haven’t figured it all out. I likely never will, but I do think that the most important question of our human existence is asking ourselves, is there a god and if so what are our obligations?  I buy into all the tenets of Christianity.  It’s a fun and curious journey. The fact that the ancient Celts practiced Samhain entertains me, but also confirms that there is an otherworld, that our souls are separate from our physical bodies and that we have a purpose.

God, I’m trying to be a good Christian, but if some reason I don’t make the cut into heaven, my first preference to hang out is in one of Hugh Hefner’s mansions. Thank you.