Photo by Misha Enriquez
Ghost and Graveyard Tour in Old Town Alexandria
A city this old accumulates stories. Alexandria has been burying people since the 1750s, spent the Civil War as an occupied town full of military hospitals and lost residents by the hundreds to yellow fever and smallpox in the years between. The ghost stories are what a place produces when it has that much history and keeps most of the buildings.
Here is what's told, and who tells it.
The Female Stranger
The story every Alexandria guide tells, and the best one.
In the autumn of 1816, a young couple arrived at Gadsby's Tavern. The woman was gravely ill. Her husband engaged a doctor and a nurse and — the story goes — swore both to secrecy about the couple's identity. She died that October. He paid for an elaborate table tomb at St. Paul's Cemetery, commissioned a long and affectionate inscription, and left town. Some versions have him leaving debts behind.
The stone is still there. It does not give her name. It reads, in part, that she was a stranger, and it does not say to whom.
Two centuries of speculation have produced candidates — a runaway heiress, an illegitimate daughter of a famous man, the wife of a fugitive — and no answer. That is precisely why the story has lasted. You can visit the grave at St. Paul's Cemetery on Hamilton Lane, and the room where she is said to have died is upstairs at Gadsby's Tavern Museum, 134 N. Royal St.
The Wilkes Street Tunnel
A brick railroad tunnel running under Wilkes Street, built in the 1850s, now a pedestrian passage connecting Old Town to the waterfront end of the neighborhood. It is dark, it echoes, and it is on nearly every tour route for obvious reasons. Walk it once in daylight and once after dark; they are different experiences.
The rest of the map
Most of Old Town's oldest buildings come with something attached. Lee-Fendall House on Oronoco Street, Carlyle House on North Fairfax, the churchyard at the Old Presbyterian Meeting House on South Fairfax — all appear regularly in the tellings. The Meeting House churchyard also holds the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution, which is worth the visit whether or not you believe anything walks there.
Who runs the tours
Alexandria's Original Ghost and Graveyard Tour — 201 King St.
Costumed guides, lantern-lit, multiple routes running north and south from the King Street starting point. Consistently the most family-friendly of the three — spooky enough for kids, historical enough for the adults who brought them. Tour stickers get you discounts at some local businesses afterward, which is a nice touch.
Alexandria Ghosts: Ghost Tours and Haunted Pub Crawls — 323 Cameron St.
Runs both a standard walking tour and a later, longer "dead of night" option, and the route includes the Wilkes Street Tunnel and original burial sites. Guides skew toward locals with family history in the city, which shows.
Nightly Spirits — meets at The Alexandrian, 480 King St.
The pub-crawl version: ghost stories between stops at Old Town bars. Adults only, and a different proposition from the other two — this is a night out that happens to include history rather than a history tour that happens at night.
When to go
Tours run year-round, but October books out. If you want a Friday or Saturday date in October, reserve in September. The early-fall weeknights are the quiet sweet spot — cool enough to feel right, empty enough to hear your guide.
