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Heavily Investigated

Eleven spirits, they say — not a round number arrived at carelessly. At Ferry Plantation House, the dead seem to have found the accommodations agreeable. Sally Rebecca Walke still grieves by the magnolia she planted in 1863 for her fallen soldier; a Lady in White haunts the staircase where she reportedly broke her neck in 1826; and Henry, once enslaved here, is said to have simply declined to leave — in life or after. Stand in the hallway long enough and visitors swear they are not alone. The house does not rattle or howl. It just watches.

The site dates to 1642, when Savill Gaskin launched the second ferry service in Hampton Roads along the Lynnhaven River — cannon fire echoing across the water to hail the boat. The current Federal-style brick house was built in 1830 (its bricks salvaged from a burned Walke mansion) and served, in its time, as plantation, courthouse, school, and post office. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, it is also the site of Grace Sherwood's infamous 1706 witch trial — the records quite sober, the legacy anything but.