Haunted Places in Staunton, VA

The history

Staunton's haunted ground is a small city's worth of institutions, all within a few streets of each other in the Shenandoah Valley: an asylum, a railroad hotel, a station that kept being destroyed, and a university. Staunton is an independent city in Virginia with a population of 25,750 at the 2020 census, the birthplace of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president, and the home of Mary Baldwin University, on its Wikipedia article. The asylum came first, and it is the city's defining building. Western State Hospital — Western State Lunatic Asylum in its early years — admitted its first patient on July 24, 1828, on its Wikipedia article. Its Main Building, now the Blackburn Inn, was built in 1825–1828. In its early days, on the article, the facility was a resort-style asylum with terraced gardens, roof walks and mountain views, built on a philosophy of moral treatment; by the mid-19th century that model had vanished into overcrowding and warehousing, with ankle and wrist restraints, physical coercion and straitjackets in use.

After Virginia passed the Eugenical Sterilization Act of 1924, patients were forcibly sterilized at Western State until the law was repealed in the 1970s; electroshock therapy and lobotomies were also practiced there. Joseph DeJarnette, a noted eugenicist, was the hospital's director from 1906 to 1943. Western State was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 25, 1969, but the hospital vacated the original property in the 1970s for its present site near Interstate 81. The old complex then became the Staunton Correctional Center, a medium-security men's penitentiary, which closed in 2003; after vacant years the grounds became The Villages at Staunton, and in 2018 a portion of the complex debuted as The Blackburn Inn and Conference Center, inducted into Historic Hotels of America the same year — all on the anchor article, and matching Visit Staunton's account that the inn was the hospital's main administration building, built in 1828 and likely raised by workmen of Thomas Blackburn, a protégé of Thomas Jefferson.

The wharf district supplies the other two anchors. The American Hotel stands at 125 South Augusta Street, directly across from the railroad station in the downtown wharf district, on its Wikipedia article; Visit Staunton dates it to 1855, built as one of the most luxurious hotels in Virginia beside the Virginia Central Railroad, and records that within ten years it had become a Civil War hospital housing wounded and dying soldiers, its basement used as a morgue. Staunton station stands in the Wharf Area Historic District on its own article; Visit Staunton's ghost-tour account adds that the station has been rebuilt three times after disasters — burned by Union General David Hunter's troops during the Civil War and later destroyed again after a runaway train derailed through the rebuilt station in 1890. One more Staunton institution belongs in the history precisely because no one can visit it: the former DeJarnette Sanitarium, built in 1932 and named for Western State's director, stands decaying above the Frontier Culture Museum's driveway, troubling in its past and unsafe for visitors, on Visit Staunton's account — photographed from the road, not entered, and not an attraction.

The legend

This section is folklore — reported by the tourism authority and the tour operators listed below, and never asserted as fact here.

The Blackburn Inn's haunting is Visit Staunton's telling, since the inn's own site publishes none. On the Haunted Staunton account, the building has "a long line of ghostly residents that refuse to leave": surrounding businesses are said to have reported hearing quiet moans of the word "home" — belonging, the account asks, to patients of the former hospital, or to the graves that still lie on the campus grounds — and guests are said to have reported showers turning on by themselves, lights flickering and locked windows opening on their own. At the American Hotel, the same account reports voices, footsteps, shadowy figures and unexplained static, most of the encounters in the basement that served as the Civil War hospital's morgue; Staunton Ghosts, the US Ghost Adventures operation, tells its own version, with spectral children playing in the halls and phantom Civil War troops permanently stationed there, on its page.

Visit Staunton's account says the apparition of the 1890 derailment's sole casualty — a 17-year-old opera singer — can be seen wandering the platform and is known for pulling the hair of female travellers, alongside a soldier in uniform stumbling across the tracks. Black Raven Paranormal's own Eventbrite listing for its depot tour names her: "the lingering spirit of Myrtle Knox, forever tied to the tragic train wreck of 1890," with a hair-pulling spirit on the depot tour as well. US Ghost Adventures' page tells of "a tragic young actress" and "a mangled soldier" waiting by the dark rails. Opera singer, Myrtle Knox, young actress — three names for one platform tradition, none of them documented in the anchor article on the station, and all of them labelled folklore here. Mary Baldwin University completes the civic repertoire on Visit Staunton's account, its faculty and staff said to have affectionately named a fourth spirit "Richard" for his prankster-like doings.

Haunted today

Hountix lists 5 places in Staunton, VA. Seasonal attractions keep their own open dates, so check each business's own site before you go.

• American Hotel — haunted place, 125 South Augusta Street, Staunton, VA 24401
• Blackburn Inn (former Western State Hospital) — haunted place, 301 Greenville Ave, Staunton, VA 24401
• Clock Tower Building (Clocktower Restaurant & Bar) — haunted place, 27 West Beverly Street, Staunton, VA 24401
• Mary Baldwin University (Main Building & Collins Theatre) — haunted place, 318 Prospect Street, Staunton, VA 24401
• Spotts-Coffman House (Kalorama Estate) — haunted place, 22 South Coalter Street, Staunton, VA 24401

Attraction stories

The Blackburn Inn

The Blackburn Inn publishes no ghost lore on its own site, and its story here says so plainly at the start: the pages collected sell history, elegance and weddings — "Rich in history and steeped in elegant charm," "conceived nearly two centuries ago as a place of rest, relaxation, and tranquility," "steeped in years of history and local lore" is as close as its own copy comes to the paranormal — with no haunting claimed, no ghost tour offered and no lore page found by the collector. What its own site does publish is the visit: a 49-room boutique inn at 301 Greenville Avenue, Staunton, Virginia 24401, phone (540) 712-0601, on more than eighty acres of rolling Virginia hills just steps from downtown, with the Second Draft bistro, a three-story spa in one of the original historic buildings, the Great Hall and a gallery named 1828 among its venues, all on its homepage.

The building's documented history is the anchor article's and Visit Staunton's, set out in The history above: the Main Building of Western State Hospital, built 1825–1828 — the hospital that admitted its first patient on July 24, 1828, later practised forced sterilization under the 1924 Eugenical Sterilization Act under director Joseph DeJarnette, was listed on the National Register in 1969, and became the Staunton Correctional Center before the prison closed in 2003 — reopened in 2018 as the inn, its design led by Thomas Blackburn, a protégé of Thomas Jefferson, on Visit Staunton's historic-hotels account. The haunting attached to it is entirely other people's record: Visit Staunton's reports of moaned "home," self-starting showers, flickering lights and opening windows, set out in The legend above, and the inn's place on US Ghost Adventures' most-haunted list for the city. A documented asylum administration building turned luxury inn, whose operator lets the tourism authority and the tour companies tell its ghost stories for it: that is the Blackburn Inn's record, presented as such.

*Website: http://www.blackburn-inn.com/*