About 3 a.m. on April 28, 1890, a sleeping car swung off the rails at the Chesapeake and Ohio depot in Staunton and tore through the platform. The city fire alarm rang. Firefighters and townspeople pulled passengers out of the wreckage. One of them, a young singer with an opera troupe, did not survive.
The facts of that night survive in print. The story Staunton tells about it has wandered.
A Sleeper Car, a Failed Brake Rod and a Girl in a Nightgown
A newspaper dispatch from that morning, reprinted on GenDisasters, gives the bones of the story. The vestibule train from the west ran two hours late. As it reached the station, the rear sleeper careened into the platform covering and brought down the iron posts and the structure around them. The dispatch blames a failed brake rod, which threw ballast into the air-brake connections and left the engineer without brakes. One person died: Miss Myrtle Knox, a member of the “Pearl of Pekin” opera company. The wounded went to the Virginia Hotel.
A 2023 WHSV retelling fills in the rest. Only the sleeper car left the tracks, and it took out a baggage shed attached to the depot. Eleven of the troupe’s twelve members in the car were pulled out injured. Knox had been asleep in a top bunk, and splinters from the shed injured her artery. She bled to death on the platform. Her father recovered her body, and she was buried in Blue Springs, Missouri. The troupe carried on with its tour.
The ghost story starts where the record stops. Colonial Ghosts describes an apparition of Myrtle in a nightgown, wandering the station platform. A 2009 article by author Beth Trissel, recounting a Ghosts of Staunton tour, says witnesses reported seeing her peer through the windows of a nearby restaurant.
Retellings drift, though. Sources give her age as 17 and as 18. One popular online roundup says nobody was killed in the crash, which does not match the 1890 dispatch. The wreck is documented, however, officially.
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Downstairs at the American Hotel
Across the street from the depot stands another stop on the ghost circuit.
According to Visit Staunton, the American Hotel, built in 1855, ranked among the most luxurious hotels in Virginia, helped by its nearness to the Virginia Central Railroad.
Less than ten years later it became a Civil War hospital, filled with wounded and dying soldiers.
Most reported encounters, the guide says, happen in the basement, which served as a morgue in those years. The guide presents the hospital years as history and the basement encounters as reports, and it names no dates or witnesses for them.
The Virginia Hotel, where the 1890 wreck victims were taken, is gone. Wikipedia’s entry says it was built in 1847, served as a hospital and headquarters during the Civil War, and was demolished in October 1930.
Richard Walks the Mary Baldwin Campus
Mary Baldwin University began in 1842 as the Augusta Female Seminary.
Ghost directories say students often report a man in an old soldier’s uniform, nicknamed Richard, on its 58-acre campus. GhostQuest also lists reports of apparitions in the Fletcher Collins Theatre, McClung Hall and the King Building. Haunted Places places Richard in the Administration Building and Wenger Hall.
None of the accounts we reviewed for this story names a historical Richard or says where the nickname came from.
The Hospital on the Hill, and the Word “Rumored”
The story with the heaviest history is Western State. Visit Staunton says it was built in 1828 as the Western State Hospital for the mentally ill and was a sought-after, resort-style institution. The guide says it later became a place of pain, despair and rumored torture, and that more than a century on the property became a medium-security prison.
We wrote a story about the hospital in July.
GhostQuest says the old hospital was abandoned in 2003 and reopened in 2008 as an apartment complex, and that many people have reported apparitions and unexplained activity there.
The early decades followed a reform idea called moral treatment, which favored kindness, routine and a healing setting over restraint. Overcrowding wore the idea down until the population topped 3,000 patients across two sites. Joseph S. DeJarnette, superintendent from 1905 to 1943, lobbied for Virginia’s 1924 eugenic sterilization law. Our article reports that about 1,700 involuntary sterilizations took place at Western State between 1927 and 1964, roughly 1,200 of them during his tenure. The General Assembly expressed profound regret in 2001, and the governor apologized in 2002.
Ghost directories report apparitions and unexplained activity at the old hospital, and Visit Staunton’s haunted-locations guide calls its later years a time of pain and rumored torture.
The building most people point to as the old asylum is also a different one. The decaying complex on the hill near the Frontier Culture Museum is the DeJarnette Sanatorium, founded in 1932 as a separate, semi-private hospital. It has sat empty for decades with its windows and doors sealed, and it has become a magnet for trespassers and a fixture of online haunted-asylum storytelling.
The 1828 hospital became the Staunton Correctional Center in 1981, a medium-security prison, and after the state transferred the property it became the Villages at Staunton. The first condominiums sold in 2008, and the Blackburn Inn opened in the old administration building in 2018.
The Halloween Dark Tales tour lists the Western State asylum as a stop viewed from a distance.
Deeds, Schoolrooms and a Nickname
The house the tours call their most haunted is the Spotts-Coffman House.
The Visit Staunton guide says it began as the Kalorama estate and later served as a boarding school, the city library, a private high school, and a home to owners, boarders and servants. It puts the site’s history at more than 260 years and says the property saw several misfortunes and deaths, including the story of Charlotte Coffman, whom the page nicknames the “Black Widow.”
People interested can review the list of uses through deed books and newspaper files. The nickname is a local legend. Neither the guide nor the tour listings lay out the evidence behind it.
Three Tours on Halloween Night
The late-night Halloween tour warns that it is not a history tour only, but a blend of history, mystery, legend, lore and ghost stories. The tour is honest about its mix, and readers can judge each story accordingly.
Visit Staunton says Black Raven Paranormal leads the Ghosts of Staunton Walking Tours. On Saturday, October 31, the schedule stacks three of them downtown.
Halloween Railroad Haunts runs from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. and starts at 32 S. New Street, beside the depot where the 1890 wreck happened. The Historic Haunts of Staunton tour follows from 6:45 to 8:15 p.m., meeting at the corner of Johnson and New Streets by the city parking garage, across from Mill Street Grill. The organizers call it their most popular and longest-running tour.
The last, from 7:30 to 9 p.m., is listed on Visit Staunton as Haunts From the Darkside and on Eventbrite as Dark Tales of Staunton. The two listings share a time and a meeting place at 35 S. New Street. The 90-minute tour covers the Staunton Court House, the Western State asylum from a distance and the Spotts-Coffman House. The listing warns of mature themes and does not recommend it for young children, and the organizers’ October schedule lists it for ages 13 and up and not wheelchair accessible.
The Historic Haunts and Dark Tales listings advertise $16 Halloween-night tickets, with free candy and snacks at the start. The ticket pages show a higher figure, so confirm the final price at checkout. The same schedule lists Friday, October 30 departures at 7:00 and 7:30 p.m. for anyone who would rather skip the holiday crowd.
Before You Buy the Story, Ask for the Source
Staunton is not alone in its ghosts. Harrisonburg has its own walking tour, and its operator, Lisa Ha, told WHSV in an earlier report that more reportedly haunted places lie off her 75-minute route than on it. Author Denver Michaels gathered regional lore in Haunted Shenandoah Valley, published by History Press in 2021.
On whichever route you walk, ask your guide one plain question: where did you find that? A guide who can point to a newspaper, a deed or a family letter is giving you history. A guide who answers with a shrug and a smile is giving you folklore.
Both make a good evening.