Harpers Ferry

Harpers Ferry sits where the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers meet, a narrow, hilly town that became a centre of arms-making: the federal armory produced more than half a million muskets and rifles between 1801 and 1860. On 16 October 1859 the abolitionist John Brown led 22 men in a raid on the armory, hoping to arm enslaved people and start an uprising. Marines under Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee stormed the fire engine house where Brown’s men held out, and Brown was captured, tried at Charles Town and hanged on 2 December. The building, known as John Brown’s Fort, is now the most visited historic site in West Virginia.

The Civil War then turned the town into a battleground. Secessionists seized the arsenal in April 1861, the town changed hands repeatedly, and in September 1862 Stonewall Jackson captured about 12,400 Union troops there, the largest US surrender until Bataan in 1942. Much of the town and the armory was destroyed and the armory was never rebuilt. Storer College, one of the first integrated colleges in the country, later operated on the hill, and in 1906 the Niagara Movement held its conference there. The park service now cares for the Lower Town, and the area became a national monument in 1944 and a national historical park in 1963.

The ghost stories are older than the park service and have been kept alive on foot. In 1970 a local restaurant owner, Shirley Dougherty, started what is billed as the oldest ghost tour in America, after she and her staff reported odd happenings in her restaurant, including sounds like someone falling down the stairs and a ghostly lantern on the mantel. She collected local tales in a 1977 book, and the tour is now run by the historian Rick Garland and his wife. Its stories include Dangerfield Newby, a formerly enslaved man who joined Brown’s raid hoping to free his family and who was fatally shot in the raid; visitors say they have seen his figure in Hog Alley at night. Other tales feature a Confederate drummer boy said to haunt apartments in the Lower Town, and a crying baby, which the guide links to a diary said to have been written by a girl named Anne, describing a cannonball striking a house where a mother was rocking an infant during the 1862 battle.

The tour’s guides stress that they present stories with history behind them and do not try to summon spirits. The tales are part of how Harpers Ferry remembers a violent past, and they have no independent verification: the diary, for instance, is a story told on the tour, and the Union-officer-and-spy explanation for the stair sounds is presented only as plausible. The Lower Town is a living historic district with residents, so visitors should keep to public streets and park service areas.

Visitors and residents report footsteps and falling sounds on stairs, a crying baby heard at night, a figure of Dangerfield Newby in Hog Alley, a Confederate drummer boy in upper apartments, and apparitions in photographs.

Hog Alley and the Lower Town, the site of the former restaurant on Potomac Street, apartments above Lower Town shops, and the area around John Brown’s Fort and St. Peter’s Catholic Church, where the tour meets.

Harpers Ferry’s Ghost Tours claim to be the oldest in America, and the town features in Civil War ghost lore, regional books and public-radio profiles. The national historical park interprets John Brown’s raid, the Civil War and Storer College.