The town of Bedford Virginia is one of character, charm and lots of history. If you ride through Main Street and out onto some of its bordering drives, you’ll see residents taking morning runs, kids playing in yards, owners giving their furry friends their daily dose of exercise, and those avid gardeners working diligently to maintain their botanical masterpieces which, of course, adds to the beauty of this charming place. If you’re lucky enough, which I have been on several occasions, you may catch a glimpse of a couple or two holding hands as they enjoy their evening stroll down Peaks Street, possibly headed for a dinner out, a casual look-see at one of the antique shops, or perhaps a visit to the library to grab yet another novel to enrich their literary lives as the sun sets on this small and pleasant little town.

I love the little town of Bedford. It’s intriguing to me, and more often than not, and when I’m in the area, I will do just that: take a casual drive down through the comfortable streets of this aesthetically pleasing little hometown that, well, just makes ya feel all warm and cozy inside.

Part of that “home-y” feel comes from the beautifully up kept historic houses that line its streets. One house, in particular, that has always captivated me, has been that of 413 Avenel Ave, otherwise known as Bedford’s Avenel House.

I was granted the privilege to tour this beautiful historic estate with Miss Annette Kendall, Vice President of The Historic Avenel Foundation.

I arrived shortly before 10 a.m. on a rather dark and cloudy August morning. Even so, the birds were still chirping, while a soft summer breeze blew through the magnolia tree and onto the front porch making the outside chandelier move in a slow and rhythmic sway.

With its various benches and paved walkways tucked away along the three-acre tract of hearty hedges, spreading ivy and shady pines, there’s a beautiful sense of tranquility that surrounds this gorgeous house.

When I glanced up to take in the view of its entire splendor, it appeared as if the majestic Avenel knew exactly why I was there and proudly sat in the midst of all its surrounding loveliness.

Not only does this beautiful historic home add to the ambiance of this quaint little town, it also has quite the reputation that spreads much further than just Main Street in Bedford, Virginia.

Avenel just so happens to rank number 10 in “Colonial Ghosts Top 25 Most Haunted Places in Virginia. ” According to Colonial Ghosts, a site has to have documented paranormal activity to be included on the list.

When Miss Kendall arrived and we entered the house, she wasted no time in starting to educate me on Avenel’s mesmeric past. But, before she got too far, she did warn me to keep an eye on my recorder’s battery. She explained that sporadically batteries will quickly drain with interviewers or guests that are attempting to record.

“Just wanted to give you a head’s up. But it usually doesn’t happen early in the mornings, but… anything can happen.”

I patted my pocket and explained I had backup. Miss Kendall smiled.

The Avenel Foundation started back in 1985 and Miss Kendall has been a part of it from the start, explaining that her children grew up here at the house.

She and others formed a workforce guild, working endless hours to restore Avenel and bring it back to its original glory.

Miss Kendall has served on the foundation’s board of directors since 1990 and she also has written the docent manual for the property. She pretty much knows everything about this house and its history.

As I listened to her tell of Avenel’s past, and of the Burwell family,

“If you hear someone say ‘BurWELL’, well that’s wrong!

It’s pronounced Bur-RELL,” she firmly explains, “the W is silent!”

Her heartfelt knowledge shows that she respects Avenel and its past inhabitants. Annette Kendall gleamed with pride as she shared with me the story of Avenel.

The History

William McCreery Burwell was the son of William Armistead Burwell, who was a congressman and the private secretary to Thomas Jefferson during his last year of presidency. Growing up in politics, William M. Burwell followed in his father’s footsteps after graduating in the first class of the “new” University of Virginia.

After finding his bride, Frances Steptoe, the couple resided for a little while in the Burwell homeplace in Franklin County Virginia. With Mr. Burwell spending a lot of time working in the House of Representatives and often meeting with Virginia’s founding fathers, he was frequently traveling to Washington DC and Richmond, which meant leaving Frances alone. He decided that she needed to be close to her mother. Plans to move, to the then town of Liberty which later became Bedford, were orchestrated.

Sometime around 1836, William and Frances began building their home, “Avenel,” which derived its name from Mr. Burwell’s reading of “The Monastery,” as he was an avid reader of Sir Walter Scott.

Avenel has the feel of both the Federal and Greek Revival architecture of its time. Back then, the two-story brick plantation home sat on close to seventy acres, and was a focal point for both the social and political scene.

“Completed. We like to use the word completed, because it was probably years!   They starting making the brick, by hand, every one, and with the walls being two feet thick brick, that’s alotta brick! It’s published it was built in the year 1836, which is also scratched in the brick on the front porch, but the property wasn’t deeded until 1837 so it couldn’t have been completed until after that.”

Annette goes on to explain that based on expert research, Avenel’s completion date is thought to have been around the year 1838.

Once Avenel was completed, the Burwell’s along with their two young daughters, Letitia (Lettie) and Catherine (Kate), moved in with Frances’s widowed mother, Mrs. James Steptoe, and her son Edward. The Burwell’s then had two more daughters, Mary Frances (Fan), and Rosalie (Rosa). Unfortunately, their only son, James Steptoe Burwell, died at less than one year old.

All four daughters were known to have kept journals and other writings, some of which were published, of their life at Avenel.

“Some of the mystique is that, in all the writings that the daughters did, and everything that we could find, there is no mention of them losing a baby brother. That’s sort of the way it was in that day. Sorrow like that, you just didn’t grieve on pen and paper. In fact, with having folks do paranormal investigations and interests along those lines, we often wonder, ‘Where is that baby buried?’ We know of the cemetery here at Longwood and we know of other burial sites of the ancestors, but there’s no mention. The Jones Memorial Library was the only place that one of the historians found a record of the baby’s birth and death date.”

There were several notable guests that stayed at Avenel including Robert E. Lee.

“Of course, Robert E. Lee was a friend and was here. In fact, his wife, Mary Custis, stayed here in 1863 while she was in ill health, we do have documentation of that.”

It is written that among their guests was that of American writer Edgar Allan Poe.

“That was never documented as proved. Edgar Allan Poe was in the same freshman class as Mr. Burwell at UVA, that is where their known association is, that’s mentioned in a book written by Mr. Burwell’s daughter Letitia and she speaks of that class and Poe as one of the class members. As far as physically Poe being here at Avenel, the four daughters never wrote of this, and they would have.”

It’s clear, if you read any of the Burwell daughter’s writings and publications, that Avenel served their family well.  Its walls have witnessed these girls grow up and this family grow old and saw them through times of celebration and joy as well as times of grief and sorrow.

Sadly, Frances and William experienced another untimely death of one of their children. This time it was Mary Frances they grieved. But along with her sisters and parents Mary Frances, or “Fan” as she was often called, also left a grieving newlywed husband of only four months.

“Mary Frances, the third born daughter, died only four months after marrying Captain James Breckinridge. They were married in 1862, in the parlor here, 9 o’clock at night on March the 4^th.

“In the day, sisters, mothers, grandparents, they would all go visit their brothers and male family members out on the battlefield. Fan and her entourage left from Avenel to go and visit her newly wedded husband. On her journey back through the camps, by the time she had gotten back to Avenel, she was deathly ill with typhoid, and a bride of only four months died here.

“Captain Jimmy Breckinridge had lost his wife, and the South had fallen. In 1865 when he was fighting one of the last battles of the war, it is said that he threw himself in front of enemy fire and was killed. His body was never recovered. They have a burial plot right next to Fan with a headstone with his name. You would think, if you did not know, he was buried right next to his bride. Nothing there. Well, when they were building the by-pass through Petersburg, I believe it was said that some little boys were scampering around there and saw something laying there in the dug-out for the new road, and be-darned if it wasn’t a Confederate uniform. From my understanding, the buttons, if you were a Captain of significance, had your initials on them. They fell into the right hands and were sent to VMI and the buttons were identified as his. Recently they just confirmed that. The Breckinridge family just recently had a memorial service with honors for him.”

Mr. Burwell passed in 1888. About ten years later, Catherine “Kate” was the next to pass.

On the convincing of her youngest daughter Rosa, Mrs. Burwell then invested all she had into a seminary called Belmont, which was a finishing school for young women.

“It was beautiful but huge! She spent all her last monies, building it, staffing it and running it, and it lasted under ten years. She went bankrupt, and she lost everything.”

After the death of Mrs. Burwell, daughters Lettie and Rosa disputed over what to do with Avenel and what was left of the estate. Rosa ended up suing her sister as heartbroken Lettie died in the midst of the feud.

Around 1906 the Avenel House changed hands from the Burwell family to the Ballards.

“When Mrs. Burwell and Lettie lived here and were still trying to take care of the large grounds before they passed away, there was a young lad, ‘the little Ballard boy,’ that’s how he was described in some of their writings, would come take care of the yard and feed the cows and horses that were left. ‘The little Ballard boy’ grew up to be the grown man that married and had many children and bought the house in 1906. Rosa writes in a letter to Mr. Ballard ‘My mother could not have stayed at Avenel and died at Avenel if you hadn’t been there to help tend to the place.’ So that all worked out really, really neat.  And they were the only two families that owned or lived in Avenel.”

Peggy Ballard Maupin was the youngest Ballard child and lived at Avenel until she could no longer up keep it. She moved into the apartments right behind Avenel so she could keep an eye on the place according to Miss Kendall, up until she died at the age of 102.

“She was the one that lived here and literally saw “The White Lady.”

The Haunts

There has been evidence from several different paranormal investigations of a male presence in the house as well as that of a child and a cat, but the most predominant spirit that is known to Avenel is that of “The White Lady.”

“I have been here inside like we are now. I have heard footsteps so many times, and have come to the door because I hear somebody walking on the porch with clicking shoes, distinguished wooden heel clicking that you can hear plain as day, and nobody’s there. So many times, I cannot even count!

“I have seen, out of the corner of my eye, after I heard this noise, (Annette briskly rubs the palms of her hands together) the end of a hoop skirt, but it’s in a shadow. I can honestly tell you I have seen an outside shadowy image after I heard steps and that noise. Took us all a while to figure out that noise. It’s taffeta and the rustling of a hoop skirt.”

Miss Kendall also tells of a particular committee meeting held there at Avenel late one evening where other members heard that same taffeta rustling.

“Well the hair on the back of our necks was standing up! It was so loud and we stopped and we thought for a minute and then that’s when we all agreed, it was a hoop skirt and taffeta that was rustling.”

Miss Kendall’s connection with Avenel started long before her involvement with The Avenel Foundation back when it was purchased from Mrs. Peggy Ballard Maupin in 1985.

“I grew up just a mile away from here, hearing about this ‘White Lady’ and looking at this ‘haunted house’ and it was fascinating to us! So my best girlfriend and I rode bikes, that’s all we had to do, and we’d ride bikes and come by here. We grew up with the legacy, and funny thing, my friend still talks about this, she’s 60 years old now. We had nerve back in those days (she laughs). We would come up on this porch and peek inside (she says as she opens a small slot on the front door). I remember that day when my friend peeked in and slammed the slot down and ran off the porch! She said ‘I saw a coffin in there! I saw a coffin!’ And she will still tell you she saw a coffin in there! Apparently when Mr. Burwell passed away they put his body right here, when you came in (she points to the entrance or foyer area). He was laying right here! So for her to say that, we were little girls! We knew none of this history. Did she really go look in here and whatever is encompassing this place, did she see that? Crazy, because I know this hallway, when paranormal come, has more energy than anywhere in the house.”

The Burwell girl’s writings have also mentioned that of ghosts that kept them up all night, rapping at the headboard. Miss Kendall tells of one of the writings where the girls mention their father getting up in the middle of the night hearing a burglar and having even got his gun out only to find no one there.

“They heard so much of a commotion that they got their arms to protect themselves, and there was nobody. So it goes back before the Burwells passed, they talked about it.

“But what really put us on the map, as far as the haunts go, is Peggy Ballard Maupin’s family that moved here. It was Peggy’s mother that was the first to see The White Lady.”

Peggy explained that a group of them were standing on the front porch as her mother witnessed a lady dressed in white with a parasol, hoop skirt, and shadowy face that disappeared behind an oak tree.

I located an interview done with Mrs. Maupin by WDBJ7 back in 1996 where she is quoted as saying,

“And we saw this lady dressed in an old time white dress and she was carrying a parasol in her hand and when she got across the road she disappeared in front of a big oak tree. And my mother turned around and said, ‘Did any of you see what I just seen?’ And of course right many of us had seen it.”

The Sci Fi Channel covered The Avenel House in one of their episodes of “Sightings” back in 1996.  It was confirmed to me by both Deborah Carvelli (Frashure), a parapsychology teacher, and Miss Kendall who were both present during the interview, that some sort of vibration caused the UV coverings on all three windows in the “Lee Room” to violently shake.

Annette laughs,

“The camera man, the boom man, put their stuff down and they high-tailed it outta here!”

I also spoke with Kelly and Don Johnson of Beyond the Dark Paranormal who have performed numerous investigations at Avenel. Kelly explains about some of their experiences.

“Avenel has our hearts because that is where we got married. We actually had photos sent to us from other people taken at our wedding that had some very interesting things in them.

“The night before our wedding we were downstairs setting up and decorating and throughout the evening we could hear footsteps upstairs walking around.

“In one of our wedding pictures, we were standing in the back of the house and underneath of what is now the office. Our photographer snapped a picture and flipped the camera down and asked who was in the upstairs window. I said ‘There’s nobody up there, that’s the office and no one’s allowed in there, it’s locked.’ And she said, ‘Well it looks like there’s someone standing up there.’ Sure enough, in the picture it looks like a lady standing in the window.

“We have heard from several people that there is a cat, and a couple of the other paranormal groups have said that they have heard a cat’s meow during their EVP sessions. We have never heard anything from any kind of animal during our investigations.”

Kelly and Don have picked up a man’s and a child’s voice on some of their sessions.

“I feel like Mr. Burwell’s here but I don’t know that he is the male presence that’s been seen. We have also heard that there is a possibility that a slave is buried on the property and that a soldier’s grave is here on the property.”

They also tell of an experience where some of their highly technical equipment picked up that of a small child running around the house.

Above  pictures were provided by Beyond The Dark Paranormal taken at Avenel. The three pictures are of an “orb” that was followed around the room

I also asked my good friend, Mandy Belue, who has worked with several paranormal groups in the area about her experiences with Avenel.

“I have investigated Avenel about a half a dozen times, and it never fails to provide possible evidence of the paranormal. One memorable experience was a phantom floral scent that filled an upstairs bedroom. Other team members were called into the room and confirmed the scent. So not all ghostly activity is scary.”

So, who exactly is this “Lady in White” that roams the grounds of  Avenel?

As Mr. Burwell named his grand estate after “The Monastery,” there also happens to be a White Lady in Scott’s story. Could Mr. Burwell have conjured up this ghostly presence from the pages of a novel?

Don Johnson:

“Personally, I think it’s Letitia. Mainly because when a spirit returns back to a location, it can be for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes a spirit can get suspended in between both worlds, or they just love the place so much they just come back. I feel with the emotional connection and torment that Letitia went through, I feel like she’s here.”

Kelly Johnson:

“I’m kinda on the fence. I’m not really sure who I think she is. We have asked several times during our investigations and we’ve never gotten any direct response to that. I’ve speculated it could possibly be Mrs. Burwell or Fan, but I don’t really know.”

Deborah Carvelli:

“It’s Fan.”

Annette Kendall:

“Was Fan possibly buried in her wedding gown? Could she be “The White Lady of Avenel”? My inkling is that the white gowned apparition seen walking along the front of the house and along Avenel avenue in the early 1900’s with a parasol, my inkling is that it is Fan. She’s looking for her husband.”

And while The White Lady and the other ghostly inhabitants were kind to me on my visit, (no batteries drained, no visions seen, no voices heard, no interruptions at all), it’s clear why they might never want to leave. Avenel is an intriguing and exquisite place.

And perhaps the cooperation I was granted from them on that August morning was that of their southern hospitality, in an attempt to share their beautiful Avenel with others.

Avenel will be hosting Paranormal Night on November 3^rdstarting at 7 pm. Come and tour Avenel alongside 5 area paranormal groups. Proceeds benefit The Avenel Foundation.