FERRY PLANTATION HOUSE Historic House — Virginia Beach, Virginia Status: Operating · Access: Open to public Dossier: https://haunthunt.com/place/ferry-plantation-house-virginia-beach-virginia/ Historic house associated with published local folklore. A historic house in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Ferry Plantation House is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Historic house associated with published local folklore. The presences in its file go unnamed: the eleven spirits, the record says. The dossier holds 3 reported claims, 2 legends and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. The site is open to visitors. On July 10, 1706, part of the colony's proceedings against Grace Sherwood — the only woman Virginia ever convicted of witchcraft — ran through the courthouse that then stood on this Lynnhaven River peninsula. She was ducked in the river nearby, survived, served a jail term, and lived to about eighty; the spot is commemorated by Witchduck Road. The ground under Ferry Plantation House has been accumulating records like that since 1642, when Savill Gaskin started the second ferry service in Hampton Roads here — eleven stops along the river, each summoned by signal cannon. The house standing today is the third act on the site. Princess Anne County built its first brick courthouse here in 1735 on two donated acres; the Walke family raised a manor house around 1751 and demoted the courthouse to a kitchen; the manor burned in 1828; and in 1830 George McIntosh built the present Federal-style house out of bricks salvaged from the ashes. THE DOCUMENTED RECORD The current house is a ten-room, central-passage Federal farmhouse facing the western branch of the Lynnhaven — three-course American bond brick under what was originally oyster-shell stucco, with heart-of-pine floors and an 1850 northwest wing. It stayed in the McIntosh family for more than sixty years, went to the City of Virginia Beach in 1996, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 20, 2005. An on-site excavation exposes the old brick floor of the earlier buildings. The ferry, the courthouse, the manor, the farm — the file's history is layered literally, which matters because the haunting claims are layered the same way. WHAT WITNESSES FILE Volunteers at the house put the resident count at eleven and can name them: Charles, Isabel, Bessie, Eric, Julie, Nanny, George, Cora, Stella, Belinda and Henry. Henry is the best documented presence the file holds — an enslaved man who lived in the third-floor quarters of the old kitchen wing, stayed on the plantation after Emancipation, and answered paranormal investigators' EVP sessions, the record says, with the opinion that his favorite pastime was "goin' fishin'." He is also credited, in local memory, with running into the burning manor house in 1828 to pull people out. The most-quoted report is residual rather than interactive: in the 1980s, caretakers hired by the last private owner watched an elderly Black man come up from the basement on Saturday evenings, cross the room, and kneel before the west wall on some long-ago task. When that room was later restored, a fireplace was found behind the wall. Other filed spirits include Sally Rebecca Walke, who mourns a dead fiancé; a Lady in White said to have broken her neck on the stairs; the artist Thomas Williamson, seen at the top of the stairs mid-brushstroke; two children pressed against the second-story landing; victims of an 1810 wreck at the ferry landing; and dragging chains attributed, reasonably enough, to the courthouse days. WHAT REMAINS The Friends of the Ferry Plantation House run the building as a museum and education center, with a summer history camp, an annual Grace Sherwood Festival that reenacts the ducking, and an October spirit tour marketed as the Stroll of Lost Souls. Volunteers are matter-of-fact about the roster; the National Register nomination is matter-of-fact about everything else. Between the two documents a visitor gets the file's full shape: four centuries of Lynnhaven crossings, one convicted witch, and eleven spirits whose names, at least, are on record. FILED CLAIMS — 3 on record, reported not verified · [Documented legend] apparition: Virginia Tourism recounts Ferry Plantation's alleged spirits — a roster said to include shipwreck victims from the ferry era — attached to a house that has stood over the Lynnhaven since 1830. The house counts its ghosts the way some houses count bedrooms: eleven, by the lore's own census. The telling survives; the proof stays folklore. source: 12 Haunted Sites in Virginia with True Ghost Stories (https://www.virginia.org/blog/post/virginias-haunted-sites/) · [Documented legend] named ghost legend: The eleven spirits — including the Lady in White — are Ferry Plantation's documented lore: a named roster of hauntings attached to a house that predates the city around it. Eleven ghosts is a lot of bookkeeping, but the house has had nearly two centuries to collect them. The reports keep the address on the map. source: Ferry Plantation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferry_Plantation_House) · [Investigation claim] apparition: Reported figures move through the Ferry Plantation house — apparitions consistent with the eleven-spirit roster the lore maintains. The claims are Virginia Beach's most systematic haunting: less a ghost story than a guest register the dead keep signing. The account stays in the file — reported, retold, unresolved. source: Ferry Plantation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferry_Plantation_House) HISTORY — 1 documented facts · [1830] Built 1830 on 1642 foundations; the ghost tours are documented. Ferry Plantation House's history is documented rather than told — this entry is part of that spine. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. 'Ferry Plantation' documents the entry. The record keeps it — history, not lore. SOURCES — 2 cited · 12 Haunted Sites in Virginia with True Ghost Stories — Virginia Tourism Corporation https://www.virginia.org/blog/post/virginias-haunted-sites/ · Ferry Plantation — Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferry_Plantation_House — HauntHunt is a research archive. Claims are filed as reported — documented where sources exist, marked as folklore or unverified where they do not. Methodology: https://haunthunt.com/methodology/ · Corrections: https://haunthunt.com/report/