Ghosts and geophysics...just in time for Halloween
By Nadia Johnson
Last fall, our archaeological geophysics team performed a survey of lost graves at two historic cemeteries in Alexandria, Virginia. They planned to spend their time looking for coffins, but they did not expect to end up investigating a ghost story.
In the nearby St. Paul’s Episcopal Cemetery, there’s a particular tomb that has become a local legend. Called “The Grave of the Female Stranger”, the plot is allegedly the final resting place of a mysterious woman who appeared suddenly in Alexandria in 1816 and died shortly thereafter. Since her death, the female stranger’s spirit has been a popular feature in local ghost stories, but to this day, no one knows her name, if she even existed, or if anyone is really buried in her beautiful tomb. Folklore tries to answer some of these questions. While on their search for graves, Rhea’s team could at least try to address the latter.
A slab sits on six pillars on top of the grave, with a detailed inscription that recounts the last moments of the mysterious woman’s life.
The epitaph reads:
To the memory of a
FEMALE STRANGER
whose mortal sufferings terminated
on the 14th day of October 1816
Aged 23 years and 8 months
This stone is placed here by her disconsolate
Husband in whose arms she sighed out her
latest breath and who under God
did his utmost even to soothe the cold
dead ear of death
How loved how valued once avails thee not
To whom related or by whom begot
A heap of dust alone remains of thee
Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be
To him gave all the Prophets witness that
Through his name whosoever believeth in
him shall receive remission of sins
Acts 10th Chap. 43rd verse.
The loving inscription raises more questions than it answers: how is it possible that a woman be buried by her loving husband, her exact age be given, and her identity still be a mystery?
Unfortunately, there isn’t much historical documentation to account for this local legend. The most common version of the story states that a young couple arrived in Alexandria by ship in 1816 and sought out lodging in the City Hotel, which is today the site of Gadsby’s Tavern Museum and Restaurant.
The young lady was gravely ill, and her husband begged a local doctor to attend to her, on the condition that the doctor not inquire into their true identities. Despite the doctor’s best efforts, the lady succumbed to her illness and was laid to rest in St. Paul’s cemetery under that famous gravestone. Some accounts describe her husband as a swindler who paid for her burial with a counterfeit banknote. In any case, he skipped town shortly thereafter, and the identities of the young couple remained a mystery.
The details of this story were first published in a local paper in 1866, fifty years after the events supposedly took place. This, combined with the lack of records from the City Hotel, makes identifying the couple nearly impossible, but this has not stopped ghost story enthusiasts from speculating.
One popular theory is that the lady was Theodosia Burr Alston, the daughter of the notorious former Vice President Aaron Burr. If you’re a fan of Hamilton, you’ve heard Burr’s character singing a lullaby to the newborn Theodosia. The real Theodosia was presumed lost at sea when the ship she boarded in South Carolina in 1813 never arrived in New York, but this version of the Female Stranger legend suggests that she used this shipwreck as an opportunity to run away and reinvent herself. As compelling as this story is, the math doesn’t quite check out. The Female Stranger’s age is given as 23, while Theodosia would have been 33 in 1816.
Other stories name the husband as John Wroe, or simply John. In this version of events, the young lady was betrothed to another but fled with her true love John before her tragic death.
A third possibility is that the female stranger never existed. After all, there’s no mention of her prior to 1866, so perhaps the whole ordeal was simply a publicity stunt. In that case, is there even a real grave under the Grave of the Female Stranger?
To answer that question, Rhea’s archaeological geophysics team brought in a ground-penetrating radar.
Ground-penetrating radar, or GPR, projects radio waves into the ground and measures the waves as they are reflected back to the instrument, revealing buried objects or disturbances within the soil. This makes it an ideal tool for archaeologists and forensic investigators to search for lost or unmarked graves or, in this case, to confirm the location of a marked grave.
The GPR could not fit between the stone pillars of the raised grave marker, so our team surveyed as close as possible on either side of the grave, expecting to catch the edges of the burial.
Under the gravestone, we found signs of a large buried object, with its top sitting two feet below the ground surface. Its width and depth are consistent with other graves that the team found during their nearby cemetery survey.
We may not know who the Stranger is, but our work confirmed a small part of this intriguing ghost story. Someone is almost certainly buried there. Future research may reveal more details of the story, but for now, lovers of ghost stories can continue to enjoy the mystery. If you ever spend time in Old Town Alexandria, maybe take a ghost tour and keep an eye out. You might just get a glimpse of the Stranger yourself.
Learn more about the Female Stranger here, add the grave to your Atlas Obscura bucket list, or click the link below to download our white paper.