Local News

I found this in my morning news today. I had to chuckle. My husband and stood outside the Governors house last summer when we took the Ghost tour. We kept hoping he would come outside since the guard at the gate told us he was home. I guess maybe he was to busy on the phone ha ha. (photo taken last summer)



Mr. Governor, it’s the ghost again
By CHRISTINA NUCKOLS, The Virginian-Pilot
© December 8, 2006




If there’s a paranormal “Do Not Call” registry out there, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine would like to sign up.

The governor told radio listeners Thursday that the ghost who supposedly has haunted the 193-year-old executive mansion in Richmond for more than a century seems to have taken up telemarketing.

“The telephone will ring once in the private quarters that we have at a very inconvenient time. It rings once, pick it up, there’s nobody there,” Kaine said on his monthly radio call-in show. “It’s always at the exact same moment.”



Legend has it the Gray Lady took up residence in the executive mansion in the 1800s after dying in a carriage accident as she was returning from a party at the governor’s home.

“The story is, she came back to the mansion because that was where she had her last happy moments in life,” said Amy Bridge, director of the executive mansion, the oldest continuously occupied governor’s residence in the United States.

Kaine wouldn’t reveal the precise timing of the calls to avoid “copy-cat poltergeists,” but spokesman Kevin Hall said they occur just after midnight on the same day of the week. Bridge said former Gov. Mark Warner also received the spooky phone calls.

Realizing that his listeners might be unnerved to hear about their governor’s supernatural adventures, Kaine assured them he has never seen the Gray Lady.

“I could have just really unwound my whole term as governor by launching into a description of my communing with the spirits,” he said.