The Ghosts of Old Mansion (from the series The Restless Spirits of Caroline County)

Old Mansion located on South Main Street in Bowling Green. For more about the Hoomes family see Old Mansion and Oakridge, The Real Sophia Hoomes on Caroline Home and Garden's homepage.

The oldest and most fascinating house in Caroline is without a doubt “Old Mansion.” Many of the rea­sons it continues to enthrall us can be explained by the family who received the original land grant in the mid 1600s and whose descendants continued to own it for 300 plus years. 

The Hoomes family were among the most colorful people to grace the colonial era of Caroline.  The Hoomes built “Old Mansion” about 1741. The entrance to “Old Mansion” boasts a wide ex­panse of lawn encircled by an old road lined with massive cedar trees. The cedars are said to have been brought to Caroline as mere twigs in Major Hoomess saddlebags. 

Col John Waller Hoomes was a great horse racing enthusiast and imported the first Thoroughbred horses from England to the Colony of Virginia.  The story has been told that the great cedar lined driveway was the site of the first horse racing in America held sometime before 1700. Even today, to turn from Main Street onto the ancient avenue which leads to “Old Mansion” is to truly step back into the past. The site looks much as it did in the early colonial period. It is easy to imagine a tall, big boned, grey thoroughbred cantering down the track with a longlegged youth upon his back.

Strange Phenomena

Down through the years, the “Old Mansion" has hosted multiple sightings and manifestations thought to be of supernatural origin. Perhaps the earliest and most well known story goes back to the time of Col. John Waller Hoomes. The Hoomes family and guests were seated at dinner one evening when they suddenly heard the sound of hoof beats. Curious at which one of his valuable horses should be loosed from the stable, the Col. got up from his chair and went to the front door. There was no horse or rider to be seen, only a group of phantom chil­dren at the far end of the track near the entrance gate. The next day, Hoomes' oldest son became sick and died. The following year, the thun­dering hooves were heard, and again, a group of children were seen play­ing on the grass. The next day, the circumstances were repeated when the next son in line died. A year later, the hooves sounded again— the third son died.

For the next several years, the invisible rider ceased his ominous predictions and was not seen. After this, he began to appear until all of the Hoomes' sons ‘were dead and buried behind the boxwood hedge on the left side of the house.

Another reported spirit was that of Col. Hoomes himself. It is said he appeared to each member of his fam­ily before their death, “walking in full view, dressed as when in the flesh

and not in grave clothes.". An even odder tradition surrounds Sophia, the daughter of John Hoomes. Her father built her a manor similar in style to “Old Mansion” just a few miles from his estate. For unknown reasons she would never again visit her father's house by day. According to her coachman, she never again returned to her home by day but only re­turned at night. For years after her death, neighbors reported seeing a ghostly carriage journeying to “Old Mansion” by moonlight.

After the death of the Hoomes, the house was owned by branches of the family.  During this time, a par­ticularly frightening lady was said to haunt “Old Mansion.” Mrs. Woodford, in life, was afflicted by serious heart trouble and bedridden. She was taken care of by a well endowed housekeeper. Mrs. Woodford's hus­band fell in love with the house­keeper and became increasingly dis­gusted with his wife and her never-ending complaints.

He soon decided how he might be rid of his wife. He dressed himself in a sheet and put on a “hideous mask” with a jack-o-lantern for an “elevated head.” He pressed the mask against his wife's bedroom window and when she awoke she gave “One ter­rifled scream and expired.” He left the county after her funeral and was followed by the housekeeper.

Mrs. Woodford, however, de­cided to remain in ghost form, scaring a number of people nearly to death. Those unlucky enough to sleep in her bedroom were subjected to the ringing of her sick bed bell, and unsettling groans. One account claims that her footsteps, groans and screams are seen and heard in the stairway and the halls. Perhaps the pictures are Mrs. Woodford's appa­rition.

When this author was a teenager and young adult, a number of friends rented the back apartment at Old Mansion but never for very long due to numerous manifestations.  This addition according to legend had been built for Hoomes' daughter, Sophia (while the construction of Oakridge took place) and is according to residents, the most haunted part of the house. Caretakers who have lived at Old Mansion have reported their own sightings over the years in various books on Virginia ghosts.

 In 1995, this author interviewed then owner Ed Russell and took three pictures of him in the hallway of Old Mansion, inadvertently capturing an image standing behind Mr. Russell with fairly determinable features including an extended arm and hand in at least one of the photographs.