All too often, I find myself stuck in the University bubble, curating familiar routines in the same places week in and week out. Whether it is going to E Way, the Lawn or the Corner over the course of the day, my typical regions of operation don’t extend far beyond the University’s boundaries — save for runs to Wegmans, ventures out to non-Corner restaurants and special outings with friends. It becomes easy to forget that there is more to Charlottesville than just the University and its immediate surroundings.
Now, as a fourth-year student, I find myself actively looking for ways to pop the bubble. Not only have I started to engage with new cuisine this semester, but I’m also exploring new areas of the city and surrounding myself with a refreshing break from just other 20-something-year-olds. Recently, a ghost tour of the downtown area got me out of the University sphere and opened my eyes to the distinct — and spooky — entity that is Charlottesville.
Of all the things I could be doing on a Friday night, I opted to bring a little spookiness into my life by exploring some of Charlottesville’s haunted sites with US Ghost Adventures. While the tour began in the Downtown Mall, almost the entire experience took me and a friend outside of the hustle and bustle of the mall and to quiet streets and parks, illuminated by streetlights and eerily-blinking interior building lights.
After leaving Caspari in the Downtown Mall, we moved to our second stop, which revolved around the history of the former Robert E. Lee statue in Market Street Park and the negative apparitions associated with the location. The patch of grass on which the statue was located has been dead since the statue’s removal in 2021 — coincidence, or spirits?
Between stops, my friend and I talked to our guide about haunted spots at the University, both those we knew and spots we didn’t realize had ghost lore, including Pavilion VI. Let’s just say I’ll be reevaluating some of my study spots.
At the Inn at Court Square, I learned the tale of an employee aggravated by a wall sconce and his determination to see it dismantled in the afterlife. Other stops included historic buildings near the end of Park Street and the Maplewood Cemetery.
As a personal non-believer of ghosts — I am an Engineering student, after all — I worried that my own subjective skepticism might get in the way of fun. Writing this now, a few days after the tour, I realized that for me, the ghosts surprisingly became a secondary component to my experience.
While this service is packaged as a ghost tour, history, a subject that resonates deeply with me, lies at its core. This — not so much the ghosts — was my fun. This local history, separate from that of the University, was my doorway to really seeing Charlottesville. Each stop discussed different types of apparitions thought to exist in that location, but what I took away were the past events that affected local people's actions, both during their time on Earth and in the afterlife.
As we moved from spot to spot on the tour, I found myself excited to be seeing new areas of Charlottesville through this historical lens. Walking around under the guise of visiting high paranormal activity spots, I was seeing parts of the city — like the Albemarle County Circuit Court, Number Nothing, Swan Tavern and the former Levy Opera House — that were completely new to me, even though they were, at most, a 12-minute walk from where I had parked my car over at Water Street Garage.
I began to understand just how little of Charlottesville I’ve explored over the three years I've lived here, and to venture to new spots now — under the pretext of sensing ghosts while learning interesting local history — was perhaps the best way for me to start seeing more.
Whether ghosts, history, nature or art is a student’s thing, they are best served using that interest as a way to break out of the insulated University community and soak up more of Charlottesville and the surrounding Albemarle County. Just because our current job is to be a student doesn’t mean we should be so tightly tied to our school’s narrow community. When they start at the University, most students embark on four years of living somewhere completely new — and they should feel empowered to deeply and expansively explore this new area instead of feeling tethered to the college town part of where they’ve moved.
Whether it’s visiting Pantops to see the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Rose Hill to enjoy a nice dinner or Ragged Mountain Reservoir to hike through the Heyward Community Forest, students should tap into their passions and hobbies — or pursue something new, different and out of the ordinary — in order to discover more of what’s right in their backyard.
There is too much around us to sit still in what we know and in what is comfortable — make the time to experience it, one delight — or fright — at a time.
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