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Ghost Reports: They buried Mrs. Kyle twice
00:16:13
There’s a boarding school in Virginia with a ghost story that predates the American Revolution. Today, Post reporter Clarence Williams brings us the story of the ghost of Mrs. Kyle, a legend kept alive at Foxcroft School.
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- [00:00]
A
I hear a lot from people that there are days where it's hard to read a single news story. Forget actually being caught up. But I host a podcast that can fix that. It's called the Seven Stories every weekday by 7am Eastern. And here's the other thing. It's short. Less than 10 minutes in fact. I'm Hannah Jewell. The Seven podcast will turn around your morning and get you caught up. Check it out and follow the seven wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Boom.
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C
It's Elahe. We're taking a break today from the news to bring you something a little different, a little spooky. Since we launched Post Reports almost seven years ago, our production team has had this inside joke. Every time we reach this time of year, we start calling the show Ghost Reports in honor of Halloween, and we look for the spookiest and most thematically appropriate stories from around our newsroom. Sadly, we have only ever successfully had one episode of Ghost Reports on the show. But dear listeners, I am excited to announce that this year we have another Ghost Reports episode. It's Thursday, October 30th, the day before Halloween, and today we're bringing you a ghost story from Clarence Williams. He covers the D.C. metro area for the Post. It has all the hallmarks of a good ghost story. Personal tragedy, restless spirits and a surprising twist. Also, a warning that there are some descriptions of violence in this episode. This story begins with a personal connection for Clarence in Loudoun County, Virginia, near D.C.
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D
The tale starts in a unique place, a private boarding school for girls in Loudoun County, Virginia. 500 acres of rolling Piedmont hills. I lived on campus. My father was the head cook. My mom was the baker and later ran the guest house. Foxcroft is a special place, not just to me. For generations, parents have sent their daughters to be educated in the spirit of the school founder, Ms. Charlotte Haxel Noland. Determined, athletic, independent. The school is modeled after British boarding systems. Girls are sorted into houses. Here, it's the Foxes and the Hounds. And they'll be foxes and hounds for the rest of their lives. Students learn dressage and show jumping alongside history and science. The two houses compete in sports like field hockey and basketball. I never attended this school, but I studied it. The tradition I found most unique. Each Halloween, they tell a ghost story. The ritual goes like this. The Foxes and the Hounds hold a skit competition and the upperclassmen walk the younger students deep into the woods to a tiny cemetery where the body of the school founder, Ms. Charlotte, was rests. As all the students are gathered around the Grave. They often dust off an old cassette tape that's been around for decades and press play.
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I've always liked ghosts and stories of them and tales about them.
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This is the voice of Miss Charlotte. It was recorded sometime before her death in 1969, the year before I was born. On the tape, she talks about her life and the legend of the ghost that still haunts Foxcroft. Ms. Charlotte was born in Virginia in the late 1800s. She spent her childhood riding horses, was presented at a debutante ball in Richmond, studied physical education at Harvard, went abroad to study at Oxford, and eventually came back to the United States determined to start a school.
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E
I was working in Baltimore up until 1913, and I came down and lived right in what is now Foxcroft.
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D
In September 1914, she opened a boarding school that she dubbed Foxcroft. From her childhood, Ms. Charlotte was fascinated by tales of ghost stories.
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E
So when I was a very little girl, my grandfather used to tell me about the ghost of Mrs. Carl, how she walked all around this big place.
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D
According to the legend, Mrs. Kyle is connected to Mary Ball Washington, the mother of George Washington. According to Ms. Charlotte, Mrs. Kyle's maiden name was Ball, a prominent colonial Virginia surname.
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E
Mr. Clark, her husband, was sent to America by an English company to build some houses in 1700 and 38. He is the one who first built Foxglove.
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D
It was there that the Kyles had a baby. As the story goes, it was not easy for Mrs. Kyle after the birth.
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When Mrs. Kyle had a baby, there was no doctor within hundreds of miles of her. And the story is that she went off her head.
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D
Mrs. Kyle reportedly went, quote, crazy. Now we'd call it postpartum depression and the treatment chaining her inside her own attic.
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E
She was chained as she lay in bed and the chain is still in the floor.
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D
How long she was chained there, how she reacted to her confinement, if she saw her newborn, or even what happened to that baby, that's never been part of the story. Now, her prison, the attic, still exists. It's atop a creaky wooden staircase on the third floor of what was their brick house. She would never leave her home alive. It was summer. Her husband was away on business while.
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E
Mr. Kyle was away on a trip. Mrs. Kyle got out of her chains and tore down the steps.
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D
As Mrs. Kyle escaped down the stairs, she tripped and broke her neck and died due to the heat. She was immediately buried in the orchard outside the veranda of the the couple's brick home. Years passed. The Revolutionary War swept through the land. Almost a hundred years passed. Regiments of the civil war, marched through the Battle of Middleburg 14 days before Gettysburg. Another century turned. The legend of Mrs. Kyle's ghost lingered and was told to a young girl named Charlotte by her grandfather. It's why Ms. Charlotte ultimately wanted to buy the land to start Foxcroft.
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E
And she was part of the reason I wanted to get it. Because, as I tell you, I like ghosts.
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D
As she founded the school, Ms. Charlotte lived in the same old brick house that Mrs. Kyle lived in, Was chained in and died in.
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E
And there's no doubt Mrs. Kyle was there.
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D
According to Ms. Charlotte, Mrs. Kyle's ghost visited her and school staff.
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E
She was kind and good. I could feel her right behind me, breathing on my neck as I walked up the steps. She'd go to a certain door there, and then she'd go on up in the garret and disappear. Even Ms. Wayman, the first big head of Foxfort, who lived in the house at the top of the steps. I hadn't told her about Ms. Carr at all. And she said to me, what is these footsteps to stop at my door and then go up the steps? There were a number of teachers who came to Foxcroft and people who worked there who knew there was something, some sort of spirit that moved around. Because I wasn't the only one. I heard dozens of people talk to me about it. So you see, it wasn't just my imagination.
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D
So Ms. Charlotte wondered if Mrs. Kyle had unfinished business to take care of in this world.
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After the break, Ms. Charlotte makes a grisly discovery. We'll be right back.
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She was sent to the spirit of a restless soul who couldn't rest because they had something to tell us. What the something was, I had no idea. But I made up my mind I was gonna find out.
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Ms. Charlotte decided to dig into it. Literally.
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I decided I would try to dig her up. That was simply fascinating to the girls. So I told the ones who got the highest marks they could come. When I began to dig the graves, there was only about six girls. I got two good stiff men there and we dug and dug and found nothing. The next day we let the whole countryside come. That was everybody in the school and all our friends. It really was a funny gathering. And we began in real earnest with four men digging instead of two. And there we hit Mrs. Carl's bones. If you can imagine the excitement when they brought up the first once nice little ladylike way. I was so glad to see them. They didn't take very long now and excitement was something beyond any words.
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In the excitement, one of Ms. Charlotte's students fell into the grave. The student was not injured, but she emerged with a clue central to the mystery.
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E
Mrs. Carl's head. Her skull.
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The student picked up the skull and was hoisted out of the pit by the two men who had helped dig the grave.
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E
I'll never forget a triumphant look as she came up out holding the disco of Mrs. Carlo. It was wonderful. It was then and Right then, about 5:30 on a May afternoon, I bet found out the secret of why she wandered. When I looked at the skull holding it in my hands, she was shot right through the very top of her head. A big bullet hole. The day after that, racketed all the skull up in a newspaper, and I took her to Washington to dismiss. Zoneing institute. There's a ballistic department there. I showed this girl to them after.
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D
She dug up Mrs. Kyle's bones. Ms. Charlotte supposedly had the remains examined by the Smithsonian institute. I found no record of this, but.
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It'S possible they took it, gave it the most minute examination, and brought it back to me within about half an hour saying it's a pre revolutionary bullet hole.
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D
So that's when Ms. Charlotte developed her own theory about how Mrs. Kyle actually died and why, after all those years, Mrs. Kyle's spirit still restlessly wandered the grounds of Foxcroft.
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E
You see, she did the most natural thing in the world. As you rushed down the steps, the man was left to take care of her. Just leaned over the banister and shot her right through the head. It's the only way it could have been done. Absolutely right in the middle. And then, being scared to death to tell the husband how he shot him and what they did, they arranged to have her break her neck falling down the steps.
- [14:59]
D
I've come home to Foxcroft to reconnect with my childhood haunt here. We're at the bottom of the steps. Brick house. Used to be locust lawn when the Kyle's lived here. I remember going to look for my best friends near those steps. We were always running in and out of that old brick house building where our parents worked. We'd never go up those stairs, though. As kids we knew the story of Mrs. Kyle's ghost and dared each other to climb the stairs and peek at chains that we were told remained in the attic floor. In fact, I lived there for nearly 16 years and only once screwed up the courage to climb that staircase. I'm attempting it now, late at night. Can see that door, that white door. Ow. I'm not going up to the top of those stairs. There's no reason for me to go up there and bother that woman. I have yet to walk through that attic door and look for those chains myself. Steps from the brick house, there's an orchard. And on the edge of the orchard, there's a tree. And under that tree, Mrs. Kyle was buried again.
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We collected her rib bones and ones that we dug up, Put them all in a huge great mason jar. It's a jar that used to be old town pickle jars.
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D
Ms. Charlotte had put the bones inside of a pickle jar and reinterred them.
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And that's where she used to stay for always.
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A bronze plaque marks the spot. It reads, here lie the bones of Mrs. Kyle, who lived in the old brick house and died circa 1730. Her ghost still haunts Foxcroft. That's what the plaque reads.
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Well, she. She'd gotten the story to us. She told what she wanted, but we wanted to know, and she wanted us to know. And now she rests right there under the tree.
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C
Clarence was Williams is a local reporter with the General Assignment Breaking News Team. That's it for ghost reports. Thanks for listening. You can find more of this kind of spooky reporting at the Washington Post. And right now, a premium subscription to the Washington Post comes with three extra accounts for you to share. So you get your login and three more accounts to give away. And right now, you can get all of that with a single payment of just $33 for the entire first year. That renews at $170 thereafter, and you can cancel anytime. Go to washingtonpost.com subscribe again. That's washingtonpost.com subscribe Today's episode was produced and sound designed by Bishop San. It was edited by Ted Muldoon and Anne Gerhardt. I'm Elahe Izadi. We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from the Washington Post. Thanks for listening and happy Halloween.
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