Countdown to Halloween #5: Kenmore — The Man Still Doing His Paperwork

All this week at 8 PM, I'm counting down the most haunted places in the country I call home. Not Salem. Not Gettysburg. The ground I actually live and work on — the Fredericksburg region, where I live, and the counties my work takes me through: Caroline, Essex, and Westmoreland. Three hundred years of history leaves marks, and some of those marks, people swear, still walk around.

We start close to home, with the gentlest ghost on the list.

Kenmore, on Washington Avenue in Fredericksburg, was built in 1752 for Fielding Lewis and his wife Betty — George Washington's sister. It is a beautiful house, and in its day it was a showplace. But Fielding Lewis spent the Revolution spending. He built a gunnery that turned out weapons for the Continental Army, outfitted ships, and poured his own fortune into the cause, expecting to be paid back. He died in 1781 still waiting on that money, with the estate strained and the worry of it on him to the end.

Here's the thing: by every account, he's still at it.

People at Kenmore have reported a man in Revolutionary-era dress in the upstairs bedroom — the room where Lewis spent so many hours fretting over his accounts — bent over his documents like the books might balance if he just looks one more time. His footsteps have been heard in the house. Doorknobs turn on their own.

Notice what he's not doing. He's not rattling chains or frightening children. He's doing paperwork. Worrying about money he spent on something he believed in.

I have to be honest: of every ghost in this countdown, Fielding Lewis is the one I understand. Anybody who has ever run a business, a household, or a nonprofit knows that feeling of lying awake with the numbers. Some hauntings are meant to scare you. This one mostly makes me want to tell the man to go rest — the country's still here, Colonel. It worked out.

Whether you believe a word of it or not, Kenmore is worth the visit in daylight. Just know that upstairs, some say, the light's still on.

Tomorrow night at 8: #4 — a Caroline County house with three ghosts, and one of them died because of a Halloween prank.