Reason with a View

All week I've been counting down the most haunted places in the country I call home — Fredericksburg, where I live, and Caroline, Essex, and Westmoreland, where I work. We end tonight, Halloween night, in Essex County, at the one that stands alone. Elmwood. It's a great brick mansion from the late 1700s, down a lane near Tappahannock, built when Essex County was tobacco money and river trade. By the late 1800s the house stood empty — and an empty mansion in the woods is an invitation the human imagination cannot refuse. A century ago, the newspapers took up the stories coming out of Elmwood: strange happenings in the vacant house, things seen and heard that nobody could explain. And people came. Not a handful of thrill-seekers — hundreds of them, tramping through the woods on nights when the moon was full, just to stand outside that dark house and see for themselves. Virginia's dean of ghost stories, L.B. Taylor, kept Elmwood near the top of his lists for a reason. Of ...

Not everybody does Halloween out on the town. Some of us do it the best way there is: candy bowl by the door, something good on the stove, the house lit up with jack-o'-lanterns, and the doorbell ringing every few minutes. If that's your Halloween, you need music for it — something playing while you're cooking and getting ready, before you settle in for the night. So here's mine. Sixteen songs, just under an hour, on Amazon Music: A Cozy Halloween Night In — the playlist And when dinner's done and the porch light's still on, I've got you covered for the second half of the night too — yesterday I posted my full guide to what to stream this Halloween , family picks to the genuinely scary ones. Music first, movies after. That's a night. If you're a Prime member, Amazon Music is already in your pocket. And if you want the full on-demand catalog, you can try Amazon Music Unlimited free — that's how I built this list. New to Prime altogether? ...

Night four of the countdown, and we're back home in Fredericksburg, at the big house on the hill across the river: Chatham Manor. Built in 1771 by William Fitzhugh, Chatham hosted Washington, Jefferson, and later Lincoln. It also hosts the most famous ghost in our region — famous enough that her walking route has a name. They call it the Ghost Walk. The story goes like this. A young Englishwoman was brought to Chatham by her father to break off her romance with a young man back home — a tradesman, a drysalter, not suitable in her father's eyes. She pined at Chatham despite its parties and grandeur. Then her young man did the boldest thing in this whole countdown: he followed her to Virginia, and the two of them planned an elopement. A boat waiting on the Rappahannock. A ladder against her window at midnight. But a servant talked. And the houseguest who got word of the plan was George Washington. Washington had the young man arrested that night, and the girl was put back und...

Halloween is tomorrow, and sometime tonight or tomorrow night, a lot of us are going to do the same thing: stand in front of the TV, scroll for twenty minutes, argue a little, and finally land on something. Let me save you the scrolling. Everybody's scared of something different. Some folks want the real thing — lights off, phone down, full horror. Some want the fun of Halloween without taking it to bed with them. Some have kids on the couch. So here are my picks by kind of scared, with where each one is streaming right now. Most of them are on Prime Video, which is where I watch. If you don't have Prime, you can try it free and get through the whole weekend. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. For the whole family Hocus Pocus (1993) — The Sanderson sisters are more beloved now than they were when this came out, and it's easy to see why. It's Halloween candy in movie form: funny, a little spooky, nobody's getting scarred for life. Wh...

Night three of the countdown through the haunted places where I live and work, and tonight we go big: Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County, the Lees' Great House — home of two signers of the Declaration of Independence and the birthplace of Robert E. Lee. If square footage counted toward hauntings, Stratford would win this countdown walking away. It lands at #3 on strength of cast. The voice people talk about most belongs to Elizabeth McCarty Storke. In life, she was whispered about twice over — first for an alleged closeness to Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee when she was very young, and then, darker, after her husband George Storke died and the whispers turned to poison. She never cleared her name in the court of public opinion, and maybe that's why, on a visit to Stratford, a medium reported hearing her voice, plain as day: “I didn't do it!” Two centuries later, still pleading her case to an empty room. Whatever you make of mediums, as a story it gets under your skin ...

I saw the news today and sat down to write this while it was still fresh — because we always wait too long to say these things, and by the time we say them, we're saying them to each other instead of to the person. Sir Patrick Stewart died last night at his home in Los Angeles. He was eighty-six. I never got to say any of this to him. So I'll say it to the rest of us who grew up with him. I grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I never missed an episode — not one. From 1987 to 1994, that show was appointment television in a way that barely exists anymore. You watched it when it aired, or you missed it, and I did not miss it. People argue about the best Star Trek, and they can argue all they want. For my money, The Next Generation is the ultimate Star Trek, and it isn't close. And the biggest reason is the man who sat in the captain's chair. Here's the part people forget. When Patrick Stewart took the role of Jean-Luc Picard, he was forty-seven years old, ...

  The Thursday series on conspiracy theories that turned out to be true. What was alleged: In 1972, people started saying the Nixon White House wasn't just running a reelection campaign — it was running a criminal operation. That the break-in at the Democratic headquarters was ordered from the top, paid for with campaign money, and covered up by the President himself. What was true: All of it. On June 17, 1972, five men were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. They had bugging equipment and thousands in cash. The money trail led back to Nixon's reelection committee. And the cover-up — the hush money, the destroyed evidence, the lies — went all the way to the Oval Office. On August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency rather than face impeachment. No spin, no alternative telling. It happened. How it came out: Two young reporters at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, wouldn...