The Departed

The thing about ghost stories is that, although each has a central core, something that always stays the same, details differ with whoever is telling it. And ghost stories should be told. They are part of a human tradition as old as language itself. When such a story is locked in print, something is lost—the printed version becomes the baseline, the unimpeachable source against which all facts are measured.

Take the case of Alexandria’s Female Stranger. The truth, as far as anyone can reasonably determine, is that in September 1816, a ship, bound from the West Indies, docked at the Alexandria wharves. A young couple disembarked, the woman very ill, probably with typhoid or yellow fever. They took a room at Gadsby’s Tavern. A physician was called as well as a pair of nurses. The husband requested the doctor and nurses, as well as the inn-keeper’s wife, swear an oath never to reveal the couple’s name. Tragically, the young woman, declining all the while, died in her husband’s arms in October. She was (some say, secretly) buried in St. Paul’s Cemetery under a headstone with the name “Female Stranger”. The young man disappeared and the doctor and nurses kept their vows, never revealing the names. End of the facts as written—the mystery now becomes legend.

Depending on who is telling or writing the story, things take off from there. Speculation on the couple’s identity ranges from the daughter of Aaron Burr, to the disgraceful outcome of a love triangle ending in a fatal duel and furtive flight. Some stories have the young man dying in prison while others have him moving up the Potomac and becoming a recluse, overcome by grief, and living in a lonely ramshackle cabin by the river’ edge. He journeyed regularly down river to Alexandria to visit his beloved’s grave. Since nothing was known about him, locals took to calling him “John of the Cabin” or simply “Cabin John”. The name lingers today in a small community on the Maryland side of the river.

Another version of the story, told in Gadsby’s Tavern, concerns a beautiful young woman, who, dressed in the style of the early 19th century, frequented formal dances held in the ballroom on the second floor. The ballroom was down the hall from the room taken by the unknown couple years earlier. She never spoke or danced with any would-be suitors, and always slipped away before the festivities ended. One evening during the Civil War, a smitten young Union officer followed her as she left the ball, hoping to strike up a conversation with this mysterious beauty. Upon entering the room down the hall, he found it empty, with a lamp lit in the corner. He notified the manager of an unattended flame and the two went back to the room. When they got there, the room was dark and the candle wick in the lamp was unblackened—it had never been lit. As the puzzled young officer was leaving the room, he touched the glass globe of the unlit lamp. And burned his fingers.

As a student of the paranormal once said: If you believe, no explanation is necessary; if you don’t, no explanation is possible.