Sleeping with a ghost
Confederate soldier haunted local home
By Donna C. Gregory NEWS EDITOR
Editor's note: Reports of paranormal events aren't just limited to the Sci-FiChannel and stories told around campfires. Chesterfield County has its own haunting tales. In celebration of Halloween, below is the account of a Brandermill resident who believes her home was haunted by a Civil War soldier for more than a decade. For more county ghost stories, turn to page 23.

A Brandermill woman says she was touched from beyond during a haunting at her home.

It was a bright and sunny morning as Karen Foster* stretched her legs across her bed, brushing up against what felt like the strong, hairy legs of man. Only, there was no man. As the realization hit, Foster bolted upright in bed and screamed.

This was just another of the eerie happenings that had been transpiring since Foster moved into her Brandermill home. She'd bought the lot in the Fox Chase neighborhood and built a home there in the late 1970s.

Since then, family members had reported seeing the outline of a tall, filmy figure in various rooms, particularly those with lots of antiques. It was only visible in peripheral vision and disappeared whenever someone tried to look at it directly.

One of Foster's children once walked past a second floor bedroom and saw the figure sitting on the bed. The mattress rose as it stood up.

Years later, Foster's children went off to college, and she lived in the house alone with her two dogs. "On any given night, I'd be sitting in the family room, and both dogs would turn their heads toward the doorway leading to the hallway and follow a figure as it moved through the room. They would both sit and stare at the identical place in the room," she recalls.

The same thing would happen when Foster would be reading in bed. "Suddenly both dogs would stare at the doorway and follow something with their eyes to directly beside the bed," she says. "They weren't afraid of it."

The hairy leg incident occurred one Saturday morning when Foster was fully awake. It was no dream, she says.

About a month later, Foster was awakened at 2 a.m. by a hand touching the back of her neck followed by the feeling of fingers running down her backbone. "I remained upright with all the lights burning the remainder of the night," she says.

The next night she was again awakened at 2 a.m. - this time by the scent of lavender and the feeling of something floating above the bed. Again, she spent the night propped up in bed with all the lights on.

The following night, she was awakened again at the same time by the same hands touching her neck and back. "This time, I sat up and screamed for whoever was there to please stop touching me. It was frightening me," she says. "I was not touched again, but after that many crazy things began happening. Keys would be moved from one place to another, and the dogs continued to watch something moving throughout the house."

One day, Foster noticed a woman staring intently at her as she was having her nails done. The woman was what some would call a medium, and finally summoned up enough nerve to ask Foster, "Do you know that you have a ghost?"

The medium went on to say that the ghost was that of a very handsome Confederate soldier named Ashton. "She said he adored me, and he wanted to protect me. She told me that he had been killed during the war and his grave was on the site of my house, and that it had been unearthed when the house was built. We didn't see any grave, but apparently there were a lot of Civil War skirmishes on the site of Brandermill."

As the months passed, Ashton became bolder at trying to communicate with Foster. While vacuuming, her canister-style vacuum cleaner would often turn upside down, turning itself off. "When this began happening over and over, I actually began talking to this ghost. I would yell at him, 'Ashton, would you please stop turning the vacuum over and let me finish cleaning?'"

One night, as Foster as going through the mail at her kitchen table, she heard the sound of thick paper being flicked by a fingernail. "I looked up and saw something floating downward from the ceiling, and when it landed at my feet, I noticed it was a King of Clubs card from a deck of cards I recognized. I quickly went to a chest in the kitchen where the playing cards were stored, and when I went through the deck, the King of Clubs was missing."

Frightened and bewildered, Foster called the medium she'd spoken to at the salon. "She looked through a book she had and told me that the King of Clubs in a regular deck of cards corresponded to the 'communication' card in a deck of tarot cards. She said this ghost was desperately trying to communicate with me and wanted me to know he was there and that he cared about me."

Ashton's card trick didn't feel very caring to Foster though. She was becoming increasingly more frightened and asked the medium for help.

"The lady told me that many times when someone is killed or dies in a sudden or violent way, they have a difficult time crossing over to the other side and sometimes need our help. The lady came to my house a few days later, and we lit white candles, and she talked Ashton toward the white light of Christ. She told him to go to the white light, and he would find that his family and friends were waiting for him on the other side."

"Ashton left peacefully, and I never saw or heard from him again," says Foster.

More than a decade of paranormal activity immediately ceased. "It was just very quiet," recalls Foster.

Today, Foster still lives in the same house - without her ghostly companion.

*Name has been changed by request.