Retiring Beach museum educator says something lurks at historic house

During the past 20 years, Starr Donlon has given countless tours of the historic Adam Thoroughgood House.

She knows every dark corner and creaky step in the circa 1719 home after showing it to countless school groups and bus tours. And she has even come to know some of the home’s less physically apparent history.

Over the years, tourists and museum interpreters have told her stories of ghost sightings and other strange, inexplicable events in the home and on its property, but she was never able to share them with the community. Until now.

Last month, Donlon retired as Virginia Beach’s educator for historic houses after 10 years in the role. While working for the city, she and other city employees were discouraged from sharing their stories of things that went bump in the night and apparitions that would occasionally be seen by visitors and workers.

The city didn’t want the stories to lessen the historical significance of the home, Donlon said, with visitors only stopping by in the hopes of glimpsing a ghost or seeing candlesticks levitating in the middle of the room. But, she added, she realizes why those stories would be a draw for visitors.

“People would probably come out if we could tell some of the things we know,” she said. “I think the things the sites have to tell are important.” Although she never actually saw any ghosts or any other strange events occur in the Thoroughgood House, she did experience an unsettling moment in the nearby woods eight years ago.

About 8:30 one December evening, Donlon was putting the final touches on some decorations she was creating as part of holiday display at the home. She was running short of the greenery, so she decided to get some more from some boxwood shrubs that bordered the woods at the back of the property.

Donlon’s husband offered to go with her.

“It’s a moonless night, but it was OK because I know where I’m going,” Donlon said. “So I’m clipping away at the boxwoods and my husband looked back at the Thoroughgood House and he said, ‘You know, it almost looks like someone is sitting there watching us.’ ”

Donlon assured him it was just a shadow and there was no one there, but just as she said that, she had a strong sensation of her own. “I had the feeling that I needed to leave,” she said. “The skin was raised on my arms. There was no doubt in my mind that if something was watching, it was watching from behind. It’s in that area.”

The incident made more sense a few years ago when she organized a Halloween program centered on superstitions of the Colonial period. She hired a Native American interpreter to re-enact some of the rituals that would have been performed to ward off evil spirits.

“The Native Americans were very much in touch with nature,” Donlon said. “They were in touch with their spirits and that was what he was supposed to portray.”

Shortly after the interpreter arrived for that evening’s performance, Donlon said, she showed him the spot at the back of the property where he was to emerge from the woods and start performing the ritual. Soon after he ventured farther into the woods to familiarize himself with the area, he came back out.

“He said, ‘There’s something not right there,’” Donlon said. “He said there’s something very evil – it doesn’t want anyone to be there.” After picking up on the negative energy, Donlon said he performed a blessing on the area.

“What he said just backed up my own experience,” Donlon said.

It wasn’t until about 2006 that an archeological survey of the property was completed, and the site was discovered to be the likely location of a large Native American village.

“When they did the archeological survey on that southern pasture, they brought up amazing Native American artifacts,” Donlon said. “There’s been speculation that the Thoroughgood’s land might have been the city of Apasas, which was a huge Native American village that was set up before the Thoroughgoods were here.”

“They know it existed,” she added. “It’s on the early maps and the location seems to line up with the Thoroughgood site.”

Although Donlon has never seen any ghosts in the Thoroughgood House, others say they have.

Nancy Baker, who worked as a historical interpreter at Thoroughgood House for 28 years, still clearly recalls a day in 1982 when she pulled into a parking space in front of the museum. A red-haired woman in a gold Colonial-style dress was running across Thoroughgood Drive toward the historic home.

“I happened to look up and I saw this woman appear and she jumped a ditch,” Baker said. “So as I pulled in there and I got out and looked around and I didn’t see anybody.”

Baker said she didn’t think too much of it and assumed it was one of the other interpreters who lived in a house nearby. At the time, the Thoroughgood House interpreters dressed in Colonial-style clothing to give the tours.

Later that day, another interpreter asked who the red-haired woman in the pink Colonial-style dress was. Baker said the same figure was spotted for the second time that day – in a different dress – walking behind a group of tourists that had just come out of the House.

“It was just really strange,” Baker said. “Nothing ever happened after that.” “Whatever it was,” she added, “I saw it.”

Catharine Van Elsaker saw it, too, on another occasion. Van Elsaker practically grew up at the Thoroughgood House, because her mom was a longtime interpreter there.

“It was on the stairs at Thoroughgood House, on the landing,” Van Elsaker said. “There was a lady dressed in Colonial clothes. I started going up and I got a completely peaceful feeling. She smiled and kind of waved her hand and disappeared.”

As a youngster, Van Elsaker remembers hearing different noises and strange sounds while waiting for her mom to close up the house. But, she added, she never got the feeling of negative energy in the home and was never scared.

“We know we have Native Americans living on that property a very long time ago, so who knows?” Donlon said. “It has a very long history of people living on that land.”

Rita Frankenberry, 222-5102, rita.frankenberry@pilotonline.com