One of my favorite times of the year is Fall for its beautiful colors and fun seasonal events like local festivals, and of course, it is when the bewitching season comes to life. This is especially true in Williamsburg where they celebrate the season with entertaining ghost stories, colonial legends and haunting tours like these that are sure to educate and send chills up your spine.
Listen My Children: Legends, Myths and Fables for Families. This 45-minute gathering offers fun and interesting stories that the whole family will enjoy. Storytellers share their tales by firelight as young and old hear some of the same legends that entertained families of centuries past.
Ghosts Amongst Us. This one-hour walking tour shares mystifying tales of the day in the candlelit homes. Some stories may be too intense for younger guests. Historian Carson Hudson discusses Colonial Virginians’ beliefs in the supernatural and the existence of witches throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries. On October 28, guests will learn how and why Virginians conducted several witchcraft inquiries.
Cry Witch. Guests to participate in the re-created 1706 trial of Grace Sherwood, “the Virginia Witch.” Participants can question the witnesses, weigh the evidence and help decide whether the woman is guilty or innocent.
Lantern Tours. Explore the shops and workplaces of Williamsburg’s most accomplished tradespeople by candlelight. Enter four shops and learn about the masters, journeymen and apprentices who formed Williamsburg’s “silent majority.” Guests will discover the technology of the trades that shaped Virginia’s economy.
Crime and Punishment. Guests will explore and compare real 18th-century justice to that of today. On this walking tour, you will get up close and personal with 18th-century legal punishments by going back in time and meeting three people from the past who may be ghosts or may be real. The experiences they share are from actual cases from the 18th-century Virginia courts.
Tavern Ghost Walk. Let your imagination wander as your guide depicts dramatic tales of the ghosts that are said to still haunt modern Williamsburg’s taverns and sites.
Plan Your Trip Colonial Williamsburg
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation is the not-for-profit educational institution that preserves and operates the restored 18th-century Revolutionary capital of Virginia as a town-sized living history museum, telling the stories of our nation’s founders, located 150 miles south of Washington, D.C. For more information call 1-800-HISTORY or visit www.history.org.
