Virginia State Capitol

Thomas Jefferson designed this building, and it's been in use since 1788 — the second-oldest working capitol in the country. Aaron Burr was tried here, and it served as the Confederate capitol during the Civil War.

Just after 11 a.m. on April 27, 1870, the floor gave way.

Hundreds of spectators had crowded into a second-floor courtroom at the Virginia State Capitol to witness the Supreme Court of Appeals ruling on a bitter mayoral dispute between Republican George Chahoon and Democrat Henry Ellyson. A piece of ceiling fell. Then a girder supporting the spectator gallery snapped. The gallery crashed into the courtroom floor, which itself collapsed, sending the entire mass of humanity plummeting forty feet into the House of Delegates chamber below.

"The mass of human beings who were in attendance were sent, mingled with the bricks, mortar, splinters, beams, iron bars, desks, and chairs to the floor of the House of Delegates and in a second more, over fifty souls were launched into eternity!" the Richmond Dispatch reported. In total, 62 people perished and 251 were injured.

Among the dead: Patrick Henry Aylett Jr., great-grandson of the Founding Father, who had remarked prophetically about his own death before entering the courtroom that morning. Crushed beneath the debris, he "continued to talk of his wife until his spirit took its flight." Also killed were State Senator J.W.D. Bland, one of only two African Americans among the victims, William Charters, Chief of the Richmond Fire Department, and John Turner, a 13-year-old House page.

Thomas Jefferson designed this building with Charles-Louis Clerisseau, modeling it after the ancient Roman temple Maison Carree in Nimes, France. It was completed in 1788, served as the Confederate capitol during the Civil War, and today houses Jean-Antoine Houdon's 1796 marble statue of George Washington in its grand rotunda. But the 1870 collapse left a wound that has never healed.

THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT

Paul Hope, a former Virginia Capitol Police officer who worked the graveyard shift, kept what he witnessed secret for years. In his 2013 book "Policing the Paranormal: The Haunting of Virginia's State Capitol Complex," he finally published accounts that officers had been experiencing regularly.

Hope's own initiation came early in his training. Entering the rotunda with a senior officer, they proceeded to the Old House of Delegates Chamber -- the very room where victims had fallen in 1870. The training officer had him read the memorial plaque. As the pair stood in silence, Hope watched a dark shadow move across the gallery above them before disappearing. The other officer saw it too. They swept the gallery with flashlights. Nobody there. The room maintained a constant mysterious chill -- so pronounced that doors were sometimes opened to cool other parts of the building during sweltering Southern summers.

During patrols near the Old House Chamber, officers reported moving shadows with no source, voices from empty rooms, footsteps on vacant stairways, pockets of freezing air, and what Hope called "the acute and unmistakable sensation of being in the presence of something unearthly."

THE SIXTH FLOOR

One of the most chilling accounts involved a Capitol Police officer named Emma. In 2003, she was using a sixth-floor vending machine when she saw a reflection approaching from behind -- an elderly tall man with thick, scruffy curly brown hair, a short beard, and brown suit. His eyes looked directly at her while his head tilted downward. An intense cold struck her neck. When she turned, no one was there. Emma was so terrified she refused to re-enter the building.

Hope himself experienced something on that same floor. After making coffee in the kitchen, he spotted a shadow moving before him in the winding hallways. Then came the unmistakable scent of cigar smoke -- though he was alone. An overwhelming "chillingly cold static electricity charge" caused his body hair to stand on end. The cigar smell intensified as he approached the source, forcing him to retreat.

L.B. Taylor Jr., Virginia's premier chronicler of the supernatural, was the first author to note that "some say the eerie cry of mournful voices, muted under tons of debris, can still be heard in the hallowed corridors of the Capitol." Pamela K. Kinney echoed these descriptions in her 2007 book "Haunted Richmond."

THE EXECUTIVE MANSION

The adjacent Virginia Executive Mansion, home to governors since 1813, has its own famous ghost. In the early 1890s, Governor Philip McKinney entered his bedroom and saw a young woman in a taffeta gown gazing out the window. When he asked his wife about the guest, she replied: "I have no guest." The ghost, known as the Lady in Taffeta, was later chased down a staircase by a brother of Governor Andrew Jackson Montague between 1902 and 1906. In summer 1973, Governor Linwood Holton reported paintings propped against his bedroom wall were found face-down on the carpet when he awoke -- "There was no wind to move them -- nothing." A ghostly butler has also been spotted between the Executive Mansion and Capitol, believed to be a former member of a governor's personal staff.

The Old House of Delegates Chamber remains the epicenter of the haunting. Its memorial plaque stands as testament to the tragedy. Its cold air persists. Perhaps the souls "launched into eternity" on that terrible April morning never truly departed.