Ghost Reports: They buried Mrs. Kyle twice

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0:29Boo! It's Elae. We're taking a break today from the news to bring you something a little different, a little spooky. Since we launched Post Reports almost seven years ago, our production team has had this inside joke. Every time we reach this time of year, we start calling the show Ghost Reports in honor of Halloween. And we look for the spookiest and most thematically appropriate stories from around our newsroom. Sadly, we have only ever successfully had one episode of Ghost Reports on the show. But dear listeners, I am excited to announce that this year, we have another Ghost Reports episode.

1:20It's Thursday, October 30th, the day before Halloween. And today, we're bringing you a ghost story from Clarence Williams. He covers the D.C. metro area for The Post. It has all the hallmarks of a good ghost story. Personal tragedy, restless spirits, and a surprising twist. Also a warning that there are some descriptions of violence in this episode. This story begins with a personal connection for Clarence in Loudoun County, Virginia, near D.C.

1:57The tale starts in a unique place A private boarding school for girls in Loudoun County, Virginia 500 acres of rolling Piedmont Hills I lived on campus My father was the head cook My mom was the baker and later ran the guest house

2:21Foxcroft is a special place Not just to me. For generations, parents have sent their daughters to be educated in the spirit of the school founder, Miss Charlotte Haxell-Noland. Determined. Athletic. Independent. The school is modeled after British boarding systems. Girls are sorted into houses. Here, it's the foxes and the hounds. And they'll be foxes and hounds for the rest of their lives. Students learn dressage and show jumping alongside history and science. The two houses compete in sports like field hockey and basketball. I never attended this school, but I studied it. The tradition I found most unique?

3:09Each Halloween, they tell a ghost story. The ritual goes like this.

3:18The foxes and the hounds hold a skit competition And the upperclassmen walk the younger students deep into the woods To a tiny cemetery Where the body of the school founder, Miss Charlotte, rests As all the students are gathered around the grave They often dust off an old cassette tape that's been around for decades And press play I've always liked ghosts and stories of them and tales about them. This is the voice of Miss Charlotte. It was recorded sometime before her death in 1969, the year before I was born. On the tape, she talks about her life and the legend of the ghost that still haunts Foxcroft.

4:05Miss Charlotte was born in Virginia in the late 1800s. She spent her childhood riding horses, was presented at a debutante ball in Richmond, studied physical education at Harvard, went abroad to study at Oxford, and eventually came back to the United States, determined to start a school. I was working in Baltimore up until 1913, and I came down and lived right in what is now Foxcroft. In September 1914, she opened a boarding school that she dubbed Foxcroft. From her childhood, Miss Charlotte was fascinated by tales of ghost stories. So when I was a very little girl, my grandfather used to tell me about the ghost of Mrs.

4:50Kyle, how she walked all around this big place. According to the legend, Mrs. Kyle was connected to Mary Ball, Washington, the mother of George Washington. According to Miss Charlotte, Mrs. Kyle's maiden name was Ball, a prominent colonial Virginia surname. Mr. Kyle, her husband, was sent to America by an English company to build some houses in 1738. He is the one who first built Fox 12. It was there that the Kyles had a baby. As the story goes, it was not easy for Mrs. Kyle after the birth. When Mrs. Kyle had a baby, there was no doctor with hundreds of miles of her. And the story is that she went off her head.

5:41Mrs. Kyle reportedly went, quote, crazy. Now, we'd call it postpartum depression. And the treatment? Chaining her inside her own attic. She was chained as you lay in bed. And the chain is still in the floor.

6:03How long she was chained there. How she reacted to her confinement. if she saw her newborn, or even what happened to that baby. That's never been part of the story.

6:18Now, her prison, the attic, still exists. It's atop a creaky wooden staircase on the third floor of what was their brick house. She would never leave her home alive.

6:36It was summer. Her husband was away on business. While Mr. Kyle was away on a trip, Mrs. Kyle got out of her chains and tore down the steps. As Mrs. Kyle escaped down the stairs, she tripped and broke her neck and died. Due to the heat, she was immediately buried in the orchard, outside the veranda of the couple's brick home.

7:09Years passed. The Revolutionary War swept through the land. Almost a hundred years passed. Regiments of the Civil War marched through. The Battle of Middleburg, 14 days before Gettysburg. Another century turned. The legend of Mrs. Kyle's ghosts lingered and was told to a young girl named Charlotte by her grandfather. It's why Miss Charlotte ultimately wanted to buy the land to start Foxcrawl. And she was part of the reason I wanted to get it. Because, as I tell you, I like ghosts.

7:53As she founded the school, Ms. Charlotte lived in the same old brick house that Mrs. Kyle lived in, was chained in, and died in. And there's no doubt about it, Mrs. Kyle was there. According to Ms. Charlotte, Mrs. Kyle's ghost visited her and school staff. She was kind and good. I could feel her right behind me, breathing on my neck as I walked up the steps. She'd go to a certain door there, and then she'd go on up in the garage and disappear. Even Miss Wayman, the first big head of Foxworth, who lived in there, was at the top of the steps. I hadn't told her about Miss Carter at all, and she said to me, what are these footsteps that stop at my door and then go on up the steps?

8:41There were a number of teachers who came to Foxworth and people who worked there who knew there was something, some sort of spirit that moved around, because I wasn't the only one. I heard dozens of people talk to me about it. So you see, it wasn't just my imagination. So, Miss Charlotte wondered if Mrs. Kyle had unfinished business to take care of in this world. After the break, Miss Charlotte makes a grisly discovery. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Susan Glasser. I'm Jane Mayer. And I'm Evan Osmos. And we host the Washington Roundtable from the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast. For me, this is the water cooler.

9:26This is a wonderful chance to sit down with two of the smartest colleagues in the country and, you know, just kind of compare notes. No, that's so true, because first of all, we are actually friends in real life, but I can't wait till Fridays to hear what you guys think. Everybody sees the headlines, but you guys fill in the gaps. I also think, though, occasionally we get somebody to come on, and I'm always smarter for it. And if you get a great historian who can tell you about a presidential election 50, 60 years ago, often it can help you understand about what's happening today. So if you're looking for weekly insights into what's going on inside the Beltway, please join us every Friday on the Washington Roundtable, part of the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast.

10:11Right now, during the President's Day sale, you can get a Washington Post premium subscription for just$3 every four weeks. And that includes three extra accounts to share with friends or family. After your first year, renews at$19 every four weeks. The Washington Post. Power. Perspective. Premium. Learn more at WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe.

10:42She was simply the spirit of a restless soul who couldn't rest because they had something to tell us. What the something was, I had no idea. But I made up my mind I was going to find out. Ms. Charlotte decided to dig into it, literally. I decided I would try to dig her up. That was simply fascinating to the girls. so I told the ones who got the highest marks they could come when I began to dig the graves. There was only about six girls. I got two good, stoked men there, and we dug and dug and found nothing. The next day, we let the whole countryside come. That was everybody in the school and all our friends.

11:26It really was a funny gathering. And we began in real earnest with four men digging instead of two. and there we hit Mrs. Carl's bones. If you can imagine the excitement when they brought up the first ones. Nice little ladylike ribs. I was so glad to see them. It didn't take very long now and excitement was something beyond any words. In the excitement, one of Miss Charlotte's students fell into the grave. The student was not injured, but she emerged with a clue central to the mystery. It was Mrs. Carl's head, her skull. The student picked up the skull and was hoisted out of the pit by the two men who had helped dig the grave.

12:16I'll never forget her triumphant look as she came up, out, holding the skull of Mrs. Carl. It was wonderful. But then and right then, about 5.30 on the May afternoon, I found out the secret of why she wanted it. When I looked at the skull holding it in my hands, she was shot right through the very top of her hip, a big bullet hole. The day after that, it wrapped the skull up in a newspaper and I took it to Washington. to the Smithsonian Institute. There's a ballistic department there. And I showed this girl to them. After she dug up Mrs. Kyle's bones, Ms. Charlotte supposedly had the remains examined by the Smithsonian Institute.

13:18I found no record of this, but it's possible. They took it and gave it the most minute examination and brought it back to me within about half an hour, saying it's a pre-revolutionary bullet hole. So that's when Miss Charlotte developed her own theory about how Mrs. Kyle actually died. And why, after all those years, Mrs. Kyle's spirit still restlessly wandered the grounds of Foxcroft. You see, she did the most natural thing in the world. She rushed down the steps. The man who was left to take care of her just leaned over the banister and shot her right through the head. It's the only way it could have been done.

14:03Absolutely right in the middle. And then, being scared to death, to tell the first one how he shot him, and what they did, they arranged to have her break her neck falling down the steps.

14:21I've come home to Foxcrawled to reconnect with my childhood heart. Here we're at the bottom of the steps. The brick house. It used to be Locust Lawn when the Kyles lived here. I remember going to look for my best friends near those steps. We were always running in and out of that old brick house building where our parents worked. We'd never go up those stairs, though. As kids, we knew the story of Mrs. Kyle's ghost and dared each other to climb the stairs and peek at chains that we were told remained in the attic floor. In fact, I lived there for nearly 16 years and only once screwed up the courage to climb that staircase.

15:06I'm attempting it now, late at night.

15:14I'm not going up to the top of those stairs. There's no reason for me to go up there and bother that woman. I have yet to walk through that attic door and look for those chains myself.

15:32Steps from the brick house, there's an orchard. And on the edge of the orchard, there's a tree. And under that tree, Mrs. Kyle was buried again. We collected her rib bones and the ones that we dug up, put them all in a huge, great mason jar. It's a jar that used to be old-time pickle jars. Miss Charlotte had put the bones inside of a pickle jar and reinterred them. And that's where she's to stay for always. A bronze plaque marks the spot. It reads, Here lie the bones of Mrs. Kyle, who lived in the old brick house and died circa 1730. Her ghost still haunts Foxcroft. That's what the plaque reads.

16:28Well, she'd gotten the story to us. She told what she wanted to, what we wanted to know, and she wanted us to know. And now she rests right there under the tree.

16:53Clarence Williams is a local reporter with the General Assignment Breaking News team. That's it for Ghost Reports. Thanks for listening. You can find more of this kind of spooky reporting at The Washington Post. And right now, a premium subscription to The Washington Post comes with three extra accounts for you to share. So you get your login and three more accounts to give away. And right now, you can get all of that with a single payment of just$33 for the entire first year. That renews at$170 thereafter, and you can cancel anytime. Go to WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe. Again, that's WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe.

17:40Today's episode was produced and sound designed by Bishop San. It was edited by Ted Muldoon and Anne Gerhart. I'm Elahe Izadi. We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from The Washington Post. Thanks for listening and happy Halloween!

18:09Hi, I'm Susan Glasser. I'm Jane Mayer. And I'm Evan Osnos. And we host the Washington Roundtable from the New Yorker's Political Scene Podcast. For me, this is the water cooler. This is a wonderful chance to sit down with two of the smartest colleagues in the country and, you know, just kind of compare notes. No, that's so true. Because, first of all, we are actually friends in real life. But I can't wait until Fridays to hear what you guys think. Everybody sees the headlines, but you guys fill in the gaps. I also think, though, occasionally we get somebody to come on, and I'm always smarter for it.

18:43If you get a great historian who can tell you about a presidential election 50, 60 years ago, often it can help you understand about what's happening today. So if you're looking for weekly insights into what's going on inside the Beltway, please join us every Friday on the Washington Roundtable, part of the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast.

19:05Right now, during the President's Day sale, you can get a Washington Post premium subscription for just$3 every four weeks. And that includes three extra accounts to share with friends or family. After your first year, renews at$19 every four weeks. The Washington Post. Power. Perspective. Premium. Learn more at WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe.