|
A spooky business
Creator of long-running Gettysburg tour brings similar ghost tour business to Fredericksburg
Date published: 5/25/2006
GHOSTLY footprints that appear out of nowhere, and vanish just as eerily.
The spectral sight and sound of an 18th-century harpist and singer.
And buildings where candles mysteriously appear, silverware rearranges itself and an unseen someone tugs on women's skirts.
To Mark and Carol Nesbitt, these are the building blocks of a new business that steps off tomorrow evening.
Nesbitt's "Ghosts of Fredericksburg Tours" is a first for the region, a business that provides regular tours to introduce tourists from nearby or afar to things here that go bump in the night.
To scare up some interest in the tours, Nesbitt--a former National Park Service historian and the author of a dozen books on the Civil War and ghosts--touts the region's ghostly bona fides.
"From its Colonial heritage to the horror of being the focal point of four major Civil War battles, Fredericksburg has more history, more battles and more ghosts than any other city in America," he claims in his ghost-tour circulars.
He continues, "Combining history with mysterious tales of the still-lurking dead, costumed guides will conduct 80-minute, comfortably paced, candlelight walking tours filling the evening with folklore and stories spawned when 100,000 fell in the fighting in and around town."
To convey those tales, guided tours will depart every Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. this summer (and possibly beyond) from the Ghosts of Fredericksburg Tour Headquarters, known by most as The Chimneys building at 623 Caroline St. downtown.
For prices that range from $7 to $10 a person--local folks get a special tour price, groups are discounted and those 7 and under are free--people will be treated to a candlelight tour highlighting some of the city's more well-known ghosts and tales.
It's not a new business for this couple, whose daughter, Katie, will be supervising much of the operation here.
For 13 years, Nesbitt has been operating "The Ghosts of Gettysburg Candlelight Walking Tours," a successful business that last year offered more than 600 tours of various ghostly attractions there.
Nesbitt, who began collecting ghost stories while working for the National Park Service as a ranger and historian at Gettysburg, said they eventually became a book, "Ghosts of Gettysburg," and the topic of varied ghost tours.
| 'Everywhere we'd go into people would ask what we do. When they heard we have a ghost tour, they started sharing their Fredericksburg ghost stories with us.'
Mark Nesbitt, ghost tour leader |
|
Date published: 5/25/2006
|
Star Directory
