Gadsby’s Tavern Museum

The Gadsby's Tavern Museum in Alexandria was originally built as a tavern and inn for tired travelers. It is also the site of one of the most curious mysteries in Virginia history. A young woman and her husband traveled by ship to Alexandria in 1816, contracting a disease on their journey that caused them to seek rest at the tavern. The woman ended up on her death bed at the inn and stories say that she made all of the people that attended to her swear an oath to never reveal her identity. To this very day, no one knows who the woman was, they just know her story. She is buried in St. Paul’s Cemetery with a gravestone marked “Female Stranger”. Room 8 (where the woman was on her deathbed) of the tavern is said to be haunted by her ghost, along with the cemetery she is buried in.

The woman's spirit is said to be a gentle one. She appears dressed in an evening gown and sometimes even likes to crash events taking place in the ballroom. Around the turn of the 20th century, there was an event in the ballroom, and a young man spotted an unknown woman in solid form dressed in an early 19th century gown. She was across the room from him so when he went over to her, she smiled and floated out the door and disappeared outside room 8. Her apparition has been seen in that room, and wandering the halls.