Virginia

Castle Hill Manor

Late on June 3, 1781, having discovered a surprise British raid, Jack Jouett set off on a perilous 40-mile ride from Cuckoo Tavern to Charlottesville. Captain Jouett galloped through the night, reaching Monticello around dawn to warn Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and other Virginia legislators meeting there. Jouett arrived several hours ahead of the British, and the patriots eluded their would-be captors.

Alerted by Jouett, Dr. Thomas Walker helped secure their escape. Walker, the legend goes, delayed Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton’s 180 dragoons and 70 mounted infantrymen at Castle Hill. A noted western explorer, Walker had settled in the Southwest Mountains near Charlottesville and built his Castle Hill home in the 1760s.

Politician and diplomat William Cabell Rives married into the Walker family in 1819 and expanded Castle Hill Manor. His granddaughter Amélie, who earned fame as a novelist and playwright, occupied Castle Hill until 1945 with her husband, Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy of Russia. Rumors persist that Amélie’s spirit, or perhaps that of another female descendant, continues to dwell there.

Castle Hill Manor was built before the Revolutionary War in 1765, by a Dr. Thomas Walker. Many guests staying at the manor are aroused and really frightened in the middle of the night by unexplainable noises or footsteps. Some guests over the years saw a female and described her as a young pretty woman who is sometimes playful and whose main goal is to disturb the people that are sleeping in her former room.

In the early 1800's a prince and princes lived in the house and had many festive parties. Guest hear the sounds of chairs moving across the floor, glasses clinking, and footsteps walking swiftly across the floor. Possibly the ghosts are celebrating the parties they attended hundreds of years ago.

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