Part three of our video interview series on the hauntings of the Peyton Randolph House in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. House featured on our ghost tour.
The story that you’ll hear people tell that is that anyone who works security at the Peyton Randolph has no business going into the basement. They do go in the basement; it’s a fluke reason for them to go in to that they’re being nosey, a bunch of variations.
The reality of it is a break room. Part of the job of security is to check that area down there and make sure door s are secured, make sure lights are off. They had things like a microwave, coffee pot; things of that nature to make sure everything is cut off and hope that if anything could have been a hazard that we be prevented from like basically burning the house down.
Well this one particular night he’s down there, he’s doing his job and as he’s getting ready to leave he’s walking up the stairs and realized I left the light on down there. He goes back down to turn the light off, walks back up the stairs. He’s about three to four steps from the top and feels something literally grab him by the ankles and the proverbial mwaaa he hears. He said did I draw my gun out? Yes I did. He goes but then I realized if it’s something I can’t see, he goes a gun ain’t going to do me no good.
Re-holstered his gun, standing there he could not move. He said literally he was frozen in place. He called his lieutenant who asked and says I don’t know, he goes I literally cannot move, I don’t know what’s going on, he says I cannot move where I’m at.
So he’s standing there in pitch black, he’s got his flashlight, nothing behind him. He has no idea what it is, but he can feel like literally somebody’s holding him in place.
Now when they go in the building on this particular one way we do it, there’s a way you can secure the door with the key and the big skeleton key, you can half turn it. Basically you’re preventing anybody from getting into the house. The doors are two or three inches thick solid wood, you’re not going to kick them open.
So when the lieutenant arrived they called him on the radio and said where are you? He said I’m still in the basement. He said when the lieutenant came to the door, when he knocked on the door that’s when he felt something break free and he was able to move. Got up the stairs, he exited the stairs into the hallway and went there, when he opened the door his lieutenant looked at him and I quote, he said you’re the whitest lack man that I have ever seen. He goes it scared him that bad.
Did he go back in the building while he was still there? Yes. Did he quit immediately? No. He ended up quitting a couple months later to take another job. That’s the actual story; however, some of the other one’s that people hear are definitely more colorful, definitely more adventurous, not as exciting a story. Mr Scratch starts off at the jail.
