YELLOW HOUSE INN One of the inns built in the river town called Port Republic, in Rocking ham County, Virginia after the Civil War took such a name unto itself, perhaps, because the enterprising Port people had a well established traits acquired for many years of commercial association with people downstream including the Bay in the Baltimore district.
It might have been that a Port person acquired such a odd color of pigment with which to make the new in stand out as being unique among building which were general drab, even unpainted. It's name was built-in or plastered on, you might say. The original builders had no way of knowing it but they seem to have built in some other unusual features which disturbed ordinary folk.
It appears to have been common among so many houses constructed during that Victorian era that many of them proved to be haunted. Not so with the Yellow House at Port. There, only the front porch was subject to visits from an apparition of an older lady who took possession of one of the sturdy, wooden rocking chairs which were a main feature of the spacious hotel porch. There was only on thing about the old lady which made her of special interest. She lacked a head.
There have always been doubters in every community and the three men stepped forward and volunteered to sleep all night long on the Yellow House Inn porch to disprove the existence of such a headless hag.
They selected rocking chairs and arranged them around the one the old lady always sat in; boxed her in, one might say, with her ghostly feet almost touching the porch rail. No one could get in or out without them knowing it.
We think we know, now, what actually happened but they did not want to see it that way. Along a bit after one-thirty in the morning when all three of the men were asleep, one of the men started to snore; sat up sharply and called out. This noise startled a cat sleeping on top of the railing. The cat jumped from the rail top, ricocheted off of the upright back of the chair, and took off across the floor. All thee men were aroused at the same time and, looking across at each other saw the central chair rocking away steadily. By their own admission, they all three “grabbed their hats and got outta there!”
The old Yellow House Inn was torn down in 1914, but some old say the headless lady still wanders around the area. Another thing: no one has ever seen a live cat within twenty feet of the place where rocking chairs used be a main attraction. Fact is they take a wide circle around the spot.
A.L.M. August 5, 2005 [c474wds]
