The Bedford Museum held its first Ghost Walk in nearly a decade Friday night. This time it was on Centertown sidewalks instead of Longwood Cemetery. This time it wasn’t the Museum alone. They partnered with the Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce and Little Town Players.
Little Town Players cast the ghosts. Grace Peterson provided Karen Hopkins with information and, in most cases, photos of the people. This allowed her to cast people who were the right age to portray the historical figure. Little Town Players involvement meant that the people playing the role of the ghosts knew how to act.
The actor portraying General William Terry was particularly memorable. Terry was a Confederate general, but the actor portrayed him at a time when he was running for election to the Virginia Senate. He described why he was running, gave a political stump speech and asked for the spectators votes. Peterson played the role of Polly Smith, Bedford’s first female police officer. She wore the actual vintage uniform that Smith wore and it fit her perfectly.
Costumes took some work. In some cases, they had actual vintage clothes. In addition to Polly Smith’s uniform, they had the original work uniform that Morman Musgove, who owned Bedford’s Coca Cola warehouse wore when making deliveries.
Leslie Mehaffy, who is a Civil War reenactor, provided four 1860s era reproduction outfits.
Peterson said it was especially hard to find the right style of clothes for the women, as reproductions can be hard to find. At least affordable reproductions are hard to find. But between donations and loans, they were able to do it with no cost for costumes.
There were 15 interactions with the ghosts and many talked to the people on the walk. The encounters were set up to as if the people on the walk encountered these people going about their business on a normal day and interrupting them.
“We come to the ghost,” said Peterson. “We are interrupting them.”
Peterson said the Chamber of commerce approached them and asked them to do it. As the museum’s staff had been thinking about starting the ghost walks again, they were glad to do it.
The ghosts came from all periods of Bedford’s history, starting from the late 19th century to the 1960s. They included Susie G. Gibson and two of the Bedford Boys. They caught up with Billy Parker and Jack Powers chatting in front of the Bedford Boys Tribute Center, formerly Greene’s Drug Store. The time is just before the farewell party in 1941 when the National Guard company shipped out for what they thought would be a year’s federal service. Billy Parker came home from the war, although his two brothers did not. Jack Powers was killed on D-Day.
One of the ghosts was a lady the Museum didn’t learn about until two months ago. An old bank ledger was donated to the Museum and they discovered that a lady named Martha Layne made a large deposit.
“We see this lady making a $30,000 deposit in 1861,” Peterson said.
That was a huge amount of money in a time when most people didn’t make more than $500 a year. They have no idea what she looked like, but they have been able to learn that she was a very wealthy woman and lived in what today is called Montvale. Back then, it was Buford.
Peterson said they hope to see the ghost walk become an annual event.
The weather was perfect, cool and not windy. Although Peterson would have liked to see weather that would have set an eerie mood, it was bright and sunny when the walk started.
Ghosts included Peter Lee Huddleston, a Confederate veteran who was Bedford County’s longest serving sheriff and Mary Oney Fizer, who served as a nurse in one of Bedford’s many hospitals during the Civil War. There were seven hospitals and the one that she worked at was across North Bridge Street across from the Bower Center. There is no trace of it today. Henry Vincent Jordan, who was Bedford’s town sergeant, elected in 1908. He lost the election in 1914.
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