The Vampire's Tomb

Last Saturday, after a yoga lesson and a morning meeting, my pal Constance & I went to brunch at The Black Sheep. This is a small restaurant in the Carver District, and the food and coffee are quite good. Since it was an exceptionally nice day, cool but sunny, we decided to walk off our meals at Hollywood Cemetery. I'll include a few pictures for you of our famous local boneyard. Some of you may recall reading about this humongous cemetery in a post from last year.


We rode through Oregon Hill, a 19th century neighborhood consisting mostly of old row houses. Within the past few years, blocks of new homes and apartments have been built in this area as well. Oregon Hill is situated next to the river and within sight of the downtown skyline, but for most of its existence was always a neighborhood for the working class. The white working class, to be specific. Within easy walking distance of the VCU campus, at least one black college student was harassed into moving out of the neighborhood when I lived in Oregon Hill back in the mid-80's. I remember how angry I was when I heard about that incident. It seems odd that one has to drive through this hardscrabble neighborhood to reach the burial ground of Presidents.


Constance & I found a place to park and began our stroll. We both enjoyed looking at the various styles of stone monuments. Finding unusual names is fun, too, and a cemetery is the perfect venue for sketching out evil schemes. The last time we went to dinner, Constance had told me about her plan to masturbate to good health and happiness. It seems she had read somewhere about the therapeutic benefits of daily masturbation, and had been giving it a try. I'm always concerned about the well-being of my friends, so I asked her how the plan was working. "Oh, I got bored at Day 17 and quit," Constance admitted disconsolately. I was glad we were taking a walk in Hollywood. There's nothing like a stroll through a sunny cemetery to lift one's spirits.


One family plot that we found interesting and, frankly, amusing was a woodsman's fantasy. The central monument was a stone tree trunk wrapped with stone vines & leaves, and the individual tombstones were stacks of logs (like bundles of firewood). While not the choice of the masses, this sort of theme was apparent in several plots scattered throughout the bucolic landscape. Not my cup of tea, but eye-catching nonetheless.


Near the edge of the bluffs a modern multi-family mausoleum still has space available. If you're sick & tired of moving, consider this for your final home. The central hall is suitable for worship or entertaining, and the terrace boasts spectacular views of the rolling river and the downtown skyline. Garden view, river view, or atrium units available. One bedroom apartments comfortably accommodate most caskets; efficiency units also offered for fancy-free crematory urns. Note: no heating or air conditioning. In our next photo, Constance contemplates the river view while deciding which unit makes her heart beat faster (or not at all).


Down below, we see a train on the CSX tracks below the bluffs. Alongside the railroad tracks, the James River and Kanawha Canal is visible. The canal was first proposed by the young George Washington when he was surveying our country and searching for a way to open a water route to the west for commercial purposes.


The canal was opened in 1790, and allowed vessels called packets to transport goods, bypassing the river rapids. Packet boats drew more water than the bateaux which were used on the James River, and were pulled by mules & horses on towpaths which flanked the canal. This photograph points out the demise of the nation's canal system; this once-promising form of transport was usurped by the locomotive. You can see a couple of walkers enjoying the old towpath.



In the photograph below, you can see the barest glimpse of the James River. Hollywood Cemetery sits on bluffs overlooking the James River rapids.

Below is the mausoleum of Lewis Ginter, the man we met in a previous post. Lewis Ginter made and lost several fortunes in Richmond.

He decided that Richmond deserved a world-class hotel, built the Jefferson Hotel in 1892, and opened the hotel in 1895. At one time, the Jefferson featured live alligators in its marble pools in the Palm Court. Margaret Mitchell stayed at the hotel while writing Gone With The Wind, and it is said that the magnificent marble staircase in the lobby was the inspiration for the one described in Scarlett's Atlanta mansion. There is a long-standing but false rumor that the Jefferson's staircase was used in the film. Today, the Jefferson is recognized with Mobil's Five Star rating and AAA's Five Diamonds.

Since it is my understanding that Mr. Ginter never married, and was a man of impeccable taste and vision, it is my personal belief that he must have been gay. He rests alone in the structure below which overlooks the James River.



Then we have this old girl, typical of cemetery monuments of the era. There are more stone angels in Hollywood Cemetery than you could chase off with a stick.



At last we come to the moment you've been waiting for! The Vampire's Tomb!
Yes, Virginia, there is a vampire. Indeed, Richmond does have a legendary hometown bloodsucker, but he does not exist in the tomb pictured below. He lives at the intersection of False Rumor Boulevard and Wild Imagination Way. True or make-believe, it's fun to point out W.W. Pool's tomb to visitors, because it is a creepy spot in the cemetery. From the sad little lamb at the top of the crypt, to the rusty iron & glass door beyond the iron outer gate, Goth wannabes and Anne Rice fans would be well-pleased with a picnic on W.W. Pool's banquette.


The outer iron door used to be unlocked, so you could step inside the ante-chamber of the tomb. Inside this vestibule, there is an inner door with an ancient lock, and an aperture above this doorway gives a view into the dim burial chamber. This opening only works for tall people, or folks that find something to stand on. Nowadays, the outer door is secured, but you can still peer through the ironwork. Below is the opening between the vestibule and the inner crypt. The upper part of the rusted door frame is visible at the bottom of the photograph. (Edit: I added a photo of the door below the mysterious opening, so you get a fairly good idea of how the whole picture looks at the entrance to the burial chamber. The hexagonal glass pieces fitted into the oxidized muntins were painted long ago, perhaps to foil curiousity seekers)



So, how did the notion of a local vampire spring forth? In 1925, the Church Hill Tunnel along the C&O Railroad track collapsed on a train, killing several workers. One man, a fireman named Ben Mosby, escaped from the tunnel horribly burned by the ruptured steam engine. He died later at Grace Hospital. Somehow, this sad story morphed into the legend of a vampire with jagged teeth and torn skin hanging from his body who was seen disappearing into the tomb of W.W. Pool, as if the actual train disaster weren't horrible enough. The train still rests in the collapsed tunnel, despite attempts to dig it free and retrieve the remaining bodies. The tunnel was ordered to be sealed, leaving inside a steam locomotive and ten flatcars.