Haunting Texts at Walkerton Tavern

On Sundays, I’m teaching a writing course at The Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen. My classroom is on the second floor of Walkerton Tavern in Glen Allen. Built in 1825 for John Walker along Mountain Road, Walkerton has served many purposes over the past two centuries: tavern, hotel, store, voting precinct, private residence, and now a historic space connected with the Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen.

There is something wonderfully meta about teaching a course called Haunting Texts for the Living, the Dead, and Those We Remember while reading haunting texts in an allegedly haunted building.

The second floor itself has a long history. Walkerton contains an unusual, hinged partition that can be moved to enlarge the upstairs room for guests and gatherings, and local tradition also connects the building to the Civil War. Historical accounts suggest that wounded Union cavalrymen may have been treated there in 1864, and older documentation records stories about stains on the upstairs floor said to date from that period. Whether every part of that story can be verified matters less to me than the fact that the story persists. That is how ghostlore works: history, memory, storytelling, and place begin to accumulate around one another.

It reminds me of the soldier and poet R.M. Kirby and his poem "Autumn" that was originally published in the Journal of Commerce. Kirby is buried in Shockoe Hill Cemetery and while I don’t know of any connection he had to Walkerton Tavern, I imagine that some of the soldiers who may have ended up in the building wrote poetry too. I wonder if a group writing there might stir up some ghostly excitement because apparently, Walkerton has a reputation for being haunted.

Naturally, this makes it especially interesting to be there alone before and after class.

Before the students arrive, the building is quiet in a way that makes me much more aware of where I am. The staircase is older and has that delightful creaking. The rooms feel larger. Small sounds become noticeable. Then class begins and the space fills with conversation, readings, writing, and people moving through it. After everyone leaves, the building changes again. Some of this could be connected to how adding people moves the room from a space to a place. 

The setting feels unusually appropriate for the course. We are reading texts about memory, death, grief, continuity, absence, and the ways people and places continue to visit us long after a moment has ended. We are discussing what makes a text haunt us while sitting inside a building already layered with its own stories of the past.

The more I researched Walkerton and the surrounding area, the more another connection began to emerge.

In 1886, Elizabeth Jane Holladay, known locally as “Miss Lizzie,” began teaching children in her home on Mountain Road. She was about thirty-eight years old, and her classroom was also on the second floor. Her small school eventually grew into the first public school in the Glen Allen area. By 1899, it had moved into a one-room schoolhouse, and eventually it developed into Glen Allen School, the building that now houses the Cultural Arts Center.

So, while I am teaching upstairs in Walkerton, another woman taught upstairs not far away on the same road nearly 140 years ago. Her little classroom became part of the educational history of Glen Allen, and now I am teaching a community course in another historic second-floor room nearby.

There is something I like about that continuity.

The course itself has also surprised me. I expected more of the students to be older because many community-based courses I have taught in the past have included a large number of seniors. Instead, quite a few of the people in this class are younger than I am. That has made the discussions especially interesting.

Death Studies can easily be framed as something primarily connected with aging, but the conversations in class have reminded me that death, grief, memory, inheritance, fear, ritual, and remembrance belong to every generation. People enter those topics from very different places depending on where they are in their lives. Having several generations in the same room means that no one perspective dominates. The same poem or prompt can resonate very differently with someone in their twenties, someone in middle age, and someone much older.

That range feels particularly appropriate for a course concerned with haunting. After all, haunting itself is partly about time collapsing. The past continues into the present. Someone who is gone remains part of a story. A building survives the people who once occupied it. A poem written decades or centuries ago suddenly speaks directly to someone reading it now.

While researching Walkerton, I also discovered that there is a small Hopkins family cemetery on the grounds near the tavern. Members of the Hopkins family lived at Walkerton from 1857 until 1941, and several family members are buried there.

I have not visited the cemetery yet. Obviously, I will need to check that out.

The course is becoming as much about the place where we are meeting as the texts we are reading.

So far, no ghosts have joined the discussion. But I am beginning to think they would fit right in. Speaking of those who haunt me, here is the poem Kirby wrote a few years before the Civil War. 

The Fifth Full Moon Has Passed: The Harvest Moon

The fifth full moon has passed since Dad died beneath the Flower Moon on May 1. When I began marking time this way, I wasn't really sure what I was doing. I only knew that the first full moon after Dad died felt important enough that I couldn't let it simply arrive and disappear. Plus, as I included in Dad's obituary, he was a man of celestial wonder so this makes me feel close to him. 

Since then, each moon has become a small marker in a year that otherwise seems to be moving far too quickly. The Strawberry Moon brought a labyrinth and sound bath. The Buck Moon brought a bicycle ride in Cape Charles and a permanent bracelet. The Sturgeon Moon brought a lunar eclipse, a cemetery tour, and my spectacularly unsuccessful attempt at stand-up paddleboarding on, or rather in, the James River.

This time was a bit different. I had been charging forward creating moments that reminded me of my youth and family adventures. The September full moon was the Harvest Moon, and it felt as though this moon should be less about going outward and more about gathering. The previous months had been about doing things, trying things, moving through experiences... you know, muddle through somehow. The Harvest moon felt more reflective. It felt like a time to take stock of what has happened since the last moon, to consider what I had accomplished, and to think about what I wanted to carry forward.

I spent much of Friday at home because I had gotten my COVID vaccination on Wednesday and my immune system had decided Thursday night that we were going to reenact every illness I'd ever experienced at once. By Friday afternoon, I was sitting on the back porch, tired and achy, but it was a beautiful day and fall had finally started to feel like fall. I missed the university's fall open house, and I had to remind myself that work continues without me.

That sounds obvious, but apparently I need reminders. We are moving into the fifth week of the fall semester. Academia feels precarious. Everyone seems to be trying to figure out what comes next while continuing to teach, advise, respond to email, attend meetings, and behave as though uncertainty is simply another item on the calendar. I'm tired, and I find myself hoping that I can simply keep my job for the next ten years.

That uncertainty has been running quietly beneath everything else this month, alongside all the estate work that still has to be done. Since the Sturgeon Moon, though, there has also been progress. Babushka has cleared and sorted most of Dad's house. I sold his Saturn VUE. I submitted the probate inventory. I've continued working through accounts, paperwork, bills, belongings, and all the administrative debris that follows a person's death. I've contacted estate-sale companies and begun thinking seriously about the next stage of emptying the house.

None of these things feels particularly monumental while I'm doing them. Mostly they feel like errands, obligations, and one more thing to check off a list with lots of tears in between the moments. But taken together, they are a harvest of sorts. Things that felt impossible a few months ago are now done or at least on their way to being done.

Then there were the apples. I had bought a huge old basket that looks positively witchy at a thrift store, and for the Harvest Moon I decided to fill it with papier-mâché apples made from newspapers Dad had saved. I tore those old newspapers into strips, soaked them in paste, shaped them into apples, added tissue paper to add color, and added leaves. They aren't perfect, which somehow makes them better.

The newspapers had been sitting in Dad's house waiting for whatever purpose he imagined they might eventually serve. Now some of them have become apples. I placed them in the old basket on my front porch, and there is something about it that I love more than I expected to. A basket full of harvest made from something Dad saved. Not preserved exactly as it was, but transformed. And, after I placed the apples in the basket a beautiful yellow garden orb weaver made her home on the front porch. So, I did what every spider-loving girl would do-- I made the porch off limits and added a sign that Webecca is not taking visitors.

The things we inherit do not always remain in their original forms. Sometimes memory becomes a story. A possession becomes something useful to another person. An old newspaper becomes an apple. A house becomes somebody else's home. A familiar life becomes a collection of stories we carry around inside ourselves. This grief is hard because it isn't just Dad passing but it is Mom having passed and my mother-in-law having passed just before her, and emptying a house that is haunted with my youth. This week I have been dreaming about old boyfriends and old friends who are no longer in this world. Each time I walk into my old bedroom now that the hoardedness has been removed, I can see the walls and they hold memories.

My own house is changing in other ways too. Our trees along the side of the house, where our bad neighbor had cut down the privacy we once had, have finally been planted. They look great. 

Life keeps arriving even while other parts are disappearing.

On Saturday, Babushka and I went to Apothec for a broom-decorating event. When I originally signed us up, I thought we would literally be making brooms. We were decorating cinnamon brooms instead, which was probably safer anyway although there was the hottest glue gun that burned the heck out of my thumb. There was something appropriately witchy and autumnal about decorating a broom on the day of the Harvest Moon, and after months of estate paperwork, sorting, probate forms, and cleaning, having time with Babushka keeps me going.

Then came Hollywood Cemetery. That evening I gave the Full Moon Tour beneath the Harvest Moon. About fifty people had signed up. Five months after Dad died, I found myself standing beneath another full moon in a cemetery, doing what I have done for years: telling stories about people who are gone.

There is an odd comfort in that. Cemeteries have always made sense to me because death isn't treated there as something that needs to be hidden or hurried past. The dead have names, dates, stories, families, monuments, odd details, and histories that can still surprise us centuries later. I spend a great deal of my professional and creative life reminding people that the dead are not simply gone because their stories remain. Now that idea has become intensely personal.

Dad's story remains too. I carry it into strange places now. This fifth moon has felt quieter than the others. There was no great physical challenge. I didn't have to stay upright on a bicycle or attempt to stand on a paddleboard. I didn't lose sunglasses in the James. I didn't have to prove anything. Instead, I gathered. I gathered old newspapers and made apples. I gathered people beneath the moon and told stories. I spent time with Babushka. I looked around at the things that have changed since the last full moon and realized that some things that felt impossible then are now behind me.

The Harvest moon is about recognizing what survived. It is about noticing what I managed to carry through a difficult season. It is about gathering what is worth keeping and figuring out what can be transformed.

Time keeps moving whether I acknowledge it or not. The semester keeps moving. The estate keeps moving. Houses change. Trees grow. Cars get sold. Newspapers become apples. Grief changes shape. The Harvest Moon has passed, and the basket is full. For now, that is enough.

Gathering Our Ghosts- an online course

More details about the course can be found on the TLAN website

HAUNTING TEXTS FOR THE LIVING, THE DEAD, AND THOSE WE REMEMBER

 If you're in the Richmond area and want to take a course with me, check out the Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen's new Fall catalog, which now includes two Language Arts courses!

HAUNTING TEXTS FOR THE LIVING, THE DEAD, AND THOSE WE REMEMBER

Instructor: Sharon Pajka

Designed for writers of all experience levels, this Transformative Language Arts workshop offers a welcoming space for creativity, contemplation, and connection during the autumn season. Participants will consider how stories linger in people, landscapes. buildings, and the imagination, discovering how language can help us pay closer attention to what endures-and, in doing so, inspire us to live more fully.

Fall I: Sundays, 10/4-11/22.

3-5 PM

$100, $10 material fee

See less

Witchy Side-Quests for The Beginning of Fall

 

The Fourth Full Moon Has Passed: The Sturgeon Moon

The fourth full moon has passed since Dad died beneath the Flower Moon on May 1 and considering it has only been a week since the Sturgeon Moon, it feels as though an entire season has passed in those few days. The semester has officially begun, but before that came faculty development week, too many meetings, and all the frantic preparation that marks the end of summer whether you are ready for it or not. And then, in the middle of all of that, there was the moon. On Thursday night, I got up around 12:12 to see the lunar eclipse. I stood outside looking up, sleepy but determined not to miss it, and it was beautiful and poignant. Four full moons ago, I began paying attention to the moon because Dad died beneath one. Now I find myself marking time by it, measuring the distance between then and now in moons instead of weeks.

The next evening, I gave a historic tour beneath the Sturgeon Moon at Hollywood Cemetery. It was a big crowd, but a wonderful one. They were friendly, kind, and incredibly helpful. There is something strange and lovely about walking through a cemetery beneath a full moon, telling the stories of people who have been gone for decades or centuries while carrying the absence of someone who has only recently gone. Then, on Saturday, my friend Miako took perhaps the biggest risk of the weekend by agreeing to go with me to the James River to try Stand-Up Paddleboarding. There are several things you should know about this decision. First, I have pretty terrible balance. I have Ménière’s disease, and it is an ongoing joke that I walk into walls because, well, I pretty much do. Second, I hadn't put on a swimsuit in two decades and actually had to buy one specifically for this adventure. Third, my wobbly legs were giving me some fairly reliable information that standing upright on a floating board in the middle of the James River might not be where my particular talents lie. Naturally, I tried anyway.

inspiration illustration

I got a little brazen and attempted to stand before I was ready, and into the James I went. I had not planned on swimming with the sturgeon as part of this particular full-moon adventure, but there I was. And no lie: there was an enormous splash right beside us. Sturgeon live in the James, so naturally we decided it had to be one. I choose to believe this. Getting back onto the paddleboard became an adventure of its own. Miako paddled us closer to shore so I could get some footing in the shallower water, and somewhere in the process I lost my hat and my sunglasses, but wow, did we laugh. Because apparently falling into the James wasn't enough, being on the water also made me completely seasick. I am not the best representative for Pisces. Eventually, I accepted my fate and converted Stand-Up Paddleboarding into Sit-Down Paddleboarding while Miako actually managed to stand. Somewhere between falling in, losing my belongings, getting seasick, laughing until it hurt, and sitting on that board on the James, I realized that all of it was part of the adventure. This is what acknowledging the full moon has become for me. It isn't really about accomplishing something, and it isn't even entirely about the moon. It is about interrupting the ordinary march of days long enough to notice that another month has passed without Dad. Instead of letting that passage happen unnoticed, I do something that reminds me I am still here. And, as Miako said, the goal was getting together and getting in the water; we accomplished just by participating. 

After SUP, we ate lunch at the marina. I ordered a grilled cheese and some absolutely amazing hush puppies with berry butter. I'm basically a child. Apparently my version of conquering the river is falling off a paddleboard, losing my hat and sunglasses, getting seasick, and then celebrating with grilled cheese. But those hush puppies with berry butter were amazing, and sitting there with Miako after everything we'd just done, laughing about the ridiculousness of it all, felt like part of the full-moon ritual, too. Maybe acknowledging another month without Dad doesn't always have to be solemn. Maybe sometimes it gets to taste like berry butter.

Then the semester began, and the moon disappeared back into the background of my life. I've had a stress-induced eye twitch for the last few days, and I keep going to my family home to take out trash and recycling while my Babushka works her butt off clearing out that place. I'm angry and I'm sad. For a while, I wasn't really crying, but for the last few days, I have been. I'm exhausted almost all the time, and work is stressful. Higher education is changing, and "academic transformation" sounds clinical until you remember that it means real people may lose their jobs. Things I have spent years building and believing in suddenly feel uncertain. My fella keeps reminding me of Cookie Monster's philosophy: "Cookie happened." That's probably more of a paraphrase than an actual Cookie Monster quotation, but I understand what he means. Cookie happened. I got to teach amazing literature. I got to sit in small groups and have conversations that mattered. I got to live and breathe in the humanities. Those things happened, and whatever comes next cannot undo them.

And I got to have a Dad who was pretty darn amazing. That happened, too. I got an entire lifetime of being his daughter. I got childhood and adulthood and all the ordinary days in between. I got stories and jokes and frustrations and memories. I got a father worth grieving, and now I get to clean up the mess… literally, in many cases. There are trash bags and recycling bins and belongings that have to be sorted. There are decisions about what stays and what goes. There are objects that meant something once and objects whose meaning has disappeared with the people who knew it. There is an entire physical life that somehow has to be reduced, distributed, recycled, donated, saved, or thrown away. I'm trying to do that with grace. Some days I probably do and some days I probably don't, but maybe grace doesn't require doing this beautifully. Maybe it just means continuing to show up.

The next full moon is the Harvest Moon. I have another cemetery tour planned, another volunteer gig beneath another full moon, but this time I don't have a physical adventure waiting for me. No sound bath. No bicycle. No paddleboard. No planned plunge into a river. And I think that may be right because harvest is different. For the last four moons, I have been going outward: walking, riding, paddling, searching, trying something new. But harvest is about gathering. It is about taking stock of what grew, what survived, what can be carried forward, and what has reached the end of its season. Maybe this moon doesn't need an adventure. Maybe it needs a basket. I recently bought a huge old basket, and I've decided to fill it with papier-mâché apples made from old newspapers that come from my folks’ house. There is something about that idea that feels right for where I am now: taking what is old, what has already been read and used and might otherwise be discarded, and turning it into something that symbolizes harvest. After months of trying to mark grief by doing something new, perhaps the Harvest Moon is asking me to look at what I already have.

I have a few plans.

Spooky Town Books Author Event, Saturday, October 17 • 7 PM - 8 PM

The Third Full Moon Has Passed: The Buck Moon

The third full moon has passed since Dad died beneath the Flower Moon on May 1. I wasn't sure when I began marking time by the full moons that it would feel cathartic, but it has. I don't look forward to these full moons. In fact, as they approach, I find myself becoming more anxious and emotional. But having something that encourages me to move through my grief, both physically and symbolically, has helped. Instead of letting another month simply disappear into paperwork, probate, and the endless work of clearing out a house, the full moon gives me a reason to pause, go somewhere, and remember Dad in a way that feels intentional. This month's moon was the Buck Moon, and after the heaviness of the last few months, I wanted to do something fun that reminded me of him.

Dad and I both had fond memories of our family vacations from when I was growing up, and some of my favorite childhood memories are of riding bikes together while we were on vacation. I hadn't ridden a bike in more than twenty years, so deciding to join the Full Moon Bike Ride in Cape Charles seemed wonderfully symbolic, completely ridiculous, and scary. If something is scary, you should probably do it, right? 

I rented bikes from Make Fast Cycles, and I ended up changing the reservation several times after it became clear that Babushka wasn't going to be able to ride with me. JD could not have been more patient. He rewrote the rental agreement, changed the drop-off location, and walked me through everything without ever making me feel like I was creating extra work for him. Acts of kindness like this will stay with me, especially during seasons when even small accommodations can make an overwhelming day feel manageable. By the start, community riders had gathered for a fun evening ride dressed in colorful clothes, flashing lights, and even a tutu. My ride approach was much more serious. First, I didn’t want to fall because now falling means bruises that won’t heal for months and possibly a broken bone or two. Second, I didn’t want to embarrass myself. I’m not sure why I even care about that. And lastly, I didn’t want to weep. It would not only make riding a bike hard, but I didn’t want to change anyone’s mood.  My tears are emotional releases, not that I am simply sad. It’s complicated and I need to cry sometimes.

My bike was an e-bike, another first for me. I was so intimidated by the idea that I barely used any of its electric features. I spent most of the evening gripping the handlebars far tighter than necessary, convinced that one wrong button would send me flying down the streets of Cape Charles. It wasn't until nearly the end of the five-mile ride that I finally gathered enough courage to try the pedal assist. After all that worrying, I discovered it simply made the ride easier. I could have laughed at myself because it felt like a lesson I probably should have already known. Sometimes we carry more than we need because we're afraid of the very thing designed to help us.

The ride began at the LOVE sign on Bay Avenue, where families, friends, and cyclists gathered as the Buck Moon rose over Cape Charles. There was something comforting about moving together beneath the moonlight. I kept thinking about riding bikes with Dad when I was a little girl and how naturally those memories returned the moment I started pedaling. 

I was so focused on staying upright that I hardly noticed anything around me at first. Then, as we turned onto one of the roads, someone called out, "Hey, check out the moon!" I looked up and there it was, hanging low over Cape Charles. It was enormous and absolutely stunning. At that point, the ride got a bit easier (emotionally! I had forgotten that my butt would hurt from the bike seat.) 

After the ride, Babushka and I walked out onto the pier together. It was a breezy Eastern Shore nights where the wind keeps you cool, and the sound of the waves crashing against the large rocks below was oddly comforting. There were many families our fishing together. We stood there for a while, watching the Buck Moon over the water before heading back.

We stayed at Fisherman at Cape Charles Tiny Livin', and I cannot say enough good things about Eric and Sylvia Hawkins. We arrived early enough to meet Eric while Sylvia was outside painting a beautiful grapevine mural that she continued working on throughout the day. Their tiny home community reflects exactly who they are. They spent years living the tiny lifestyle themselves before creating these restored homes, and every detail shows the care they have put into the property. There are games scattered throughout the grounds, including darts and bean bag toss, what everyone now calls cornhole, and a huge cauldron-shaped fire pit that immediately caught our attention. By the end of our short stay, it felt as though we had been welcomed by friends rather than simply checking into a place to spend the night.

After checking in and before the moonlit ride, I had made an appointment at Moonrise Jewelry. We actually arrived almost an hour early because, as usual, I was worried about getting there on time. They were incredibly accommodating and invited us right in rather than making us wait. I had been thinking about this bracelet for days and knew exactly what I wanted. I designed a permanent bracelet around the twelve full moons that will mark this first year after Dad's death. The bracelet begins with three tiny sequin links that reminded me of miniature moons, representing the Flower Moon, the Strawberry Moon, and now the Buck Moon. A single black crystal separates those first three months from the nine moons still ahead. The remaining nine moons are attached to what had once been Babushka's anklet chain, allowing something she once wore to become part of something entirely new.

There was enough of the anklet remaining that we made matching bracelets to represent what has become our shared journey over these past three months. I truly cannot imagine navigating Dad's illness, his passing, the memorial and now the overwhelming task of clearing the house without the Miller family. Every donation run, every trip to the dump, every unexpected crisis has somehow become a little more manageable because they were there....

Since the Strawberry Moon, my days have been spent sorting through a lifetime. Babushka has made trip after trip to churches and charities so that nothing useful is wasted, while I have become a regular customer at the county dump. Just as we began making progress, a hickory tree fell onto the house. Tony came to the rescue with one of Dad's old chainsaws, cutting the tree apart piece by piece. The limbs are still waiting to be hauled away, which may explain the recurring dreams I've been having about baby copperheads hiding in the garage. They feel symbolic of everything that still lurks beneath the surface, but they're also strangely literal. Probate still hangs over me, there is still so much work to do, and my academic life is about to begin again just as this season of caretaking begins to wind down.

Summer break has not really been a break. It has been a season of burial, probate, sorting, cleaning, paperwork, and trying to honor Dad while preparing for life to keep moving. Tomorrow I will be speaking at the Virginia Writers Club Symposium at Randolph-Macon College. On Tuesday, Haunted Virginia Colleges and Universities is officially released, and that evening I'll be collaborating with the Haunts of Richmond on their Creepy Tales on Campus tour. It all feels wonderfully exciting and completely overwhelming at the same time.

One moment before the end of the Strawberry Moon will stay with me forever. At six o'clock on the morning of July 29, I received the notice that Baby Joseph Pajka's gravestone had finally been installed.

Not once did we visit Dad’s father’s grave without Dad telling me about Baby Joseph and stopping to pray for him. Dad was just a little boy when his baby brother died in their home. He was there in the kitchen with their mother when it happened. Their father was already sick with tuberculosis and would die only two years later. There simply wasn't money for a gravestone, and Baby Joseph rested in an unmarked grave for seventy-nine years. His grave is unmarked no longer. Before what would have been Joseph's eightieth birthday, before the Strawberry Moon had passed, that small promise had finally been kept.

The Buck Moon is named for the time of year when young bucks begin growing new antlers. They are not fully formed yet. They are still covered in velvet, still growing into what they will become. I find comfort in that image because grief isn't something we finish. It changes us slowly, month by month, moon by moon. Three full moons have now passed, and while I still find myself crying without warning and missing Dad every single day, I can also see that something is quietly growing alongside the grief. It isn't replacing it. It never will. But perhaps, like those new antlers, it is teaching me that healing and remembering can exist together.

Higher Education Haunts [Style Weekly]