Editor’s note: We’re featuring the stories of some spooky hunts in our region during October.
It was after a bloody battle a few miles north of Manassas Junction on July 21, 1861, that a young Confederate soldier named Edward Craighill found himself attending to the wounded at Ben Lomond.
Craighill was a medical steward assigned to the house that was forcefully commandeered as a field hospital after the battle. Shortly following the battle and after a long shift, an exhausted Craighill tried to find a spot next to a campfire close to the house between some trees.
Miserable, wet and cold, Craighill found “a place between two sleeping soundly” and himself fell asleep:
“The next morning when I awoke the sun was high in the sky, but I noticed that neither of the men I was between had stirred, and upon examination found they were stone dead. Neither moved when I took my place between them, and I have never known whether they were dead then or had died in the night from their wounds, which I found the next day to be frightful. They were carried out and buried in the Pringle garden the next day, with others, very likely, almost certainly ‘somebody’s darlings’ whom I expect to this day, are wondering what became of the after the battle. A bloody battle is a dreadful experience…”
What became known as the First Battle of Manassas left over 3,500 men injured or killed between the Union and Confederate forces. For those poor soldiers who succumbed to their wounds, many were interred in unmarked graves making the location hallowed ground.
Today the house and the surrounding six acres comprise the Ben Lomond Historic Site, operated by Prince William Historic Preservation Division, where visitors are invited to learn about nineteenth-century medicine and experience the sounds and smells of this horrific part of Northern Virginia’s Civil War history.
But for some guests, the historic interpretation and engagement of the physical senses provided by the site staff is just the formal part of the program. A visit to the recovery rooms where soldiers dealt with hardship, despair, and anguish, or the surgery room where they encountered excruciating pain, can appeal to other, more subtle, senses.
Moving through the rooms conjures up more than tangible impressions. As some visitors explore the hospital, they claim to feel the energy of soldiers who may still reside in the hallways.
The list of names of men who walked, or were carried, through the doors of Ben Lomond is long and saddening, but surely the list of those unknown soldiers whose mortal remains never left the site is much longer and daunting. Maybe those poor souls, to whom Craighill alluded, are still trying to find a way home.
For more information about Ben Lomond Historic Site or to learn about fall programming at the site, please visit pwcgov.org/history or call 703-367-7872.
