Part VI: The Ghosts of Christmas Past: In Search of Goodwin’s Ghost
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(Photo above-apparitions, what I call “geo-lights”, appear over the Bruton Parish Church during a Christmas Eve Service.)
I’ve never had trouble finding ghosts, but then again I’ve never set out to look for a specific ghost. If Dr. Goodwin’s ghost would be anywhere in Colonial Williamsburg, it would be somewhere between the Bruton Parish Church and the George Wythe House, which is basically right next-door. I’ve stood at the main doorway to the church (through the bell tower/steeple) and photographed people as they have gone in and out of the church during evening concerts, and I have captured many apparitions doing that, but none have had enough clarity to be identified as a particular person. They have either been classic whites (what I call a white apparition with no identifiable features—usually just two eyespots, sometimes a nose and/or mouth), or so ephemeral that although you can make out the clothing, the facial features are so vaporous that you cannot really see what they look like. That’s because when the church is in use, there is so much residual light that the apparitions are not able to compete with the brightness, and when the church is not in use the ghosts seem to reside in an inactive state—or another dimension. Now at other homes and buildings in Colonial Williamsburg I have been able to get clearer photos of the ghosts because the lighting is not so bright, but there are exceptions—like the George Wythe House. The Wythe House almost always has interior shutters that are drawn in the evening, and the home is almost always in total darkness—unless there is a special evening program going on at the time. So one place is too bright, and the other is too dark and closed up to capture an apparition with enough facial detail to positively identify it. So I’ve decided to concentrate my hunt on the walkways in between the two possible places where I might encounter W.A.R. Goodwin.
One evening between Christmas and New Years when the streets were quite active, especially on the brick walkway between Bruton and the Wythe House, I began to take photos of the area. Dr. Goodwin was an affable man who loved to be around people; so if I could not find him in the church—what better place to find the ghost of the man who communed (his word, not mine) with the ghosts? I took many photos that evening, and I could see some things on the review screen that were difficult to make out, but I could tell they were paranormal in nature. The review screen is too small for any detail, but when I got home and downloaded the photos to my computer, I could tell one of the photos may contain what I was searching for: It was a little blurry, but it looked like the ghost of a cleric! The ghost wore a long black robe (the same type I had seen Dr. Goodwin wear!) with a very distinct white collar—also worn by clerics of the church. Now all of the photos that I have seen of Dr. Goodwin are when he was older—bald and gray; but this photo had a younger cleric with light brown hair—could this be Goodwin as he appeared as a young man? The ghost cleric may have a mustache (it’s hard to tell—the one side appears darker than the other); I’m not sure if Goodwin had a mustache as a young man, but it is a possibility! If you look at the photo below, I don’t think you will have any doubt that the ghost is a man of the cloth, and since it’s on the sidewalk just outside of the Bruton Parish Church, what are the odds the ghost was a cleric at the church? But since I cannot reference any photos of a young Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin at this time, I cannot say for sure whether this man is indeed Goodwin or not. I have seen, however, a photo of an older Dr. Goodwin dressed in a long black robe just like the ghost in the photo below. (If you do a search on the Internet of images of Dr. Goodwin, you can see the same photo.) Again keep in mind that ghosts move much faster than we do; for me this will result in distorted and incomplete photographic images-and you can see both in the lower part of the ghost’s face. So I will leave it for you to decide if I have captured the elusive rector from Bruton Parish—or whether this is the ghost of another cleric from the very same church. So . . . what do you think?
Here is the ghost cleric standing right outside Bruton Parish Church; is it the elusive Dr. Goodwin as a young man—or is it another rector? What do you think?
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After 2 years of research, a lot of experimentation, and over 10,000 photographs, check out the world’s first groundbreaking photographic study of ghosts: Haunted, Historic Colonial Williamsburg Virginia with Breakthrough Ghost Photography available at both Schiffer Publishing and at Amazon:
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Tim Scullion is a published author, photographer, and musician. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree Cum Laude. In addition to the book mentioned above, Tim has written a novel, a series of instruction books on the guitar, a children’s book (all available on Amazon) and has a photo-essay published by the University of Virginia in the book Troubled Times Companion, Vol. III.
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