Ward Building; Lynchburg, VA
Posted by admin | Filed under SHPS Research
September 19, 2009- Ward Building; Lynchburg, VA
Former Hill City Masonic Lodge
At the corner of Church and Eleventh streets stands a beautiful building with the numbers 1897 above the portico, and a splendid mosaic of the Freemasons symbol painstakingly laid into the front entryway. One can immediately sense the deep history of the place and feel the warmth of brotherhood that created and kept it.
Masonic symbol mosaic
At the back of the building is a rolled up piece of mildew covered foam and a threadbare sleeping bag, a couple of glass bottles and scattered wrappings of various not-so-good-for-you snacks, several cigarette butts and other things one would generally not care to identify. So it is downtown- Majestic beauty along the historic James River mingled with the stark brutality of homelessness and poverty in streets that once thrived with a bustling tobacco trade and burgeoning turn of the century industry.
We were invited to investigate what is now known as the “Ward Building”, originally built as a meeting place for (what we believe was) Hill City Mason Lodge #183, though we have been unable to confirm this through our limited research at this time. More recently operated as a dance studio, claims of paranormal activity include shadows, voices, footsteps on the upper levels, and the feeling of being watched. These claims have come mostly from workers recently renovating the building.
The interior of the building is breathtaking, even in its deteriorated state. Soaring white columns and vaulted ceilings in a grand ballroom dominate the majority of the building. Spanning the two upper floors, the ballroom exhibits floor-to-ceiling windows, two mirrored altars flanked by double columns, drop chandeliers and pale ornate tin ceiling tiles. An exquisite balcony overlooks the ballroom from both sides of the second floor as black blank eyes staring from an expressionless pallid face.
The lower street level of the building is simply designed with a broad, elegant hallway lined on either side with meeting rooms and/or offices. Textured wallpaper falls away in wilting strips from the walls, and a slight breeze stirs from shattered windows on the backside of the building. Street noise is considerable, though muffled through thick stone walls, and street lights create an eerie bluish ambient glow throughout the building. We decided that if any of us ever got the money, this would make the best night club EVER!
We began our investigation around 9pm with five investigators, an employee of the building’s owner, and a friend of his, who is also a photographer. The photographer was a silent character that melted into the shadows and startled several of us on more than one occasion- purely by accident, of course. The first few hours were really quiet, except for the occasional traffic on the street. We discovered a high EMF field on the front right corner of the building that we attributed to the street light and a transformer outside the window. One room in particular gave me the creeps personally- a small side room to the right of the ballroom on the second floor that appeared to be a waiting room of some kind with a small pass-through in the wall. Perhaps it was the feeling of just not knowing what I should be waiting for… Nothing turned up here however, neither significant video or audio. In fact, other than a couple dead birds in the stairwell and one in the attic that nearly startled a couple of us into a great “dude run” moment, the evening was exceptionally quiet and inactive. The only oddity we encountered was a static column of unusually high EMF readings in the back right corner of the building. As there is no power to the building, we could not definitively trace the EM readings to a power source. There is a rock wall behind the building with a narrow alleyway between the wall and the building that we thought might hold a metal beam, or perhaps there were metal supports or wires running the length of the building in that corner (the EM field followed through all four floors) but we do not have a good answer for this. One thought is that perhaps there is a well or spring underground in that area attributing to the reading.
Dave in Grand Ballroom
Another interesting bit from this investigation- though again, not paranormal- involves the mirrored altars in the grand ballroom. As inferred, these altars stand on each end of the enormous room facing each other and each has a floor length dance mirror in the center of the altar. I stood between them and took a picture of one mirror, hoping to create sort of a fractal illusion with one mirror inside the other, inside another, and another etc. I was surprised at first to find the image completely black. One step to the side created a nice photo of the single mirror, but if I stood directly between the two, each frame was completely dark. I don’t think I captured a portal to the beyond, unfortunately… more likely the (mirrored) mirrors scattered the light from my flash so widely and completely that it was utterly cancelled. Interesting behavior of light and mirrors to note for future investigations.
Tags: apparition, EVP, freemason, ghost, ghost hunter, haunted, hill city, hill city ghost, investigation, lynchburg, lynchburg ghosts, lynchburg paranormal, Mason, masonic lodge, paranormal, seven hills paranormal
