Paranormal investigator discusses the Ghosts Walk at Night tour at Hanover Tavern.
Ghosts walk at night. Sometimes they also talk.
As part of a tour of Hanover Tavern with Transcend Paranormal, an investigative team dedicated to exploring and understanding preternatural phenomena, two women walked down a long hallway on the upper floor. Once they got to the other end, they complimented tour guide Steve Dills on the use of speakers to make a young girl’s voice whisper in their ear as they passed by.
“[But] we hadn’t set up any sort of speakers or anything of that manner,” Dills says. “It was fun to see their faces when we retraced our footsteps to where they heard the whisper, only to find that it was a solid wall.”
Dills is the director of Transcend Paranormal, president of the Hanover Tavern Foundation and an investigator and historian for the TV show “The Ghost Finders.” Founded in 2010, the group has partnered with numerous historical locations to contribute to their preservation and restoration efforts, using a mixed approach that combines history, science, and metaphysics. Through these collaborations, the 20-member Transcend Paranormal team has raised over $200,000 for various historical locations throughout Virginia.
During Halloween season, they offer a Ghosts Walk at Night tour which runs for three nights, with each tour lasting about an hour. The guided tours take visitors through the haunted Hanover Tavern, historic Courthouse, and Old Stone Jail. “Along the way, you’ll encounter a ghastly cast of characters as they recount ghostly tales of actual events and recorded paranormal activity at these locations,” Dills promises.
All proceeds go directly to the Hanover Tavern Foundation, the nonprofit that owns and operates Hanover Tavern. Those funds are used to continue the historic preservation and restoration efforts of the building, as well as helping fund community and educational outreach. Each year, Hanover Tavern brings in over 3,000 school-aged children to teach them standards-of-learning (SOL)-related history.
The stories shared on the Ghost tours come from encounters that the Transcend Paranormal team members, as well as staff, volunteers, and board members, have had at Hanover Tavern. “We’ve been investigating and working with the Tavern for over a decade,” Dills notes. “The experiences we recount are directly from that time.”
Launching the partnership wasn’t a slam dunk. Early in the founding of Transcend Paranormal, they’d reached out to Hanover Tavern, inquiring into the possibility of paranormal activity there. Dills had grown up in Hanover and recalled the Tavern being called “that haunted building.” When he began paranormal investigating, he wondered if those childhood stories were true.
The Tavern was the second location they reached out to, the first being Henricus Historical Park. But the Tavern was first to reply with the standard dismissal: “There’s no such thing as ghosts, Hanover Tavern is not haunted, thanks, but no thanks.”
“A few years and a new executive director later, I received a phone call from the Tavern,” Dills recalls. “The new director, David Deal, had been having his own experiences, as had his wife and daughter. It spurred him to search for a paranormal team in the area to investigate the goings on and we’ve been investigating there ever since.”
The goal of the Ghosts Walk at Night tour is not only to share ghostly stories, but to utilize them to share the history of Hanover Tavern, its grounds, inhabitants, owners, and even former patrons. “First, we use factual history, things that actually occurred, people who were actually real,” Dills explains. “The second thing is that guests on these tours often have their own paranormal experience while on the tour.”
Since Dills’ team began investigating Hanover Tavern and the surrounding buildings over a decade ago, they’ve experienced everything from disembodied voices and sounds to objects moving to shadow figures and full body apparitions. Dills recalls a particularly memorable experience that occurred after they locked up the building for the evening. Making their way to the parking lot, a few people looked back at the Tavern to notice a man with a short haircut, T-shirt and jeans standing inside one of the doors to the Tavern moments after they’d locked up and turned on the alarm. As quickly as they’d seen the man, he disappeared.
Worried that someone had either hidden inside until after they’d closed or snuck in, Dills called the Hanover Sheriff’s Department to come out and sweep the building for intruders. A sheriff arrived and quickly called in backup. “There were upwards of nine of Hanover’s finest, working in pairs, mind you, because they refused to go into the ‘haunted tavern’ by themselves,” Dills says. “Afterwards, they shared some of their own stories from the Tavern, and how it was always the rookie’s job to answer Tavern calls for any late-night alarms.”
Ghosts Walk At Night tours aren’t your typical ghost tours, mainly because the experiences shared are directly from the room and building visitors are often standing in the very same spot that someone previously had an experience.
“It’s a tour that weaves these ghastly experiences with real-life history, making this not only a fun evening, but also educational,” Dills adds. “Most importantly, it goes to support a good cause with all of the proceeds directly benefiting the historic preservation and restoration of the Hanover Tavern and its educational outreach.”
Ghosts Walk at Night tours at Hanover Tavern, 13181 Hanover Courthouse Rd. in Hanover, Virginia, run hourly on Oct. 22, 23, and 24 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.. Last tour at 9 p.m. $15 per person. Tickets available here.