‘The best road trips are tied to a theme, with plenty of stops pandering to a person’s interests or moods. They take a wee bit longer to plan, but they’re thrice as memorable.” – Old Sean
Hallow’s Eve Supremacy
Halloween is, by several orders of magnitude, my favorite United States holiday.
It’s deeply rooted in Irish lore, aligned with the mystical days of the equinox, saturated with bizarre legends and myths, home to vast amounts of chocolate, cleverly infused with pumpkins, dedicated to terror and, overall, it’s entertaining and irreverent.
Bluntly put, Halloween is the best US holiday. And as such, I wrangled my friend and roommate Roy into joining me for a Halloween Tour through Virginia.
For this trip, I made a point to follow two themes: Haunted and Autumn. I love both with an undying passion.
Autumn Road Trip
We started our miniature road trip in Fairfax, stopping in the early morning at a seasonal autumn street-stall selling Apple Cider and Snickerdoodle cookies.
From there, we meandered on to Manassas, where we toured the old Civil War Battlefield of Bull Run, reading stories about confederate and Union ghosts I had dug up online. We lounged near artillery pieces as the sun continued to rise.
Further along our route, we visited a strange shop called Koala Coffee, which was a nice enough breakfast experience. After we’d eaten, we hopped back in the car and I continued to point out miniture detours on our westerly route.
I angled us slightly off-route to visit the Chapman Beverly Mill in the area.
The ruins were a pre-Civil War structure, once used to process grain. During the Civil War and shortly after the conflict, the Mill was used as a slaughterhouse to feed soldiers.
In the nineties, the mill burned to the ground, the result of arson. What remains today is a series of stone pillar ruins, a protected piece of American history with just enough action to be a feasible creepy location in the morning mists of a road trip.
Onward Westward
Roy and I continued to drive West and South, eventually making it to the interesting little town of Brandy Station.
There were two things I wanted to see here. The first was the Fleetwood Church. The building has appeared on several ghost hunting documentaries and is considered resoundingly haunted. The structure, gray, with paint peeling, a sharp steeple and a set of repair steps on the side, certainly looks the part.
However, the building was closed so we could only peer in the candled, cloistered windows.
The second building, directly down the road is famously known as the Graffiti House.
The building was once used as a field hospital for both Confederate and Union Troops. Best of all, wounded soldiers used charcoal and hard edges to write messages on the walls of the building, creating a surprisingly well-preserved tapestry of signatures.
Unfortunately, this was also closed. The online resources weren’t terribly clear about times. Apparently, tours are only given during certain weeks and require advanced bookings.
Towards the Mountains Tall
Undaunted, Roy and I continued on our trip, jamming to songs from the 2010’s. A haze of bluish mountains began to rise, a specter over the sharp yellows and red of autumn.
We continued to roll towards the Shenandoah Mountains, letting the low, rounded forms loom closer with each moment.
When we finally arrived in Shenandoah, we weren’t disappointed.
Skyline Drive is a massive long, smooth and winding mountain ridge road cresting over the various stones and peaks. The road veers towards overlooks often, letting trees fall away to reveal spectacular views of the surrounding mountains, valleys and lowlands. All features are further accented by colorful trees.
Elevation strongly defines the autumn-mountain foliage. Trees usually change colors at different intervals, based on the coolness of heights and rainfalls at different elevations.
At the highest points of the drive, Roy and I were surrounded by brown twigs and blotches of green lichen. These dry areas were utterly convinced that winter was in full swing.
A bit lower, trees, ferns and bushes exploded into color, giving the entire world an impossible pastel palette.
And when driving even further down, green reclaimed the land, clinging onto a summer already halfway-out-the-door.
The entire experience is a rapid transition. The overlooks, especially where the full spectrum was visible, were very striking.
Feet on Stone
Roy and I made a special point to delve into a few trails, hiking up to Adam’s Peak, letting leaves crunch in protest under our shoes. There were signs everywhere warning about bears in the area, making us swivel our heads like periscopes as we walked.
The next best visit along Skyline, aside from the compelling tunnels leaving the area, were the Dark Hollow Falls.
These somewhat thin creeks of water swooped off several broad and flat stones, collecting hoards of fallen leaves in swirling ponds, gradually damming itself back up the mountain.
Into Luray
When Roy and I finally left Shenandoah, we veered towards the town of Luray. We had planned to visit a haunted house in the area, but we ended up arriving early. With plenty of time to kill, we got a so-so meal at a burger joint before heading off to see Luray Caverns.
I’ve never been to the Caverns before and the entry price, 21 USD, was initially a bit rich for my taste.
But when Roy and I finally wandered inside, I was rendered mute in awe. Twenty bucks is a bargain. I would have paid fifty.
The caverns are utterly enormous, opening up into an endless series of chambers, each large enough to handle a full cathedral. And cathedral is the right word.
Solid, tilting, slick layered pillars of ancient stone rise from the floor. Great drilling fangs hang in networks on the ceiling, except for the places where they’re so large, they look like walls. Thin, translucent stones hung in waves from curving roofs, delicate veins alit in the nearby underground lights.
A symphony of water continued to trickle everywhere we walked. There was a section where a pool of water stood perfectly still, creating a dead city of stalactites reflected below.
Elsewhere, stones warped in colors, turning from hulking black to rusted red to placid clay-brown to sturdy gray to wavy white and spotted copper-green.
Even the artificial lights were profound. The cave is uniquely lit with powerful floodlights obscured by fake stone canvases. These are expertly placed, fully capturing the swells and twists of stone crests.
These lights have incredible wattage. Indeed, in many places, a carpet of ferns and moss emerged in a lifeless cave, deep beneath the earth’s crust.
It was a holy monument to time and stillness.
Best of all, Roy and I had the place to ourselves. We were one of the last groups let in, so we only saw a half dozen other people walking around. The sounds in chambers echoed oddly, the contours of arcing stone dampening noise, sending sound into other subterranean nooks.
Musical Chapel of the Mathematician
As we grew near the end of our hour-long underground walk, we marveled at a few oddities. In a miniature cave, no higher than a person’s knee, somebody had placed a plastic human skull.
With Halloween around the corner, Roy and I barked a laugh at this. It was an invisible little joke unless a person shone a flashlight while crawling on their knees.
Further in, there was another pool of impossibly blue water. Hundreds of coins hugged the bottom and dollar bills drifted on the surface.
Apparently, this wishing pool was where tourists could toss money in, which was donated to various charities. The pool was drained once every decade or so, the cash collected.
But best of all was the organ.
Years ago, a sound engineer and mathematician named Sparkling installed an organ in the Caverns. But this was no ordinary instrument. Instead of playing notes, the organ keys are wired to a network of rubber mallets throughout a large antechamber.
An interesting fact: Stalactites are hollow. They are formed when water drips down a hollow vein in the center. Therefore, when a broken stalactite is tapped against another, they make a ringing noise, much like two metal poles.
Sparkling calculated the diameter of hollow stalactites and tested the sound created by each of them. Then he found a mathematically precise stalactite and paired it via wires with the appropriate organ key.
The organ actually plays the cavern, echoing through the dark.
Now, the organ is rarely played due to its age and delicacy. But Roy and I were blessed with extraordinary luck. The organ was playing when we walked in. We saw the mallets move, we heard the haunting rings and held our breath as sound graced the chamber again.
Luray Caverns was an accidental, nearly unplanned visit. But it was the most astounding marvel of nature I’ve seen during all my time in Virginia.
To the Hauntings
After leaving Luray Caverns, Roy and I made started driving towards DarkHallow House, a haunted house located in downtown Luray. While parking was a little tricky, we found a place and settled into line.
I wasn’t expecting much from DarkHallow, especially after visiting Luray. But I should have ramped up my expectations again. It was an excellent little Halloween event.
The show, called Pumkinphasima, is a mind-twitch experience in a well-lit, neon blacklight series of rooms and chambers.
The premise of the walkthrough involves a pumpkin disease plaguing the minds of various characters as they wander through an indoor maze.
The decorations and story themes are phenomenal. There are trigger switches, heaps of pumpkin-based horrors, flaring lights, compelling jump scares and totally committed monstrosities lurching out from revolving doors and hidden panels.
Other scare factors, also actors, lurk in close and silent from behind, making it impossible to avoid sudden shocks. There were four people in my little group, and everywhere was terrifying.
But is was the actors who truly sold the event. They were attired properly, spoke in convincing fits of insanity and ushered us through the story line with energy and compulsion.
They danced, shocked, and acted their hearts out, giving the performance such genuine power, I felt jittery and off balance throughout the whole experience.
It was excellent.
A Second Spook
The Pumpkinphantisma portion of the haunted house was the best, but there was a second haunted house attached which was dedicated fully towards optical illusions and mind-melting visuals.
This psycho-freak-out theme was faster, sharper and more psychedelically alienating. We lurched from room to room, struck by a new flare of impossible color on each corner.
More actors shouted phrases oscillating from insane to hilarious to clever to harrowing. Roy’s favorite was an elevated pirate captain shouting “Are you ready kids?!” before waiting for an appropriately vehement and joyously loud response.
The tour finished with a sign leading into the gift shop. It stated “You survived Dark Hallow. But can you survive the greatest evil of all? Capitalism?” Roy and I split ourselves laughing as we lurched outside, a night well spent.
We’re now back in DC, enjoying a somewhat mundane week before Halloween. As far as mini road trips go, I would have trouble ranking any higher than our forays into Shenandoah.
Best regards and excellent trails,
Old Sean
Written October 23rd, 2022
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