The Lost Maid of Milton Hall (Callaghan, Alleghany County)

Mrs. Lee called the building "a commodious and comfortable dwelling, in the style of a typical Irish house." If the specter of the maid appeared to the Miltons, there is no record of it. "Her" first appearance apparently came some years later, possibly in the 1890s, after Milton Hall had been sold to a family named Doe. It was during this time that a young woman named Marie Swift lived in the house and was governess to Annie Doe, daughter of Colonel and Mrs. Doe.

One night she stayed downstairs reading after everyone else had retired. When the clock struck midnight, she put out her lamp and tip-toed up the stairs in the dark. As Mrs. Lee reported it, "Turning on the landing towards her room, a hand caught her skirt, holding it firmly for an instant!" Terrified, Marie finally tore herself loose and fled into her room in "almost a fainting condition." The next morning at breakfast when she related her experiences, she was told that others had felt the same thing.

Sometime later, Marie and little Annie Doe were asleep together in a bed when Annie began screaming hysterically. Marie rose up in bed, and both of them "saw distinctly" a woman standing at the foot of their bed who "stared fixedly at them, and then faded — vanished!" Marie later said she might have dismissed the apparition as a dream had not Annie seen the same figure.

"We always understood that she was a friendly ghost," says Robert McAllister. "I never saw her myself, but we did have visitors who said they saw or felt some sort of presence in the back of the house, where the old servants' quarters were. In fact we had a servant when we first moved into the house to help mother out. She stayed about two weeks and then abruptly left and never came back. She never did say why she left. She wouldn't talk about it."

Robert's sister, Harriet Loving of Richmond never saw the spirit either. "Oh, you hear a lot of sounds in an old house," she says She did admit, however, that as a child at Milton Hall she was afraid to go by a certain closet. She couldn't explain why. "I think it was just a childhood fear," she laughs. "It was just a feeling."

Robert adds that a Mr. Rumpole, a previous owner, had said he once had a guest who saw "something" in one of the lower rooms He also remembers that after the servants quarters had been converted into an apartment, a guest staying there reported hearing a "rustling sound" in the room one night. She awakened and turned on the light, but saw nothing. She said there was no breeze that evening so she couldn't explain the sound.

John Eckert, the present owner, says the Irish maid was buried in a grave about a mile and a half from Milton Hall. The consensus of thought is that it is her spirit which occasionally roams the halls and rooms of the manor seeking her mistress. As Mrs. Lee put it, "Hauntings can frequently be traced to a tragedy." It could well be that the maid, likely homesick and buried in unfamiliar ground, feels more comfortable in the familiar surroundings of an English-style country home.