Location: The Old Campbell House is located at 3782 Campbell Road off Route 10 in Lowell, Virginia on Highway 193, five miles outside Washington D.C. in Northern Virginia near the Potomac River.

Description Of Place: The Campbell House is an two-story 18th Century antebellum farmhouse with five acres of wooded property with a circular driveway, chimney and front garden. It has a period interior and furnishings with modernized fixtures and a large staircase through the center of the house. Unannounced visitors are not recommended.

Ghostly Manifestations: In the United States, pre-Civil War houses have endured a number of fates. Many of them were destroyed by Union or Confederate Soldiers or left abandoned to the elements on distant forgotten properties to be reclaimed by the land. Several of them have been restored as landmarks, museums or as bed and breakfasts, but it is very unlikely to get a look within the Campbell House in Virginia's Fairfax County. Since it was built in the 1790s, the historic residence has been the home of several consecutive generations of the Campbell family who built it.

No one is quite sure when rumors that the house was haunted first started. Owner Ruth Bennett was certainly not aware the location was haunted when she started visiting her her Cousin Hattie, seventeen years older than herself, and when she inherited the house among her other relatives, she certainly had no qualms about the house having ghosts when she moved into the house. The year after inheriting the house, Ruth took a leave from the Department of Agriculture in Washington D.C. to move into the house and board her niece, Sarah Dunning, a student at nearby Marymont College.

As Sarah recalls, activity started light at first. There were strange sounds in the house that seemed odd to her. At first, she thought they were the normal noises of a house out in the country. Floors creaked, the house groaned under strong winds and echoes emanated up from the first floor when she was alone in the house, but as she started listening closer, the sounds gradually took on another form of life. One night she heard the muffled sounds of a conversation from the first floor. To her, it sounded like the sounds of two people fighting so she headed to down to get a first hand look and was met by an empty first floor parlor. Her Aunt Ruth was the only other person in the house, and she was in her room coming down behind her on the stairs.

The one recurring activity locals have heard near the house is the sound of a voice calling through the woods off the property. Mostly occurring on windy days or days before inclement weather, the voice sounds as if it is calling the name "Annie" or "Ammie." Different witnesses have described hearing both names, but historically, it is believed that "Ammie" refers to Amanda Campbell, the daughter of General Douglas Campbell, who vanished from the house in the Late Eighteenth Century. Stan Whitman, a retired anthropology teacher from the college, knows a lot about the days of Autumn 1970 when Ruth Bennett reopened the house.

"In those days, I was an assistant to Professor Patrick McDougal, the nearest neighbor to the house." Stan recalls. "I don't recall a lot of what happened in those days, but I do recall it all seemed to start with the portrait Sara brought into the house. She had picked it up in a curio shop in town, and had tried hanging it over the fireplace, but that night while we talking, it came crashing to the floor by itself and got torn on one of the gridiron in front of the fireplace. It was a weird accident, but we got it fixed, restored and tried to put it back on the wall. That night it jumped off the wall and landed straight in the fire this time. It was such a strange experience that we never tried to figure it out."

Whitman also recalls that Sara had a lot of nightmares and did a lot of sleepwalking after moving it. His impression of meeting her at the time was that she was a sweet innocent young girl, but upon moving it to the house, she started having one spell after another. Much of the activity occurred around her as well. Having no reputation of sleeping problems before, Sara was watched quite close by Ruth who soon started having dreams of Sara calling for help. Both she and Sara recalled the footsteps on the top landing and the voices on the property, but this actually seemed mild compared to some of the fear they had in the house.

"By Late September to Early October," Stan adds. "They were beginning to feel a male presence in the house, and had a sensation of being watched. I recall Sara asking me to escort her into the house and feeling the house... just so incredibly cold. The house didn't have air conditioning, and upstairs, I recall shivering badly, rubbing my hands together and looking around for a draft. I couldn't understand then and I still can't."

"Another odd thing was the door off the parlor. It was a short hallway to the cellar landing and the underside of the house, but that door was always open despite how often we tried to close it. On at least one occasion, I had gone down there to investigate some of the strange noises in the house. Closing it behind me, I went to go talk to Pat and Ruth, but on my way through, it's open again. I'm thinking, it's an old house, it popped open again, so I closed, latched it, checked it over... It was closed. It wasn't going to pop open, but I walk over, sit down near Sara and out the corner of head I hear, click, it's opened again."

Eventually, Ruth got to the point that she believed there was a spirit trapped in the house, and after some research into her family tree and the house's past, she believed it was wanting to get out of the basement. A check of the basement revealed the basement was smaller than the house itself, so there had to be parts that had been sealed off. Behind a wood wall, they found a heavy steel door that once been access to a forgotten wine cellar. The root of a tree in the yard had grown up and through the foundation, part of it coming up through the dirt floor of the cellar, pushing up part of some human remains in the cellar.

"I haven't been back to the house in years." Whitman concludes. "But I still wonder if the ghost is still in the house." 

History: Not much history can be found about the house as most of the Lowell City Records were lost in a fire in 1863 started by Union Soldiers during the Civil War, although a lesser known tradition has it burned down by a local landowner trying to destroy the records of his unpaid property taxes. Tradition claims that the house was designed by William Thornton, the same man who designed and built the US Capitol, but that story is unconfirmed. Built by General Douglas Campbell around 1770, an obscure Revolutionary War General, the house consistently passed down through his family after his death. Over the years, the house has had several renovations and alterations to it. The last modern tenant was Harriet "Hattie" Campbell who was described as a quiet reclusive woman by her neighbors. Upon her death, she left it to her cousin, Ruth Bennett. Today, the house is owned by Carol Hackett, another family descendant of General Campbell.

Identity Of Ghosts: Two ghosts are believed to haunt the Old Campbell House. One of the ghosts is Amanda "Ammie" Campbell who according to legend ran off to marry Captain Anthony Doyle, a young officer her father of whom did not approve. Excavations of the basement in 1970 would contradict this story. It is now believed that Doyle became aware of General Campbell's complacency and loyalty to the British and was murdered and buried by Campbell in the basement to conceal his duplicity. It is even less clear what happened to Ammie, and whether she was also murdered and buried in the basement after witnessing the murder or if she simply disappeared from the area. Reportedly losing his mind over his guilt, the ghost of General Campbell now walks the grounds looking and calling out for her to return to him.

Source/Comments: The House That Would Not Die (1970) - Based on the book, "Ammie Come Home" by Barbara Moxley - Activity based on the Daniel Benton Homestead in Tolland, Connecticut, the Captain Lindsey House in Rockland, Maine and Sprague Mansion in Cranston, Rhode Island.