...sisters in black, and true crime...

 

I have a writing project underway and today's story is more of an aside to that work.

This tree is sort of spooky but not really.

It has piqued my interest enough so that I am reading Three Sisters in Black: The Bizarre True Case of the Bathtub Tragedy (1968) by Norman Zierold, which was an Edgar Award Nominee for Best Fact Crime (1969).

The story concludes with one of the most notorious criminals in 1910 being interred in an unmarked grave at Sunset Cemetery in Christiansburg, Virginia. 

While I'm not supposed to side with a killer, I have to admit that the wardrobe of the sisters is what originally interested me.

Known as the "Black Sisters," the women were seen as a peculiar family of sisters who wore all black clothing and black veils to hide their faces. As someone who wears black, I don't find this peculiar. There were other strange aspects to the sisters. They had odd eating habits where they wouldn’t touch any food until it was a day old. As someone who likes food, I find this very odd.

Newspaper: The Standard Union, August 12, 1910.

In 1909, a bathtub drowning in New Jersey became one of the most bizarre criminal cases in American history when police discovered the emaciated and abused body of Ocey Snead. The young woman was face down in the bathtub. Her death was said to be an apparent suicide by drowning. There was even a suicide note left behind. 

Ocey’s alleged suicide note, 1909, Public Domain Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Newspaper: The Knoxville Journal, April 21, 1946.

As the truth slowly came out, and hundreds of suicide notes written in the same handwriting were discovered, it became clear that Ocey’s mother and aunts, "The Black Sisters" were involved in the crime.

One of these sisters, Virginia Wardlaw ran the Montgomery Female Academy in Christiansburg. She was said to possess "hypnotic control" over young girls. Investigators believed that the murder was planned and intentional since Wardlaw, at the time she inquired about renting the house, asked specific details about the size of the bath tub.

Wardlaw also insisted that once she took possession of the house, she did not want the owners visiting the space. She also wished to move all of her belongings at night.

Wardlaw and her sisters, Caroline and Mary, were accused of murdering family members for insurance money.

In order not to be convicted, Virginia Wardlaw starved herself to death before the judge in the case could rule against her. 

Wardlaw's body was sent back to Christiansburg, Virginia to be buried in a private family funeral. 

Today the grave is not marked, or perhaps over the years it was damaged. I've seen various stories about that and about the place being haunted. Virginia Wardlaw's Find A Grave profile includes some spooky stories in the biography, which aren't included in this write up as I could not find a source. Trust me, I really wanted to find an old newspaper article about the sisters going to the cemetery "making gestures skyward and murmuring incantations" but I did not find a thing in the papers.

...cemetery tours, the American Sycamore, and a giant candy cane...

I never wanted to be a teacher when I was young. I was not even convinced until I started graduate school. Growing up, I had friends whose parents were teachers and they always had homework. I did not think I wanted a life with homework.

From as far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a tour guide. I had dreams of moving to big cities and carrying an umbrella through a crowd so that the patrons could follow me. It just was not a job that the career services folks ever mentioned but I did not give up so easily. When I was 17, I was hired at a local theme park to give tours of the wild life preserve. I drove a monorail while talking about the animals. It was a twenty-minute ride and I spoke the entire time. That was thirty years ago but I can still remember some of my spiel. In undergrad, I volunteered at the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia and gave tours around the property. While I still very much love that museum, I did not love the job because it required me to be inside. I preferred giving tours where I could be outdoors more than indoors.

In 2014, I started training to give historic tours in Richmond. What I really wanted to do was give tours of historic Hollywood Cemetery; so, I did. Even better, instead of working for a tour company, I worked out a plan with their Friends organization and for several years now I have been offering tours where all the proceeds go to the historic preservation of the cemetery. 

2019 was a pretty great year for tours. I started giving evening/night tours of the cemetery, which turned out to be one of my favorite tours to give because Virginia summers are so brutal. While I pride myself on a good shade tour during the day, even the shade can be a bit too much for guests. 

Hollywood is a 135-acre garden cemetery full of life. During the evening tours, we saw bats, fox, and deer. With the night tours and one organization booking me as a guide, I raised $850. This morning, I wrote a check for the Christmas Eve's Eve tours, which came to $700. On December 23^rd, I offered our third annual Christmas tour. This year, I scheduled three tours beginning at 9am. On that morning tour, I was startled by a deer who was startled by me. For a moment, I nearly mistook the deer as a Christmas display.

Hollywood was designed with the living in mind and it was intended to be a place for those in Richmond to escape the hustle and bustle of city life. While many come to visit the cemetery for the historic figures buried here, many visit the trees that were left untouched by landscape designer John Notman in 1847.  

Along with the evening tours, I love the Christmas Eve's Eve tour because it helps folks escape the Christmas frenzy; and, I love seeing the holly trees, which is where Hollywood's name derives. Without question, my favorite this time of year is the American Sycamore tree. It has exfoliating white bark that peels and curls from the trunk in patches. In winter, this tree is stunning and my picture does not do it justice.

Being able to help raise money for the cemetery is such a privilege and one that I take quite seriously even though on the Christmas tours I carry a giant candy cane. These tours are also what I feel most proud of doing in 2019. Beyond the academic accomplishments through my workplace and various publications, somehow conducting research on a place that one loves doesn’t feel like homework. I love to learn and I try to share that love on my tours.