Virginia, Frederick County

Winchester. The town's oldest house is Abram's Delight, which dates from 1754 and is now a museum (https://winchesterhistory.org/abrams-delight/). One of its 22-inch-thick limestone walls originally was hinged so that it could be swung aside to accommodate an entire Quaker congregation. The house also was the home, throughout the Civil War, of the intriguing Mary Hollingsworth, an imposing woman more than 6 feet tall who, according to legend (i.e., gossip), liked to dress as a man and, indeed, pose as one. The historical marker says only that Hollingsworth "may have impersonated a man to spy for the Confederates, according to local tradition." More scandalous, and wholly unsourced, is this online claim: "She was said to have even become engaged to a woman, although she never married--in fact, the girl’s father followed Mary home and made the [Hollingsworth] family shell out money for the deception." If this is true, the father seems to have assumed, or at least to have claimed, that his daughter had been "deceived" in the first place; today, as then, we need assume nothing of the kind. In any case, the poltergeist phenomena claimed for the house--vases knocked over, volume knobs turned up, taps switched on, all by unseen agents--are generally attributed to Mary's ghost. Even the "gentleman ghost" who "appears as a tall figure in Quaker clothing on the front steps" could be Mary in drag. See Swain, Craig. "Abram's Delight." HMDB.org: The Historical Marker Database. 20 September 2007. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=2606. See also "Abram's Delight." Haunted Places. https://www.hauntedplaces.org/item/abrams-delight/.