Downtown Charlottesville Historic District · Old Albemarle County Jail (1876) — last public execution in Virginia · 1904 McCue murder case
Charlottesville Ghosts, US Ghost Adventures' Charlottesville brand, operates a nightly, roughly 1-hour, 1-mile walking tour meeting outside the Paramount Theater, 215 E Main St, on the city's downtown pedestrian mall. The route covers Maplewood Cemetery, a historic burial ground; Market Street Park, a downtown park whose Confederate-monument history made it a focal point of local controversy; and the Old Albemarle County Jail, built in 1876 and used until 1974, site of the last public execution carried out in Virginia. That 1905 execution was of Samuel McCue, a former Charlottesville mayor convicted of murdering his wife, Fannie McCue, in their home in September 1904 — a documented case covered contemporaneously in the local press.
The operator's broader marketing also references Charlottesville's connection to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and the University of Virginia, and touches on the city's history of slavery and a 20th-century KKK-artifact display at a local historical society; that material is not part of the tour's three featured stops and is not reproduced in this listing.
Sources
- https://usghostadventures.com/charlottesville-ghost-tour/
- https://www.viator.com/en-IN/tours/Charlottesville/Charlottesville-Dark-History-Ghost-Tour-By-US-Ghost-Adventures/d23229-333325P1
- https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g57592-d23827654-Reviews-Charlottesville_Ghosts_By_US_Ghost_Adventures-Charlottesville_Virginia.html
ApparitionsUnexplained SoundsResidual Hauntings
According to the operator, Maplewood Cemetery is haunted by a figure locally described as a 'woman in white' among its historic obelisks. Market Street Park is tied by the operator to unspecified long-dead souls said to linger from the site's layered civic history. The Old Albemarle County Jail is described as haunted by the spirit of Samuel McCue, the former Charlottesville mayor hanged there in 1905 for the murder of his wife, Fannie McCue, in a documented 1904 case; the operator's material describes reports of anger, anguish, and disembodied footsteps reported by visitors and tour guides at the site.
All of the above is the operator's own marketing and narrative framing, not documented history independently verified by HauntBound, and is included here only to describe what the tour covers. Samuel and Fannie McCue were real historical figures whose case is a matter of public record (a mayor's conviction and execution for his wife's murder); the haunting claim itself is presented strictly as the operator's own stated material, not as a fact independently verified for this listing.
Notable Entities
Samuel McCueFannie McCue
