Few states in America have the type of history, both modern and colonial, that the Old Dominion does, which lends itself perfectly to the spookiest month of the calendar year and the tales that come along with it.  

In Virginia, Revolutionary War hotspots like Yorktown and Roanoke along with more modern locales like Virginia Beach, Springfield and Staunton all find themselves atop or close therein when it comes to towns in the Commonwealth with the most ghost sightings overall.  

BetVirginia.com took a break from Virginia sports betting and utilized GhostsofAmerica.com to compile the amount of ghost sightings across the state. After determining the number of sightings per city, they developed the Top 10 cities for ghost sightings.

Yorktown has 45 reported incidents of paranormal activity, beating out Roanoke’s total of 40 and Gloucester’s sum of 38.  

Throw in Virginia cities like Virginia Beach, which had 35 ghost sightings during the period in question, West Point (28 ghost sightings), Colonial Heights, Springfield, Stafford and Staunton (27 sightings each) and Suffolk (24 sightings) and you have the full list of haunted cities in the Old Dominion.  

Still, when it comes to the paranormal, nowhere holds a candle to the York County city of 195 residents, with the Historic Triangle locale that was the site of British General Charles Cornwallis’ surrender to George Washington and the French Fleet in the Revolutionary War having the most ghost sightings of anywhere in Virginia since its founding in 1691.  

This is the second installment of the Mirror’s All Hallows series.

David Cronenberg’s 1979 film The Brood remains a cornerstone in the body horror genre, a chilling and psychologically charged exploration of repressed trauma manifesting through the human body. Known for his focus on the intersections of science, psychology, and physical grotesqueries, The Brood was a deeply personal project for Cronenberg, blending horror with an emotional depth.

The Brood tells the story of a man named Frank Carveth (Art Hindle), who is caught in a vicious custody battle with his estranged wife, Nola (Samantha Eggar). Nola, undergoing a radical and controversial form of psychotherapy with Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed), is encouraged to physically manifest her repressed rage and trauma. What begins as an unconventional therapy soon spirals into a terrifying nightmare as Nola’s emotions give birth to deformed, rage-driven creatures that enact her violent subconscious desires. These “psychoplasmics,” as they are called, become the physical embodiment of her inner torment.

Cronenberg, a master of melding psychological and physical terror, uses the film to explore themes of parental trauma, anger, and the destructive power of repression. His own personal experiences during a bitter divorce and custody battle heavily influenced the film, adding an extra layer of raw emotional power to the narrative. The story’s central idea—that unresolved trauma can manifest in grotesque physical forms—plays out through Cronenberg’s signature body horror aesthetics, where the boundary between mind and body dissolves into horrific mutations.

One of the most disturbing elements of The Brood is how Cronenberg uses the monstrous children as metaphors for familial dysfunction. Nola’s psychic offspring, a brood of childlike creatures birthed through parthenogenesis, serve as living extensions of her rage and pain, attacking those she perceives as threats. This physical manifestation of mental illness pushes the boundaries of traditional horror, suggesting that psychological wounds are not just abstract but can wreak tangible, violent consequences.

Samantha Eggar’s performance as Nola is central to the film’s emotional core, particularly in the infamous final scene where she reveals her grotesque ability to “birth” these creatures. This scene, which blends horror with emotional intensity, embodies Cronenberg’s interest in the body as a site of horror—where the grotesque and the emotional are inseparable.

Though The Brood received mixed reactions upon its initial release, it has since been re-evaluated and is now considered one of Cronenberg’s most important films. Its commentary on the dangerous consequences of unchecked emotional repression, combined with its exploration of bodily horror, has left a lasting impact on the genre. The Brood paved the way for Cronenberg’s later films such as Scanners (1981) and Videodrome (1983), where themes of technology, mind, and body continued to dominate his work.

680: Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the prophet Mohammad, is decapitated in battle against the army of Caliph Yazid I. Ali’s death is one of the defining events in Islam’s great Sunni-Shi’a split. The core of the dispute centers on who rules as the legitimate successor to the prophet himself: blood heirs (Shi’a position) or political-scholarly leaders (Sunni position). The death is commemorated as the feast of Ashurah.

732: A Frankish army of 30,000 under the command of Charles “The Hammer” Martel, decisively defeats the invading Muslim army of Abdul Rahman al Ghafiqi at the Battle of Tours (also known as the Battle of Poitiers (pronounced “pwat’-teeaay”)). Like the Battle of Lepanto, this victory was one of three- many would say it was the most important- engagements that halted the militant spread of Islam in its tracks, and ensured that Europe would continue to develop as a collection of explicitly Christian kingdoms. The conventional wisdom over the last century or so is that had Martel’s army not been successful here, the tallest towers in the cities of Europe would have been minarets instead of church steeples.

1600: The principality of San Marino, which looks like a small Tuscan city tucked on the side of a cliff (which it is), adopts a written constitution, making it the first republic of the modern age. 

1604: A star in the constellation Ophiuchus explodes and becomes visible to the naked eye, the brightest star in the night sky, rivaling even Venus. The astronomer Johannes Kepler observed the star for over a year, detailing its intensity and movement in such detail that it was named Kepler’s Supernova. Located ~20,000 light-years from Earth, it is the most recent supernova to have occurred in our own Milky Way galaxy.

1701: Connecticut colony issues a charter to the Collegiate School of Connecticut, located in Old Saybrook (although it probably wasn’t quite so old back in the day). You would probably recognize the school as Yale University, alter-ego to that older institution up in Massachusetts.

1780: A massive hurricane tears through the Lesser Antilles, creating a swath of destruction from the Grenadines to Bermuda that leaves 23,200 souls dead and no fewer than 65 naval vessels from France, the Netherlands and Great Britain lost at sea or smashed to splinters on a lee shore, to say nothing of the devastation ashore, where thousands of homes and business were swept away by the storm’s surge. The Great Hurricane of 1780 remains the single most destructive weather event in the history of the Atlantic Ocean.

1793: In a continuing effort to ensure the citizens of France believe and behave as rationally as possible, the National Convention formally adopts a legislative program to de-christianize [sic] France. Rather than pursuing the American precedent of separating the offices of Church and State, and thus allowing free exercise of religious conviction, the Convention reasoned that there should be no public acknowledgement or display of religion at all, even in churches.
        The program opening this day entailed:
        1) Confiscation of all church properties, to be held by the State as collateral on its new currency;
        2) Removal of all silver, gold, art and any other iconography from places of worship;
        3) Removal and destruction of any crosses, bells or other external signs of worship being conducted;
        4) Establishment of civic cults, specifically designed to incline the heart toward the virtues of the benevolent State through the Cult of Reason and the Cult of the Supreme Being (more in November);
        5) Most importantly, holding all non-jury (i.e., will not vow obedience to the jury of the civil government) priests liable for death.
        If all this sounds a little harsh to you, that’s because it is; and it is also the logical extension of where led the French Revolution’s obsession* with Reason as the arbiter of all things.

1799: HMS Lutine sinks off the Frisian Islands in the North Sea, taking with her 240 souls and £1,200,000 pounds in gold bullion. Lutine’s bell was recovered in 1858 and is displayed in the central hall of Lloyds of London, where until 1986 it sounded a single toll on news of a lost ship, and two when a missing ship was reported safe. No fewer than 14 salvage attempts have been made to recover the treasure. The most successful was the 1857-58 expedition, which brought up 45 gold bars, 64 silver bars, and over 15,000 coins of various denominations, yielding the investors a return of 136%. The last salvage attempt was in 1933. 

1812: In the Battle of Lake Erie, an American squadron of 9 ships under Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry achieves a decisive victory against a fleet of 6 British gunboats, ensuring American control of the entire southern coastline of the Great Lakes for the remainder of the war. Perry’s formal report of the battle is deliciously brief: “Dear General, We have met the enemy and they are ours. Two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop. Yours with great respect and esteem, O.H. Perry” 

1813: Death of the Indian warrior Tecumseh (b.1768), in the Battle of the Thames, near present-day Chatham, Ontario.

1845: The first class of The Naval School is seated in Annapolis, Maryland; 50 midshipmen and 7 instructors begin the process of formalizing the training of nascent officers of the U.S. Navy.

1871: The Great Chicago Fire finally burns itself out. The cataclysm took over 300 lives, left nearly three and a half square miles of the city center in cinders, and displaced over 100,000 people from their homes. 

1884: Under the tutelage of Commodore Stephen Luce, the United States Naval War College was established in Newport, Rhode Island. The school nurtured among its first faculty Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, developer of the seminal theory of naval warfare that holds naval fleets as the key to controlling events ashore. A “Mahanian Navy” is one comprised primarily of capital ships that can fight it out on the high seas with other capital ships, after which they can turn their attention to the land campaign, if necessary.

1888: The recently completed Washington Monument opens to visits by the general public. 

1889: American inventor Thomas Edison publicly displays his motion picture device for the first time.

1902: Birth of Ray Kroc (d.1984), founder of McDonalds.

1902: Birth of Ray Kroc (d.1984). Remember what his canny business model was? Still works, best I can tell.

1905: During their Huffman Prairie flying period outside of Dayton, Wilbur Wright sets an airplane endurance record of 26 miles traveled over the ground in 39 minutes. You math people can probably figure out his ground speed from those numbers.

1908: The government of Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina into their polyglot empire. 

1912: Opening guns of the 1st Balkan War, where the Balkan League (Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bulgaria) initiated combat in a bid for independence from the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans were no match for the multi-front armies of the four allies, who relatively swiftly defeated their Turkish overlords and then settled into their own rounds of territorial squabbling, aided and abetted by the Great Powers of Europe.

1914: Less than 10 years after Wright’s record flight, a French pilot, Louis Quenact, opens fire with a machine gun to shoot down a German pilot interfering with his reconnaissance duties. This is widely regarded as the first day of intentional aerial combat.

1919: The Chicago White Sox throw the final game of the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, cementing for themselves the opprobrium of the nation, and the permanent moniker of the Black Socks.

1928: Three years after the death of his long time mentor, Sun Yat Sen, General Chang Kai Shek becomes Chairman of the Republic of China

1939: Nazi Germany annexes western Poland into the Third Reich, conveniently setting the conditions, per the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty, for the Soviet Union to occupy the eastern half of that long-suffering country.

1945: In the aftermath of the Japanese surrender, the Communist Chinese under Mao Tse Tung and the Kuomintang of Chang Kai Shek sign an agreement on the post-war future of China. The “Double Tenth” agreement confirmed that the Kuomintang was the de facto ruling party of China, and that the Communists were a legitimate opposition party. 

1962: Birth of American race car driver Michael Andretti, son of Mario, father of Marco. 

1967: The communist leader Che Guevarra, having worn out his welcome in Cuba, is finally captured in Bolivia.

1967: The Outer Space Treaty goes into effect. The parties to the treaty agree to not place nuclear weapons into orbit, and to refrain from using the moon or other celestial bodies as military testing or staging areas. The treaty is often misconstrued as prohibiting the “militarization” of space, but this is not the case. It does provide a framework for consultation and non-interference between spacefaring nations; it considers space part of the global commons, and the moon and other celestial bodies as part of the “common heritage of mankind”.

1967: A day after his capture by the Bolivians, Che Guevara is executed.

1973: Opening guns in the Yom Kippur War, with coordinated Egyptian and Syrian attacks across the Suez Canal into Israeli-occupied Sanai Peninsula and Golan Heights respectively. Catching the Israeli Defense Forces off-guard on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, both Arab armies made significant territorial gains during the first three days of the fighting. Three weeks later (10/25), with the Israelis having crossed the Suez Canal themselves to completely encircle the Egyptian Third Army and advancing within artillery range of Cairo, and in the northern fight having recovered all the ground initially lost to Syria and then expanded their hold to the entirety of the high ground within sight of Damascus, all parties accepted a brokered ceasefire that ended the war.

1973: U.S. Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew resigns from office. The former Governor of Maryland was a lightning rod for the Left, acting as President Nixon’s verbal hatchet man, using mockery and incisive rhetoric to beat the radicals at their own game. What finally brought him down, as it did for Al Capone, was an eventual indictment for federal tax evasion. When faced with a potentially long and ugly public trial, Agnew stepped aside.

1981: Death of Anwar Sadat (b.1918), President of Egypt, at the hand of a core of Army officers egged on by an Islamist fatwa issued by Omar Abdel-Rhaman, a.k.a. “The Blind Sheikh” who also was also convicted for the first attack on the World Trade Center. Sadat’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel negated in Islamist’s eyes any gains he made by launching the 1973 Yom Kippur War against the Jewish state. In 2017 Abdel-Rhaman died in a federal prison in NC, finally putting to an end issuing fatwas against the West and any Muslim who would dare to resist the Islamist movement. 

2001: One month after the attacks of 9/11, the Executive Branch of the US government, with the massive concurrence of both houses of Congress, established the Office of Homeland Security, led by former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, and charged with doing for domestic security what DOD does for international security.

By Suzanne Pender, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Iconic labor leader, civil rights activist, and Presidential Medal of Freedom awardee Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) created tremendous positive change for farmworkers in the United States. He cofounded United Farm Workers (UFW) in 1967, and used non-violent actions – hunger strikes, pickets, and boycotts – to improve the lives and rights of agricultural workers by  winning pay increases, the rights to form unions, bargain collectively and more.

Today, his granddaughter, Christine Chavez, continues his legacy of equity in the agricultural sector through her work as an Outreach Specialist at USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). On the occasion of Hispanic Heritage Month, we sat down with Christine to discuss her grandfather’s legacy and how her work is inspired by the groundwork he laid.  

Can you share your memories of your grandfather, Cesar Chavez?   

I remember my grandfather as a hard worker and most comfortable when he was around farmworkers.  At home, he was always in his office, attending meetings or on the telephone.   

My mom and dad raised us near Salinas, California.  When my grandfather visited, he would somehow find time to meet local leaders or farmworkers who lived in our area.  He’d also take my sister Teresa and me to rallies, marches and meetings with workers. This was always fun for me and my cousins.  

In my family we say, ‘we don’t have family picnics instead we have family pickets.’ 

He often told us it was our responsibility to remind people what farmworkers endure and sacrifice to feed people. He said, “The American people are good people, and if you show them, they will respond.”

What do you see as your grandfather’s legacy?  

My grandfather’s greatest legacy is that the union he helped co-found is still active today.  The UFW continues to fight for the immigrant community and farmworker families. My grandfather would be proud that the movement he built is still going strong and giving farmworkers and the larger Latino community a voice.  

Also, he was a huge believer in the power of coalitions because when students, African Americans, members of the Jewish community, labor unions, the LGBT community, Asian American and others come together, their collective voices help the cause of farmworkers too.

How does your work at NRCS continue your grandfather’s work?  

Under the leadership of NRCS State Conservationist Carlos Suarez, I, and the rest of our team, have been on the forefront of making programs accessible to all. So many wonderful partners –National Center for Appropriate Technology, CA Dept of Food and Ag, American Farmland Trust, West Fresno Resource Center – work alongside us to reach undeserved communities. I serve as our Limited English Proficiency Coordinator and ensure no one is turned away because of a language barrier.   

Also, the Latino Farmer Conference, taking place in Monterey, CA, Nov. 19-20, 2024, is celebrating its tenth year. Carlos asked us to put together a conference, in Spanish, to bring Latino Farmers together to network in their own language and to introduce them to USDA.

What do you think your grandfather would think about the work you do at USDA?  

My grandfather would be proud I’m working in agriculture because he understood that farmworkers would eventually become farmers. The current generation of Latino Farmers that USDA serves were farmworkers not that long ago.   

He would be pleasantly surprised that Secretary Tom Vilsack became the first USDA Secretary to give farmworkers a seat at the table. Secretary Vilsack asked former UFW President, Arturo Rodriguez, to co-chair the USDA Equity Commission.  He also implemented the Farm and Food Workers Relief Grant Program provided $670 million in one-time $600 relief payments to workers impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.  Secretary Vilsack created a $65 million Farm Labor Stabilization and Protection Pilot Program to improve working conditions for all farmworkers, increase pathways for workers from North Central America to strengthen the labor pool in agriculture. Secretary Vilsack is the most pro-farmworker Secretary in the history of USDA and is showing that USDA supports farmers and farmworkers alike. 

To celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, VA250 and the Virginia DMV have partnered to produce a commemorative license plate. A portion of the proceeds will go directly to supporting VA250’s efforts to create events, educational programs, and exhibits for the nation’s semi quincentennial.

Click here to purchase the plate and support VA250!