Blandwood Mansion

One of the earliest examples of Italianate architecture in the United States, Blandwood was home to North Carolina's 29th Governor John Motley Morehead, his wife, and their eight children in the early 1800s.

Blandwood Mansion stands on West Washington Street in downtown Greensboro, one of the earliest examples of Italianate architecture in the United States and a home steeped in history that has inspired ghostly tales for generations. Built in 1795 and enlarged multiple times, the mansion served as home to North Carolina's 29th Governor, John Motley Morehead, who lived here with his wife and eight children during his term from 1841 to 1844. The Civil War would later transform the property into something far grimmer—and the spirits of that era may never have departed.

The most persistent ghost story involves Letitia, Governor Morehead's oldest daughter. She married a man who was called away to fight in the Civil War, and Letitia took to standing in the mansion's tower, watching and waiting for her husband's return. The story says she died waiting, never learning his fate. To this day, people walking up the driveway report seeing a flickering light in the tower window, like a candle flame, though no light is installed there. Letitia's ghost is said to still walk the halls of the mansion, eternally awaiting the love who never came home.

The Civil War touched Blandwood directly in ways that may contribute to its haunted reputation. After the Battle of Bentonville in March 1865, injured and dying soldiers were loaded onto trains and sent to safer locations for medical treatment. Greensboro was one of those destinations, and the grounds of Blandwood Mansion became one of three staging areas set up as field hospitals. Men suffered and died where the gardens now bloom.

Visitors and staff have reported numerous paranormal experiences. Some claim to see what appears to be a face—or sometimes a flickering light—in the tower window, watching from above. Others have captured orbs in photographs taken around the property. Staff members have heard footsteps on the upper floors during the middle of the afternoon, when no visitors are upstairs. Strange feelings pervade the building, as if unseen eyes are watching.

Storyteller Cynthia Moore Brown, who has written about Blandwood in her book "Folktales and Ghost Stories of the Piedmont," believes the ghosts are friendly. "I feel like they really want to keep a connection to the people here now and miss the people who were here then," she explains. The spirits seem attached to the house, unwilling or unable to leave the place where they lived, loved, and in some cases, died.

Blandwood is now a museum operated by Preservation Greensboro, offering tours of the mansion and its grounds. Ghost tours through downtown Greensboro feature the mansion as a key stop, highlighting it alongside other haunted landmarks like the Carolina Theatre and Old Railway Depot.

Governor Morehead helped shape North Carolina's future as a leader during a critical era. His daughter Letitia shaped Blandwood's legend through her devotion to a husband lost to war. And the soldiers who died on these grounds during the darkest days of the Confederacy may linger here still, trapped between the world they left and the peace they never found.