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#Post#: 10053--------------------------------------------------
Re: STAFFORD COUNTY JANE DOE: UF, 25-45, found near Stafford, VA
cemetery - 7 November 1998
DIR By: Scorpio
Date: December 11, 2022, 8:39 pm
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InsideNoVa.com
Brent Cemetery, one of the oldest Catholic cemeteries in the
area, has been fodder for fanciful tales of the supernatural in
North Stafford, Va.
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/S1srsux.jpg
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#Post#: 10054--------------------------------------------------
Re: STAFFORD COUNTY JANE DOE: UF, 25-45, found near Stafford, VA
cemetery - 7 November 1998
DIR By: Scorpio
Date: December 11, 2022, 8:39 pm
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HTML http://www.insidenova.com/news/staf...cle_1a26cf81-61e9-52ce-8aec-a91b9189fc36.html
Witches Pond: The legend and the truth
Kari Pugh
Oct 31, 2015
HTML https://i.imgur.com/vEALMOj.jpg
Skeletal remains of the woman found in 1998.
As the legend goes, 18th century villagers put a witch to death
in the woods near a swampy pond and Colonial-era cemetery off
Aquia Creek. Her name, it’s said, was Edith, and her body was
tossed into the water.
Ever since, according to lore, the pond water turns blood red in
the spring. Trespassing thrill-seekers say they’ve seen the
figure of a woman hovering just above the water, or along the
nearby foot path. Sometimes, she’s seen standing by the altar —
wrongly called a sacrifice table by some — in the graveyard
nearby.
In the inky dark, many say they’ve heard splashing noises from
the pond, like large stones — or bodies — being dropped into the
water. There are also reports of shrieks in the night that seem
to get closer and closer.
Then there are tales of the crazy caretaker, who runs folks off
with his shotgun, and to frighten folks away impales small
animals on the spiked fence that surrounds the old cemetery.
To local residents, the swamp and cemetery hidden in the woods
behind the Crucifix Monument along U.S. 1 in Stafford County is
known as “Witches Pond.” It’s hard to say where some of the
legends come from, but at least one truth about Witches Pond is
even more sinister than the lore.
A skeleton covered by leaves
The Brent Family Cemetery behind the pond — just off U.S. 1
along Telegraph Road in Widewater — is the resting place for
members of the first English Roman Catholic settlement in the
New World. The oldest grave there dates to 1681.
In recent years, the area has been associated with curious
trespassers, vandals and those dabbling in devil worship.
Manassas attorney Claude Compton owns the pond and 75 acres of
woods surrounding it. He says he won’t acknowledge the moniker
“Witches Pond,” but admits trespassers are a thorn in his side.
“We get a lot of people fishing, and Halloween trespassers have
been a problem,” he said.
For one woman, a trip to Witches Pond was the last thing she
ever did.
The cemetery’s self-appointed caretaker, a Widewater native
named Russell Lewis, was hunting about 400 feet from the pond on
Nov. 7, 1998, when he came across a skeleton. The bones, covered
by fall leaves, belonged to a woman. She was estimated to be
between 28 and 45 years old, with brown hair in braids.
She wore a Redskins shirt, shorts, dark pantyhose and blue
jeans.
Her shoes were size 8 1/2, canvas platforms with buckles. Near
or with the remains, detectives found a yellow metal earring
shaped like a leaf, dark brown oval-shaped sunglasses, a small
plastic teddy bear trinket, a gold ring with black stones and a
black onyx ring with a design in the shape of a pentagram.
The medical examiner’s office could not determine how she died,
but forensic scientists said she’d been in the woods for at
least a year. Who she was and what happened to her remain a
mystery.
“Her clothes had not been removed, there was nothing remarkable
about the skeletal remains,” said Capt. William Bowler of the
Stafford County Sheriff’s Office. “She was found almost 400 feet
from the pond, near the road that goes back to the cemetery.”
Despite exhaustive efforts to identify her, from running her
information through the National Criminal Incident Database to
tracking down dozens of missing persons report along the East
Coast, detectives were never able to find out her name.
Investigators even had a recreation of her face made in clay,
but it turned up no clues.
Her DNA is on file, along with her remains, at the state medical
examiner’s office.
“You would think someone, somewhere misses her,” Bowler said.
For months, the unidentified woman’s body lay in the woods,
unseen by those looking for a scare at Witches Pond, her grave
of leaves as silent as those long-buried under the ground at
Brent Cemetery.
Pioneers in a New World
Five generations of the Brent family are buried in the old
graveyard behind the pond. The cemetery, surrounded by a brick
enclosure and spike-topped fence, is owned by St. William of
York Catholic Church, which traces its roots to 1647. It was
then that Sir Giles Brent, an English Catholic nobleman, moved
from Baltimore to the Virginia wilderness to escape religious
intolerance. Giles Brent settled with his Piscataway wife near
the mouth of Aquia Creek, and was soon joined by his sisters,
according to the Stafford Historical Society. One of those
sisters, Margaret Brent, was a landowner and attorney who has
been called North America’s first feminist.
Over the next four decades, the Brent family was granted 30,000
acres by King James II, and a patent that “included a royal
mandate assuring the Brents and later inhabitants of Virginia
free exercise of their religion,” according to a history of the
church.
Known first as Brenton and later Aquia, the Catholic pioneers
thrived for more than a century — building their ranks to more
than 200 — before disappearing from mention in local history.
Then, in 1897, the lost community of Aquia was rediscovered,
along with the cemetery.
Among the tombstones was an old stone tablet paying tribute to
Spanish Jesuits massacred by Native Americans near Williamsburg
in 1571. One of those killed was said to be a member of the
Brent family.
In the 1930s, the Catholic Archdiocese of Richmond had the
stone-and-brick altar built at the cemetery in memory of the
Brent family.
#Post#: 10055--------------------------------------------------
Re: STAFFORD COUNTY JANE DOE: UF, 25-45, found near Stafford, VA
cemetery - 7 November 1998
DIR By: Scorpio
Date: December 11, 2022, 8:40 pm
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/q5BNOpj.jpg
#Post#: 10056--------------------------------------------------
Re: STAFFORD COUNTY JANE DOE: UF, 25-45, found near Stafford, VA
cemetery - 7 November 1998
DIR By: Scorpio
Date: December 11, 2022, 8:40 pm
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[img]
HTML https://www.google.com/maps/vt/data=Wpxxt3cDtxalzEd-ncQxo6HU0LWzH0p5tiCWESwGaNH_pYBdcfYpbVHAgx1_D6xLtHVQ1CrPgmJk9Lkd9vjG1fKZl7frwj5w5rWLJ2wWW74P3KDHgdMGpe6F05zE[/img]
Stafford, Virginia 22554
#Post#: 10057--------------------------------------------------
Re: STAFFORD COUNTY JANE DOE: UF, 25-45, found near Stafford, VA
cemetery - 7 November 1998
DIR By: Scorpio
Date: December 11, 2022, 8:40 pm
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/Q48dJfr.jpg
HTML https://i.imgur.com/OxSmFaE.jpg
HTML https://i.imgur.com/QnwXsqE.png
#Post#: 10058--------------------------------------------------
Re: STAFFORD COUNTY JANE DOE: UF, 25-45, found near Stafford, VA
cemetery - 7 November 1998
DIR By: Scorpio
Date: December 11, 2022, 8:40 pm
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/cyw8O70.jpg
Is the ring a connection to the occult?
#Post#: 10059--------------------------------------------------
Re: STAFFORD COUNTY JANE DOE: UF, 25-45, found near Stafford, VA
cemetery - 7 November 1998
DIR By: Scorpio
Date: December 11, 2022, 8:40 pm
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[img]
HTML https://www.google.com/maps/vt/data=esABZIOs4wYTnSvZxgDZZgcwujfYDEIL-NpOAaIC1eDDGUeEIdPyMttMSCW7a_MP-Wb42c1FwbYK4ut_Vgh7Ws8VHB4aiLnu7g1yRvL2WeSzt0lIPyDMjkvcdUjcY-XnLF2TzRA1Gh_ohnnGJ-xGdq7qO-g8eLg[/img]
US 1 Stafford, Virginia
#Post#: 10060--------------------------------------------------
Re: STAFFORD COUNTY JANE DOE: UF, 25-45, found near Stafford, VA
cemetery - 7 November 1998
DIR By: Scorpio
Date: December 11, 2022, 8:41 pm
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Witches Pond: The legend and the truth | insidenova.com
HTML https://i.imgur.com/UJy4p8f.jpg
HTML https://i.imgur.com/fcXOTne.jpg
The pond at the Brent Family Cemetery known as "Witches Pond"
HTML https://i.imgur.com/x9vgCQU.jpg
#Post#: 10061--------------------------------------------------
Re: STAFFORD COUNTY JANE DOE: UF, 25-45, found near Stafford, VA
cemetery - 7 November 1998
DIR By: Scorpio
Date: December 11, 2022, 8:41 pm
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/KSr1DBZ.jpg
Brent Family Cemetery in Aquia
#Post#: 10062--------------------------------------------------
Re: STAFFORD COUNTY JANE DOE: UF, 25-45, found near Stafford, VA
cemetery - 7 November 1998
DIR By: Scorpio
Date: December 11, 2022, 8:41 pm
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HTML http://hauntin.gs/listing/witchs-pond/
Stafford, Virginia
Witch’s Pond Information:
Witch’s Pond is just to the right off of Telegraph Road in
Stafford, Virginia. There is supposedly a sacrificial table near
the pond that some people report seeing, although the table is
said to be fenced off now. Interestingly, a variety of people
who have visited Witch’s Pond report that there are dead animals
hanging from the fence around the “sacrificial” stone table. On
the table, are latin words carved all over it.
According to one source, the Jesuits settled the area in the
1570′s and the table with Latin words all over it is
actually a remnant of their religious artifacts. The Natives in
the area were not amenable to being converted by the Jesuits and
apparently, the Jesuits were all killed. Later, the area was
associated with witchcraft and then with devil worship. Whether
the witchcraft and devil worship part of the story is really
true or just urban legend is hard to say.
This land is on private property and the property owner is not
keen on having unannounced visitors on his property! Apparently,
the poor souls who have been caught trespassing have either been
caught and arrested or held up at gun point. GET PERMISSION TO
VISIT THIS LOCATION!
Ghosts and the Paranormal at Witch’s Pond in Stafford, Virginia:
Locals report the apparition of a woman (apparently known as
“Edith”) standing beside a table near Witch’s Pond. Visitors
also report hearing some strange sounds in the area. In
particular they report hearing the eerie sound of a woman
screaming in the distance.
Some people have reported seeing a shadow person at Witch’s
Pond.
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