As Halloween approaches, I’d like to tell a tale that is based upon some historical facts mixed with little fiction by yours truly.

Long ago, in the year of 1773, Anne Hill was born into a wealthy family in Virginia.

She was raised with all the finer things afforded to her by parents who owned the prestigious Shirley Plantation.

At the age of 20, Anne married Gen. Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, the ninth governor of Virginia. They had five children — four sons and a daughter.

As a member of the Federalist Party, Henry opposed America’s decision to fight Great Britain in the War of 1812. One night, two men beat him severely for his political opposition. Henry was left seriously injured, both physically and psychologically.

He left Anne and the children for a brief period of time to travel to the Caribbean where he tried, but failed, to recover. He returned to his family and died shortly thereafter, leaving his wife a widow. His body was buried in a family plot in Fairfax County Cemetery.

Now with only modest means, Anne did her best to raise her five children. She was chronically ill, but her doctor was unable to diagnose her ailments. His best guess was that the birth of Anne’s fifth child left her with internal complications. Then one day he was called to her home when she was having difficulty breathing.

Upon his examination, he heard no heartbeat and felt no pulse. After a short while, he could not even detect a breath. On the night of Oct. 31, 1814, Anne Hill Lee was declared dead. Her children and her late husband’s family were saddened beyond what words could describe. Her body was placed in a wooden vault and left to eternal rest beside her husband.

On that evening that was damp and dreary, a church sexton was crossing the cemetery to go home after he had been imbibing the wine from the holy tabernacle. As he stumbled along drunk and shaking his lantern light, he stopped when her heard something that sent chills down his spine.

“Help.”

He thought he heard a muffled voice, but he laughed it off through the taste of the wine that was still present upon his lips.

“Help. Help me.” The voice sounded like a woman’s. The sexton stepped slowly toward a grave from which he had heard the sound.

“Help me!” Now the voice was louder and clearer. The sexton hitched his breath, swore that he would never drink again, and hurried home as quickly as he could.

Sometime soon after midnight, he was awakened by a terrible nightmare. He had heard the voice again and again in his mind until he felt his brain was on fire. His head hurt from the drink, but his alcoholic daze had worn off. Something compelled him to put on his boots and as if a powerful force was pushing him, back to the cemetery he went.

As he approached where he had heard the voice, he listened. Nothing came at first. Then there it was again!

“Help me!”

He turned and ran and rousted the pastor of the church from his sleep and told him the story.

“Have you been drinking again, Charles?”

“No, I mean yes, I mean no, Father.”

“Well, be it the liquor then I will have to dismiss you from your duties. This has been happening too many times.”

They walked into the cemetery with their lanterns leading their way. The sexton fell to his knees and banged his fist on the ground where he had heard the voice.

“Hello. Is somebody down there?” He shouted.

“Let’s go Charles, “ said the pastor. “When the sun comes up, I’m afraid you will have to tender your resignation.”

“Help me! Help me!”

Charles and the pastor took a step back from the grave. Both men shrieked in horror.

“Who’s in there, Charles?”

“The lady named Anne Hill Lee.” The pastor narrowed his eyebrows.

“When was she buried?”

“This morning.”

“What did she die from?”

“Uh, Father, think for a moment about that question you just asked me.”

The two men then hurried to the house where the gravedigger lived. The only way the pastor convinced him that he had buried Anne Hill Lee alive and to come and dig her up was to promise to pay him a double wage for his night’s inconvenience. So the pastor, the sexton, and the gravedigger hurried back to the cemetery.

After the digger had shoveled out the dirt from Anne’s grave, he jumped into the hole and pried the lid open to the wooden vault. There lay Anne with her eyes wide opened! She let out a loud gasp and breathed in the night’s damp air.

Suddenly, someone appeared behind the pastor and tapped his shoulder.

“It was YOU who told the sexton and the gravedigger to beat me!”

Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee had risen from his grave!

With one mighty swing of his arm, he knocked both the pastor and the sexton unconscious. Then he leaped into his wife’s grave and knocked out the gravedigger with one punch from his fist.

Anne returned home to her children that night. The next day she told the town’s folk the story of being rescued from her grave. The pastor, the sexton and the gravedigger were never seen again.

They say that if you walk through the Fairfax County Cemetery on a damp and dreary night in late October, you might hear the ghostly voices of three men who were buried alive together.

“Help us!”

As for Anne, her doctor finally diagnosed her “malady.” She was pregnant again, and this time she gave birth to a son she named Robert E. Lee!

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.