A full house, estimated at 200 people, gathered Wednesday, April 20, at the Kingston Parish House in Mathews to hear tales of haunted houses and ghostly woods.

Dr. Rosalind Hammond, county native and retired professor of education and dean at Bowling Green University in Ohio, came at the invitation of the Mathews County Historical Society. Hammond told about the folklore of the Hudgins Haunted House and, a few miles down the road, of Old House Woods near Haven Beach, stories she had learned years ago while doing graduate work at the University of Virginia.

She said she had found these stories in the university’s archive while studying folklore. Not knowing what to choose as a topic, she stumbled over references to her native county in the basement of Alderman Library, and followed them up with extensive research and fieldwork.

Learning that the Haunted Hudgins House in Mathews County was actually in her own family—the home of her great-grandparents Augustine and Molly Hu...