A Twisted Smile of Revenge

On October 13, 1828, Adam Godding was admitted into William's Town Insane Asylum. Eight weeks previous, Godding had been part of a team of men building a grand mansion down in Harlington, Virginia. It had all been going smoothly until one of the men got frustrated because of his wages and, in the grip of his anger, he set fire to mansion.

The rest of the men were able to douse the flames before any permanent damage occurred. The walls would need to be repainted but it was the floor that had suffered the most. Segments of it had deteriorated in the flame's heat and other parts were smoking and scorched. It would take about a week to conduct the repairs.

The next day as the men entered their ruined project, a wooden beam fell and hit Alan, one of the workers. His chest was broken and he died within the next few minutes. The next accident befell the workers two days later when the ladder Thomas Hedding was standing on collapsed. He crashed through the kitchen and the master bedroom's ceilings and died as soon as he hit the gritty basement ground. In total he fell three floors; it was a messy affair.

Two weeks passed with no disturbances, but that didn't calm the five remaining men's nerves. The were jumpy as a rabbit; frightened they would be the next to go. (They were sure the house was cursed.) The men were right be frightened, because on September seventh, Richard Smith was found hung from the rafters.

Richard had a wife, three kids, and a good life. What caused him to do this is uncertain. But discovered along with Richard's body was three pieces of wood- two of them square and the last one shaped into a deformed sort of smile.

By this time, two of the remaining builders had fled and Adam and Paul Jenkins were the only ones left. But not for long. On September twelfth Paul slipped and fell on his axe. He continued to bleed profusely until he died thirteen minutes later.

The rest is history. Adam fled from the scene in a frenzied panic and was not seen until a week later when a farmer's wife found him wandering aimlessly through their fields. He was taken back to his home where he told his family that the Harlington House, as it had come to be known, was possessed. But he was only met with unbelief. Over the next few weeks Adam's family did all they could to help him get over what they had been through, but with no avail; his mind had flown away.

And so it was, with heavy hearts that his family had him put in William's Town Insane Asylum. No one really knows what happened at the Harlington House. We may never know. Was it a group of gruesome murders committed by Adam Godding or was the mansion really mad about being burned down? No one will ever know, but there is one thing we do know and that is that the secret will die with Adam Godding.

We may never know if Adam Godding's story is true, but to this day that house has remained empty and derelict. And if you look very closely, you can still see the bloodstain left from Thomas Hedding's plunge of death on the gritty basement ground.