John Hildreth Chronicles a Virginia Mountain Hollow
PEARISBURG, Va. — Musician and composer John Hildreth’s new double album, House of Ghosts, tells the stories of an old house and its surrounding neighborhood in a Virginia mountain hollow, moving between 1917 and the present day, with occasional journeys 1,000 years into the past.
Hildreth said the project grew from stories shared with him over the years, his own experiences in the house and his interest in preserving the neighborhood’s history before it was forgotten.
“I felt I could tell these stories in a unique way with music,” Hildreth said. “and they became a good vehicle for the musical language I spent years developing.”
The stories range from documented events to impressionistic glimpses and imagined journeys. One recounts a fugitive robber hiding in the house’s basement for a week while the Davis family lived upstairs, unaware. Others evoke a mother bear moving across the land at night or an owl calling from a treetop. Another follows Pearisburg patriarch Mr. C.A. Lucas as he approaches his 100th birthday in 1987.
The title itself carries multiple meanings.
“The ‘ghosts’ in the title refer both to literal apparitions and to memories of earlier versions of ourselves and the people we have known,” Hildreth said.
The house sits near the Kendall funeral home, where bodies have been coming and going for decades. The album draws on that history as well as reports of unexplained voices and apparitions experienced by homeowners and guests.
Some stories reach beyond the documented history of the property. One song follows a young Monacan girl walking through the forested land 1,000 years ago.
Others are firmly rooted in the community’s more recent past, including Sam Atkins seeking Mr. Lucas’ counsel in early 1965 during a real estate dispute that eventually led to Atkins purchasing the Ben Franklin store. Atkins and his wife, Joann, operated the business for 40 years.
The album also captures Sheree Davis’ departure from the house in May 2004 and the arrival of Sherry Hildreth from Kentucky.
Ultimately, while the album is rooted in a particular house and community, it explores broader themes of memory, place, loss and change.
Hildreth spent most of 2024 developing the stories, titles and lyrics before beginning to write and record that November. The recording took place in the house itself, often in the middle of the night.
Additionally, Hildreth deliberately limited the project to upright piano, tenor banjo, voice and synthesizer.
“The restrictions became part of the project’s identity,” Hildreth said. “They bring together several influences, from Appalachian instrumentation to electronic and classical elements.”
Hildreth performs all of the voices and instruments on the album, but other key figures helped bring the project to life. Bud Bennett assisted with developing the banjo sound, while composer and producer Matt LaBarge provided an outside perspective on the final mixes.
