RICHMOND, VA—Acknowledging the change was long overdue, officials in Virginia announced Wednesday they plan to remove all Confederate ghosts from the grounds and interior of the state capitol building. “After listening to impassioned arguments on both sides of the issue, we feel the time has come to exorcise these ghosts once and for all,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Kelly Thomasson said of the controversial apparitions of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and several nameless Confederate soldiers, all of whom have wandered the building for decades. “Virginians of color should be able to visit the seat of their government without having to feel these ghosts lurking behind them or hear them wailing in agony from the shadows. Such specters of the past don’t belong in a public space, but in a haunted house, where they can scare visitors with the facts of our terrifying history. They are not representative of today’s Virginia.” Thomasson went on to add that most Confederate ghosts did not begin regularly haunting government buildings until the Jim Crow era, decades after the Civil War.

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