Glass ‘witch bottle’ from Civil War found in Virginia median

"It was this glass bottle full of nails, broken, but all there, near an old brick hearth," Joe Jones, director of the center, said in a release. "We thought it was unusual, but weren't sure what it was."

Researchers believe it was a witch bottle, which served as a talisman to ward off evil spirits. The witch bottle tradition started in England in the late Middle Ages.

The site was once a Civil War garrison constructed by the South and taken over by the Union after the Battle of Williamsburg in 1862.