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CHAPTER 6

Historic Ellicott City

ELLICOTT CITY

Some paranormal investigators believe that the granite construction prevalent throughout historic Ellicott City has contributed to its extremely high incidence of hauntings.

So rapid was the rise of the water that many persons barely escaped from their houses on the high banks in time to see their dwellings carried away by the rush of waters and the impact of the floating masses of wreck. Children perished in the sight of their parents, and wives before the eyes of their husbands.

—J. Thomas Scharf, History of Maryland, From the Earliest Period to the Present Day

SOME MEDIUMS SAY that granite attracts and channels spiritual energy. If so, that might explain why this historic Maryland town may be the most haunted town in Maryland, if not in the entire country, as some people claim. Granite is everywhere. The houses are built of granite blocks hewn from the nearby quarries that line the Patapsco River. The foundations are set in the solid granite bedrock on which the town rests. Moreover, the streets are paved with cobblestones of granite, and granite steps lead up through narrow passageways between the buildings. Most Maryland towns are built of brick or wood. Some still have the sturdy log cabins built by the original settlers. Some have marble court houses and city halls of limestone. None, as far as I know, are built almost entirely of granite; and maybe that is why none seem to have the sheer volume of ghosts that Ellicott City has.

Maryland in general has more than its share of ghosts. Those in Frederick can be largely attributed to its proximity to Civil War battlefields. Fells Point hauntings seem most often to be associated with its bars and those who frequented them. At each location there seems to be an explanation that more often than not is rooted in some dramatic event, a violent death, a murder, a suicide. Ellicott City has had its fair share of those too, but no more than any other historic Maryland town, yet it seems to have disproportionately more ghosts. The answer may lie in the granite.

Many of Ellicott City’s ghosts seem to simply be those of ordinary folk who lived out their lives and came to a peaceable end. In other places, most such spirits just move on. But not so in Ellicott City. The “Duchess of Main Street” is a case in point.

The Duchess was the wife of Gramps, who is the owner of Gramps’ Attic Books on Main Street. She gained her nickname because Main Street is where she held court, and she could be seen almost every day proceeding up and down the street, engaging friend and stranger alike in conversation. She loved to socialize and would visit the businesses on Main Street just to gossip with the employees. The Duchess also had a peculiar custom: She would blend two or more of her favorite perfumes into a single very distinctive scent. She never shared that recipe with anybody. It was hers alone.

The Duchess died a few years ago in the apartment the couple shared in the back of the bookstore. Nevertheless, customers report that they can still smell her distinctive perfume drifting through the bookstore, and some take that as evidence that her presence persists there. The lawyer whose offices are next door to Gramps can attest to this. He was one of the people the Duchess “haunted” when alive.

The lawyer always knew it was the Duchess who was approaching the glass door of his office by the distinctive shadow that she cast in the hallway. So, he knew it was she when, not long after she died, he looked up from his desk to see that familiar shadow.

“Oh, no, it can’t be,” he thought. He got up and walked into the hallway, but the shadow was gone. There was no one there. Maybe she had come only to make her last farewell, because he has not seen her shadow since.

There are also, of course, the spirits of people who came to violent and untimely ends, such as those who perished in one of Maryland’s greatest floods. On July 24, 1868, there was an exceptional rainfall all over the state, producing widespread flooding. The high-water mark is recorded on a marker located between the train station and the railway overpass over Main Street and is several feet above the level of the overpass. Scarcely a bridge was left standing over any major stream, and many houses, mills, and other buildings were swept away. The Patapsco River rose precipitously and, in about twenty minutes, became a swollen and furious torrent sweeping everything before it. Trees, masses of timber, and other debris were swept downstream with tremendous force. At Ellicott City, the flood was most destructive. Thirty-two buildings were swept away, and forty-three people killed.

Among those who perished were nine children from a single family, and there is some reason to believe their spirits continue to linger in Ellicott City. At least that is the conclusion that some have drawn from the strange experience of L.J., who is one of the tour guides for the Ellicott City Ghost Tour. She had parked her car in the parking lot behind Caplan’s Auction Company one evening in October. After conducting the tour, she returned to her car and began to drive home. That is when she noticed an inexplicable whirring sound coming from the engine. The car did not stall, however, and she succeeded in making it home safely. But the strangeness did not stop there.

She exited the car and closed the door but, before she could lock it, she heard a click. It had locked itself. Then, as she walked away from the car toward her house, she could hear it unlock itself. Using her remote control, she locked it again, only to hear it unlock itself again. She then walked back to the car and locked it manually—but, as she walked away, it unlocked itself again.

It was late, and being frustrated by the whole experience, L.J. decided to go to bed and deal with the problem in the morning.

Early the next day, before she could go outside, L.J. heard a knock on her door. It was one of her neighbors.

“I just wanted to let you know that the headlights on your car are going on and off,” he said.

L.J. stepped outside, and sure enough they were. She went over to the car and climbed inside. She turned on the dome light. No change. The headlights kept going on and off. She checked the owner’s manual. No help. She went back inside, turned on her computer and checked the manufacturer’s Web site listing of issues or recalls. Nothing relevant.

This went on for several days, and during that time L.J. tried everything she could think of. She parked her car away from other cars. She changed the battery in the remote locking device. She detached her cell phone from the ring on which she also had the device. Nothing worked.

Reluctantly, she came to the conclusion that she might have brought some ghosts home with her from Ellicott City. She called a friend for advice.

“Why don’t you just take you car back to Caplan’s in Ellicott City?” he suggested, assuming she might have picked up the hitchhiking shades there.

At least two ghosts are believed to inhabit the Judge’s Bench Saloon, including one of a young woman who killed herself there.

“If they’re ghosts from Ellicott City, they should be able to find their own way back,” she said, perplexed.

“Not if they are ghosts of children,” her friend replied.

L.J. waited until that evening to see if the light show would start again. It did. Her car lights went on, then off, and showed no sign of stopping.

“I’ve had it,” she said to herself. She got in her car and drove to Caplan’s parking lot in Ellicott City. She parked the car, opened the door, and, looking in the rearview mirror, said, “We’re back in Ellicott City. I hope you enjoyed playing with the gizmos and gadgets in my car, but I’ve brought you home and it’s time to leave.”

L.J. then stepped out of her car and walked a short distance and waited. After a few minutes, she got back into her car and drove away. She held her breath, but there was no whirring sound and the lights worked normally.

L.J. never experienced those phenomena again—but she also never again parked in Caplan’s parking lot.

Although the Patapsco and its floods have been the source of more than a few ghosts, its swift-flowing waters are also the reason Ellicott City was built to begin with. It was the river that brought the Ellicott brothers, Joseph, Andrew, and John, to this spot in the late eighteenth century. The brothers had searched throughout Maryland and Pennsylvania for a site where they could grow wheat and harness water power for a mill, and in 1771 they purchased many acres along the Patapsco River and built their mills there.

By the early 1800s, these mills had developed a respected reputation.

“Here is one of the largest and most elegant merchant mills in the United States,” wrote Joseph Scott in 1807. “It is one hundred feet long and forty feet wide, with four water wheels, which turn three pair of seven-foot stones and one of five feet. She is capable of manufacturing 150 barrels of flour in a day. Here also is a mill, with one water wheel and a pair of burr stones, for the manufacturing of plaster of Paris. Here likewise is a saw mill and an oil mill which is worked with great spirit.”

Ellicott City prospered through the 1800s but, unfortunately, began to deteriorate in the middle years of the twentieth century. It never fully recovered from the Great Depression. While the rest of the country prospered during World War II, Ellicott City did not. It began taking on a rough edge. Rowdy bars and pool halls dominated Main Street. Crime was rampant. It became so bad that the commanders of nearby Fort Meade placed the town off limits to soldiers. There seemed to be no end to the downward spiral—but the Patapsco intervened again.

In the early summer of 1972, Hurricane Agnes swept through the area. Ellicott City was ravaged—but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The town fathers, disgusted with what the town had degenerated into, decided they would use the federal disaster funds to rebuild Ellicott City into a town they could be proud of. The sleazy bars, the pool halls, and the slumlords were told to clean up their acts or do without any money to rebuild. They got the message.

Today, Ellicott City is a pleasant and vibrant town whose residents are justly proud of what they have accomplished. They are dedicated to the preservation of its historic character and to making it an inviting place to visit, which it most certainly is. Antique shops and other small businesses abound. It also has several good restaurants and many more coffee houses and pubs. The latter includes the Ellicott Mills Brewing Company, which has good beer and food, and which I enjoyed very much during one of our visits to the town. It is also haunted, of course, with the ghost of a young accountant who was let go at the outset of the Great Depression and ultimately hanged himself in desperation. He can still be seen from time to time on the second floor of what was then the Talbot Lumber Company, which had employed him. They say he is dressed for the office, in the stiff collar and cuffs that characterized men’s dress in 1929.

Being a Marylander, I had known of Ellicott City, and my wife and I had visited it several times to walk around, enjoy a good meal, and sometimes hike out on the trail that follows the old trolley line toward Baltimore. (The Trolley Stop Restaurant, located at the trail head, serves good meals and has a good nice selection of beer. It is also haunted—ghosts inhabit the second floor and are responsible for inexplicable footsteps and slamming of doors heard by the restaurant staff late at night. Ghosthunters have investigated the second floor and confirmed the ghostly presence.) It was not, however, until I took the ghost tours sponsored by Howard County Tourism that I came to understand the sheer volume of ghosts in Ellicott City, and the role that the local granite rock possibly plays. There are so many ghosts that they have had to offer the tour in two parts: Part One is on Friday night and Part Two on Saturday night.

But there is also another reason to take the ghost tours that many towns offer: the people you meet. Some are casual tourists, some are serious ghosthunters, and some are there for other reasons, like the young girl we met on one of the Ellicott City tours we took. After the tour was over, my son and I lingered to talk to Terry Trembeth, our tour guide. The rest of the group of about twenty had dispersed, but we noticed that a pretty little blonde girl of about ten years and her mother had also stayed behind. The girl seemed shy, but was also strangely intense. It was she who wanted to talk to the tour guide. As it turned out, she was seeking professional advice.

“Why do some spirits not move on?” she asked. “Why do they stay around?”

“Well,” Terry explained, “there are lots of reasons. Some just have unfinished business. Others can be so attached to a place or an object that they just don’t want to leave.”

“Oh,” said the little girl, who had clearly been hoping for more.

“You see,” her mother said, noting our interest and turning in our direction, “We have a ghost in our basement. Only she can see it—and we took this tour hoping we might learn more about what we’re dealing with.”