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Welcome to America’s Haunted Road Trip
CHAPTER 1 Ghost Ships of the Inner Harbor (Baltimore/Inner Harbor)
Ghosts are believed to haunt several of the historic vessels berthed in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, including the wooden warship USS Constellation, the Coast Guard cutter USCGC Taney, the submarine USS Torsk, and the schooner Pride of Baltimore II. This chapter also takes a look at nearby Fort McHenry.
CHAPTER 2 Fells Point (Southeast Baltimore)
Many spirits, including that of Edgar Allan Poe, are believed to haunt the former bars, boarding houses, and bordellos of this once-rowdy seaport area that is now famed for its 120 bars and active nightlife.
CHAPTER 3 Old Baltimore Shot Tower (Baltimore/Jonestown Neighborhood)
Built in 1828, this 238-foot-tall ammunition manufacturing structure was the tallest building in the United States until the construction of the Washington Monument. Passersby frequently hear strange sounds coming from within the tower when no one is inside and it is widely reputed to be haunted.
CHAPTER 4 Westminster Hall and Burying Ground (West Baltimore)
Edgar Allan Poe is among the one thousand prominent Baltimoreans buried at this site, which dates to the eighteenth century, and his unquiet shade is among those that people have reported seeing walking its grounds on moonlit nights. This chapter also looks at the nearby house where the tormented author lived and worked.
CHAPTER 5 Druid Ridge Cemetery (Pikesville)
Visitors have experienced many episodes of unearthly activity at this sprawling, beautifully maintained hilltop necropolis, which houses the remains of about forty thousand people, many of them members of prominent Baltimore families.
CHAPTER 6 Historic Ellicott City (Ellicott City)
Charming Ellicott City is, according to some, perhaps the most actively haunted town in America. Reputedly haunted sites in it include the Judge’s Bench Saloon, which is haunted by both a noisy ghost that tampers with the plumbing and that of a young woman named Mary who hanged herself on the third floor in years past and whose spirit lingers there still.
CHAPTER 7 St. Mary’s College (Ilchester)
Better known as “Hell House” in the surrounding area, this former Roman Catholic seminary on a hilltop overlooking the Patapsco River is now a strange, mysterious, and overgrown ruin that is widely believed to be haunted.
CHAPTER 8 Beall-Dawson House (Rockville)
Built in the wake of the War of 1812, this brick mansion was once the most impressive home in Rockville. Today, it is believed to be haunted by the spirits of some of its former residents, free and slave alike, including some ancestors of the authors of this book.
CHAPTER 9 Bladensburg Dueling Grounds (Colmar Manor)
Bladensburg Dueling Grounds lies just across the border of the District of Columbia and for many years in the early days of American history, men fought duels of honor here … and their deaths left many ghosts behind.
CHAPTER 10 Exorcist House (Mount Rainier)
Located outside of Washington, D.C., this was the location of the historic haunting that provided the basis for the book The Exorcist. Today, a small municipal park sits on the site of the house, which was burned down by the community several years ago.
CHAPTER 11 Surratt House Museum (Clinton)
Over the years, witnesses have claimed to see the unquiet ghosts of various members of the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln in this 19th century inn and tavern owned by Mary Surratt—convicted of treason and the first woman to be executed in the United States.
CHAPTER 12 Mount Airy Mansion (Upper Marlboro)
This Colonial-era mansion achieved fame as a haunted site when the London-based Society for Psychical Research conducted an investigation there in the 1930s and identified a number of specific ghosts residing in it.
CHAPTER 13 St. Mary’s Cemetery (Rockville)
This eighteenth-century cemetery is the final resting place of F. Scott Fitzgerald and, in addition to being treated almost like a shrine to the great author, is believed by many to be haunted by his spirit.
CHAPTER 14 University of Maryland (College Park)
A number of sites on this sprawling campus are reputed to be haunted, including Easton Hall—from which more than one unfortunate freshman has plummeted from upper-level windows—and the Stamp Student Union.
CHAPTER 15 Waters House (Germantown)
This historic farmhouse in northern Montgomery County is believed to be haunted by a number of ghosts—including those of both slaves and horses that were once kept in the buildings behind it!
CHAPTER 16 Ghosts of the Shore (Eastern Shore)
Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the largest and most sparsely populated region in the state, is also one of the most haunted, with some sort of ghost story, macabre legend, or other weird tale being associated with just about every crossroads, bridge, or town.
CHAPTER 17 Furnace Town (Snow Hill)
This abandoned foundry town is haunted by the ghost of Sampson Hat, a slave who stayed in the town after everyone else left and lived there until the age of 106. Even death could not sever his link to the forsaken community, however, and to this day his shade has been seen guarding the remains of its blast furnace.
CHAPTER 18 Patty Cannon’s House (Finchville/Reliance)
Few people have been more loathsome than Patty Cannon, who earned a living by kidnapping free blacks and selling them to southern slave holders. Her evil presence can still be felt in her home and the tavern next door, where she kept her prisoners and tortured them in a warren of secret rooms and tunnels.
CHAPTER 19 White Marsh Church (Talbot County)
One of the best known ghost sagas in this part of the Eastern Shore involves the ruins of this seventh-century church and the graveyard surrounding it, which on at least two occasions was the target of grave robbers.
CHAPTER 20 Ghosts of the South (Southern Maryland)
Numerous ghost stories persist in this coastal Western Shore region, including that of the Blue Dog, a spectral hound that haunts the roads around Port Tobacco; Cry Baby Bridge, said to be haunted by the spirits of two women and a baby killed at the site; and Moll Dyer, an eighteenth-century witch who died in Leonardtown after her home was burned down by locals and who is still blamed for maladies that occur in the area.
CHAPTER 21 Point Lookout (St. Mary’s County)
This area contains several highly haunted sites, including Point Lookout Lighthouse, where people have reported apparitions, odd smells, and spectral footsteps. Another hotspot in the park is the site of Camp Hoffmann, one of the largest Union prisoner-of-war-camps during the Civil War.
CHAPTER 22 Dr. Samuel A. Mudd House (Waldorf)
Dr. Samuel Mudd was one of the people imprisoned by the government on suspicion of being involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. His embittered ghost is believed to still dwell within the farmhouse where he and his family lived during the Civil War, and where he died fourteen years after President Andrew Johnson pardoned him in 1869.
CHAPTER 23 The Passion of John Wilkes Booth (Southern Maryland)
The ghost of John Wilkes has Booth has, ironically, been spotted at nearly as many places as that of President Abraham Lincoln, most of them places he visited during the last few weeks of his life or those where his body lay following his death.
CHAPTER 24 Antietam National Battlefield (Sharpsburg)
Site of the single bloodiest day of America’s bloodiest conflict, during which more than twenty-two thousand casualties were inflicted, the shades of Civil War soldiers have long been seen marching across the fields where they were violently slain.
CHAPTER 25 Burkittsville (Frederick County)
Home of “Blair Witch,” Elly Kedward, who was banished in 1785 for witchcraft, this town has been the site of numerous ghost sightings over the years, particularly of Civil War soldiers killed in the nearby woods and hills.
CHAPTER 26 Church of Saint Patrick (Cumberland)
For more than 140 years, people in the local area have held that this old Catholic church has been haunted by the shade of a Civil War soldier who was executed for killing his commanding officer.
CHAPTER 27 City of Frederick (Frederick County)
Many ghosts are believed to haunt the homes and other buildings of one of Maryland’s oldest cities, including Civil War patriot Barbara Fritchie and a German pacifist who was one of the only people ever to have been drawn and quartered in the United States.
CHAPTER 28 Gabriel’s Inn (Ijamsville)
Once a mental institution, this inn now specializes in fine French cuisine. It is believed to be haunted both by former residents and by casualties of the Civil War Battle of Monocacy, some of whose spirits now reside in the wine cellar.
CHAPTER 29 Monocacy National Battlefield (Frederick County)
Spirits of Civil War soldiers slain in this brutal 1864 battle have for many years been witnessed marching across it, unaware perhaps that nearly a century and a half has elapsed since they fell in combat.
CHAPTER 30 Schifferstadt (Frederick)
This oldest home in the city is believed to be haunted by its builder, German immigrant Joseph Bruner, as well as the ghosts of some of his descendents and many others who have lived, visited, or taken refuge there.
Information about more than fifty haunted sites not covered elsewhere in this book.
Web sites, radio shows and podcasts, and listings for several Maryland ghost tours.
