Dredging the Choptank
Dredging the
Choptank
Maryland Ghost Stories
Kimberley Lynne
Baltimore, Maryland
www.apprenticehouse.com
Copyright © 2010 by Kimberley Lynne
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lynne, Kimberley, 1961-
Dredging the choptank : Maryland’s ghost stories / [compiled by] Kimberley Lynne. -- 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-934074-15-2
1. Ghosts--Maryland. 2. Haunted houses--Maryland. 3. Ghost stories, American--Maryland. I. Title.
BF1472.U6L96 2008
133.109752--dc22
2007051091
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher (except by reviewers who may quote brief passages).
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
Apprentice House
Communication Department
Loyola University in Maryland
4501 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21210
410.617.5265 • 410.617.5040 (fax)
www.ApprenticeHouse.com • [email protected]
For my Grandmother,
Marjorie Louise Johnson Schuck
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Michael Angelella, Deborah Donohue Amos, Megan Anderson, Kathleen Barber, Mark Blackmon, Tish Brown, Terri Ann Ciofalo, Norrie Epstein, Neal Fandek, Lou Gieszl, David Hunt, Joe Leatherman, Betty Ann Leesburg Lang, Donald Lynne, Jeffrey Lynne, Susan Lynne, Lisa Mion, Todd Mion, Noel Schively, and Joan Weber for their guidance.
Thanks to John Benoit, Raine Bode, Shawn Brown, Andrew Ciofalo, Denise Cumor, Sid Curl, Cassandra Davis, Korinne Spence D’Amore, David Flury, Adrienne Cassara Gieszl, Thomas Hoen, Peggy Miller, Rebecca Monroe, David Orem, Shannon Parks, John Raley, B.Thomas Rinaldi, Anthony Scimonelli, Elaine Sfondias, Mr. Travis, and Dana Whipkey for their extraordinary stories.
Thanks to Margot Adler, Karen Anderson, Joseph Campbell, Joan Didon, Edith Hamilton, Mark Harp, Arlene Hirschfelder, Bertha Johnson, Paulette Molin, Alice Ann Parker, Anthony Reda, Marjorie Schuck and Christopher Weeks for expanding my mind.
Thanks to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Cambridge Library, Dorchester County Arts Center, and The Eastern Shore Tribal Council for protecting Dorchester County’s precious resources.
Thanks to Lillian Jackson Braun, George Carey, Helen Chappell, Thomas A. Flowers, Trish Gallagher, Vernon O. Griffen, Dickson Preston, Brice Stump and Thames Toy Store for telling Maryland folklore and expanding my heart.
Table of Content
Haunted Hunting 11
Walking with Ghosts 15
A Chilled Wind 35
Push Back 53
Read Folklore 61
Fictionalized Reality 71
Black Shapes 89
Show Me the Way 97
Ghosts or No Ghosts 109
Porch Puddles 157
Bad Luck Blue Boats 173
Worm Windows 193
Human Here 213
The What 219
Fork-lore 241
Pasta Paper 245
The Devil Made Me Do It 257
I Heard No Water 277
Cancelled Czech 287
Storm Coming 291
A Human Head 301
It Floods A Lot Here 307
We Need a Carcass 339
On My Way There 343
Burial Records 355
We Believe 381
After April 2nd
Haunted Hunting
Once, in a place that seems outside time, I wrote a ghost walking tour for a small town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. As I collected local folklore, a Cambridge resident named Mr. Travis told me this ghost story that happened in his hunting lodge. Hunting’s popular on the Eastern Shore; it’s rural enough for its populace to still use weapons to catch dinner.
“It wasn’t much,” Travis said of the lodge. “Just a couple of bedrooms and a kitchen and a bathroom. Up on stilts because of all the flooding.” The house stood on its stilts on isolated Aisquith Island in the haunted, southern underbelly of Dorchester County. Aisquith hovers only a few feet above sea level, floating between miles of wet fen and the Honga River. Before the lodge was built, its low woodlands were the sacred ground of a Native American Indian graveyard. Before John Smith showed up in 1608, indigenous people had developed a millennia of civilization, and, in the history of this country, live conquering people plow dead people under.
Travis says he regularly hears children laughing when there’s nothing but cattails and marsh holes for miles, and every time he returns to the lodge, the salt shaker has inexplicably spilled over. Things happen there.
One of Travis’ friends stayed with his young son in the lodge. The son got up in the middle of night to get a glass of water in the kitchen. The mattress spring squeaked, and an owl hooted outside. In the living room, a strange man rocked in the rocker. He wore a plaid shirt and blue jeans and had a bl ack plait of braided hair. He was strange only because the boy didn’t know him. He thought perhaps the man was one of his father’s hunting buddies; the ways of the adult world were still a mystery to the boy.
“Hello,” said the boy. The rocker creaked. The man seemed to have shape and weight, like a living man.
The man nodded, and when the boy returned from the kitchen, the man was gone.
The boy tapped his sleeping father. “Where did the man go, Dad?” He asked. “The man in the living room. He looked so real.”
They searched the lodge house and found no one. They looked outside into the wavering, dark pitch of the Eastern Shore night. One lone green ball of light glided over the undulating marsh grass and then vanished. The son asked to leave.
There’s no sanctuary from the past; not even our living rooms are safe. I’m scared to look into my Baltimore living room late at night for fear of seeing even briefly into another dimension. My friend Korinne once slept on my couch and awoke to see a man seated in my arts and craft era sliding rocker.
“Didn’t that freak you out?” I asked the next morning, aghast.
“No,” she said, smiling and sipping coffee. “He seemed very happy to be here.”
“What’d he look like?” I stuttered.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said calmly. “Older guy, white, I think he was wearing a dinner jacket.”
I realized that my ghost stories and Travis’ ghost stories match