If you have experienced similar paranormal events, then you know that ghosts exist. Even if you have not yet experienced these things, you are curious about the paranormal world, the spirit realm. If you weren’t, you would not now be reading this preface to the latest book in the America’s Haunted Road Trip series from Clerisy Press.
Over the last several years, I have investigated haunted locations across the country, and with each new site, I found myself becoming more fascinated with ghosts. What are they? How do they manifest themselves? Why are they here? These are just a few of the questions I have been asking. No doubt, you have been asking the same questions.
The books in the America’s Haunted Road Trip series can help you find the answers to your questions about ghosts. We’ve gathered together some of America’s top ghost writers (no pun intended) and researchers and asked them to write about their states’ favorite haunts. Each location that they write about is open to the public so that you can visit them for yourself and try out your ghosthunting skills. In addition to telling you about their often hair-raising adventures, the writers have included maps and travel directions so that you can take your own haunted road trip.
Mike Varhola’s new book Ghosthunting Maryland proves that the “Old Line State” contains a lot of old ghosts. The book is a spine-tingling trip through Maryland’s small towns, cities, and historic sites, from the shores of Chesapeake Bay to the Allegheny Mountains. Ride shotgun with Mike as he seeks out Civil War ghosts at the Antietam and Monocacy battlefields. Travel with him to Edgar Allan Poe’s house in Baltimore where a ghost—perhaps that of the macabre writer himself—taps visitors on the shoulder. Come aboard as he stalks the spirits of long-dead seamen on the eighteenth-century warship USS Constellation. And who belongs to the disembodied voice that whispers “I’m sitting right here” in Gabriel’s Inn? Hang on tight; Ghosthunting Maryland is a scary ride.
But once you’ve finished reading this book, don’t unbuckle your seatbelt. There are still forty-nine states left for your haunted road trip! See you on the road!
John Kachuba
Editor, America’s Haunted Road Trip
Introduction
“THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN and earth,” Shakespeare wrote in his play Hamlet, “than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” One of my guiding principles has long been that incisive phrase spoken by Hamlet to his friend Horatio (while holding a skull, no less). In short, there are countless things in this world that cannot be adequately explained by any single conventional system of beliefs. This book, and the America’s Haunted Road Trip series of travel guides in general, are devoted to exploring sites where inexplicable things of a haunted nature are believed to occur, and to helping people who are so inclined to visit them.
Ghosthunting Maryland is, in fact, a travel guide and the primary criterion for inclusion in it is whether or not a place is publicly accessible. This book is a collaboration between me and my father, Michael H. Varhola, who wrote five of the chapters—those about Ellicott City, Fells Point, Gabriel’s Inn, Historic Frederick, and the Schifferstadt—and contributed to a number of other sections in it.
While visiting the sites described in this book we conducted varying degrees of paranormal investigation, sometimes in conjunction with individual ghosthunters or groups of them and sometimes on our own. At no point, however, did we personally endeavor to perform a “full investigation” conforming to the standards of any particular organization. After all, the point of this book is to tell people about promising sites to visit, give them the information they need to do so, and then let them enjoy the sites as they see fit.
GHOSTHUNTING IN MARYLAND
Maryland is home to an absolutely amazing number of reputedly haunted places and, suffice it to say, is fertile ground for ghosthunters and contains no shortage of potential venues for investigation. To say that this book could have a hundred chapters devoted to publicly accessible haunted sites would be a marked understatement, and to say that it could have a thousand if private venues were also included would not be inaccurate. Distilling all of the possible choices into a mere thirty chapters was not the smallest challenge associated with this project. That was, of course, one of the incentives for including an appendix of Additional Haunted Sites for anyone who is interested.
Maryland is divided into six regions for purposes of this book: Baltimore, Central, D.C. Metro, Eastern Shore, Southern, and Western. Geographically, Maryland is not a large state. It is, however, among the oldest in the country, and has a rich, varied, and turbulent history that has contributed to an exceptionally high number of haunted sites. It also contains a variety of communities and landscapes, from some of the busiest metropolitan areas in the country to sparsely populated rural locales, and from mountainous terrain in the west to extensive areas of shoreline in the east and south.
Because it is relatively compact, Maryland is in many ways an ideal state for a haunted road trip—especially in an era of historically high gasoline prices—and many haunted sites within the same area can easily be reached on a single weekend-long trip by people visiting from other areas. For those living almost anywhere in Maryland itself, a great many sites, even more than one at a time, can be visited on day trips.
As with my previous book, Ghosthunting Virginia, my earliest research revealed a striking number of sites reputed by various sources to be haunted. With space in this volume for only a limited number of these, my co-author and I have carefully attempted to identify a representative selection that both emphasized variety and a struck a balance between “must include” sites—such as the graveyard where Edgar Allan Poe is buried—as well as lesser-known ones that do not appear in any other books.
Several people, places, and themes peculiar to Maryland and its history emerged while we were working on the various chapters in this book. These include the state’s Colonial era, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the B&O Railroad, Edgar Allan Poe, and Francis Scott Key, among others, all significant elements in the state’s normal and haunted histories. Ghosthunters can plan itineraries based on one or more of these themes (e.g., visiting sites along the route of the B&O Railroad, visiting sites associated with the war of 1812).
My own connection to Maryland goes back nearly four decades, to when my family moved to the Old Line State when I was three, and I have both lived there and visited sites throughout the state off and on since then. This, combined with the degree in journalism I earned at the University of Maryland in College Park, has played a large part in inspiring me to write this book. My father and co-author has, likewise, spent much of his life in the state, and has resided in it for many years.
PARANORMAL PHENOMENA
Prospective ghosthunters who visit enough sites should expect to eventually experience various sorts of paranormal phenomena. These might range from anomalies in photographs or recordings—which I have experienced fairly consistently in my fieldwork—to more profound and much rarer phenomena like apparitions, disembodied sounds such as footsteps and voices, and the like.
Ghosthunting Maryland is my second contribution to the America’s Haunted Road trip series and follows my Ghosthunting Virginia. When my editors asked me to write that book, they knew me to be an established author of nonfiction books; to have a strong background in history, research, and fieldwork; and to have lived in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, with easy access to both Virginia and Maryland. They had no way of knowing that I’d had an abiding interest in the paranormal for some thirty years, nor indeed, that I had been a “ghosthunter” some years before that term would have meant anything to most people.
Ghosthunting as a pursuit has come into its own over the past few years and has been the subject of numerous television shows and movies. In my experience, however, real ghosthunting bears little resemblance to what is depicted even in “reality” shows related on the subject. The real thing is generally much less manic, a lot quieter, and—despite the absence of noise, running back and forth, and jerky camera angles—much more intense. It also does not result in evidence of haunting on every expedition, or even most