Allegany County By Location

Breakneck Road is named for the local accident that killed colonial Col. Joshua Fry, thrown from his horse in May 1754. For a 22-year-old junior officer named George Washington, this turned out to be a big break—literally. See “Col. Joshua Fry.” The Historical Marker Database. 9 April 2009; rev. 29 Nov. 2021. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=187084

Brush Tunnel. However popular this scenic spot with sightseers and ghost hunters, the claim that a group of luckless tourists here accidentally stepped fatally into the path of an oncoming train are inaccurate; that 1912 disaster occurred 10 miles to the northwest, between the Borden Tunnel and the depot at Frostburg (see below). See also Duncan, Andy. "Rail Victims Moved 10 Miles in 100 Years." Weird Western Maryland. 1 Nov. 2021. https://weirdwesternmd.blogspot.com/2021/11/rail-ghosts-moved-10-miles-in-100-years.html.

Cumberland. In summer 1824, five-year-old Belle McMahon fell 90 feet down a Prospect Street well "in front of the Court House yard," but was hauled to safety via grappling hooks with "no injuries whatever, beyond a slight abrasion of the skin on the forehead." According to Keith and Annie Potts on their ghost tours of historic Cumberland, the apparition of a little girl still is seen sitting on the curb outside the courthouse in Prospect Square, crying for her lost doll. See Duncan, Andy. "B Is for Belle, Who Fell Down the Well." Journal of the Alleghenies 58 (2022). The historical account is Lowdermilk, Will H. History of Cumberland (Maryland). Washington, D.C.: James Anglim, 1878, via Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/historycumberla00lowdgoog. Pages 307-309.

Cumberland. Every April beginning in 1828, the street preacher Prophet Harris appeared at the corner of Mechanic and Bedford streets loudly warning passers-by that the city was doomed for its wickedness, just like Sodom and Gomorrah. That's not an unusual message among street preachers, but Harris got more attention than most, as he performed all his public harangues stark naked. Repeated arrests and expulsions, even a public flogging, failed to deter him. Finally, in April 1833, the naked prophet was escorted across the Potomac and into the custody of his long-suffering family in Leesburg, Virginia. That month, most of downtown Cumberland burned to the ground in an inferno that claimed more than 75 buildings; it began at a cabinet shop at the corner of Mechanic and Bedford streets. See Stegmaier, Harry Jr., David Dean, Gordon Kershaw and John Wiseman. Allegany County: A History. Cumberland, Maryland: Allegany County Commissioners, 1976; printed by McClain Printing in Parsons, West Virginia; second printing 1983. Pages 149-150.

Cumberland. Gilded Age millionaire Henry Gassaway Davis (1823-1916), who made his first fortune in railroads, got his start in 1842 as a 19-year-old brakeman for the B&O. Immediately realizing that money could be made running trains by night as well as by day, and innocent of the industry conviction that night trains were quite impossible, he naively invented the locomotive headlamp and put it to prompt and public use. 

A curious crowd which included many skeptics and scoffers gathered at Cumberland to see the first night train start for Baltimore.  

The comment was not encouraging. One man said the train was almost sure to run into a cow and get thrown off the track.  

The train moved off in charge of young Henry G. Davis, despite the misgivings of the crowd. It proceeded at little better than a snail’s pace and there were many stops, but Baltimore was reached in safety.  

Davis was given the credit for having proved the feasibility of running trains at night.  

See Hunt, J. William. Across the Desk, Vol. 1: 4-8-45 to 10-31-48. Cumberland, Maryland: Allegany County Historical Society, c. 1968. Columns originally published weekly in the Cumberland Sunday Times. Accessed via Ort Library. Unpaginated. 6-17-45. 

Cumberland: C&O Canal. In late June 1857, posters went up everywhere proclaiming that "Professor Culex"  would on July Fourth at the canal docks "perform the wonderful feat of WALKING ON WATER!" Thousands duly assembled, but "Professor Culex" never showed. Surely my esteemed colleague was in the crowd incognito, snickering. This July Fourth was remembered for generations, historian David Dean dryly notes, precisely because "nothing happened." See Stegmaier, Harry Jr., David Dean, Gordon Kershaw and John Wiseman. Allegany County: A History. Cumberland, Maryland: Allegany County Commissioners, 1976; printed by McClain Printing in Parsons, West Virginia; second printing 1983. Page 163.

Engraving of O'Brien and his mustache.Cumberland: Civil War. The pioneering Irish-American science fiction writer Fitz James O’Brien (pictured), a pillar of queer Greenwich Village before the war, is buried in historic Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn—but he died a Union officer in a private home in Cumberland, of tetanus in April 1862, having been wounded in a skirmish. See Michael Burke, “Fitz-James O’Brien.” The Arch. Spring 2006. https://www.green-wood.com/wp-content/uploads/apdf/gwhf_the_arch_spring2006.pdf

Cumberland: Civil War. According to local tradition, a young Union soldier who was court-martialed and hanged in July 1864 walked into St. Patrick’s rectory hours after his death with a ghostly request for Father Brennan. The hanging, at least, is verifiable. Under the dateline "HEADQUARTERS D'P'T. OF WESTERN VIRGINIA, CUMBERLAND, Md., July 11, 1864," The New York Times reported: "FRANK GILLESPIE, of the Fifteenth New-York Cavalry, was hung here yesterday, for shooting Lieut. SHAVER, an officer of his company." That terse announcement was published July 13, two days after the dispatch and three days after the hanging. See “The Parish Ghost of Cumberland.” Mountain Discoveries Magazine. Fall/Winter 2003. http://www.mountaindiscoveries.com/stories/fw2003/parishghost_plain.html

Cumberland. In October 1870, wealthy industrialist William W. McCaig Junior was shot dead on Baltimore Street, in front of what now is the Kensington, in broad daylight before scores of passers-by—yet Harry Crawford Black was acquitted by a jury that accepted his argument: McCaig simply needed killing. See “The Black-McKaig Homicide.” Murder by Gaslight. March 2013. http://www.murderbygaslight.com/2013/03/the-black-mckaig-hommicide.html

Cumberland. Edwin Thomas Shriver made daily 7 a.m. weather readings for 37 years, 1859-1896--a record for nineteeth-century Allegany County. Note that the Civil War and an occupation army did not deter him. His younger brother Howard continued the daily observations for another five years, until his own death in 1901, when the Shrivers' combined 42-year run was honored in the U.S. Weather Bureau's official organ, the Monthly Weather Review. See Abbe, Cleveland, O.L. Fassig and F.J. Walz. Report on the Meteorology of Maryland. Maryland Weather Service Special Publication Vol. I, Part III. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, July 1899, accessed in Ort Library's Special Collections. Pages 385-386. See also the Monthly Weather Review, February 1901, Page 67; downloaded from the online archives November 19, 2023.

Cumberland. Long ago, a Cumberland informant told a folklorist: "Ghosts travel in a mantle of hot air. You sometimes feel a sudden warmth in the temperature while riding or driving in the country on a cool summer evening." See Whitney, Annie Weston, and Caroline Canfield Bullock. "Folk-lore from Maryland." Memoirs of the American Folk-lore Society Volume 18 (1925): 78.

Cumberland. From a 1945 newspaper column on the city’s street names: “Strangest name of all is Je Ne Sais Pas Street, two blocks south of Oldtown Road. Its English equivalent is ‘I Do Not Know!’” Does this street still exist? Je ne sais pas! See Hunt, J. William. Across the Desk, Vol. 1: 4-8-45 to 10-31-48. Cumberland, Maryland: Allegany County Historical Society, c. 1968. Columns originally published weekly in the Cumberland Sunday Times. Accessed via Ort Library. Unpaginated. 4-22-45. 

Cumberland. On the night of Saturday, August 4, 1945, a war-weary town saw a portent in the sky. 

The crescent moon was in position directly over a single star, with no other stars visible, making a remarkable heavenly reproduction of the Soviet symbol. 

Some townsfolk believed this celestial hammer-and-sickle foretold the death of Stalin, who defied the seers by living until 1953. Others believed it foretold the long-awaited entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan. Sure enough, that declaration came four days later—but it had less to do with Saturday’s night sky over Cumberland than with Monday’s A-bombing of Hiroshima. See Hunt, J. William. Across the Desk, Vol. 1: 4-8-45 to 10-31-48. Cumberland, Maryland: Allegany County Historical Society, c. 1968. Columns originally published weekly in the Cumberland Sunday Times. Accessed via Ort Library. Unpaginated. 8-12-45. 

Cumberland. A local columnist dryly noted in 1945 that of the city’s six living mayors, three (including the incumbent) had the first name of Thomas, and three had the first name of George. Since then, Cumberland has elected one more Thomas and one more George. In fact, of the 60 Cumberland mayoral administrations listed by the Maryland State Archives, 14 were either Georgian or Thomist—23 percent. The Thomists have an 8-6 edge. A good question is asked by Rob Forsythe of Frostburg State's Department of Mathematics: Does this record match the percentage of Georges and Thomases in the city population? See Hunt, J. William. Across the Desk, Vol. 1: 4-8-45 to 10-31-48. Cumberland, Maryland: Allegany County Historical Society, c. 1968. Columns originally published weekly in the Cumberland Sunday Times. Accessed via Ort Library. Unpaginated. 12-16-45. The complete list is at https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/37mun/cumberland/html/cmayors.html .

Cumberland. At a secret Pentagon meeting in November 1949 to discuss a wave of “green fireballs” over military installations, esteemed physicist Ross Gunn, a veteran of the Manhattan Project and the Naval Research Laboratory, interjected that he and his pilot had seen one that August, about 8,000 feet above Cumberland; he assumed it was a meteor. No one seems to have followed up on the comment. While meteors can flash green on occasion, they aren’t terribly common; was their sudden ubiquity in 1949 just Cold War paranoia, or was something else going on? See Duncan, Andy. “Green Fireball Discussed at Pentagon.” Weird Western Maryland. 30 Sept. 2021. https://weirdwesternmd.blogspot.com/2021/09/green-fireball-discussed-at-pentagon.html. For details of the meeting, apparently in their first publication, see Gross, Loren E. The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs: A History. 1949 July-December Supplemental Notes. Fremont, Calif.: self-published, 2000, Gunn quote Page 57.

Cumberland. For centuries, children have squealed in terror and delight at the climax of "The Golden Arm," a story in the oral tradition with infinite variations, always involving the step-by-step advance of a vengeful ghost who may seek a missing limb. Key to the telling is a winching up of suspense until the ghost arrives at the very campfire or slumber party where the tale is being told, the cue for the teller or an accomplice basically to yell "Boo!" so that happy chaos ensues. Long ago, folklorist Dorothy Howard and her students collected a bedtime version in Cumberland that lacked only the arm:

One day these people moved into a haunted house, but they didn't know it was haunted. That night they went to bed, and at twelve o'clock they heard a voice saying, "I'm on the first step; I'm on the second step; I'm on the third step; I'm on the fourth step; I'm on the ninth step; I'm on the tenth step; I'm in the hall; I'm at your door; I'm at your dresser; I'm by your bed; I'VE GOT YOU!"

See Carey, George G. Maryland Folklore and Folklife. Centreville, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1970; fourth printing, 1983. Page 30.

Dan’s Mountain. On Saturday, Nov. 4, 1994, the opening day of turkey season, a 30-year-old hunter from Franklin County, Pennsylvania, was found dead in the Dans Mountain Wildlife Management Area (https://dnr.maryland.gov/wildlife/Pages/publiclands/western/danswma.aspx). He had been crushed beneath a thousand-pound slab of rock that had broken off the hillside; he also had been shot in the head by his own 12-gauge shotgun, which lay within reach. Police theorized he had ended his own suffering, leaving area hunters with much to discuss. “Was it an accident, or was something else at work?” a Department of Natural Resources spokesman said. “It’s a real freaky kind of thing.” See Tasker, Greg. “Hunter’s last hours remain a mystery.” The Baltimore Sun. 9 Nov. 1994. Page B1. Accessed via Ort Library’s ProQuest Historical Newspapers database. 

Eckhart Mines. Two old ghost stories collected by 20th-century folklorists may be releated. Both are from Carey, George G. Maryland Folk Legends and Folk Songs. Cambridge, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1971. Accessed on loan via Ort Library. Pages 18-19, 21.

  • "A man was brutally murdered where Spruce Bridge once stood near Eckhart. Some said it was one of Braddock's soldiers who had cut off the victim's head and thrown it into the stream. But for years afterward, farmers complained that their horses refused to cross the bridge after dark." This is a rare Braddock Expedition ghost story that does not involve buried gold; and a rare oral tradition of a local British Army atrocity.
  • "In 1949, James Skidmore recalled that near Eckhart in a thickly wooded patch of road on the way to Cumberland the unearthly appearance of a man and his dog, presumably murdered at the spot, frightened the horses of market-bound farmers." This is similar enough to the story above to justify the pairing, with the caveat that a missing head is missing here.

Eckhart Mines. Florence Himmelwright Pryor, who lived on Pryor Lane just off Piney Mountain Road at National Pike, made such a good fried steak that the smell allegedly has lingered for generations. According to her great-great-granddaughter, "if one inhales during the night, the aroma still makes its way from the kitchen to the upstairs bedrooms." Is this a vivid memory ... or a haunting? See Horn, Polla Drummond, Bucky Schriver and Barbara Armstrong, eds. Miner Recollections Volume Three. Frostburg, Maryland: Foundation for Frostburg, 2021. Page 38.

Ellerslie. In October 2008, the Girl Scouts of Troop 650 were crestfallen to learn that the hundreds of plastic bottle caps they had collected for Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia, would not help pay for a cancer patient’s chemotherapy. They had been victimized by a bogus email that went viral in West Virginia that summer and fall. “The Plastic Bottle Caps for Chemo program is a hoax,” the American Cancer Society announced, saying it was “similar to other ‘cash for trash’ hoaxes that have circulated worldwide for years.” Since then, interestingly, a charity in Mexico has begun just such a program; was the hoax the inspiration? See Mikkelson, Barbara, and David Mikkelson. “Saving Plastic Bottle Caps for Medical Treatment.” Snopes.com. 17 October 2008. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/capped-well/. Citing Spradlin, Kevin. “Girl Scouts Find Service Project Was Too Wonderful to Be True.” Cumberland Times-News. 29 September 2008. See also Pius, Wendy. "Fighting Cancer with Bottle Caps." Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) America. 13 June 2022. https://www.cafamerica.org/fighting-cancer-with-bottle-caps/

Flintstone. The everyday atrocity of slavery was traditionally but tacitly acknowledged among post-Civil War white Americans via ghost stories, often involving cruel slaveholders who were, by implication, meant to seem anomalous, or enslaved persons who suffered untimely deaths, often for unstated reasons or at the hands of unidentified murderers. A local example collected by Dorothy Howard's students was the haunted "Bible place near Flintstone"--Bible here being a family name--where footsteps frequently ascended the stairs, stopping only when the door was flung open to reveal nobody. "Elsie always said that there was some ... slave boy who was murdered there ... and that it was his ghost that roams around that house opening all the doors." Note that opening doors implies setting someone free. See Carey, George G. Maryland Folk Legends and Folk Songs. Cambridge, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1971. Accessed on loan via Ort Library. Pages 7-8.  

Flintstone.The town was namedfor what was once an impressive landmark, a roughly circular stone of dark, waxy flint some 10 feet in diameter.” Local tradition claimed the stone had been a place of parley for Indigenous tribes. “Something happened to the stone in 1958, when sections of Route 40 were relocated. Cumbersome road-building machines moved in, reshaped the terrain, and when they were gone so was the flintstone. Residents assume the stone was bulldozed out of its position and used somewhere for fill.See Kenny, Hamill. The Place Names of Maryland: Their Origin and Meaning. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1984. Second printing, 1999. Pages 89-90, citing Reppert, Ralph. “Flintstone in Maryland.” The Baltimore Sun Sunday Magazine (April 23, 1961), p. 14. Accessed via Ort Library’s ProQuest Historical Newspapers database. 

Flintstone. "The most isolated town in Maryland," according to one travel site--but how they measure isolation is unclear. See "The Most Remote Small Town in Maryland Is the Perfect Place To Get Away from It All." Only in Your State. 11 October 2023. https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/maryland/most-remote-small-town-md/ 

Frostburg. The Braddock Stone, now enshrined outside the Frostburg Museum on Main Street, once was so controversial, the subject of so many discredited claims, that Frostburg State University kept it hidden away in storage for many years, like the title relic in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Even that was better than its previous, brief incarnation as a broken-up set of steps underfoot, though we appreciate that stonemason’s thrift. In any event, no evidence supports the old highway marker’s popular connection to General Braddock’s doomed 1755 expedition, which had more important tasks than planting adverts for “Capt Smyths Inn.” See https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=135549

Frostburg. Running underneath Frostburg’s Main Street is the long-abandoned Cumberland & Pennsylvania Railroad tunnel, built in 1856 by the George’s Creek Mining Company so that its coal could be shipped by rail north and east. Its north entrance is easily seen across the street from the Frostburg Depot. Its overgrown south entrance is fitfully visible through the fence along Bowery Street south of Washington Street.

Frostburg. Charles G. Watson of “Frostburg, Maryland, U.S.A.” is listed as a new Associate member in the March 1912 issue of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, published in London. To date, we know nothing else of Charles G. Watson, psychically or otherwise, but happily, the SPR still exists. See https://www.spr.ac.uk/.

Frostburg. The pleasant ascent on the old railbed west of the Frostburg Depot, today part of the Great Allegheny Passage rail-to-trail network, was in August 1912 the scene of a grisly disaster in which a party of six pedestrian sightseers accidentally stepped fatally into the path of an oncoming train about halfway between the depot and the Borden Tunnel, then a brand-new, 957-foot-long wonder that attracted tourists and novelty seekers. In the intervening century, however, the ghost story associated with this calamity has moved down the GAP toward Cumberland, specifically to the Brush Tunnel (which see). See also Duncan, Andy. "Rail Victims Moved 10 Miles in 100 Years." Weird Western Maryland. 1 Nov. 2021. https://weirdwesternmd.blogspot.com/2021/11/rail-ghosts-moved-10-miles-in-100-years.html.

Frostburg. In 1917, the Socialist Party of Allegany County, meeting in Frostburg, called for an end to the military draft. Somewhere we even have documentation of this, which we will post once we find it again.

Frostburg. The legendary laziest man in Frostburg--before the author of these pages moved in, that is--was the subject of this yarn collected long ago by folklorist Dorothy Howard’s students. Like many time-honored jokes, it’s about death. Note the second sentence, a ritual opening to explain the absence of names. 

Now they tell this about the laziest man in town. No one knew his name and if they did they didn’t mention it. 

This fella was so lazy he wouldn’t do nothing, and it got so bad that he wouldn’t even eat. … So they put him in this old wagon and started for the cemetery. 

They were riding along and they passed this farmer working in the field and he asked them where they were going. They said they were taking the laziest man in town to the cemetery to bury him alive because he was just too lazy to live. 

Well, this farmer, he offered to give the lazy man a bushel of corn rather than see him be buried alive.  

When the lazy man heard that, he raised his head about an inch and looked over the edge of the wagon and said, “Is it shelled?” 

“No,” says the farmer. 

So that lazy fella motioned and said, “Drive on.” 

For maximum effectiveness, this story probably should be performed while lying down. See Carey, George G. Maryland Folklore and Folklife. Centreville, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1970; fourth printing, 1983. Page 43.

Frostburg. This ghost story collected long ago by folklorist Dorothy Howard’s students involves what the Society for Psychical Research would call a crisis apparition, but which in Western Maryland was called a token: an omen of death. 

Now this was in the winter of 1926. I was only a year old. At that time we lived up on the Pope place. 

Mom and Pop was in the kitchen of our little log house and Mom seen someone come up the lane with a lantern. Pop saw it too. And the next thing Mom knowed she saw Grandpap’s face in the window. 

Pop went to let him in, but there was nobody there. They didn’t see any tracks or anything. 

About an hour later, Uncle George come and said that Grandpap had died at suppertime. … just when they saw the face. Now that was a token of some sort. 

See Carey, George G. Maryland Folklore and Folklife. Centreville, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1970; fourth printing, 1983. Pages 46-47.

Frostburg. In 1930, the city of Frostburg barred boys younger than 16 from poolrooms. Somewhere we even have documentation of this, which we will post once we find it again.

Frostburg. Most of us know the old North American custom of the shivaree, the raucous and cacophonous serenading and/or hazing of newlyweds or newly engaged couples, only through pop culture--the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, for example, or a 1975 episode of The Waltons. Today, the noisy celebration as the happy couple leaves a wedding and, sometimes, the string of tin cans attached to the getaway car are both vestiges of the shivaree. In Western Maryland, shivarees went by various names, including "bellying" and "bull-banding." Long ago, folklorist Dorothy Howard and her students collected one woman's account of shivarees in the 1930s, which sound more like Halloween trick-or-treating:

In the section of Frostburg where I grew up, and among the people with whom I grew up, bull-banding was quite a ceremony for the newlyweds.

As soon as the couple were married, sometimes even as the couple left the church, a group of children and adults congregated for the purpose of bull-banding the bride and groom. To do this they came prepared to make all kinds of noises, such as blowing toy horns, pounding on old tins, until the groom treated the group.

The groom was usually prepared for them and he had a lot of pennies which he threw out to them and let the crowd hunt them. If the weather was bad, he usually gave the leader enough money to take the crowd somewhere and buy them a treat. Mostly, the crowd consisted of children.

See Carey, George G. Maryland Folklore and Folklife. Centreville, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1970; fourth printing, 1983. Page 15.

Frostburg. To date, the author of this page and his wife have had precisely one UFO sighting; fortunately, it happened to us both at the same time, in the night sky of 19 Jan. 2021. It looked “like the gleam of a lantern when the shade is briefly opened, then shut again; or like a dark moving object briefly illuminated in the moonlight.” Not mentioned in our formal report to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) is that a Frostburg State alumnus told us, soon thereafter, that he saw the same thing at the same moment from the D.C. area—an indication the Whatever was a lot higher than Frostburg treetops. See “Small white flash near the ISS.” UPDB: UFO Sightings Map, Search Engine, and Database. https://updb.app/report/1-113321

hlh-reaper.jpg

Frostburg. The 1882 Gothic stone building that now houses Mountain City Coffeehouse & Creamery once was a tombstone showroom, conveniently located next door to the Catholic church—hence the name of a previous eatery at 60 E. Main St., the Tombstone Cafe. See https://www.mtncitycoffeehouse.com/.

Frostburg. "If you have lived in the George's Creek Valley for more than fifty years, you may remember 'Chuckles' flying over roof tops, buzzing the trees, and tipping the wings of his Piper Cub and Bakeng Deuce in a jolly greeting to those below." This airborne jokester was Carl "Chuckles" Keiling, who also built "a bowling alley in Wright's Crossing, creating fun and fond memories for many of us." Is this Sherwood Lanes, built in 1940 and still in operation at 11405 Upper Georges Creek Road SW? See Polla Drummond Horn, Bucky Schriver and Barbara Armstrong, eds. Miner Recollections Volume One. Frostburg, Maryland: The Foundation for Frostburg, 2018. Page 39.

Frostburg. Every October, the Knieriem family turns 11330 Upper Georges Creek Road SW, across from B&B Country Meats, into the Haunted Little House, a homemade special-effects extravaganza that benefits St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The 2023 version recreated 15 scenes from Tim Burton's Beetlejuice. The curb appeal of the facade (in the banner above) was remarkable, from the Dante's Inferno Room marquee to the dancing tongue in the hellmouth. Pictured at right is one of the larger, and louder, inhabitants.

Frostburg State University. Still part of the oral tradition in the English department is that circa 1969, a student brought to class a “backward Bible” inherited from her witch grandmother. This blasphemous artifact, the story goes, especially unnerved Dr. Warren Fleischauer, who as friend and ally of the conservative philosopher Russell Kirk was sympathetic to Kirk’s argument that “all culture arises out of religion.” See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Kirk.

Frostburg State University. Old Compton Hall, built in the 1950s and demolished in 2002, housed both an auditorium and a gymnasium and thus was a hub for backstage and late-night activities. Ghost stories inevitably arose, and after her death in August 1973, all mysterious noises were attributed to the shade of the building’s namesake, former college President Lillian Compton. This example, contributed by Judy Fair Lewis of Arlington, Virginia, Class of 1983, was published in the university magazine in summer 2003:

My most vivid memory of Compton [Hall] is when we were rehearsing 'Othello' with Dr. Jack Vrieze (God rest his soul) as the director. We were rehearsing in the 'old gym' part of the building, late in the evening, when all of a sudden, we heard loud, continuous banging coming down from the ceiling over the gym. It lasted for about 10 seconds, but seemed longer. Then it just stopped. We all agreed that the ghost of Lillian Compton was giving her blessing to the show (either that, or objecting to it!).

One wonders whose ghost was blamed in the 20 years before Compton's death. One also wonders whether Compton's ghost is still invoked in the building that occupies the site of old Compton: the Compton Science Center. See Page 17 of https://www.frostburg.edu/_files/pdfs/news/profile/summer03.pdf.

Frostburg State University. In summer 1984, local writer and historian Anton "Toni" Urbas, who grew up in a Vale Summit immigrant mining family (see below), planned meetings with "tourist groups who come to see the mining sculpture on the Frostburg State College campus." What became of this sculpture, which may have been the first of its kind in town? And where on campus was it? See Cordts, Jeanne M., "From the Editor's Desk," Journal of the Alleghenies XX (1984): 1-2.

Frostburg State University. In December 1990, Frostburg State President Herb. Reinhard Jr., declaring himself the victim of a “witch hunt,” resigned amid allegations he had misused foundation funds. As the preceding sentence demonstrates, Reinhard was typographically interesting for his insistence that the abbreviated short version of his first name, Herbert, be written with a period, as Herb.—an affectation that inevitably led, behind his back, to a substitute nickname: “Herbdot.”

Frostburg State University. During a nighttime snowfall in December 2006, an anonymous campus pedestrian had an “incredibly weird” experience: “a loud bell, almost like a Christmas bell, continuously ringing … so loud that I had to use my hands and cover my ears.” After five minutes of this, a passer-by, asked about the mysterious sound, replied, “What sound?” At that moment, wrote the experiencer, “I saw a bright flash go across the sky and the sound stopped.” Perhaps an audible hallucination that built to a visible one, as in migraines? See “Sighting Report 12/10/2006, Frostburg, MD.” National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). https://nuforc.org/sighting/?id=79164

Frostburg State University: Ort Library's Special Collections. Comet Miscellanea is one of a kind: a set of seven three-ring binders, each bulging with photocopied journal articles in three languages (English, French, German), all preserved in plastic sleeves. Donated as part of the Jon Jansen collection, this was clearly someone’s labor of love--probably Jansen's, as the late engineer was a stalwart of the Cumberland Astronomy Club--though the binders contain no index, no tables of contents, no finding aids whatsoever. Here’s what each volume seems to contain. 

  • Vol. 1 is 19th- and 20th-century articles about historical comet reports, from the ancients through medieval times. 
  • Vol. 2 is 19th- and 20th-century articles about historical sightings of, as the title of the first article has it, “Neue Sterne,” or new stars—new in the sense of previously unseen and undocumented. Some of these likely were comets, others supernovas. 
  • Vol. 3 is exclusively articles about comet and supernova sightings through Chinese history, though none of the articles is in Chinese. 
  • Vol. 4 is entirely tables of known comets, their periodicities and trajectories. 
  • Vol. 5 is a complete photocopied French-language book, c. 1800, titled atop each page Histoire des Cometes, but sadly lacking a title page.  
  • Vol. 6 is multiple lists of historical sightings—or, as one list charmingly calls them, “apparitions.” 
  • Vol. 7, the slimmest of the binders, is more articles on historical sightings. Many of these were published in the 1980s, which may help date the project, especially since binders 2, 4 and 6 all have manufacturers’ inserts with a 1985 copyright date. 

The only hint of a personal note is typed atop the first page of the first article in Vol. 7: “Copied from AAVSO Journal Vol. 13, #1 1984 GJ.” Jon Jansen would be JJ; who was GJ?

Georges Creek. Floyd and Nannie Atkinson's daughter Nelda was only 2 when she died of diphtheria on January 14, 1918. Her parents buried her in the back yard. When they sold their house and land to the Custer family in November 1934, they did so on the condition that the new owners would continue to care for Nelda's grave. Another part of the bequest, apparently, was caring for Nelda's ghost: "Stories passed down through the Custer family claim that the Atkinson family had later seen the ghost of their departed daughter in their home." The house is long gone, but Nelda's grave is still there, at the end of Old Reynolds Road, off Highway 36 between Barton and Westernport. See Horn, Polla Drummond, Bucky Schriver and Barbara Armstrong, eds. Miner Recollections Volume Three. Frostburg, Maryland: Foundation for Frostburg, 2021. Page 169. Nelda's Find a Grave entry is https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/173766739/nelda-lucretia-atkinson.

Georges Creek. Sometime before World War II, a mining engineer claimed to have discovered, in a Georges Creek coal mine abandoned for 50-plus years, long-dormant colonies of hundreds of bats, “glued fast to the roof of the mine, covered with mold and sleeping away the years.” Biologists generally agree that in cold climates, bats can hibernate for six months or more; any claim of years-long hibernation, however, would give most bat experts pause. See Duncan, Andy. “Do Dormant Bats Still Sleep in Old Mines?” Weird Western Maryland. 20 Sept. 2021. https://weirdwesternmd.blogspot.com/2021/09/are-dormant-bats-still-sleeping-in-mines.html. For the original account as related by Pennsylvania folklorist George Korson, see Coal Dust on the Fiddle: Songs and Stories of the Bituminous Industry. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1943, Page 208. Please also consider helping the vital work of Bat Conservation International, https://www.batcon.org/.

Green Ridge State Forest. Before Elwood Higgs died at age 69 in 1991, he asked his hunting buddies, fellow firefighters all, to spread his ashes around their one-acre camp, the Windy Hollow Hunt Club. This they tried to do, despite having more experience with fire than with ash, and were dismayed that Elwood’s remains “kind of fell out in a clump” and were still on the ground in the not-so-windy hollow a week later, looking forlorn. So they scooped his ashes into an empty peanut butter jar and set them on a shelf inside the trailer, where they stayed for years. “Elwood sits up there and keeps an eye on everything,” Ron Moser explained. “He still talks to us.” Interestingly, none of his buddies could recall Higgs ever actually shooting a deer. See Tasker, Greg. “Hunter who wouldn’t kill is now the man who didn’t die.” The Baltimore Sun. 10 Dec. 1994. Page B1. Accessed via Ort Library’s ProQuest Historical Newspapers database.

Green Ridge State Forest. Five teenage boys armed with BB guns were arrested at their campsite in August 2015 on various charges, including having killed, skinned, grilled and eaten a timber rattlesnake, a protected species in Maryland. They pleaded guilty and were fined $200 apiece. We have it on good authority that “rattlesnake meat is white, tender, and tastes like a cross between frog legs and turtle,” as long as you chop off the head first thing: “Dead rattlesnakes can still bite. It’s a nervous system deal.” See Zauzmer, Julie. Teenagers who killed, grilled and ate a rattlesnake are fined in court.” The Washington Post. 12 Nov. 2015. Accessed via Ort Library’s ProQuest Historical Newspapers database. See also “How To Skin and Prepare a Rattlesnake for the Table.” Realtree. 18 March 2021. https://realtree.com/timber-2-table-articles/how-to-skin-and-prepare-a-rattlesnake-for-the-table   

LaVale. For centuries in the British Isles and North America, adolescent girls practiced occult love rituals called “dumb suppers” (“dumb” as in “silent”) in hopes of conjuring visions of their future mates. This account from a LaVale woman, related by Maryland folklorist George Carey in 1970, suggests these games enabled teens to scare themselves silly long before Ouija boards became household items.

A popular thing with the young girls was the "dumb supper." This took place at midnight and was served entirely backwards. At midnight your future husband was supposed to appear at the head of the table. One night my sister and I decided to attend one of these suppers. We had prepared everything and just as the clock struck twelve, the wind began to howl and all the cows ran from the hills and gathered around the house and then there was a shattering noise like chains hitting the doorsteps and my sister and I ran frightened to bed and never stayed to see our future husbands appear.

Atlas Obscura notes that in Maryland, this rite often was performed on May Eve, April 30: Walpurgis Night. Source: George Carey, Maryland Folklore and Folklife (Tidewater Publishers, 1970; fourth printing, 1983); p. 83. See also Anne Ewbank, “When ‘Dumb Suppers’ Were a Halloween Love Ritual.” Atlas Obscura. 30 Oct. 2018. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-dumb-supper.

LaVale. The only Allegany County sighting in the excellent Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization database took place in the daytime in the woods off Georges Creek Boulevard, which dead-ends at District Park: "Witness stated that, the animal was first crouched down, then stood erect, on two legs, the animal was limping, favoring it's right side. He (witness) did not see the face, or notice any details due to fright. ... Witness feels the animal was looking for a water source, due to local drought." The BFRO considers this a "Class A" sighting, reserved for "clear sightings in circumstances where misinterpretation or misidentification of other animals can be ruled out with greater confidence." See Duncan, Andy. "Kid Playing in Woods Was Not So Alone." Weird Western Maryland. 1 Nov. 2021. https://weirdwesternmd.blogspot.com/2021/11/kid-playing-in-woods-was-not-so-alone.html. The original report is https://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=1748.

Lonaconing. On Feb. 25, 1924, during a girls' basketball game between Lonaconing Central and Cumberland Ursuline, Coney star Marie Boyd (later Marie Boyd Eichler) scored 156 points, including 77 field goals, setting two single-player national records that stand to this day. Her Coney teammates scored an additional 6 points--maybe while Marie was getting a drink of water--for a team score of 162, a third national record. (What was Ursuline's losing score, we wonder?) All these records are probably safe, since Title IX ended the six-on-six play standard for girls in 1924; modern five-on-five play has a separate set of records. For the Coney girls, the Roaring Twenties were aptly named: "One of the outstanding powerhouses in Maryland basketball history, the team went undefeated for four consecutive years, winning sixty-five consecutive games." Exactly one week after Emily Boyd's 156-point game, a player in Connecticut had her own 128-point game, second on the all-time six-on-six list; her name was Edith Boyd. Probably this is coincidence. See Polla Drummond Horn, Bucky Schriver and Barbara Armstrong, eds. Miner Recollections Volume One. Frostburg, Maryland: The Foundation for Frostburg, 2018. Page 107. All records from the searchable online Record Book of the National Federation of State High School Associations: https://www.nfhs.org/RecordBook/Records.aspx

Lonaconing. A couple visiting Oak Hill Cemetery one late July afternoon in the 1990s saw, for about 10 seconds, an “old-time miner,” with “mining hat” and “lunch bucket,” moving past the tool shed as if walking, though he “was not totally solid looking,” and his feet weren’t “solidly touching the ground.” The sighting coincided with “a strong wind.” Dating from 1864, the cemetery likely contains many miners’ graves and conceivably was a peaceful, daily shortcut for living miners commuting on foot. See Duncan, Andy. Weird Western Maryland. “Bucket-Toting Miner Trudges Home Forever.” 1 Nov. 2021.
https://weirdwesternmd.blogspot.com/2021/11/bucket-toting-miner-trudges-home-forever.html.
For the original account by “Jeri,” see “Lonaconing, Maryland Ghost Sightings.” Ghosts of America. Undated; accessed 27 Aug. 2023. https://www.ghostsofamerica.com/2/Maryland_Lonaconing_ghost_sightings.html.

Midlothian. The supernatural "Scottish lights" of legend, which appear as warnings to miners of Scots descent, were no mere superstition to the late Anthony Harvey, who believed the lights saved his life in the 1930s--twice. On the first occasion, he was working alongside two other miners.

Anthony stopped to take a break; while leaning on the handle of his shovel and looking toward the mine entrance, he saw three lights come bobbing down the tunnel toward him. Thinking the lights to be carbide lamps on miner's caps, he wondered why other miners were coming in, as he and his buddies were supposed to be the only ones working that day.

As he watched, Anthony suddenly realized there was nothing beneath the lights, they were simply floating, bobbing lights; he instantly understood the message.

Dropping his shovel, he yelled for the other men to run for the mine entrance. As they ran, they heard the mine roof collapse behind them.

The second sighting happened in the surface world.

Another time, Anthony got up early, ate breakfast, picked up his lunch bucket, and left for the mine as usual. About an hour later his wife Helen found him sitting on the steps at the end of the porch.

He looked somewhat shaken and she asked him what was wrong, but Anthony was reluctant to speak at that time.

Later that day, mine inspectors came to the house to notify him that there had been a cave-in at the area where he was to have worked.

After the visitors left, Harvey told Helen the truth: As he had been walking down "Sprout Hill," probably modern-day Shaft Road, toward the mine entrance, he had seen the Scottish lights--whereupon he turned straight around and headed for home. As a result, Anthony Harvey would live on for many years, dying in his late 70s. See Horn, Polla Drummond, Bucky Schriver and Barbara Armstrong, eds. Miner Recollections Volume Three. Frostburg, Maryland: Foundation for Frostburg, 2021. Page 61. The Find a Grave entry for Harvey, buried in Frostburg Memorial Park, is https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/98221609/anthony-harvey.  

Nikep/Pekin. Coal mines, and the mining towns that grew up around them, once were given exotic, even fantasticnames, observed the late toponymist Hamill Kenny. The Pekin mine was one example, its random name being the old English spelling of Beijing. Lately, to avoid postal confusion, the name has been spelled backwards.” The pronunciation, Kenny claims, is NICK-up. Local wits like to tell newcomers that it’s Pekin when you drive through in one direction, Nikep when you drive through in the other. See Kenny, Hamill. The Place Names of Maryland: Their Origin and Meaning. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1984. Second printing, 1999. Pages 173, 191.

Oldtown. In December 1837, a local man fell into a vat of boiling soap and died “a couple of hours after being pulled out.” See Hunt, J. William. Across the Desk, Vol. 1: 4-8-45 to 10-31-48. Cumberland, Maryland: Allegany County Historical Society, c. 1968. Columns originally published weekly in the Cumberland Sunday Times. Accessed via Ort Library. Unpaginated. 12-16-45.

Polish Mountain. It’s pronounced POLE-ish, as in Polish sausage, and the late toponymist Hamill Kenny had “little doubt” that the ridge was named for settlers of Polish descent. He noted, however, that “a worthy Allegany County local historian, decrying a racial origin,” insisted the name came from “the polished look of the sunny mountain leaves” and therefore should be pronounced as in “shoe polish.” “I reject this theory,” Kenny snorted. See Kenny, Hamill. The Place Names of Maryland: Their Origin and Meaning. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1984. Second printing, 1999. Pages 24, 198

cal_stewart_with_paper.jpg

Pumpkin Center. This community between Flintstone and Oldtown was occasionally newsworthy long ago, thanks to the mystery of its name. “I’ve lived there for fifty years,” Earl Cooper told United Press International in 1983, “and I can’t remember ever seeing a pumpkin.” In the same article, Marcellus Slider claimed, “They used to raise a lot of pumpkins here,” but eleven years later, his son Ron told The Baltimore Sun his dad had been lying through his teeth, annoyed that he had to walk fifteen minutes uphill from the barn (both ways, no doubt) just to take a call from some dang reporter. The best theory by far is that our Pumpkin Center was one of two dozen U.S. hamlets that took their name from a popular series of rustic comedy recordings by vaudevillian Cal Stewart (1856-1919, pictured), who performed as "Uncle Josh Weathersby from Punkin Center, New England"—a town as mythical as Grinder’s Switch would be in Minnie Pearl’s routines. Stewart himself was from Southside Virginia. See Korn, Carl. “No pumpkins in Pumpkin Center.” United Press International. 28 Oct. 1983. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/10/28/No-pumpkins-in-Pumpkin-Center/1214436161600/. See also Riechmann, Deb. “Town’s name remains a mystery at a place called Pumpkin Center.” The Baltimore Sun. 14 June 1994. Page 10B. Accessed via Ort Library’s ProQuest newspaper database. See also Beales, John. “Pumpkin Center.” Fascinating Names. 4 February 2010. https://fascinatingnames.com/2010/02/pumpkin-center/ .

Rawlings. In January 1898, railroad workers were being spooked “at Greenwade’s siding, near Twenty-first bridge” by an “almost nightly” apparition: “A headless woman emerges from an old culvert or bridge and walks up and down the track. Whenever any of the men attempt to follow her, she disappears.” One still can turn off U.S. 220, a.k.a. McMullen Highway, just west of Hi-Rock Animal Hospital, and follow Twenty-First Bridge Road until it dead-ends at a Potomac River railroad trestle, and a siding that crosses the main line a few yards back from the water’s edge. The site pretty well matches the description in that long-ago ghost story, but who is there now to see the headless woman walk? See Duncan, Andy. “Headless Woman Spooked Crews at Trestle.” Weird Western Maryland. https://weirdwesternmd.blogspot.com/2021/11/headless-woman-spooked-crews-at-trestle.html. Newspaper account found via Clark, Jerome. “1898: Phantom Woman Minus Head.” Unnatural Phenomena: A Guide to the Bizarre Wonders of North America. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2005. Page 137.

Stickpile Hill. “It is said that the ridge got its curious name from a local hobo who was killed and was buried under a pile of sticks,” says the C&O Canal Trust. The ridge is also the namesake of a popular campsite for hikers, bicyclists—and, according to local tradition, ghosts. See “Stickpile Hill Campsite.” C&O Canal Trust. https://www.canaltrust.org/pyv/stickpile-hill-campsite/

Vale Summit. As the Urbas family were Catholic immigrants from Slovenia, they were targeted in the early 1920s by the local Ku Klux Klan, which three times ignited 10-foot-high blazing crosses on the hill above the Urbas home, while setting off dynamite charges. Anton “Toni” Urbas, then a young teenager, recalled many years later that the third blast would have killed him, had he not heeded a “guiding angel” that manifested at the last possible second: “an unseen hand or force pressed firmly against my chest area and an almost inaudible voice uttered the word, ‘Drop.’” Thus ended the Klan activity in Vale Summit, Urbas recalled; maybe the Klansmen heard the guiding angel, too. See Duncan, Andy. “Guardian Angel Foiled the Ku Klux Klan.” Weird Western Maryland. 1 Nov. 2021. https://weirdwesternmd.blogspot.com/2021/11/guardian-angel-foiled-ku-klux-klan.html. Urbas’s own account is “Cross-Burning by the Ku Klux Klan in Vale Summit.” Journal of the Alleghenies 26 (1990): 57-60.

Vale Summit. Long ago, folklorist Dorothy Howard’s students collected funny stories about a local character named “Mr. Henry,” who was assigned the starring role in any number of old jokes. Here is one of the more dark-humored ones. 

This was after his wife died. She was laid out in the house. Well, Mr. Cook, who was the Frostburg undertaker, was there and he was offering his condolences, you know.  

So Mr. Henry shook his head and said, “Oh yes, it’s pretty bad, but it could have been worse.” 

“What do you mean, it could have been worse?” 

“Well, it could have been me!” 

See Carey, George G. Maryland Folklore and Folklife. Centreville, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1970; fourth printing, 1983. Pages 39-40. 

Woodland. This George's Creek mining community was the home of the celebrated, if irascible, jokester Ike Morgan, a Klondike Road saloonkeeper whose wit was evident in the name of his establishment: The House of Morgan. His neighborhood was so slow and backward, he liked to say, that "the creek only runs three days a week." It was so frigid in winter, he said, "I went out to check the thermometer, and there the damn thing was, running up and down the side of the house to keep warm." When Ike's brother-in-law ambushed him in the woods dressed as the Devil, Ike was unfazed: "Glad to meet you. I married your sister, y'know." When highway taxes were increased under post-World War II Governor William Lane, Morgan put a sign on his tip jar, claiming the loose change "for crooked Lanes." Asked why he confined his comedy to the barroom rather than trying his luck in Hollywood, he replied: "There I'd be a fool among kings; here I'm a king among fools." In September 1955, the Cumberland Evening Times advertised the House of Morgan for sale, at the intersection of Klondike and Woodland roads: "Apply on premises." For much more--some of it misogynistic, alas--see Carey, George G. Maryland Folk Legends and Folk Songs. Cambridge, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1971. Accessed on loan via Ort Library. Pages 59-61.