Frederick County By Location
Brunswick. Long ago, a Brunswick woman told a folklorist about her healer grandfather magically curing Mrs. Shelton, a neighbor:
She burned her arm. She doesn't remember how for sure, but she thinks it was on a coffee pot or something like that. Well she came running over to the house and she was in such a hurry that she fell up the stairs 'cause the pain was unbearable. Her arm was all red and swollen, but it wasn't blistered yet. Granddaddy blew the fire out. Within half an hour the pain was gone and she never did get any blisters. She remembers just how Granddaddy did it too. She described how he took her arm and made the hand motions and blew. I asked her if she heard him say anything while he was doing it and she said that he did but it was under his breath to himself.
What he murmured may not have been for outsiders' ears; also, it may not have been in English. See Carey, George G. Maryland Folklore and Folklife. Centreville, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1970; fourth printing, 1983. Page 89.
Camp David. Early in World War II, the president of the Mountain Club of Maryland and two of his fellow hikers were using blue paint to mark, or “blaze,” the Catoctin Link Trail, between the Appalachian Trail and the Catoctin Recreational Area, when their wilderness trek was abruptly blocked by a detachment of armed Marines. The hikers had encroached on the top-secret presidential retreat that Franklin Roosevelt called “Shangri-La,” after the fantastical Himalayan enclave in James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon, but that Dwight Eisenhower would rename after his grandson: Camp David. “The story that the last blue paint blaze was applied to the rifle of a Marine guard is probably apocryphal. The culprits were dismissed with a warning, and a promptly heeded request to reroute that part of the Catoctin Link.” See Hartford, Winslow H. “I Remember: Stumbling on Secret Bases During Wartime Hikes.” The Baltimore Sun. 25 November 1979. Page SM46. Accessed via Ort Library’s ProQuest newspaper database.
Catoctin Mountain Park. Of the 980 runners who started the Catoctin Mountain 10K on Sept. 15, 1979, about 100 dropped out before the finish—but only one of those dropouts merited a Page One story in The New York Times.
President Carter, wobbling, moaning and pale with exhaustion, dropped out of a 6.2‐mile foot race today near his weekend retreat at Camp David, Md. The President, an avid jogger who will be 55 years old on Oct. 1, apparently suffered no lasting ill effects after abandoning the run near the two-thirds mark.
Although he had to be assisted from the course by Secret Service agents and was given smelling salts, he later appeared at an awards ceremony and picnic to congratulate the winner.
The Times went on from there, in detail.
Mr. Carter arrived for the race today just a few minutes before the starting gun. He wore a yellow sweatband around his forehead, blue running shoes and blue shorts, and a gray T‐shirt with “Chairman of the Board” emblazoned across the chest.
Mrs. Carter, who sometimes jogs with the President, was present for the race but did not participate. “Jimmy's an amateur at this,” she said. “It's his first race, and if he finishes he'll consider it a win.”
Jody Powell, the President's press secretary, reportedly saw today's running in a somewhat more political light. “If you get in it,” friends said he told Mr. Carter, “then you'd darn well better finish.”
Though much bigger news happened during the Carter administration (and in Carter’s life afterward), this truncated run lingers in pop culture, turning up in surprising places—for example, in the 1994 Robert Zemeckis movie Forrest Gump, where nit-pickers use it as evidence that the movie’s chronology doesn’t work (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/forrest-gump-plot/), and in Washingtonian magazine, which in 2018 called Carter’s collapse one of “The 19 Biggest Moments in DC’s Running History” (https://www.washingtonian.com/2018/06/26/photos-the-19-biggest-moments-in-dcs-running-history/). See Ayers, B. Drummond Jr. “Carter, Exhausted and Pale, Drops Out of 6-Mile Race.” The New York Times. 16 September 1979. Page 1. https://www.nytimes.com/1979/09/16/archives/carter-exhausted-and-pale-drops-out-of-6mile-race-still-an.html.
Cunningham Falls State Park. One of author Amelia Cotter's informants, identified only as "C.L.," reports that some "have seen a Bigfoot-like creature in the park. People say it looks and walks more like a mutated chimpanzee, kind of lumbering on all fours ... but much larger. People think it actually has to do with military experimentation--something that got loose that shouldn't have." C.L. speculates that it escaped from Fort Detrick or, much closer, the presidential retreat at Camp David. See Cotter, Amelia. Maryland Ghosts: Paranormal Encounters in the Free State. Black Oak Media, 2012. Haunted Road Media, 2015. Kindle edition. Page 144. Needless to add, a vivisected monster is not among the ALERTS! at the park's website: https://dnr.maryland.gov/publiclands/pages/western/cunningham.aspx
Emmitsburg. The legendary three-foot-tall spectral black dog, dragging a chain behind, that was believed to be the spirit of the 18th-century slaveholder Legh Master is occasionally claimed for Emmitsburg, for example in Cannon and Whitmore's Ghosts and Legends of Frederick County ("Ghost Dogs," Page 52). However, the century-old account from which all these derive clearly places this Phantom Dog in Carroll County. Legh Master died there in 1796 at Avondale, his still-standing Westminster mansion. At his death, though, the Frederick County courts listed with the rest of his "vast inventory" more than 30 enslaved persons locally, ranging in age from 85 years to 6 weeks, so there was plenty of reason to curse Legh Master's name on this side of the Monocacy, too. See Whitney, Annie Weston, and Caroline Canfield Bullock. "Folk-Lore from Maryland." Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society Volume 18 (1925). Pages 184-185. For the list of the enslaved, with first names, see https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~midmdroots/genealogy/county/maryland%20chancery%20court%20abstracts.htm. For the correct spelling of Legh Master, see his Find a Grave entry: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/9426636/legh-master.
Emmitsburg. A miscellany of Emmitsburg lore included in Whitney, Annie Weston, and Caroline Canfield Bullock. "Folk-lore from Maryland." Memoirs of the American Folk-lore Society Volume 18 (1925):
- "If you listen at a window, whatever man's name you hear mentioned will be the name of your future husband. (I do not know if this must be tried on Hallowe'en.)" Page 75.
- "A woman whose funeral had just taken place was seen sitting in a rocking chair in front of her mirror when the family returned from the cemetery." Page 77. Was her reflection visible in the mirror?
- "There used to be people around Emmitsburg who always opened a sty with a gooseberry thorn." Page 88.
- "In the Moravian graveyard, the stones were formerly laid flat on the ground so that all the dead might rise together and be equal. The different classes were separated: married men, single men, married women, single women, and children, all having their own grounds." Page 105. Which "Moravian graveyard" were they talking about?
- "Cows are supposed to get down on their knees at twelve o'clock on Christmas Eve. They are also supposed to say their prayers. A man across the Pennsylvania line, about 1820, heard that cows could talk on Christmas Even at twelve o'clock, so he went to the stalls. The cow said, 'My good old master shall not live another year.' Soon after he died." Page 128.
Emmitsburg. St. Anthony's Shrine Cemetery is the focus of Western Maryland's favorite Christmas ghost story. For 40 years, grocer Larry Dielman, who had a fraught relationship with his demanding music-professor father, played the flute beside the old man's grave every Christmas. Since the younger Dielman's death in 1923, so people say, one still can hear the plaintive strains of his flute wafting from the cemetery every year. See Weinberg, Alyce T. Spirits of Frederick. 1979. Second edition, 1992. Photos by C. Kurt Holter. Illus. by Audrey. Self-published: graphics and typesetting by Greenleaf Graphics, Frederick, Maryland. "Magic Flutist," Pages 17-18. See also Cannon, Timothy L, and Nancy F. Whitmore. Ghosts and Legends of Frederick County. Illustrated by Darby Pannier. Frederick, Maryland: self-published, 1979; printed by Studio 20 in Frederick. "A Christmas Legend," Pages 37-38. See also Okonowicz, Ed. The Big Book of Maryland Ghost Stories. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2010. "Phantom Flutist," Pages 292-294. The Dielmans' Find a Grave entries are https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8045351/john_caspar-henry-dielman (father) and https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/143349694/lawrence-dielman (son).
Frederick. Schifferstadt Architectural Museum (https://www.fredericklandmarks.org/schifferstadt) is a four-bedroom house built in 1758 by German immigrants and is remarkably well preserved, from the two-foot-thick stone walls to the original five-plate kitchen stove. It's also haunted, according to multiple sources including author Amelia Cotter, who interned there as an undergraduate. Reported phenomena include apparitions in garb circa 1800 (a man, a woman, a child) and a host of sounds: disembodied footsteps and voices speaking German; the sounds of doors opening or slamming shut; construction racket, such as hammering, when no construction is occurring. See Cotter, Amelia. Maryland Ghosts: Paranormal Encounters in the Free State. Black Oak Media, 2012. Haunted Road Media, 2015. Kindle edition. Pages 43-45.
Frederick: Civil War. On July 9, 1864, during the third Confederate invasion of the North, Confederate General Jubal Early stopped to shake down the citizens of Frederick, demanding $200,000 in cash or supplies to spare the city from total destruction. While wily Mayor William Cole haggled and stalled, Union forces poured into Monocacy Junction, blocking Early's route to Washington, D.C., while the nation's capital meanwhile used the critical hours to shore up its defenses. Some historians believe Early's ransom demand prevented the slaveholders from seizing Washington and winning the war. See Cannon, Timothy L, and Nancy F. Whitmore. Ghosts and Legends of Frederick County. Illustrated by Darby Pannier. Frederick, Maryland: self-published, 1979; printed by Studio 20 in Frederick. "Civil War Spooks," Page 41. See also National Park Service. "Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early." Monocacy National Battlefield. 1 Sept. 2023. https://www.nps.gov/mono/learn/historyculture/jubalearly.htm. Contemporary sketch by Union soldier Charles W. Reed.
Frederick: Civil War. The five-arch stone bridge over the Monocacy, an 1808 engineering marvel, was nicknamed the Jug Bridge because of the demijohn-shaped stone monument at the east end. Many believed the stone jug entombed a bottle of whiskey, a private joke among the builders. After the Civil War, people claimed the "Jolly Jug" as the site of drinking and carousing among soldiers from both armies--to the extent that their partying still could be heard on quiet nights. The old bridge collapsed during World War II, but the Jolly Jug survives, moved two miles west to the corner of East Patrick Street and Bowman Road, where constant Route 40 traffic probably means the ghostly merriment has not been heard in decades. See Weinberg, Alyce T. Spirits of Frederick. 1979. Second edition, 1992. Photos by C. Kurt Holter. Illus. by Audrey. Self-published: graphics and typesetting by Greenleaf Graphics, Frederick, Maryland. "The Jolly Jug," Pages 36-37. See also Cannon, Timothy L, and Nancy F. Whitmore. Ghosts and Legends of Frederick County. Illustrated by Darby Pannier. Frederick, Maryland: self-published, 1979; printed by Studio 20 in Frederick. "Civil War Spooks," Page 43. See also Okonowicz, Ed. The Big Book of Maryland Ghost Stories. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2010. "Spirited Frederick," Page 284. The Atlas Obscura entry is https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/jug-bridge-monument.
Frederick: Civil War. The National Museum of Civil War Medicine (https://www.civilwarmed.org/) calls itself "the most haunted building in Frederick" and offers October ghost tours that include the third-floor offices "where numerous sightings have occurred." During the Civil War, the building's enterprising owner, furniture dealer James Whitehill, turned the place into a one-stop undertaker's establishment where countless corpses from Antietam and other area battlefields were embalmed for local burial or for shipping; Whitehall sold tombstones and coffins, too. Present-day visitors and employees report apparitions of people in mourning clothes and to have heard disembodied conversations, laughter and even screams. See Cotter, Amelia. Maryland Ghosts: Paranormal Encounters in the Free State. Black Oak Media, 2012. Haunted Road Media, 2015. Kindle edition. Pages 64-70.
Frederick. Woman's College festivities at Halloween 1897 included "a phantom party in the college Hall" that featured masks, dancing and refreshments amid "lanterns of pumpkins, ears of corn, autumn leaves, and the skeleton of Mr. Smith"-- perhaps a repurposed prop from the science classroom. "Fortunes were told and bright futures prophesied for all," perhaps using the ancient superstition of reading scatter patterns: "corn and flour were freely used, which cou'd be easily told from the looks of the chapel the next morning." A century ago, the Woman's College changed its name to Hood College and moved to its present campus; the 1897 party would have been in the original building, the slave-built Winchester Hall at 12 East Church Street, which houses county offices today. See Duncan, Andy. "Pagan Rites at Girl's School Adjourned by 11." Weird Western Maryland. 1 Nov. 2021. https://weirdwesternmd.blogspot.com/2021/11/pagan-rites-at-girls-school-adjourned.html
Frederick. The classic Frederick ghost story is the one about the immovable shoes. Here’s how one informant told it, long ago.
There is a huge old house in Frederick which at one time many years ago was the most beautiful estate in the county. It is old now and condemned and it’s been vacant for over thirty years. Yet no one will tear it down.
It is said that the old woman who lived in the house … loved that old home so much that she would never leave it. She lived there with her daughter for many years.
One night the old woman had a heart attack, but before she would let her daughter take her to the hospital, she wanted to put on her brand new pair of shoes. So the daughter put the new shoes on her and placed the old worn-out shoes on the hearth of the fireplace in the living room.
The old woman died that night.
After the funeral, the daughter … saw her mother’s shoes setting by the fireplace and tried to pick them up but they were stuck.
A lot of people have tried to pull those shoes off but no one has ever been able to budge them. To this day those old shoes are still stuck on the hearth of that fireplace. …
I have heard this story over and over from many people who really believe it.
See Carey, George G. Maryland Folklore and Folklife. Centreville, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1970; fourth printing, 1983. Pages 33-34.
Frederick. "A young man told me," wrote Alyce Weinberg, "that something pulls the covers off his bed, and caresses his wife while he is asleep beside her, and that some invisible force crowded him off a bench in Baker Park after dusk. He believes a ghost is in love with his wife." See Duncan, Andy. "Young Husband Resented His Invisible Rival." Weird Western Maryland. 19 Nov. 2021. Original account in Weinberg, Alyce T. Spirits of Frederick. 1979. Second edition, 1992. Photos by C. Kurt Holter. Illus. by Audrey. Self-published: graphics and typesetting by Greenleaf Graphics, Frederick, Maryland. See Page 97.
Frederick. The A.G. Quynn & Co. Hardware store at 10-12 East Patrick Street was open for business by July 1796, but not until 1836 did its employees and regulars begin making daily weather observations there. By 1899, that unbroken 63 years of readings by a succession of five observers was the Maryland record for daily weather records—perhaps surprisingly, given the state’s written history begins with the Barons Baltimore in the seventeenth century. Note that multiple Confederate invasions during the Civil War did not interrupt the Quynn-ing winning streak. We wonder how long the daily weather readings lasted; when the store finally closed its doors in 1986, it was “the oldest continuously operated business in Frederick,” and possibly in the state. 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. Page 388. See also Martinkosky, Christina. “Quynn’s Hardware Store had a long history in downtown Frederick.” The Frederick News-Post. October 23, 2022. Accessed online November 10, 2023.
Frederick. Author Amelia Cotter's "Uncle Bernie" Masino, a font of weird stories, reports seeing an oval-shaped, grayish-brown UFO suspended motionless "in a clear sky" while driving north from Rockville toward Frederick on I-270 "sometime in 1993." He pulled into an overlook--likely the infamously non-scenic one that borders the Monocacy Battlefield--and watched through binoculars for 15 minutes until the shape was hidden by clouds. See Cotter, Amelia. Maryland Ghosts: Paranormal Encounters in the Free State. Black Oak Media, 2012. Haunted Road Media, 2015. Kindle edition. Page 123.
Frederick. As a Hood College undergraduate in 2003-2007, author Amelia Cotter lived in a white Magnolia Street house where she and her housemates experienced disembodied footsteps, the apparition of a silently screaming woman with long dark hair (seen by two residents at the same spot at different times) and, most remarkably, floating "orbs" that zipped through solid doors with a "smack": ball lightning, maybe? At the time, this was German House, an off-campus language-immersion residence for Hood students, but the photo and description in Cotter's book do not match Hood's present-day German House, a brick duplex on West Seventh Street. Knowing the haunted house's address would help. See Cotter, Amelia. Maryland Ghosts: Paranormal Encounters in the Free State. Black Oak Media, 2012. Haunted Road Media, 2015. Kindle edition. Pages 89-97.
Gold Mine Road. Local teens scared themselves in the 1950s with stories of Hatchet Harry, "a white-bearded, long-haired, scraggly male with beady eyes" who, alive or dead, brandished an axe as he chased away meddling kids. If you'd like to look for this local version of The Hook, that legendary and ubiquitous Lovers' Lane maniac, Gold Mine Road parallels I-70 to the south, between South Clifton and Mount Phillip roads. See Duncan, Andy. "Teens Feared, Loved an Ax-Wielding Hermit." Weird Western Maryland. 19 Nov. 2021. https://weirdwesternmd.blogspot.com/2021/11/teens-feared-loved-ax-wielding-hermit.html. Original account in Weinberg, Alyce T. Spirits of Frederick. 1979. Second edition, 1992. Photos by C. Kurt Holter. Illus. by Audrey. Self-published: graphics and typesetting by Greenleaf Graphics, Frederick, Maryland. See "The Haunted Mountain," Page 71.
Hood College. Small private colleges tend to have more traditional ghost stories than big public universities, and the 50 acres of Hood College, which has 2,100 students, has at least two campus buildings said to be haunted.
- Brodbeck Hall, Hood's oldest building, dates from 1868 and predates the college. Originally it held a boisterous beer hall, and students claim long-dead revelers still can be heard whooping it up late at night. Brodbeck has been closed for renovations for some time, since a lightning strike and fire; the college hopes to reopen it by summer 2024, giving us the chance to see whether the extensive construction work has stopped the haunting--or made the ghosts even more active. Parapsychologists say both can happen. See Cotter, Amelia. Maryland Ghosts: Paranormal Encounters in the Free State. Black Oak Media, 2012. Haunted Road Media, 2015. Kindle edition. Page 88.
- Memorial Hall dormitory is said to house an elevator that has been legendarily unpredictable ever since a student had her throat slashed in it. Here a common campus urban legend--the one about a dying (and unidentified) undergraduate who scratches feebly and uselessly at her dorm-room door in her final moments, to be found dead on the threshold of safety the next morning--seems to be applied to a simple balky elevator. As on other campuses where this horror story is told, we'd like to see the police report. See Cotter, Amelia. Maryland Ghosts: Paranormal Encounters in the Free State. Black Oak Media, 2012. Haunted Road Media, 2015. Kindle edition. Page 89-97.
Middletown: Civil War. That farmer Daniel Wise's cabin and four-acre field saw fierce fighting during the Battle of South Mountain is historical record, as is a curious fact: "The Wise cabin was suddenly and unexpectedly demolished in 1919 by the owner." According to an oft-told, old-revised ghost story, the corpses of some of the soldiers who died on Wise's farm (perhaps Union, perhaps Confederate, perhaps both) were unceremoniously dumped down a well (perhaps by soldiers, perhaps by Wise himself), after which at least one ghost (perhaps more) rose to demand proper burials. Some versions call the farmer "Old Man Wise," though he was twentysomething at the time. Upon his death in 1876, Daniel Wise was not dropped down a well, but buried in Christ Reformed Cemetery. His cabin, with its well presumably adjacent, was "fifty yards west of the present Reno Monument," near the Appalachian Trail. The legend of Wise's Well is also told elsewhere in Maryland and Virginia, where it is associated with other battlefields, or with no specific one. See "Fox's Gap." Central Maryland Heritage League. https://cmhl.org/foxs-gap. See also Cannon, Timothy L, and Nancy F. Whitmore. Ghosts and Legends of Frederick County. Illustrated by Darby Pannier. Frederick, Maryland: self-published, 1979; printed by Studio 20 in Frederick. "An Old Wise Tale," Pages 44-46. See also Okonowicz, Ed. The Big Book of Maryland Ghost Stories. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2010. "Wise's Well," Pages 289-291. For versions farther afield, see Taylor, L.B. Jr. The Ghosts of Virginia, Volume IX. Alexandria, Virginia: Washington Book Distributors, 2003. "The Uncomfortable Spirit," Page 206. Wise's Find a Grave entry is https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/72663292/daniel-wise.
Mountain Church Road. In the 1920s, William Aquila, a Black resident of Frederick County in his late sixties, vividly recounted to a folklorist a lifetime’s worth of supernatural experiences. He attributed these to having been “born with a caul over my face,” and therefore more attuned than most. Most of Aquila’s stories were set to the east of Frederick County, but one may be local.
Yes, indeed—I know that dark, woody piece they call Wildcat Hollow, Miss, and I know about the Headless Horseman who haunts it, as they say.
My father used to go about preaching in one church and another—some near, some pretty far away—and the one called the Mountain Church, on the Wildcat Hollow road, he visited at nights sometimes, driving a quiet, gentle horse.
In general, a child could manage him--the horse was that peaceable!--but when they got near Wildcat Hollow, Father had to hold tight to the reins. The old horse would lay back his ears, get restless and uneasy, give a kind of snort—a bad sign, we all grew to know—seize the bit in his teeth and make a bolt. Then Father had to hold on for all he was worth.
Nobody knew what the old horse saw, but there must have been something pretty queer and scarey down in that there black hollow. Ghosts of cats and dogs were there—people had seen them—but none of us ever saw the Headless Horseman.
Mountain Church Road proceeds north from Burkittsville along the eastern border of Gathland State Park before veering east. See Gittings, Victoria. “What William Saw.” The Journal of American Folklore 58.228 (Apr-Jun 1945): 135-137. Accessed via Ort Library’s online databases.
Old Misery Trail and Cat Rock. The trail is a “moderately challenging uphill hike … The name sounds funny until you start climbing the switchbacks and then it starts to make sense.” Hikers take Old Misery to Cat Rock, a “spectacular” quartzite outcrop that affords climbers a view and a precarious picnic spot. “Although no one knows for sure,” the state Department of Natural Resources says, “Cat Rock got its name either from its resemblance to a cat or from the fact that bobcats have been seen there.” See Gregory, Alyssa. “Hike the Old Misery Trail to Cat Rock.” The Outbound. N.d. https://www.theoutbound.com/maryland/hiking/hike-the-old-misery-trail-to-cat-rock. See also “Cat Rock & Bob’s Hill, Frederick County.” Maryland Department of Natural Resources. https://dnr.maryland.gov/wildlife/Pages/NaturalAreas/Western/Cat-Rock-Bobs-Hill.aspx
Sabillasville. An ax murderer killed John and Lydia Newey and four members of their household, plus an unborn baby, at their lonely cabin on New Year's Eve 1830, or possibly New Year's Day 1831, or possibly both days; the killings may have begun before midnight, and continued after. Arrested, convicted and hanged for the murders--entirely on circumstantial evidence, a first for the county--was John Markley, the Neweys' nephew, who had been released from prison that November 25 and who had threatened to kill the family because of his Aunt Lydia's damning testimony at his theft trial. Markley went to the gallows in Frederick swearing his innocence. Recently a benefactor placed a modern tombstone at the victims' mass grave. See Fry, Joan Bittner. "The Newey Murders." The Catoctin Banner. 27 November 2019. https://www.thecatoctinbanner.com/the-newey-murders/. See also Cannon, Timothy L, and Nancy F. Whitmore. Ghosts and Legends of Frederick County. Illustrated by Darby Pannier. Frederick, Maryland: self-published, 1979; printed by Studio 20 in Frederick. "The Newey Slaughter," Pages 34-36. The Newey Cemetery listing at Find a Grave is https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2624723/newey-cemetery.
Thurmont. “There’s a tombstone around here that is said to bleed at certain times of the year. There was this man who was in a terrible accident. He was taken for dead and buried. They say around here—I didn’t know him or his folks; I had friends that did—that he wasn’t really dead when they buried him and that’s why the stone bleeds. They say that he tried to scratch his way out of the casket and that he broke his fingernails and wore his fingers down to the bone and bled to death finally. They say that stone bleeds on the day he died.” See Carey, George G. Maryland Folklore and Folklife. Centreville, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers, 1970; fourth printing, 1983. Page 33.
Urbana. Landon House, a slaveholder's mansion built in 1754, is allegedly haunted by a bewildering variety of ghostly phenomena, depending on the source consulted--from the screams, prayers and cries of the enslaved to apparitions of a woman with a lantern, various Civil War soldiers, and an old man in the basement sometimes visible only as a torso and head. Certainly atrocities occurred inside and outside the house, and all over the property, part of the larger atrocity that was slavery. Privately owned and not open to tourists, it's just north of the Landon Crossing shopping center on Urbana Pike. See Duncan, Andy. "Is Landon House Overrun by Haunts?" Weird Western Maryland. 16 Nov. 2021. https://weirdwesternmd.blogspot.com/2021/11/is-landon-house-overrun-by-ghosts.html.
Yellow Springs. A classic example of what fiction writer Jeffrey Ford calls "the banality of the supernatural" is the offhand recollection, in the 1970s, of 94-year-old "Miss Effie" Spurrier, about the woman who used to run a general store in this Catoctin foothills community: "I saw her go in and out of that store after she was dead. ... The dog that hung around the store saw her, too, and was so scared he'd lay down and tremble." See Duncan, Andy. "Miss Effie's Neighbors? Out of This World." Weird Western Maryland. 29 Nov. 2021. https://weirdwesternmd.blogspot.com/2021/11/miss-effie-never-lacked-ghostly.html. Original account in Weinberg, Alyce T. Spirits of Frederick. 1979. Second edition, 1992. Photos by C. Kurt Holter. Illus. by Audrey. Self-published: graphics and typesetting by Greenleaf Graphics, Frederick, Maryland. See "Miss Effie," Pages 8-11.
Yellow Springs. Another apparition related by 94-year-old "Miss Effie" Spurrier was the long-ago "diaphanous figure" that she saw "come out of Brook Hill Church and squat down on a big rock. ... It was spooky lookin'. I didn't look long. I run." Probably this would have been the long-gone original Brook Hill UMC building, at the intersection of Yellow Springs and Bethel roads. When Miss Effie was a kid, that old building would have been empty, neglected and, no doubt, spooky lookin'. See Duncan, Andy. "Miss Effie's Neighbors? Out of This World." Weird Western Maryland. 29 Nov. 2021. https://weirdwesternmd.blogspot.com/2021/11/miss-effie-never-lacked-ghostly.html. Original account in Weinberg, Alyce T. Spirits of Frederick. 1979. Second edition, 1992. Photos by C. Kurt Holter. Illus. by Audrey. Self-published: graphics and typesetting by Greenleaf Graphics, Frederick, Maryland. See "Miss Effie," Pages 8-11.