Weird Western Maryland

  Among the many colorful raconteurs Alyce T. Weinberg visited in the 1970s for her classic Spirits of Frederick was 94-year-old Effie “Miss Effie” Spurrier, whose matter-of-fact recollections of her life’s many hauntings are highlights of the book. Miss Effie viewed ghosts as commonplaces of daily life, like crossroads and churches, or rocks and trees. Consider her memories of the general store at Yellow Springs, in the Catoctin foothills about five miles northwest of Frederick: A big, fat woman ran a store near us up there. She always wore the same shirtwaist and skirt. I saw her go in and out of that store after she was dead. We all said she must have hid money somewhere and came back to protect it. The dog that hung around the store saw her, too, and was so scared he’d lay down and tremble. “I saw her go in and out of that store after she was dead.” This chilling observation, so offhandedly presented, is a great example of what fiction writer Jeffrey Ford calls “the banal...

A 1950s urban legend from Frederick County was nostalgically recounted by Alyce Weinberg in her classic Spirits of Frederick, first published in 1979. A manic ghost, a white-bearded, long-haired, scraggly male with beady eyes, put in an appearance about twenty years ago on Gold Mine Road near Clifton in Braddock Heights. He only showed himself to kids, and they talked among themselves of how they teased and tormented and mocked the recluse. It was a game to them. They would tantalize the grisly [sic] old man by sneaking up on him and poking him with sticks until he chased them, sidling crabwise, brandishing an axe. They called him Hatchet Harry. Gold Mine Road was only a wagon trail then that led to a stream and a deserted caved-in mine shaft that was impossible to find in the dense underbrush, though maybe Hatchet Harry had. No grown-ups ever caught up with this character, no matter what time of the day or night they went to hunt for him. Progress has changed the old dirt ro...

  One of the most intriguing stories in Alyce Weinberg’s classic Spirits of Frederick is consigned to two sentences on the last page, Page 97: A young man told me 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. I would love to know the wife’s side of this story. I would love to know many things. The history on the Friends of Baker Park website gives no indication of the place being haunted, but the implication in Weinberg is that the ghost in the park is also the ghost in the home, and that it’s the people who are haunted, not the place. This arguably is the case with all hauntings, including ones much better documented than this jealous husband’s. Still, this cryptic claim is probably a good excuse to visit Baker Park, which is bounded on the east by North Bentz Street and on the south by Carroll Par...

Historic Landon House in Urbana, Frederick County, is allegedly haunted by a bewildering variety of ghosts, depending on the source consulted. To put it another way, many popular beliefs linked with ghosts have come to be associated with Landon House, for example: Anomalous sounds. At Landon, these include a little boy’s voice; adult screams, prayers and cries of anguish; and the barks, pants, whimpers and snuffles of dogs. Anomalous sensations. At Landon, these include cold spots, taps on the shoulder, and the feeling of being watched. Physical anomalies. At Landon, these include doors that close by themselves, rocking chairs that rock by themselves, and lights that move without a visible source. Apparitions. At Landon, these include a woman with a lantern, a woman (perhaps the same one) who haunts the rooms of children, various Civil War soldiers, and an old man in the basement who sometimes is visible as only a torso and head. Several of these are referenced, apparen...