Woman in White Never Reached the House
The old Snyder farm on Legeer Road in Garrett County was haunted, according to Cynthia Snyder Beitzel (1885-1968), who grew up there. Moreover, the haunt manifested in at least three different ways. First, there was a mysterious sound that came and went, a sound described -- however stereotypically -- as chains rattling. In the days when cargo was hauled by teams of horses, people who heard the sound assumed a team was coming; in later years, when cargo was hauled by motor truck, the sound was assumed to be a truck laboring up the road. But there were no horses, and no trucks, just the rattling sound. Second, horses were said to get skittish on that stretch of Legeer Road, and have to be coaxed or compelled past the Snyder place. Most interestingly, a woman in a white flowing gown would be seen walking from the spring house up the hill toward the Snyder farmhouse. If you looked away, even for a moment, or tried to approach her, she'd be gone. And if you simply watched her from the ...