Weird Western Maryland

Credit: Snopes.com. Photos of a fawn and a beagle apparently resting cozily on a sofa together, reportedly somewhere in Garrett County, went viral in summer 2008 after being published online in the Deep Creek Times of McHenry. Snopes.com published one of the anonymous emails that accompanied the viral photo: A fawn followed this beagle home — right through the doggie door — in the Bittinger, MD area. The owner came home to find the visitor had made himself right at home. This hit the 6 o’clock news big time. Sure beats out the political news for a change. Viral emails often position themselves as a refreshing or welcome antidote to whatever the press is focusing on; that’s part of the reason people forward them. The “political news” of summer 2008 included the nominating conventions that chose John McCain and Barack Obama as presidential contenders; the Bush administration’s protest of the Soviet invasion of Georgia; the John Edwards sex scandal; and a U.S. Supreme Court ruli...

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 ...

Here's another supernatural "token" described in Florence Harris Abel's entertaining book The Beitzel Family. To the old-time Beitzels, remember, a token was what others might call an omen: A token was the sign or signal of someone’s death, often occurring with the manifestation of the person’s image or a symbolic occurrence. Just as a ghost is often not recognized as a ghost until it is gone, so a token frequently is not recognized as a token until after the person has died. Some think that as the spirit begins to loosen itself from the earthly body, it enters the presence of persons it has known in this life. … The older generation frequently talked of seeing tokens. Abel titles this story "The Bee in the Cupboard." One night in April 1930, in Henry J. Beitzel and Cynthia Beitzel's kitchen at Keyser's Ridge, all the family members present heard a buzzing in the cupboard, like a bee trying to free itself. Abel continues: Upon inspection, the buzz...

  Too many family histories read, to the outsider, like a litany of birth dates, marriage dates, death dates, the dates of everyone’s descendants and everyone’s ancestors and everyone’s cousins, all the small-print data that my mother, no genealogist, dismissed as “the begats” – “like the parts of the Old Testament you skip.” My mother wanted stories. She would have enjoyed Florence Harris Abel’s 1986 book The Beitzel Family, an unexpected treasure in the stacks at Frostburg State University’s Ort Library. Yes, Abel includes all the begats of her sprawling Garrett County subject, but like Deuteronomy they are easily skipped to get to the wealth of good stories. Abel even includes stories on a theme most family histories shun: the supernatural. Abel titles one “The Midnight Visitor.” One night in spring 1930, not long after their marriage, while Beitzel descendant Clarence Sell peacefully slept, young Mrs. Sell* beside him was abruptly awakened. Looking up she saw a strange el...