Weird Western Maryland

  Lightning bolts can be terrifying enough, but ball lightning is something else again. Floating horizontally only a few feet off the ground, these glowing plasma globes, generally associated with thunderstorms, can bob, weave, change direction, even “follow” observers in ways that seem unnervingly intelligent. They have been known to roam the interiors of houses, and they have a nasty habit of “exploding” when they hit something solid. Once ball lightning was dismissed as folktale or hallucination, discussed seriously only on woo-woo TV shows such Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World – where, on Episode 13, Sir Arthur called ball lightning the “most important of all mysteries,” because of the tantalizing prospect of plasma technology. Today, if not quite “tweedy with respectability,” as Ryan Shirlow put it recently in Fortean Times , ball lightning nevertheless is regarded as a real – but really weird – weather event. “Scientists say they have much to learn about the mysterious p...

  In June 1947, under the Page One headline "When It Rains It Pours Here," The Daily Mail of Hagerstown declared a local grocery was jinxed: Speaking of a jinx! All the wrath of the spirits has been cast in one little store, located at 147 East avenue, according to recent signs. Mrs. Lewis Heine, wife of the owner of the grocery store, fell and broke an arm two weeks ago, and to top it off, cut off the end of her thumb in a slicing machine. Last week, an employe, Charles Bailey, fell out the back of the store truck, suffering lacerations about the arm and face. That same week, the storm broke out the plate glass window on the store front. That same day another employe, John Miller, shut the door on his thumb and mashed it. That such a commonplace set of mishaps neither merits front-page news coverage nor warrants supernatural explanation – “all the wrath of the spirits,” indeed! – is indicated by some of the other headlines on the same front page: Floods Inundate Ohio...

Previously, I listed the two Garrett County locations covered by Roadside America . The site has seven Washington County locations, though three no longer exist. Never fear, we will do better than that! Cautionary note: Some of this information I'm linking to is out of date, or was in error to begin with, as we shall see ... Boonsboro: Doug Bast’s House of History . " The museum's most talked-about relic is a shriveled human arm, displayed in a blood-red showcase, with a Civil War bullet lodged near where its elbow used to be." Boonsboro: White Frog Colony (Gone). " Anyone have further info on this one? Somebody's grandparents must have visited here on their honeymoon." Clear Spring: House of Hocus Pocus (Gone). " Knepper's House of Hocus Pocus was a roadside attraction ... . Closed in the 1960s." Hagerstown: Giant Coke Bottle . " Large Coca Cola bottle on the roof of a bottling building." Hagerstown: Giant Crab o...