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...

  One of my favorite place names is Contrary Knob, a 2,500-foot summit in Garrett County, between Deep Creek Lake and Savage River Reservoir. I know absolutely nothing about the origin of this name. Was the mountain itself somehow contrary, or did it become synonymous with a contrary person who lived on it? My ignorance would make this short entry even shorter, if not for the fact that “knob” is vulgar British slang for “penis” – and thus, at least since 1920, has been a British term for “an annoying, unpleasant, or idiotic person (esp. a man or boy),” so that an online search for the phrase “contrary knob” is likely to turn up a lot of insults.  The use of “knob” as an insult is becoming common in the States, too, and writer Ben Yagoda noted that it spiked online shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack, “surely because so many knobs have been acting knobbish in this country in recent days.” “Maryland’s panhandle comprises a rolling succession of rises with f...

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...

  A pet crow supposedly had learned to talk. However, when Ora Ernst showed up at Stafford Hall in Clear Spring to take Jim’s photo for the Hagerstown Daily Mail, the bird had nothing to say. But he did produce human-sounding remarks like ‘ah’ and ‘uh-huh’ when offered candy by his adopted mother, Mrs. V.L. Ebersole. The crow was discovered in a nest nine years ago by Bernie Williams, a brother-in-law of the Ebersoles*, who raised him for seven years and taught him a vocabulary which includes “How are you?”, “Hell-looo”, and “Hello” minus the last syllable. I bet Ora Ernst said “Hello” minus the last syllable, and other things besides, when she got back to the office. Based on my four years as a general-assignment reporter at a daily newspaper, I have a great deal of sympathy for Ernst, who clearly drew the short straw in the newsroom that day, but I also wish she had pointed out in print that “Jim Crow” was a remarkably tasteless name for a pet on a former slave plantation...