Weird Western Maryland

  Landon House, August 2016 (Google). A longstanding legend holds that historic Landon House, in Urbana in Frederick County, was moved to its present location in 1846, but originally was built a century earlier, across the Potomac near Fredericksburg, Virginia. Supposedly, the new owner, the Rev. R.H. Phillips, loved the house but not the location, and had it dismantled and moved 85 miles north, to be reassembled on the Maryland side of the river. Writing of this legend in 1973, the house’s then-owner, Marion Stancioff, was careful in her assessment: While there is no known archival documentation to substantiate this claim, the account exists of the dismantling of the house and its subsequent transportation by barge down the Rappahannock and up the Potomac to Point of Rocks and its re-erection on its present site, as given by two nieces of Reverend Phillips who were still living in Frederick in 1949.   Note that those two women, in retelling the events of 103 years pre...

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...

  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...

  Many antebellum mansions have ghost stories attached – unsurprisingly, their histories being inextricable from the horrors of slavery. One such mansion in Washington County has a legend of a cursed room, but don’t expect to visit the room. In fact, best not even to look for the room. About a half-mile north of old U.S. 40 on Cohill Road, east of Clear Spring, is Stafford Hall, which the 1940 New Deal volume Maryland: A Guide to the Old Line State describes as a large, two-story brick and stone structure with nine double chimneys. It was built probably about 1835 by Judge John Thompson (1815-73), descendant of Colonel George Mason who came from Staffordshire, England, about 1651. Natives of the countryside have believed for years that there is a secret room in the house and that anyone who attempts to find the room will die. It is told that a prominent citizen of Hagerstown searched for the room in 1924 and died within the year; that two years later a nine-year-old child, wh...