Ghosthunting Maryland. Michael J. Varhola
a wide variety of electronic equipment, and there can certainly be some value associated with this approach. One of the main purposes of using such devices, however, is for purposes of “proving” the existence of various paranormal phenomena to other people. While there is certainly nothing wrong with this, I would encourage prospective ghosthunters to question the premise that substantiating anything is of primary importance and decide for themselves how ghosthunting best meets their needs; my own belief is that this activity should be much more about personal fulfillment, rather than trying to prove things to people who have probably already made up their minds as to whether or not ghosts are real.
I do not believe anyone should hesitate to engage in ghosthunting based on a lack of equipment, and am myself much more of a “naturalistic” ghosthunter. For various reasons, I use a minimum of equipment in my investigations and not much more than I have ever used as a writer and reporter: a microcassette recorder and/or an MP3 player, a digital camera, a pen and notepad, and a flashlight. I have also found a full tank of gas and some food and water to be useful when heading into isolated areas.
I also think a ghosthunter’s innate senses are just as critical to an investigation as any sort of equipment. While I make no claims here to be a “psychic investigator,” I do believe that most people have access to certain paranormal senses that they can draw upon if they choose to and are aware of them. People who can use such abilities reliably, of course, have generally spent many years honing them and learning to differentiate exterior phenomena from internal thoughts and other sensations. People without such experience should probably err on the side of caution and, in the absence of corroborating evidence, acknowledge that whatever they are “sensing” could very well be nothing but the products of their imaginations.
All other things aside, a good attitude is crucial in ghosthunting. While the following chapters include a lot of information that can be useful when visiting the specific sites, there is one bit of general advice I would like to offer to ghosthunters: show respect for both the rights of any relevant living people (i.e., property owners) and for the dignity of any spirits that might be lingering at a particular site.
In any event, ghosthunting is an endeavor fraught with its own potential hazards, and my sense is that anyone who acts inappropriately for too long is ultimately going to suffer some unhappy consequences—whether legal, spiritual, or otherwise. And while the capacity of ghosts to visit various misfortunes upon people is limited, but if it is at all possible to call them down on oneself, this sort of behavior is probably the way to do it. A “ghosthunter’s code of conduct” that provides guidelines about what sorts of behavior people should or should not engage in while conducting investigations is long overdue and has increasingly become a subject of interest to me.
Determining exactly what ghosts are is beyond the scope of this book, and throughout it terms like “ghost,” “phantasm,” “specter,” and “spirit” are used fairly synonymously and are not intended as technical terms indicating manifestations with specific and differing characteristics. This is, after all, primarily a travel guide, not a tome devoted to the classification of earth-bound spirits, which would be of little practical use to most readers.
That said, the term “ghosts” runs the gamut from non-sentient residues of spiritual energy—residual haunting—that can be detected by various means or even seen by some people under certain conditions, to intelligent manifestations that can make their presences felt in various ways. My sense is that the vast majority of hauntings are of the lower order and that it is quite possible to have subtly haunted sites that are never identified as such due to a lack of investigation.
One thing I have encountered while investigating potentially haunted places is the phenomena commonly known as “orbs,” which are sometimes captured in digital photographs. No one can be involved with ghosthunting for too long without stumbling across the ongoing debate over these spherical objects and what they might be. Some people believe orbs are manifestations of spiritual energy. Others—including many veteran ghosthunters—dismiss these phenomena for various reasons (e.g., because they are trying to adhere to standards of particular groups or television shows).
I am definitely of the former school of thought. In short, in the years since I have been using a digital camera, I have taken tens of thousands of pictures under all sorts of conditions. Of all those pictures, the only ones that have displayed orbs are ones I have taken at just a dozen or so locations, all of them reputed to be haunted. To me, these phenomena are compelling evidence of what I believe to be some sort of spiritual energy and a hallmark of haunted sites.
That said, all of the sites covered in this book are reputed to be haunted, I am willing to go on the record as saying that I believe any of them could be, and am firmly convinced that several of them definitely are. But the point of this book is not for me to convince anybody of anything. It is, rather, to provide a tool ghosthunters can use to help them find haunted sites, conduct their own investigations, and draw their own conclusions. I wish you the best of luck and look forward to hearing from you as you conduct your own visits to the sites listed in this book!
Michael J. Varhola
Silver Spring, Maryland
Baltimore City
Baltimore/Inner Harbor
Ghost Ships of the Inner Harbor
Baltimore/Jonestown Neighborhood
Fells Point (Southeast Baltimore)
West Baltimore
Westminster Hall Burying Ground
CHAPTER 1
Ghost Ships of the Inner Harbor
BALTIMORE/INNER HARBOR
USS Torsk is believed by some to be haunted by the ghost of a sailor drowned while trying to get back into the submarine before it submerged.
… these sites are usually inhabited by the spirits of those who died tragically aboard the vessel. Generally, the ghosts aboard follow many of the same rules of their haunted house cousins, although they usually haunt much smaller venues and must restrict their activities considerably. In addition, [they] seem to possess a uniform sadness.
—W. Haden Blackman, The Field Guide to North American Hauntings
INNUMERABLE VESSELS have passed through Baltimore harbor over the more than three centuries that the city has served as one of the most important ports in North America. Some of these have come to stay for good and, like historic buildings, have been restored and can today be visited at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Also like historic buildings, a great many of them—all storied vessels and in several cases veterans of combat in foreign seas or other harrowing action—have ghost stories associated with them. And many of them, even those that are not “officially” occupied by ghosts, participate in “haunted ship” events around Halloween.
I most recently visited the Inner Harbor and its haunted vessels in June 2009, with my friend Brendan Cass and his mother Susan Cass. That was by no means my first time, however, and ever since I first visited Baltimore as a child nearly four decades ago, and as the various ships have come and gone, I have increasingly come to know them and the ghosts that haunt them.
USS CONSTELLATION
Perhaps the most haunted ship in the Inner Harbor—also, probably not coincidentally, the oldest—is USS Constellation. Just how old is not entirely