Ghosthunting Maryland. Michael J. Varhola
financial venture. Each ship taken was a prize to be sold. For the British, this became intolerable.
Finally, in retaliation, the British launched the Chesapeake Campaign in 1814 with the expressed purpose of “cleaning out that nest of pirates in Baltimore.” Their goal was to shut down the shipyards at Fells Point and halt the production of the deadly “Baltimore clippers.” Unfortunately for our new nation, the British, on their way up the Chesapeake Bay, managed to capture and sack Washington, D.C.—and in the process burn both the Capitol and the White House.
The vengeful redcoats then continued up the Bay, with the goal of capturing Baltimore and Fells Point by way of a combined land and naval attack. They failed on both fronts. Their ground forces were decimated by the Maryland militia at North Point, while the guns at Fort McHenry, strategically placed at the mouth of Baltimore harbor, prevented the British fleet from entering it. (See the separate chapter in this book on this historic redoubt and the ghosts that haunt it.)
Fort McHenry withstood a ferocious twenty-five-hour naval bombardment on September 12 and 13, 1814. It was during this bombardment that Maryland lawyer and poet, Francis Scott Key, was able to see “by the dawn’s early light” the huge “star-spangled banner” still flying over the fort. It’s well known that his poem became our national anthem. What is less well known is the role that Fells Point played in prodding the British to attack Fort McHenry in the first place. Quite simply, without Fells Point and its deadly clippers, there would have been no attack on Fort McHenry and there would thus have been no “Star-Spangled Banner.”
One can sense that history in the Fells Point of today—and, indeed, it should not be surprising that such a feisty population would produce more than its share of ghosts. Nor should it be surprising that a disproportionate number of these ghosts would be found in the places that sailors and shipbuilders frequented, namely bars and pubs, of which Fells Point still has a remarkable number—about 120. Many of these have their roots in the eighteenth century.
Some, like the Wharf Rat and the Horse You Came In On, were frequented by none other than Edgar Allan Poe. The poet is interred at the nearby Westminster Burying Ground but, many locals maintain, his spirit is not there, but can instead sometimes be seen in the wee hours swaying unsteadily down Thames Street, making his way from the Wharf Rat to the Horse. (See, however, the chapter in this book on the fascinating Westminster Hall and Burying Ground.) In fact, some believe, Poe haunts the Horse in particular. It is the custom there at closing to appease his spirit by setting out for him a glass of cognac, his favorite drink. In the morning the glass is found empty, washed and put away. So if you have a cognac there, you may be drinking out of the very glass that Poe sipped from the night before.
Fells Point today, as in Poe’s day, has an active nightlife. With plenty of live music, walkable streets, and friendly locals, it is easy to see why some spirits became so attached to their local “haunts” that they have not been willing to move on. Some pubs, like the venerable Bertha’s, famous for its mussels, have dozens of ghosts—or so we were told by our guide, Leanna Foglio.
Indeed, the best introduction to Fells Point ghost life is the ghost tour. Actually, there are two run by Baltimore Ghost Tours—the Ghost Walk and the Pub Walk. We did the Ghost Walk and were so impressed that we will definitely go back for the other.
The tours are the brain children of Amy Lynwander and Melissa “Missy” Rowell. It was, in fact, Missy’s personal encounter with a ghost soon after moving to Fells Point that stimulated the interest that led these friends to do the research that ultimately resulted in the tour.
Missy had dropped into the Cat’s Eye Pub on Thames Street to buy a souvenir T-shirt for her father, who had visited the pub some years earlier and had asked her to pick one up for him. The bartender at the Cat’s Eye was a tall, thin man, who bore a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, and turned out to be a font of knowledge about Fells Point. He had been there for years, and he knew where to go and who to know. There were few customers, so Missy ordered a drink and listened attentively as he filled her in on what made her new neighborhood interesting and unique. After about half an hour, the conversation died. Missy picked out a shirt, paid, got her change, and left, feeling really good as she exited the building and stepped back into the sunlight. Directly across the street she could see the old immigration building, which she now knew was where the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street had been filmed.
“Wow!” she thought to herself. “My neighborhood is so cool.”
In the two years after that, Missy encountered so many ghosts in her little house on Bethel Street that she decided to ask other people if they had experienced similar things.
“Do you have a ghost? Do you have a ghost?” she went around asking. “Because I have a ghost,” she explained. Well, everybody had ghosts. That’s when she got together with her friend, Amy, and they decided to do the research that resulted in the tour. In the process, she went back to the Cat’s Eye Pub, both because they had heard about the “junkie” ghosts there and because she had a contact there, the bartender who seemed to know everything and everybody in Fells Point. This time, however, there was a woman behind the bar. Missy asked her about the tall, thin bartender she had met there two years earlier, the one who looked like Abe Lincoln.
“You mean him?” the woman replied, pointing at a picture on the wall.
Missy nodded.
“That’s Jeff,” the woman replied. “He died about eight years ago.”
“But I talked to him,” Missy protested.
“He’s dead,” she insisted. “Now what would you like to drink?”
The spookiest thing, Missy explained later, was not that she had actually talked to a ghost, but that he had given her change. Who would think? A ghost that not only converses but also gives change!
Leanna recounted many such stories as she led our group from one haunted site to another. She threw herself into her role, and breathed life, so to speak, into the local ghosts. At Duda’s Tavern she told us about “Doc,” the polka-loving tenant, who, although long dead, still expects the jukebox to carry his favorite songs—and has caused it to play them even if they are not loaded into it! And at the Wharf Rat, we heard the sad story of John Rakowsky, its proud immigrant owner, who had been senselessly murdered on July 20, 1907, by an enraged patron. Even today, Rakowsky returns to his beloved pub to wipe the tables and watch over the establishment he loved so much in life.
She also took us to the site of William Fells’ grave. William had a grandson, also named William, whose life had been cut short in its prime, at the age of twenty-seven. Locals report that late at night the younger William, well-dressed and handsome, can still be seen walking along Shakespeare Street apparently coming from Market Street, where his favorite pub was located. As he approaches the grave site, he turns, walks through the cast iron fence, approaches the grave marker, and suddenly disappears.
Leanna also advised us on what may be an effective tactic for dealing with troublesome ghosts. At Leadbetter’s Tavern, there once lived a man who was quite abusive to his wife and teenage son—so abusive, in fact, that his son was ultimately driven to shoot him. His angry and confused spirit still haunts the apartment above Leadbetter’s, terrorizing the bartenders and their girlfriends who have lived there.
Interestingly, it was a witch who provided the solution to the situation. She explained to them that there is nothing that ghosts like better than presents, and that the present they like the most is, of all things, Brach’s peppermint candy, the red-and-white-striped confection often found in bowls at the check-out counters of family restaurants. Why this particular type of candy would be so desired by ghosts is unclear, but it worked. The bartenders set out several pieces in a small bowl where the ghost was sure to find it. After a few days, they found a piece that was pink, as if somebody had licked it. That somebody had to have been the ghost—because the candy was still in its cellophane wrapper!
The tour ended in the square in front of Bertha’s Restaurant & Bar. Beneath this plaza, we learned, there was once a mass grave, dug for the victims of the yellow fever outbreak that had devastated Baltimore some two hundred years earlier.