Ghosthunting Maryland. Michael J. Varhola

      The Blackshere monument at Druid Ridge Cemetery is one of the spots at the site around which people have reported paranormal phenomena.

      Almost as soon as the sculpture was in place, it acquired a reputation as something supernatural. Groundskeepers would apprehend two or three teenagers a week trying to test their nerve. The cemetery became a popular site for midnight fraternity initiations, where an anxious pledge might be required to sit on the lap of “Black Aggie” to see whether it was true that her arms would reach out and embrace you. It was said that her eyes turned red after midnight, and that anyone returning her earthly stare would go blind. Just as the clock struck twelve, it was claimed, she would let out a blood-curdling shriek, over a background of clanking chains.

      —Mary Ellen Thomsen, Druid Ridge Cemetery

      ANY SEARCH FOR INFORMATION about paranormal activity at Druid Ridge Cemetery will turn up innumerable references to the legend of “Black Aggie,” a statue with which there is associated a strange story replete with peculiar details both mundane and preternatural. This is somewhat unfortunate, in that on the one hand it draws attention away from more worthy and genuine stories associated with the beautiful site—and on the other that the statue has not actually resided on the site for more than forty years, despite references in sources published since then that implies it still does.

      In 1925, Felix Agnus, a U.S. Army brevet general during the Civil War who thereafter became a prominent publisher, placed over the grave of his wife the bronze statue of an androgynous robed figure by sculptor Edward L.A. Pausch. Controversy sprung up almost immediately around the sculpture, which was an unauthorized, some said inferior, reproduction of an allegorical statue by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens erected at the Adams Memorial in Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington, D.C. (ironically, the name Black Aggie has subsequently been applied by many to the original). Agnus successfully sued the party who sold him the imitation statue but thereafter refused to remove it from the gravesite.

      Perhaps it would have been better if he had. Almost immediately, the statue became a magnet for young vandals whose criminal depredations were dismissed by those whose property was not being destroyed as “rites of passage.” For four decades, people performed inane rituals at the site, scrawled obscenities on the statue and the marble pedestal upon which it rested, and in one case, actually chopped off part of the statue with a hacksaw.

      Eventually, the despairing Agnus family decided to have the statue removed from the site to a place where it might be appreciated. The Maryland Institute of Art expressed interest in the statue but refused to pay for a base to support it. The Smithsonian Institution accepted it in 1967 and promptly put it into apparently permanent deep storage, despite the family’s belief that it would be given a prominent place. It was eventually moved to the rear courtyard of the Dolly Madison House, now part of the Federal Courts building in Washington, D.C. (although legends persist in some circles that the statue was never actually removed from Druid Ridge Cemetery and is actually buried beneath the Agnus family gravesite or hidden elsewhere on the burial grounds).

      While removal of the statue ended the history of pranks and vandalism associated specifically with it and the Agnus plot, it did not end the incidence of apparently genuine paranormal phenomena reported by visitors to the site, and it remains a popular venue for investigators.

      Psychic Beverly Litsinger of the Maryland Ghosts and Spirits Association, for example, has detected spiritual presences at Druid Ridge Cemetery. She also told me about the apparition of a dark, shadowy figure that appears in the middle of the cemetery and can be seen walking toward one of the graves. Other people have reported a wide variety of other phenomena at specific areas around the cemetery—especially around the Gail, Marburg, and Blackshere family burial plots—to include orbs, mists, EVPs, and apparitions.

      Much of such activity, to include phenomena similar to what was traditionally associated with Black Aggie, has been reported around the striking green bronze Gail monument, a distinctly female figure that, despite the fact that it looks very little like Black Aggie, is often erroneously identified with the more famous statue. It is worth noting, however, that many of the stories about Black Aggie mention physical characteristics that it does not have (e.g., an arm that could be sawed off), but which the Gail statue does. This statue is located just a few hundred feet away from where Black Aggie formerly sat.

      My mother and I visited Druid Ridge Cemetery in early June 2009 and were immediately struck with the magnificence and size of the place, a sprawling, 208-acre site that is truly a city of the dead. The cemetery includes numerous above-ground family and community mausoleums, columbaria for cremated remains, raised and sunken gravestones, bronze and marble statuary of every sort, and a staggering variety of sculpture that includes everything from obelisks to Celtic crosses and a significant number of monumental benches where people can sit to meditate upon life and death. It is, in short, an essay in stone, earth, and landscaping on the American funerary tradition over the past twelve decades.

      The cemetery was established on January 14, 1896, on the site of a large historic estate called “Annandale” that was being operated as a dairy farm. The largest of the more than two dozen sections of the cemetery, where many of the most interesting and impressive monuments can be found today, is named for this historic property.