indeed feel magical, very possibly haunted, and undeniably—although not surprisingly, it being a cemetery—somewhat melancholy. It rained steadily the entire time we were there, the heavens mourning the nearly forty-thousand departed souls buried in the fields around us.
During our visit to the cemetery we were each drawn to particular memorials about which we knew nothing before our visit—which made it all the more startling when we discovered that of the thousands around us, they were among a handful that have been highlighted in various published works about the cemetery and around which other visitors have reported paranormal phenomena.
One of these was the Marburg family monument, which my mother was undeniably drawn to. It consists of a large private mausoleum, before which is a statue of what I immediately took to be Icarus. The inscription upon it revealed it to be dedicated to Theodore Marburg Jr., an American who had served with the British Royal Flying Corps during World War I and died four years after the conflict ended, at the age of just twenty-nine. What might have caused his spirit to remain at the site was not immediately obvious, although we wondered if some sort of lingering illness from the Great War might not have contributed to his demise. (Some research after our visit revealed a strangely gothic family history and any number of possible candidates for ghosthood, including a manipulative father and a deranged maiden aunt; see the sidebar to this chapter for more.)
At around the time my mother was occupied with the Marburg monument, I was exploring nearby and kept catching movement out of the corner of my eye, all from the direction of a memorial that I could not make out well from where I was. This happened several times, but each time I looked, there did not seem to be anything there but immobile stone. My eye was consistently drawn, however, to the back of a white stone sculpture a few hundred feet away, which closer examination revealed to be a mourning woman in classical garb standing watch over the Blackshere family sepulcher. The movement in the corner of my eye ceased once I reached it, and was replaced by the odd feeling that there was a presence of some sort centered on the statue, which seemed as if it might animate at any moment. I was not surprised to subsequently learn that other people have, in fact, reported similar experiences around the Blackshere monument and that many consider it to be haunted by the spirits of at least some of the family it memorializes.
Based on our cursory experiences at Druid Ridge Cemetery, we were not surprised that many other people had come away from the place believing it was haunted or having experienced paranormal phenomena there. Black Aggie is no longer there but thousands of souls and innumerable other stories are, and the place certainly warrants continued investigation.
Spotlight on Ghosts: The Marburg Monument
One of the monuments at Druid Ridge Cemetery at which people have reported experiencing various paranormal phenomena—including sensing a spiritual presence, seeing apparitions, and capturing mists and orbs in photographs—is the Marburg family mausoleum, in front of which is a bronze figure of Icarus.
The base of this statue is fitted with a plaque dedicating it to Theodore Marburg Jr., which mentions his service with the British Royal Flying Corps during World War I and includes some rather strange verbiage about the need for an American presence in Europe. It also indicates that Theodore was born in 1893 and died in 1922, begging the question of how he might have died not during the war but a mere four years after it ended.
Investigation after our return from the site revealed the strange, convoluted, almost gothic history of the Marburg family in general and the macabre events surrounding the death of Theodore in particular. A brief review of Theodore’s life during and after the war would certainly suggest he was an almost classically tormented soul, and it was not hard to believe he might haunt the final resting place of his remains.
When the Great War began, Theodore was a student at Oxford, in England, and in the furor to stop the German advance across Europe he joined the British Royal Flying Corps—despite the fact that Americans were prohibited from serving in foreign military organizations and that his father was a career diplomat and a friend of former President William Howard Taft.
In 1916, Theodore’s plane crashed while flying a frontline mission and, as a result of the injuries he sustained, he had to have his left leg amputated. During his convalescence, he met and married a Belgian baroness who was also a divorcee and the mother of a three-year-old girl and whose background was, suffice it to say, a bit questionable.
Not much about the couple’s life together is known, but two years later, when Theodore became a partner in a cattle ranch in New Mexico, the baroness refused to go with him. In an exception to the norms of the era, he claimed abandonment and they were divorced shortly thereafter.
In early January 1922, Theodore was married again, this time to a woman ten years his junior. She was not with him at his ranch either when he put an automatic pistol to his head seven weeks later and shot himself. It took him a week to die, during which the doctors had to remove his eyes. His wife arrived from Baltimore after he had expired.
There is a lot that is not known about the mounting tragedies that afflicted Theodore in life, but it is not too hard to imagine that his tormented spirit might still linger on our own sphere after his earthly troubles had been brought to an end. But, as it turns out, a number of the other Marburgs have weird stories as well, and it is easy to conceive of any number of them lingering on as ghosts. These include Theodore Marburg Sr., a man who cultivated a reputation as a peacemaker but urged the United States to enter World War I, and his sister, an increasingly desperate spinster who at one point unsuccessfully offered a European tour guide two-hundred-thousand dollars to marry her (he declined, opting for her niece instead). Any of them—maybe all of them—might be among the spirits that continue to linger among the sepulchers and monuments of Druid Ridge Cemetery.
“Black Aggie” no longer sits over the Agnus family plot at Druid Ridge Cemetery, but some say her presence can still be felt there.
CHAPTER 6
Historic Ellicott City
ELLICOTT CITY
Some paranormal investigators believe that the granite construction prevalent throughout historic Ellicott City has contributed to its extremely high incidence of hauntings.
So rapid was the rise of the water that many persons barely escaped from their houses on the high banks in time to see their dwellings carried away by the rush of waters and the impact of the floating masses of wreck. Children perished in the sight of their parents, and wives before the eyes of their husbands.
—J. Thomas Scharf, History of Maryland, From the Earliest Period to the Present Day
SOME MEDIUMS SAY that granite attracts and channels spiritual energy. If so, that might explain why this historic Maryland town may be the most haunted town in Maryland, if not in the entire country, as some people claim. Granite is everywhere. The houses are built of granite blocks hewn from the nearby quarries that line the Patapsco River. The foundations are set in the solid granite bedrock on which the town rests. Moreover, the streets are paved with cobblestones of granite, and granite steps lead up through narrow passageways between the buildings. Most Maryland towns are built of brick or wood. Some still have the sturdy log cabins built by the original settlers. Some have marble court houses and city halls of limestone. None, as far as I know, are built almost entirely of granite; and maybe that is why none seem to have the sheer volume of ghosts that Ellicott City has.
Maryland in general has more than its share of ghosts. Those in Frederick can be largely attributed
