people, places, and themes peculiar to Maryland and its history emerged while we were working on the various chapters in this book. These include the state’s Colonial era, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the B&O Railroad, Edgar Allan Poe, and Francis Scott Key, among others, all significant elements in the state’s normal and haunted histories. Ghosthunters can plan itineraries based on one or more of these themes (e.g., visiting sites along the route of the B&O Railroad, visiting sites associated with the war of 1812).
My own connection to Maryland goes back nearly four decades, to when my family moved to the Old Line State when I was three, and I have both lived there and visited sites throughout the state off and on since then. This, combined with the degree in journalism I earned at the University of Maryland in College Park, has played a large part in inspiring me to write this book. My father and co-author has, likewise, spent much of his life in the state, and has resided in it for many years.
PARANORMAL PHENOMENA
Prospective ghosthunters who visit enough sites should expect to eventually experience various sorts of paranormal phenomena. These might range from anomalies in photographs or recordings—which I have experienced fairly consistently in my fieldwork—to more profound and much rarer phenomena like apparitions, disembodied sounds such as footsteps and voices, and the like.
Ghosthunting Maryland is my second contribution to the America’s Haunted Road trip series and follows my Ghosthunting Virginia. When my editors asked me to write that book, they knew me to be an established author of nonfiction books; to have a strong background in history, research, and fieldwork; and to have lived in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, with easy access to both Virginia and Maryland. They had no way of knowing that I’d had an abiding interest in the paranormal for some thirty years, nor indeed, that I had been a “ghosthunter” some years before that term would have meant anything to most people.
Ghosthunting as a pursuit has come into its own over the past few years and has been the subject of numerous television shows and movies. In my experience, however, real ghosthunting bears little resemblance to what is depicted even in “reality” shows related on the subject. The real thing is generally much less manic, a lot quieter, and—despite the absence of noise, running back and forth, and jerky camera angles—much more intense. It also does not result in evidence of haunting on every expedition, or even most of them.
Many ghosthunters today use 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
