Halloween may be just over, but the allure of the fright, the fascination of ghosts and haunted places is a human interest that goes beyond the holiday. People who claim to have no belief in the supernatural realm, have often found them selves either alone at home in an old house or out walking through a graveyard at night, and they have felt the hair on the back of their neck start to stand up a bit, for no particular reason. In Baltimore, Maryland there are many such places.
The city is rich with years of history and it seems that with history, be it the history contained in a grandmother’s house or in a 100 year old Baltimore restaurant, or in the the city itself…where there is history, there may just be…ghosts. The first place to start for ghost stories is the Westminster Church Cemetery. The cemetery sits just a few blocks from the house of Edgar Allen Poe, and Poe himself is buried in this cemetery. His cousin Virginia is also buried there, and each Halloween fans gather at the grave site for a small ceremony. During the year, a single rose and a bottle of Cognac is found at the site, and no one knows who leaves it there.
The grand shopping and entertainment facility down at the Inner Harbor is Harborplace. Now the Inner Harbor of Baltimore is filled with two hundred years of sailors and port workers, who toiled through two world wars, the slave trade, and food shipped out during the famine in Ireland. There is a photo that was taken in 1955, that shows a shadowy figure standing on the dock, but the photographer insists that there was no one there when he snapped the shot.
Another story states that a priest, upon showing interest in the ship, the USS Constellation, was offered a tour by an older gentlemen who said that he was a tour guide. The priest toured the ship with the man, only to find out later that no such man existed. Other people over the years have reported that they too have seen strange shapes and heard odd noises on the Constellation, and two supernatural scholars, Sybil Leek and Hans Holzer claim that they have communed with spirits on the ship. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, both of these locations are just a bit haunting, as places filled with history usually are. When you are in Baltimore, at least check them out, you never know what you may find, or rather, what or who may find you.