Famous Ghosts

or, A Compendium of Apparitions, Phantoms, Spectral Hauntings and Wraiths

On the cold, wet nights of November, under the haunting glow of the hunter’s moon, all creatures – man and beast alike – seek the warm safety of their homes. Well, almost all, for this is the time for restless spirits to roam not only here in old Catonsville, but down Hilton Avenue, through the Patapsco Valley and into Ellicott City.

Even within the confines of our bucolic community in the 21^st century, there are stories of recurring events of the supernatural. In one of our mansions-turned-apartments (the owner of which declines divulging its name or location for fear of intimidating present or future tenants), neighbors have reported over the years seeing a light come on in the top-most front room of the house. This front room, really just a dreary attic space, has been unoccupied from the early 1900’s until this day. The sighting has always been in the dead of night and on the same night each year, November 13. These sightings led a neighbor to research and find published reports of a young bride-to-be who lit candles in her window every night while waiting for the return of her soldier fiance from World War I. Unfortunately, after surviving the war, the young man was killed in a tragic train wreck just two days after the truce was signed. Utterly devastated, the young woman took her own life by hanging in that very room at the top front of the mansion. Since then, on November 13, two days after Armistice Day, the room becomes mysteriously lit between midnight and 1:00 a.m., and has for the last 84 years.

On Osborne Avenue, a family repeatedly heard the house’s previous owner, an elderly widow who died in her eighty-third year within that very same house, walk loudly and purposefully up the back stairs and open and close the back door. When they would investigate, there was never any sign of a person there, nor any clue as to an alternate source of the footstep-like sounds. It finally took an exorcism of sorts to put that soul to rest.

Just down the road, where the canopy of trees, dark hills and lack of streetlights make it especially gloomy at night, is the land formerly known as Taylor’s Forest, which was later divided into the Hilton and Dorsey Manor estates. Ghostly apparitions have been reported in this area as recently as this year. Many local residents are all too familiar with the ghost of the Confederate soldier standing tall in full uniform on the large staircase of the Knapp Mansion, which is now the administration building for the community college. Even those of us most given to incredulity have been unable to withstand the menacing glare and raised sword of this nocturnal visitor. For years, the college had a contest with a night in Knapp mansion as its dubious prize. No one has had courage enough to last an entire night within its eerie environs.

To the south, on acres currently owned by the YMCA, was the infamous yet beautiful Belleview Estate. The mansion, which was built in 1861, was most recently owned by J.R. Bland. As the story goes, a member of the family who was living there just before the turn of the century was convicted of the murder of twin girls; they were her illegitimate grandnieces, and their mother had tragically died in childbirth. Legend has it that the aunt drowned each of the toddlers in the fishpond on the estate. “Aunt Mattie” was executed by hanging in Baltimore, and was buried at Belleview under some still existing ruins. She continues to roam the grounds in misery, frightening all she may encounter. Wails of the crying babies have also been heard, and there have been sightings of the ghostly twin children who died there about 1890, walking hand in hand on the property.

Tales of the supernatural and of unexplained phenomenon have “long intrigued even the most skeptical of our citizenry”, wrote Edgar Allan Poe in the previous century. For those who may be interested in the “The Most Haunted Town in the East”, be sure to catch the Haunted Ellicott City Ghost Tour. Included are visits to Mt. Ida, the notorious Patapsco Female Institute, and to the house of the “cooking ghost” of Oak Lawn. As for us, there are too many unexplained occurrences within our town without crossing the Patapsco River to look for more. By John Didier & Cathy Sidlowski