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By Kelly Martini At a nearby book shoppe and wellness center, yoga students report their feet being tickled when there’s no one around to do the tickling. And at an old opera house that’s found second life as a store, paranormal activities have been reported on the top floor. These are some of the tales you’ll hear if you attend ghost tours of Ellicott City, offered every Friday and Saturday night through the end of November. The tours follow two different scripts. Both are run by the Howard County Tourism Council. “If you take somebody home with you, bring them back,” tour guide and author Linda Joy warns her guests before setting out on a tour of haunted places. But what makes Ellicott City a center for such unexplained phenomena? Some conjecture that the spirits of captured or surrendered Confederate soldiers -- who passed through town on the B&O Railroad during the Civil War -- may still linger. Others say that because many of the buildings are centuries-old, they've been witness to many small and large dramas. The town dates back to 1772, when Ellicott City was established by brothers John, Andrew and Joseph Ellicott as the site of a flour mill. Many buildings lining Main Street were carved into a strong, granite-type rock called schist.
The builders put sticks of dynamite into the schist to carve foundations. The strength of this stone is the reason why many of the buildings still stand. Ascending the stairs of the Forget Me Not Factory on Main Street, you can see the original rock foundation along the back wall. The store, which was once an opera house, does not allow access to the fourth floor where previous owners reported experiencing paranormal activity. One theory is that John Wilkes Booth returned in spirit to the place where he was reputed to have made his acting debut. The current owner, who wishes to remain unnamed, happily states she has no ghost stories to report since the store opening in 1985. Jordan Naftal, owner of Jordan’s Steakhouse, said he and his staff have noticed an eerie presence in the restaurant. The previous owner reported spying an undertaker dressed in a “long cloak” who would appear at the bar on the first floor. Naftal said he has never witnessed the first-floor ghost, but believes that something is haunting the upstairs dining room. “Something’s going on in there,” Naftal said. “I get the chills walking through that dining room.” Another native who said she has experienced paranormal activity in her shop is Leslie Leuwet, owner of the book shoppe The Well. The Well was built as an auto mechanic’s garage in the 1920s on a site that used to be a graveyard. The ghost who reportedly haunts the building is called Al. “Al either owned or just was one of the major mechanics who worked here,” Leuwet said. She added she was visited by Al on the eve of her store opening a year ago. Everything was in its place when she and her employees locked the doors and went home for the night, she said. “When we came in the next morning, there was a shelf that had been ripped off the wall,” Leuwet said. A glass table top had been shattered for no apparent reason.
“We think that we were visited by Al because he wasn’t sure he was so happy about having us here,” she said. Since The Well’s first experience with Al, guests attending yoga classes at the shop have reported feeling as if something was tickling their feet. One of the reasons tour guide Joy issues her wry warning to guests at the beginning of her tours is her own experiences last fall with what she believes is a ghost who may be a victim of a flood or hurricane. In 1868, flood waters took the lives of 36 people, including nine children. In 1972, Hurricane Agnes washed 10 cars away, killing all passengers inside the cars. Last October Joy said she had just finished giving two back-to-back tours and gotten into her car behind Caplan’s auction house -- near where some of the flood victims had lost their lives -- only to find she couldn’t lock the doors. A few days later, a neighbor knocked on the door of her home to tell her that her car lights were blinking, and the car was making strange noises. “I think to myself, 'If it happens again, I’m going to take them (the ghosts) back,' ” she said. When her car lights began blinking again, Joy said she drove back to Ellicott City to drop off her suspected passenger. She parked her car where it was before, opened the back door and told the presence in the back seat that it was OK for it to leave. “I walked around for about twenty minutes waiting for them to figure out how to get out of the car,” said Joy. “I get back in the car…and sure enough, after 15 seconds, the car locks, and stays locked.” Joy said she has not had any problems with her car since then, but she does not park behind Caplan’s any more. |
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Copyright © 2007 University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism | |||||||||||||
| Politics | Business | Schools | Justice | Health | Et Cetera | ||||||||
Leslie Leuwet describes unexplained occurrences at The Well.
Linda Joy tells the story of the "visitor" she took home.
