I was reading an article recently that mentioned that areas with high amounts of limestone may be more prone to paranormal activity. If so, perhaps that explains some of the more interesting features of the little town of New Windsor, Maryland. Apparently some of the purest limestone deposits on the East Coast reside below the surface surrounding this little town.

Near the center of the little town lies the old Presbyterian cemetery, final home to many of the earliest inhabitants of the area. In the south-western corner of the yard can be found the grave of noted physician Roberts Bartholow. Bartholow was born in 1831 in Carroll County and obtained his bachelor’s degree in Arts from New Windsor’s own Calvert College. He then went to the University of Maryland to pursue his medical studies. Having entered practice in 1852 and serving as a US Army Surgeon until 1864, he settled in Ohio on the staff of Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinatti. It was here in 1874 that he first met Mary Rafferty, a ‘feeble-minded’ young servant girl with an ulcerated cancer of the brain. After treating Rafferty unsuccessfully for about a month, Dr. Bartholow decided to try some experiments with electric stimulation of her brain, as he had already determined that her case was hopeless. The experiments went on over the course of several days -as Rafferty did not appear to be in pain with low intensities of current, Bartholow increased the charge until Rafferty ultimately entered a coma that lasted about 20 minutes. She died several days later and though her death was listed as being caused by the cancer, the scarring from Bartholow’s experiments no doubt hastened the end. Bartholow ’s techniques were censured heavily at the time, even in that time of little or no concept of patient consent, but had little long term effect on his career. He died in 1904 and was buried near his parents in New Windsor.

So much for the background story. Several years, the local heritage group invited a paranormal investigator to town. Armed with an array of equipment, she was able to determine that the old graveyard was quite an active place, including the spirits of several Confederate soldiers were were none too happy to be buried on top of each other at the eastern end of the graveyard. Her strongest impression, however, came as she drew near to Bartholow’s stone and noted an almost violent energy coming toward her. Apparently, he was telling here over and over again, “they didn’t understand, they just didn’t understand.”