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.”

I got sidetracked the other day by a story about Glamis Castle in Scotland, the family home of the Queen Mum of England, said to be one of the most haunted castles in Scotland. One of the many ghosts said to haunt the ancient castle is that of Lady Janet Douglas, burned at the stake in 1537  as a witch for plotting to poison the king. Lady Janet’s brother was Archibald Douglas who had become an enemy of King James V. James’ anger at the entire Douglas family resulted ultimately in the accusation against Lady Janet, whose first husband was the 5th Lord Glamis, John Lyon. Though she was widely believed to be innocent of the various charges against her, confessions were extracted via torture of her family.  Though she was burned at the stake at Edinburgh, Glamis Castle was her home for many years, so perhaps it is natural that she would appear there after her death.

Apparently, there’s a local haunted house, though it appears that the ghosts are friendly ones. One of the local residents told me the other day that the house that his son is renting on Old New Windsor Road near McKinstry’s Mill road has a very extra spirits these days. From what I’ve been able to figure out, they’ve been there for awhile too, as the former residents told the newcomers that they had noticed some strange things as well. I ran into the son at the post office the other day and he told me that they had heard all sorts of odd sounds and when they left the house one evening shortly after they moved in, one of the upstairs lights turned itself on as they watched. The young man feels that they are probably very young ghosts, as one night when things were a bit noisy, he yelled up the stairs “Go to BED!” and things got quiet right away!

This story appeared in a number of newspapers in the spring of 1884:

A GENUINE OHIO GHOST.

A thousand people surround the graveyard in Miamisburg town, near Dayton, Ohio, every night, to witness the antics of what appears to be a genuine ghost. There is no doubt about the existence of the apparition. Mayor Marshall, revenue collector, and hundreds of prominent citizens all testify to having seen it. Last night several hundred people armed with clubs and guns, assaulted the spectre, which, appears to be a woman in white. Clubs, bullets and shot tore the air in which the misty figure floated without disconcerting it in the least.

The people of the town turned out en masse yesterday and began exhuming bodies in the graveyard to get at her ghostship. The remains of the Buss family, composed of three people have already been exhumed. The town is visited daily by hundreds of strangers and none are disappointed, as the apparition is always on duty promptly at 9 o’clock. The strange figure was at once recognized by the inhabitants of the town as a young lady supposed to have been murdered several years ago. Her attitude while drifting among the graves is one of deep thought, with head inclined forward and hands clasped behind.

Though I have been unable to find any information so far about the young lady mentioned, I did find it interesting that the townspeople felt it necessary to exhume bodies in the graveyard in order to combat the ghost.

The former Victorian mansion of a well-known industrialist of Staten Island is in the news again as the trial gets underway for a mob-style murder that occurred on the premises, but the mansion already had a reputation for being haunted.

The old house on Arthur Kill Road, known as the Kresicher mansion sits up on a hill overlooking a town that used to be known as Kreischerville. Balthasar Kresicher, the head of the family, made his fortune making fire-bricks and his sons continued the business after his death in 1886. Two mansions were built originally, but only one has survived. The other one burned and was demolished years ago. Tales have been told for years about the mansion - the scratching sounds heard in closets have been attributed to children who were supposedly locked in as punishment for bad behavior, doors slam unexpectedly and the widow of Edward Kreischer (Balthasar’s son who shot himself in his office in 1894) is rumored to haunt the house.

In more recent days, however, the house became a crime scene when Joseph Young convinced Robert McKelvey to come to the property. Young apparently stabbed, strangled and then drowned his victim and then chopped the body into bits and tossed it into the furnace. Young received money from a reputed mob connection and the trial for the murder is currently underway.

Isaac Yomtovian, a developer who purchased the property about ten years ago, has had plans to convert the property in to a housing center for senior citizens, but has been unable to secure funding for the project so far. Hmmm… wonder why.

Having grown up in the Baltimore area and being a fan of the writings of Edgar All Poe, I’ve been fascinated for years by the story of the mystery visitor who leaves roses and a bottle of cognac at his grave every year on January 19th, the anniversary of his birthday. Though Sam Porpora, the former church historian who was instrumental in the preservation efforts at Westminster Presbyterian Church, stepped forward and claimed to be the mystery toaster, his claim was rather thoroughly debunked later. Porpora claimed that he and his tour guides at the church drummed up the idea in the 70’s as a way to create more interest in the poet’s grave, but Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe Museum, says that the tradition actually started many years earlier and notes that a newspaper article from 1950 makes mention of the nocturnal visitor.

Some stories are just plain hard to explain, such as this one, from West Virginia:

Charleston Gazette, WV. 5/14/1976

It was discovered July 1, 1975, by Glenn Pierce, the aging caretaker of Oak Grove Cemetery in Morgantown. The sod was pushed up about eight inches, leaving a dark hole on one side. Pierce hesitantly focused the beam of a flashlight inside, then jumped back at the sight of a concrete vault with a broken lid about six feet down.

Pierce’s superiors were inclined to put it down as vandalism, but when Morgantown police could find no shovel marks or any other signs of tampering, the discovery took on new dimensions. It was obvious the ground had been pushed up from the inside. A gas company inspector could find no evidence of methane or sewer gas.

A funeral director suggested gas from a decaying body might be the answer. Looking at the grave marker standing at an angle a few feet away, however, seemed to dispel this. It indicated the occupant was 3-year-old Harry Spitz, who had died in 1912. His body would have been too small and it was long past the time of gaseous decay.

Morgantown Police Chief Bennie Palmer and Lt. William Hughes looked on while diggers hauled up the vault and casket. The concrete vault came out in seven pieces. The wooden casket was intact. The cloth covering the lid was rotting but there was no signs of mildew or dampness. The stem of a flower and a metal name plate lay undisturbed in a small indentation in the lid.

Suspecting a clue might be inside the casket itself, Pierce unlatched the lid and cautiously opened it with a shovel.

Inside was the surprisingly well-preserved body of a child. His long, blond hair glowed in the noonday sun.

“He was almost as perfect as the day they put him there,” Pierce remarked.

On his chest was a flower stem and a metal piece with the inscription “Our Darling” At the feet was a black and white teddy bear.

Monongalia County records indicate the child died of cholera. Dr. Otis Fansler, pathologist and head of the morgue at University Medical Center, wondered if anerobic organisms had survived and possibly infected the onlookers.

Fansler took skin samples from the hands, throat and nose of the body and turned them into cultures. He found them to be sterile. The same day the body and casket were placed in a new vault and returned to the ground.

After geologists discounted earth displacement, Mrs. Marion Stone, secretary-treasurer of Oak Grove Cemetery Assn., declared, “I think it was an act of God.”

News of the phenomenon brought out droves of curious passersby, who negotiated the narrow cemetery road to stare at the grave.

Fundamentalists opened Bibles to Thessalonians 4:16-17 and proclaimed the explanation: “For the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; And the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”

A woman psychic from Pittsburgh, Pa., declared a love bond existed between the child and his mother and that his love had burst from the grave and rushed to his mother. The 91-year-old mother still lives in a nursing hone at Terra Alta, Preston.
Harry’s father, Henry, was born in Holland, and his mother, Desiree, was born in Belgium. The family appeared on the 1920 US Census in Morgantown, WV.