As the saying goes, ain’t no rest for the wicked…or the ghosts in Old Ellicott City.
Every Friday and Saturday evening, from April until mid-November, people flock to the Haunted Main Street walking tours to learn about the ghosts who are said to inhabit the centuries-old buildings there.
Unsurprisingly, October is the most popular month for these tours, according to Ed Lilley of Maryland History Tours, who spoke by phone with Baltimore Fishbowl on Tuesday. Lilley said the Haunted Main Street tours have been going on for more than 20 years, starting soon after the Howard County Office of Tourism and Promotion was established.
There are two different tours offered. “On Friday nights we do what’s called Mount Misery, which is of the hills north of town. That’s the area we’ve referred to as Mount Misery for many, many years,” Lilley said. “Then on Saturday night, we do what we call Haunted Main Street.” Guides are dressed in all-black attire, and some dress in period attire.
The Mount Misery tour encompasses the former circuit courthouse next to the Howard County Historical Society Museum, the Patapsco Female Institute, and a building that used to be an old jail on Emory Street. The Patapsco Female Institute is said to be home to the ghost of Annie Van Derlot who allegedly died of pneumonia while attending the school, but there is no documentation that she was ever enrolled at the institute.
The Main Street tour has plenty of hot spots with ghostly tales to be told. “Almost every building has a story of the town. It was last year we celebrated our 250th anniversary, so in 250 years a lot of things happen,” Lilley said. “Fires, floods, people dying, and because Ellicott City was the county seat and the center of the agricultural community, if you needed anything you could get it in Ellicott City. At one time there were four funeral homes in Ellicott City.”
Lilley told Fishbowl that one of the buildings that was torn down to build the tourism office, which formerly housed the post office on Main Street, used to be a funeral home, as did Easton and Sons which is at the lower end of Main Street. Easton and Sons is one of the buildings that’s set to be torn down as part of the county’s flood mitigation plan.
“The B&O is a real hot spot. For many years, people that have worked there have talked about being on the lower level, the main street level, and hearing boxes being slid around upstairs and there’s nobody up there, but that sounds like boxes being dragged across the floor,” Lilley said. “And everybody likes to figure out a name for their ghost, and so they just decided to start calling whoever it was ‘Charlie.’ Then later we discovered that there was a gentleman that was at the B&O who, at the time of his death, was the oldest employee of the B&O and his name was Charles Harvey! Unbeknownst to them, they may have picked the right name!”
Lilley says almost every building has a story because of the town’s age, recounting a story about a Confederate prisoner during the Civil War who escaped, and people say they still hear him running down the steps between the Forget-Me-Not Factory and the next building, which used to be the Railroad hotel many years ago.
Tickets for the tours are $20 per person, though there is a discount for members of the Howard County Historical Society. Tours begin at 8:30 p.m. and last between 60 -90 minutes.
To purchase tickets for the Mount Misery Ghost Walk, please click here.
To purchase tickets for the Haunted Main Street Walking Tour, please click here.