Maryland’s oldest ghost tours retells spooky historical accounts

By Dee Richardson//

For those seeking spooky activities this fall in Frederick, consider the Historic District Ghost Tour of Frederick.

The ghost tour is Maryland’s oldest operating ghost tour, celebrating 23 years of operation. The tickets are $9 for children, age 8 to 12 and $15 for adults.

This tour focuses on historic downtown Frederick and visits hotspots where the dead still have an attachment to this earthly realm, such as City Hall and the Weinberg Center for the Arts.

One of the tour guides named Ron, dressed as if he teleported from the 1800s, is able to passionately recite the many ghost stories by memory.

“Be warned that there will be tales involving dismemberment, beheading, grave robbing, and the death of small children,” Ron advises, giving a smile that does not match the context of his words at the start of each tour.

One tale is about a mysterious man who was executed outside of City Hall for being a Loyalist during the American Revolution War. The strange man cursed the courthouse, now City Hall, and all the surrounding buildings.

Shortly after his death, the courthouse deteriorated so much that it had to be demolished and rebuilt. A few years later, the new courthouse caught on fire and took 15 buildings around it. After that fire was another blaze but the water supply was cut and firefighters were unable to put it out. They had to watch the courthouse burn down.

Ron also retells the report of a small child named Elizabeth “Bessy” Ingle, aged 10, who died of disease and then began to haunt her family and many others. The malady that claimed Bessy also struck and killed her other siblings who ranged in age from 3-10.

Shortly after Bessy’s death, the mother died. Only the patriarch of the family survived, the Rev. Ingle. It is rumored that the Rev. Ingle would visit his family’s graves and lean on the cross placed as a tombstone.

To this day, the cross is still leaning from the weight of the Rev. Ingle, grieving the loss of his family.

Nearing the end of the tour, Ron tells the account of the Peacock Lady, a violent poltergeist, who haunts the Weinberg Center for the Arts. Little is known about the Peacock Lady’s background.

Her name arose from accounts of people seeing a lady, dressed in 1920s clothing with a hat that resembles peacock feathers. People have seen the lady going into the women’s restroom, preventing others from coming in, and trashing the bathroom by throwing toilet paper and denting the stalls.

One patron of the theater had the terrible luck of encountering the Peacock Lady. As she entered the bathroom, she saw the Peacock Lady refreshing her appearance in the mirror.

The ghost froze, slowly turned to the patron with her lifeless eyes and screamed “GET OUT” so loudly, causing theater employees to investigate. All they found was an incredibly startled guest.

The tour concludes with Ron leading the group back to the starting point by taking a shortcut through an alley known as “Jack the Ripper’s Alley.” Contrary to the name, patrons do return to the restaurant, alive and in one piece.