Ghosts of the Eastern Shore

If this house could talk

40 Halloween Ghost Tours Offered on Maryland's Eastern Shore

Chesapeake Ghost Walks is conducting over forty Halloween ghost tours in ten historic towns on Maryland's Eastern Shore in October. The ghost tours spread across five counties situated east of the Chesapeake Bay and span 80 linear miles. By day the landscape is wide open and flat, rich with farmland, marshes, rivers and massive blue skies. But at night - a hauntingly powerful nightscape emerges with moonlit swamps and stark fields framed by the silhouettes of loblolly pines. The bones of the old plantations rise up, and the spirits of sea captains, slaves, soldiers, and townspeople come forth.

Author and company owner, Mindie Burgoyne states that few people outside Maryland and Delaware know about the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake. "Millions rush through it on their way to the Atlantic beaches" she said. "But most don't realize that they're traveling through the largest contiguous piece of agricultural land between Maine and Florida - and I would guess - one of the most haunted regions in the eastern United States."

According to Burgoyne, haunted stories abound in this region. "Every time I'd focus on one story, it would be related to another, and then another," she states. "I was overwhelmed by the amount of haunted lore." Some of the sites and stories on the tours include the ghost of Robert E. Lee seen in an upper room at the Kemp House in St. Michaels, the spirit of Harriet Tubman heard calling across the farm fields of Dorchester County, calling her people to freedom. In Snow Hill, the spirit of a former governor of Maryland speaks to little children inside his old mansion, and in Ocean City, the spirit of a Trimper still leaves the scent of her perfume around the old carousel at Trimper's Rides and Amusements. At the Cambridge court house, some people still hear the creaking of rope against wood - the rope around the neck of "Bloody" Henny Insley, an African slave who was hanged for hacking her mistress to death.

One of eight well-trained guides lead the walks and tell the ghost stories on these tours. The towns featured are among the most historically intact towns in Maryland with gorgeous Colonial and Victorian architecture. They are Easton, St. Michaels. Denton, Cambridge, Princess Anne, Crisfield, Pocomoke, Snow Hill, Berlin and Ocean City. Collectively, the walks comprise the largest cluster of heritage ghost walks in America.

Tempting.