Maryland's Most Haunted Places Include Mansions, Cemeteries And Historic Inns

A young woman, faintly visible, dressed in all white walking down the hallway. An open door and the sound of footsteps, but no one in sight. Squeaky floorboards, but no one is seen moving. An apparition floating without her feet touching the ground.

These paranormal incidents have reportedly occurred in past years at historic properties in Maryland.

Montpelier Historic Site and Museum was built in the 1780s in Prince George's County by the Snowden family as a plantation for agriculture and iron production.

The most famous ghost story at that home involves Anne Ridgely Snowden herself, according to The Washington Post. Cleaven Woods, a long-time site caretaker, reported seeing her walking through the mansion on a winter evening. He noted that she was smiling and that her feet did not touch the floor.

Mary Jurkiewicz has worked at the Montpelier Historic Site and Museum in Laurel for 31 years as senior museum manager and told Patch she has never encountered any ghosts, despite ample rumors of spirits roaming the Montpelier Historic Site and Museum.

"As with any old house, doors and floors creak as they expand and contract with the change of the seasons. These are the sounds I hear on a regular basis. Long past employees made such claims and visitors periodically mention feeling a presence in certain rooms, but verifiable evidence that the ghost stories are true are still up for debate, just speculative tales for the imaginative minds," Jurkiewicz told Patch.

Ghosts Call Ellicott City Home

At Lilburn Mansion in Ellicott City, a granite Gothic castle with more than 20 rooms, the heavy dining-room chandelier would swing on its own. The family who lived there in 1960 watched it happen in front of a roomful of guests. They didn't run. They spoke to it by name - Margaret - a 19th century ghost, according to The Baltimore Sun.

Reports of unexplained footsteps and doors opening with no one there have circulated at Wayside Inn in Ellicott City. The October 2024 edition of Washingtonian magazine listed Wayside Inn among the Mid-Atlantic's "haunted" hotels and inns. The inn's website states that "local lore asserted one of those many travelers was one George Washington. A law firm, which tried to lease this inn but failed, also asserted that John Quincy Adams, the 6th U.S. President, was a visitor."

Sightings of a young woman in white have been reported at the Patapsco Female Institute in Ellicott City. According to the Southern Spirit Guide, a daughter of a Southern planter enrolled there in the days leading up to the Civil War. She contracted pneumonia and died.

"The student’s spirit, however, has remained to wander the ruins of her former school," according to the book Ellicott City's Guide To Haunted Places.

Spirits Sighted In Harford County

The former owners of Tudor Hall in Bel Air told The Washington Post they repeatedly saw what they believed was the apparition of Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth's favorite pony. They also described objects moving on their own. Workers and others who stayed there reported hearing footsteps, voices and unexplained movement.

The mid-19th-century Gothic Revival cottage built for the Booth family also was the childhood home of Booth's son, John Wilkes Booth, the child who grew up and assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.

"Some claim that various poltergeists and inscrutable phenomena plague this Gothic-style house. Strange scents and noise come from the assassin’s bedroom, mirrors are lifted mysteriously off the wall and thrown across the room, loud footsteps and crashing glass, and screams are heard in the mysterious woods that surround the building. There are rumors of a man, mysteriously crushed to death by a piano he was moving, just outside the house," reported Staffordshire Realty.

The historic Rodgers House in Havre de Grace has been a site of reported paranormal activity. In fact, it's one of the stops along the Havre de Haunts Ghost Tours route. Built around 1785–1788 by Colonel John Rodgers and his wife, Elizabeth, it is one of the town's oldest structures. The house famously survived the British burning of Havre de Grace in 1813 and George Washington visited the Rodgers family in 1787 when they operated local ferries and taverns. Over the years, the building served as a home, Read's Drug Store, a Rite Aid, a tavern, and various commercial or dining spaces

Paranormal investigator Rob Gutro visited Belair Mansion in Bowie and reported encountering what he believed was the spirit of a young girl inside the mansion. He later connected the experience to Anna Marie Ogle, a child associated with the Belair property who died in 1851, according to Bowie Life

Pam Williams, the former historic properties manager for the city of Bowie, had an office in the mansion for years. She told Bowie Life in 2013 that "lots of people lived here and lots of people likely died here as well."

"I have NEVER seen a spirit – or had one approach me. I’ve had a few headaches here myself over the years, but they have more to do with budget planning and this kind of stuff than the presence of the dead," she told Bowie Life.

Other Haunted Sites In MD

The 2026 HauntBound Index, a new national ranking of more than 6,000 supposedly haunted places, examines decades of published accounts rather than recycling the same old ghost stories. The list by HauntBound, a Michigan-based website specializing in haunted travel and historical ghost lore, includes historic homes, hotels, cemeteries and other places where visitors have reported seeing things that have no earthly explanation.

Some are open for tours, some offer overnight accommodations, and others are best admired from a safe distance. Whether any of them actually have ghosts is another matter entirely.

According to HauntBound's state-by-state index, Maryland has 87 documented locations associated with paranormal activity.

HauntBound's No. 1 location is Druid Ridge Cemetery, located at 7900 Park Heights Ave. in Pikesville. An 1896 Baltimore County cemetery, it was once home to Black Aggie, the bootleg statue whose legend outlived its 1967 removal.

"Black Aggie accumulated a dense body of legend during her four decades at Druid Ridge. The most common dares held that her eyes turned red at midnight, that a pregnant woman who walked past would miscarry and that anyone who sat on her lap after dark would be dead within two weeks. A separate strand of the legend claimed that grass would not grow within the reach of her shadow, and that the spirits of everyone buried nearby convened around her once a year," according to HauntBound.

Another notable haunt is Old South Mountain Inn, a stone inn on the National Road dating to 1732 that once served as headquarters for Confederate General D.H. Hill and is now a Maryland DNR visitor center where the ghost of 19th-century proprietress Madeleine Dahlgren is repeatedly reported on the upper floor. It reportedly is closed, according to HauntBound.

The haunt with the most history is The Horse You Came In On Saloon, located at 1626 Thames Street in Baltimore. The colonial-era tavern claims to be America's oldest bar, has been linked to Edgar Allan Poe's final 1849 hours, and was named the Food Network's Most Haunted Restaurant in Maryland.

"The most distinctive ritual at the bar is the closing-time tradition of leaving a glass of cognac — Poe's known favorite drink — on the bar for Edgar. Bartenders have reported finding the glass empty in the morning. The tradition is documented in National Trust for Historic Preservation coverage, Food Network features and Atlas Obscura," according to HauntBound.

The Dr. Samuel A. Mudd House Museum at 3725 Dr. Samuel Mudd Road in Waldorf is an 1830 farmhouse where President Abraham Lincoln's assassin stopped for treatment — and where Dr. Mudd's life unraveled overnight.

"The most often repeated claim involves the sense of a heavy presence in the front rooms — the area corresponding to where John Wilkes Booth's splint was fitted. Docents have reported that visitors occasionally describe a sudden cold draft on warm days and, in a handful of accounts, an uneasy feeling that someone is watching from the staircase landing," according to HauntBound.

Haunted, But Can You Visit?

The index covers 6,041 locations across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., including 5,718 classified as family-friendly and 1,983 listed as bookable.

Each location includes a family-suitability rating and information about whether visitors can tour the property, book an experience or spend the night. A place may have a terrific ghost story but be privately owned, closed to the public or otherwise off-limits to curious visitors.

HauntBound also identifies each state's oldest documented haunted site, the location with the most published accounts, a recommended haunted overnight stay, and a particularly family-friendly destination.