Explore MD

“There were five of us from my family sitting around the dining-room table and, out of nowhere, a glass just shattered,” she recalls. “No one was touching it. No one had moved it. It just shattered.”

Drusedem isn’t sure what caused the glass to mysteriously break, but paranormal experts seem to be: They believe the Chestertown hotel is inhabited by at least one ghost.

A quaint bed-and-breakfast on the Eastern Shore, the Inn at Mitchell House was originally part of a working plantation that spanned 100 acres. The main house, now home to the inn, dates back to 1743.

According to local lore, during the War of 1812, British commander Peter Parker was wounded and taken to the Mitchell House, where he eventually died.

Historians, however, argue as to whether or not Parker actually came to the Mitchell House, and inn proprietor Tracy Stone had her doubts, as well—until an inexplicable incident changed her mind.

“I was standing in the front hall with a guest, and the woman asked, ‘Do you think Peter Parker haunts this house?’ Right then, the chandelier went out,” recalls Stone.

“It had never gone out before. There was no other explanation—no outage, no circuit break, no blown bulb. I simply flipped the light switch, and it went right back on.”

Stone has since concluded that Parker’s spirit is very likely present at the inn.

The Inn at Mitchell House is one of several supposedly haunted hotels throughout Maryland. Stories of spooky encounters abound, but when separating the real from the embellished, paranormal author Jeff Davis explains, “It comes down to the credibility of the people telling the stories.”

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Wes Burge, proprietor of Reynolds Tavern in Annapolis, is skeptical of the paranormal, but his disbelief has been challenged more than once.

The oldest tavern in the Free State’s capital, Reynolds Tavern originally was built in 1737. Ten years later, it opened as a drinking establishment where, historians say, some of our founding fathers, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, likely stopped by for a pint or two.

A perennial stop on most Annapolis ghost tours, the building has since gone through several incarnations—at one point, it was home to the Annapolis County Public Library—but reopened as an inn in 2003.

Some guests, though, seem to have arrived long before.

“I’ve worked here a long time,” says Burge. “I know that when strange things happen, it’s easy to just blame a ghost. I don’t usually believe the theories, but there are some things that have happened that I can’t explain away.”

His voice gets quieter as he tells the story of a woman who had a strange sighting there. She’d been married at the property the prior year and had returned for dinner with some friends. From her angle in the dining room, she could see a portion of the staircase in the hallway.

Burge recalls that, at one point, the woman asked him if the building had been here during the war.

“I told her that it was here during several wars,” he says. “She said that she had just seen a gentleman wearing a dark uniform and carrying a long sword come down the stairs, tip his hat, and continue down the stairs.” The woman never implied that she might have seen an actual living being.

“It was if she knew it was a ghost,” says Burge. “She wasn’t scared, she just said it very matter-of-factly.”

In most cases, Burge can attribute such strange happenings to an earthly cause, but often no one is really sure what, or who, is responsible.