Quick Answer: 8 Haunted Day Trips in Maryland

• Point Lookout State Park (Scotland, MD): a Civil War prison camp where roughly 3,000 men died, and a lighthouse called one of the most haunted in America
• Antietam National Battlefield (Sharpsburg, MD): the single bloodiest day in American military history, still marked by Bloody Lane
• Fort McHenry (Baltimore, MD): the fort that inspired the national anthem, and a soldier still seen pacing its ramparts
• USS Constellation (Baltimore, MD): a haunted warship with a ghost story that technically belongs to a different, older ship
• Lord Baltimore Hotel (Baltimore, MD): a downtown high-rise hotel with Depression-era tragedy behind its most famous, and most disputed, ghost story
• Historic Ellicott City (Ellicott City, MD): often called the most haunted town on the East Coast, with official ghost tours to prove it
• Havre de Grace (Havre de Grace, MD): a lighthouse ghost first reported in an 1889 newspaper, minutes from the Delaware line
• Chestertown (Chestertown, MD): a colonial river town where a Hollywood actress’s ghost still draws visitors to her grave

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Point Lookout State Park

A Civil War prison camp built for 10,000 men swelled to 20,000, and thousands never left.

Sitting at the southern tip of Maryland’s western shore, where the Potomac River meets the Chesapeake Bay, Point Lookout served as a Union hospital early in the Civil War before becoming one of the largest Confederate prisoner-of-war camps in the country. The tent-city prison pen was originally built to hold 10,000 men and swelled to 20,000 within a year; roughly 3,000 to 4,000 prisoners died there from disease, exposure, and malnutrition before the war ended. The lighthouse, built in 1830 by John Donahoo and among the oldest of its type in the country, is frequently called one of the most haunted lighthouses in America, with two centuries of park staff, lighthouse tenants, and visitors reporting a man in ragged Civil War-era clothing near the grounds, and a woman’s apparition asking passersby to help her find her grave. The park’s reputation is well known enough locally that police report an uptick in break-ins and vandalism around the site every Halloween.

Civil War POW campLighthouse built 1830~3,000-4,000 prisoner deaths

Plan your visitDay-use admission is inexpensive and the park includes a Civil War museum, fishing pier, and 143 wooded campsites if you want to stay overnight. Seasonal guided ghost walks run throughout the year; check the park’s official calendar for current dates.

Antietam National Battlefield

The single bloodiest day in American military history happened here, and the road where it happened still carries the name.

On September 17, 1862, roughly 87,000 Union troops faced 45,000 Confederates along Antietam Creek in what remains the deadliest single day in American military history, with the National Park Service’s official count standing at 22,720 casualties over about twelve hours. The fighting concentrated around three sites still marked today: Miller’s Cornfield, the Sunken Road, and Burnside Bridge. The Sunken Road, nicknamed Bloody Lane after the battle, is the most consistently reported haunted spot on the grounds, with visitors describing vanishing apparitions of Confederate soldiers and a heavy, oppressive silence even on crowded days. Others report spectral orbs and distant chanting near Burnside Bridge and the battlefield’s observation tower.

Sept 17, 186222,720 casualties (NPS figure)Free, public NPS land

Plan your visitThe battlefield itself is free; a small fee applies for the visitor center and film. Self-guided driving tours cover all the major sites, including Bloody Lane and Burnside Bridge, and licensed local guides run separate paid ghost tours after dark.

Fort McHenry

The fort that inspired the national anthem has its own long-standing ghost stories, even if the National Park Service won’t officially confirm them.

Fort McHenry successfully defended Baltimore Harbor from a 25-hour British bombardment in September 1814, an attack Francis Scott Key witnessed and turned into “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Only four Americans died during that battle, but the fort’s later use tells a heavier story: its lower chambers served as a Civil War-era military prison where several prisoners were executed, and during the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu epidemic the fort operated as a hospital where patients and the nurses who treated them both died. Reported hauntings include Lieutenant Levi Claggett, killed by a mortar strike during the 1814 battle and still seen standing watch at his post, and Private John Drew, who was caught sleeping on duty, court-martialed, and later took his own life in the fort’s jail; visitors report seeing him pacing the same cell. The National Park Service takes an official neutral stance, neither confirming nor promoting the fort’s haunted reputation, even as the stories persist among staff and visitors.

Built 1798Birthplace of the national anthemNPS takes no official stance

Plan your visitIn Locust Point, a short drive or water taxi from the Inner Harbor. Standard daytime admission and hours apply; paranormal investigators need a special permit from park management, since the site is managed first as a history lesson, not a haunted attraction.

USS Constellation

Baltimore’s most famous ghost story on this ship actually belongs to a different ship entirely, and the confusion took historians over a century to sort out.

Permanently docked at the Inner Harbor’s Pier 1, this sloop-of-war was completed in 1854 and served from the Civil War through World War II. Its best-known legend involves a sailor named Neil Harvey, tried and executed by cannon for cowardice during an 1799 naval battle, whose ghost is said to still walk the decks. There’s a real historical wrinkle here: that 1799 battle involved an earlier frigate also named Constellation, built in 1797, and for most of the 20th century the two ships were widely believed to be the same vessel. Extensive research in the 1990s determined they’re actually two separate ships that happened to share a name and a similar service record, which means the Neil Harvey story predates the ship currently docked in Baltimore by more than 50 years. That hasn’t stopped the reports: staff and visitors have described disembodied voices, apparitions on the orlop deck, and a figure in an old Navy uniform believed to be Captain Thomas Truxtun.

Built 1854Docked at Inner Harbor Pier 1Ghost story predates this ship

Plan your visitStandard daytime tours run year-round for a small fee. A seasonal Halloween haunted attraction runs on board in October, separate from the daytime historical tour.

Lord Baltimore Hotel

A young girl’s ghost is Baltimore’s most-told hotel story. Ask three different sources who she was and you’ll get three different answers.

Opened in 1928, this 22-story French Renaissance high-rise on the National Register of Historic Places was, for decades, the largest hotel in Maryland, and it has a documented, dark chapter tied to the 1929 stock market crash: multiple accounts describe guests jumping to their deaths from the building during the Great Depression. Where the story gets genuinely tangled is the hotel’s signature ghost, usually called a young girl in a cream dress carrying a red ball, seen and heard most often on the 19th floor. Different, well-circulated versions of her story disagree on basic facts: some accounts describe a single child who died by suicide alone, others describe a family murder-suicide off the roof after the 1929 crash with the child included, and at least one detailed retelling names her “Molly Harrison,” a 23-year-old bride jilted at the altar in 1934, not a child at all. No single version is clearly the documented original, which is worth knowing going in. What’s more consistently reported, regardless of which backstory you hear, is guests and staff describing the elevator traveling unprompted to the 19th floor, being touched by unseen hands, and hearing a child crying in empty hallways.

Opened 1928National Register listedGhost story has multiple, conflicting versions

Plan your visitA working downtown hotel; you can simply book a room, no special package required. Occasional guided ghost tours led by outside paranormal investigators run periodically; check local listings, since the hotel itself doesn’t run its own haunted programming.

Historic Ellicott City

Locals and ghost tour operators alike routinely call this the most haunted town on the East Coast, and the county tourism board leans right into it.

Founded in 1772 by Quaker brothers Joseph, Andrew, and John Ellicott as a milling town, this granite-built National Historic Landmark district has racked up over 250 years of tragedy, fires, and repeated catastrophic flooding, which locals half-jokingly credit for its outsized haunted reputation. Howard County’s own tourism office runs official “Ye Haunted History of Olde Ellicott City” walking tours through the historic district, stopping at sites like the former firehouse, now home to The Wine Bin, where former fire chief Benjamin Harrison Shipley Sr. is said to still make his presence known, and the Patapsco Female Institute ruins, where apparitions of schoolgirls in white gowns have been reported for decades. A short drive away, the Historic Savage Mill complex, a working textile mill dating to 1822 that once employed child laborers, is separately known for reports of child spirits still seen playing among its buildings.

Founded 1772County-run ghost toursNational Historic Landmark district

Plan your visitOfficial ghost tours run April through November, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:30pm, starting at the Howard County Visitor Center at 8267 Main Street; reservations recommended, especially in October. The historic district is also full of shops, antique stores, and restaurants worth a daytime visit on its own.

Havre de Grace

A lighthouse ghost first reported in an 1889 newspaper, and Al Capone himself reportedly passed through town during Prohibition.

Sitting where the Susquehanna River meets the Chesapeake Bay, at the northern tip of Maryland and only about 40 minutes from Wilmington, Delaware, Havre de Grace pairs small-town charm with an unusually well-documented ghost story. Concord Point Lighthouse, Maryland’s second oldest, was built in 1827, and the first written account of anything unusual there dates all the way back to a February 1889 newspaper article, in which the lighthouse keeper described a glowing-eyed figure staring through the lantern room glass, accompanied by a strong floral scent rather than the usual smell of lamp oil. Locals and visitors since have reported a slow-moving shadow in the tower’s upper windows and a dark presence near the memorial cannon at its base; a 1994 murder victim was also found on the lighthouse grounds, adding a more recent, real tragedy to the site’s history. Beyond the lighthouse, the town’s Roaring Twenties-era Chesapeake Hotel, once a horse-racing and gambling hot spot that reportedly drew Al Capone, and the Bahoukas Antique Mall, the subject of multiple paranormal investigations, both feature on the town’s official ghost tours.

See also

Lighthouse built 1827First reported 1889~40 min from Wilmington, DE

Plan your visitConcord Point Lighthouse is open to the public on select days and hosts a seasonal nighttime Haunted Lighthouse Tour, with proceeds benefiting the Friends of Concord Point Lighthouse. Havre de Haunts runs general walking ghost tours of the Main Street district on weekends in October and by request the rest of the year.

Historic Chestertown

A Hollywood actress is buried here, and visitors still leave vodka bottles on her grave hoping to hear her voice.

This colonial river town on the Eastern Shore’s Chester River has a full slate of ghost lore that the local historical society leans into with seasonal, guided Historic Chestertown Ghost Walks. The best-known stop is St. Paul’s Cemetery, a graveyard dating to the 1700s on the grounds of one of the oldest churches on the East Coast, where actress Tallulah Bankhead is buried; visitors have long claimed that pressing an ear to her grave slab lets you hear her voice, and mysterious tokens, beads, and empty liquor bottles regularly appear on the stone. The cemetery also holds Revolutionary War figure Tench Tilghman, whose lantern is said to still be seen crossing the nearby bridge at night, along with Union and Confederate soldiers connected to the nearby Battle of Caulk’s Field. A short drive outside town, the 1721 White House Farm carries its own well-documented legend of a young woman thrown from her horse while eloping, with a bloodstain locals say has never fully washed off the rock where she died.

St. Paul’s Cemetery, 1700sTallulah Bankhead’s graveSeasonal ghost walks

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