Restless spirits walk beside the murky waters of the Chesapeake Bay, linger among the fetid swamps and roam the manor halls. These are the tormented souls who refuse to leave the sites of their demise. From pitiless smugglers to reluctant brides, the ghostly figures of the Eastern Shore are at once terrifying and tragic. Mindie Burgoyne takes readers on a spine-tingling journey as she recounts the grisly events at the Cosden Murder Farm and the infamous legend of Patty Cannon. Tread the foggy lanes of Kent Manor Inn and linger among Revolutionary War dead to discover the otherworldly occupants of Maryland's most haunted shore. Mindie Burgoyne is a travel writer, blogger, author, tour operator and speaker. Her tour company includes Chesapeake Ghost Walks, which features ten regional tours on Maryland's Eastern Shore. She is the author of Haunted Eastern Shore: Ghostly Tales from East of the Chesapeake." Her articles and photographs have been featured in the Baltimore Sun, CBS News, Maryland Life Magazine and What's Up Eastern Shore, among others. Helen Chappell is a writer and columnist based on Maryland's Eastern Shore. She is the author of "The Oysterback Tales" and "Chesapeake Book of the Dead." Haunted Eastern Shore Ghostly Tales from East of the Chesapeake By Mindie Burgoyne The History Press Copyright © 2009 Mindie Burgoyne All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-59629-720-3 Contents Acknowledgements, Introduction, Holly Hall, Old Bohemia Church, Mitchell House, Cosden Murder Farm, White House Farm, St. Paul's Cemetery and the Ghost of Tallulah Bankhead, Kitty Knight House, Kent Manor Inn, Bloomingdale, The Tale of Wish Sheppard, The Murder of Sallie Dean, Athol — Child's Ghost in Henderson, Willson's Chance and the Ghost of Annie Belle Carter, The Lost City of Dover, Whitemarsh Cemetery, The Wilderness, The Tunis Mills Hanging Tree, Shoal Creek Manor, Suicide Bridge, Patty Cannon's Trail of Tears, Green Briar Swamp and Big Lizz, Tales from Down Below, The Ghost Light Road, The Cellar House, The Ghost of the Snow Hill Inn, Ananias Crockett's House, Holland's Island — A Ghost Island, Afterword: Living in the Vance Miles House, Selected Bibliography, About the Author, CHAPTER 1 HOLLY HALL Elkton, Cecil County The northernmost county on the Eastern Shore is also the only one joined to Maryland's mainland. Cecil County has high ground, rolling hills and endless agricultural land clipped and cut by tidal water. Elkton, formerly known as Head of Elk, is the central town. Holly Hall figures prominently in its history. James Sewell, the builder of Holly Hall, was the descendant of Charles Calvert, Third Lord Baltimore. Sewell's wife, Anne Marie Rudulph, inherited land near Elkton from her father. It was on some of this farmland that the Sewells built Holly Hall about 1810. Shortly after, the town of Elkton sprang up, and James Sewell became a prominent member of both the local community and the American colonies. He served as brigadier major of the Maryland Militia from 1805 to 1841 and commanded the Second Battalion at Fort Defiance in 1813, preventing the British from reaching Elkton. Additionally, he served as clerk of the court in Elkton and was one of the founders of the Trinity Episcopal Church (1832). We know that Mr. James Sewell was a member of the Whig party and that he entertained many visitors at Holly Hall, some of whom were quite prominent in political circles. Holly Hall became a symbol of the elite class in the Upper Shore region. It was considered a mansion in its day, designed in the Federal style with many extras and set amid beautifully landscaped gardens dotted with holly trees. It was the holly trees that compelled the owners to call the estate Holly Hall. Some of those holly trees and some of the old boxwoods still stand today in the shadow of the now vacant and derelict Holly Hall. Everyone with whom I spoke in Elkton who knew about Holly Hall knew that it was haunted. The stories vary, but most refer to Mr. Sewell rejecting his son because of political differences and that same son cursing his father and the house with his dying breath. James Sewell built a brick burial vault into a slope west of Holly Hall some years after the house was finished. It had an iron door and a stone inscribed with "James A. Sewell's Family Vault — 1838." Mr. Sewell died in 1842. The following is an account of the haunting of Holly Hall as told by Mrs. Ralph Gray Davis to a Salisbury University folklore student on March 13, 1974: In Elkton, the quiet little capital of Cecil County, there's an old family residence, now unattended ... called Holly Hall, once the home of several of the most prominent families of the country but now fast ... fast falling into decay. Now this was in a Baltimore newspaper dated 1894, so that's 79 years ago. The old house which still retains evidence of former grandeur, a stately appearance, is the subject of a peculiar su