With Halloween right around the corner, ShoreBread is gearing up for our favorite time of year… the holidays! But before we start stuffing our bellies with turkey and decking the halls (EEEKK!!!) we are celebrating Halloween Eastern Shore style with the ever-popular Chesapeake Ghost Walks.
Chesapeake Ghost Walks is the largest cluster of regional heritage walks in America, impressive right? Local author of Haunted Eastern Shore: Ghostly Tales from East of the Chesapeake Mindie Burgoyne has created over twelve ghost tours through favorite historic towns on Maryland’s Eastern Shore such as Cambridge, Easton, Crisfield, Denton, Snow Hill, Pocomoke City, Ocean City, Berlin, Marion Station, Princess Anne, St. Michaels and Salisbury. Each of the specific walks has been carefully researched and is tailored to the town’s haunted properties, spooky tales, and ghost sightings. Due to her undeniable success, the ghost walks are expanding into Oxford and Chincoteague.
Don’t believe in ghosts? Burgoyne collects her tales from a wide variety of sources, including local libraries, books, newspapers and the Nabb Research Center at Salisbury University. However, a large portion of the information is derived from personal interviews. After she carefully finds tales that she feels have some truth to them, she researches the town history and finally crafts a tour. All the tours include an evening walk through a graveyard (except for Ocean City because it doesn’t have one). The ghost walks run from March through the middle of November on the weekends and during the winter months they try to provide bus tours of the other areas they cannot cover by foot.
COST: Adults pay $15, kids are $9.
The guests are expected to walk about 1.5 miles on foot and most of the walks have at least 9 paranormal sites. The guides are expected to point out properties associated with ghosts, hauntings or tales of the dead. The Ocean City Ghost Walk is different than most of the other tours because of the atmosphere… according to Burgoyne, most of the spirits were there on vacation so they return to relax, enjoy loved ones and re-experience the memories they once made here. The sites in the tour include the Ocean City Life-Saving Museum, Tarry-A-While Guest House, the Henry Hotel, Atlantic Hotel, Shoreham Hotel, Trimper Amusements, the Plim Plaza and other properties from the Inlet to 4th Street.
One of the most popular ghost walks is the Berlin tour. Apparently, there are enchanting places everywhere you look, no surprise there! There are sources that say the Atlantic Hotel hosts a little girl that is still interacting with people in the guest rooms, there are night time sightings of three ghosts around Berlin’s Main Street believed to have hosted a flea market a long time ago, others have seen a lady in a long white dress standing by the Calvin B. Taylor Bank and an old soldier in uniform walking near Pitt Street. In addition, Berlin has other haunted sites like the Old Fish Shop, the Maryland Wine Bar and St. Paul’s Graveyard. Further up the Shore, the tours around Oxford and St. Michael’s focus on the old plantation homes on the water.
According to Burgoyne, all the walks are related and each town builds on the next. So if you’re looking for something different to do with your family, or hoping to get into the Halloween spirit, we suggest heading for a spooky night in one of your favorite Eastern Shore towns. We promise it will be a night you won’t soon forget!
