Fort McHenry

Visitors keep asking about "the reenactor" on Bastion Three at Fort McHenry, only to learn no actors were present. The 1814 battlefield, Civil War prison, and WWI hospital complex hosts at least five distinct ghosts, including a lieutenant killed during the bombardment that inspired the national anthem and an aggressive woman in white who once knocked an artist unconscious.

"He looks solid," says former Director of Visitor Services Warren Bielenberg about the figure on Bastion Three. "You don't realize he's a ghost until he walks through the wall."

Lieutenant Levi Clagett was a 34-year-old Baltimore merchant serving in the Maryland Militia on the night of September 13, 1814. He and Sergeant John Clemm were manning a cannon on Bastion Three when one of 1,500 British bombs scored a direct hit, killing both men instantly. A two-inch chunk of shrapnel tore through Clemm, "a young man of most amiable character, gentlemanly manners and real courage." Clagett was crushed beneath a broken cannon wheel. They were two of only four defenders killed during the 25-hour bombardment that inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Visitors still find Clagett at his post. People regularly approach the visitor center asking about "the reenactor" on Bastion Three, confused when staff tell them no actors were on the grounds. During preparations for President Gerald Ford's visit, Secret Service agents spotted a uniformed soldier walking the bastion where Clagett and Clemm died. Nobody was supposed to be there. Witnesses describe a military man in a uniform "only used briefly by Americans," and park staff say guests are "dumbfounded when told that there were no actors in costume on the grounds that day."

The fort's role as a Civil War prison earned it the nickname "The Baltimore Bastille." Nearly 7,000 Confederate prisoners were held in the casemates and cells. The detainees included Francis Scott Key's own grandson, Baltimore's mayor, police commissioners, newspaper editors, and 31 members of the Maryland legislature (arrested specifically to prevent them from voting on secession). Over 2,000 political prisoners sat here without trial. Thirty-three Confederate prisoners died at the fort, and at least three men were executed, including a Union soldier hanged for murder.

Private John Drew created the fort's saddest ghost in 1880. Drew fell asleep during guard duty, was arrested, and faced court-martial. A guard carelessly left a weapon within Drew's reach. Overcome with shame, Drew grabbed the gun and shot himself. A medical report from the era documented "the body and splatter of blood and brain matter on the wall of the cell." Since then, a dozen or more visitors have spotted a man in a soldier's cape pacing "endlessly back and forth" along the outer battery where he was caught sleeping. Between 1975 and 1977 alone, a park ranger and several employees' family members living on-site witnessed the figure shouldering a rifle and marching his eternal patrol. Visitors also report an icy chill within the cell where he died, and a warm spot on the wall if you run your hand along it.

Near the Orpheus statue honoring Francis Scott Key, a visitor once watched a uniformed figure float in mid-air. The location, it turns out, was the site of an 1862 execution: a young private convicted of killing a fellow soldier was hanged there, his feet dangling above the ground at exactly the height where the figure appeared.

The woman in white is the aggressive one. Staff believe she's the wife of a noncommissioned officer whose children died during an epidemic in the 1820s, and she takes her grief out on the living. An artist working inside the barracks was knocked unconscious by an invisible force. The sensation, he said, was like "being struck with a frying pan." A park ranger had a woman in period clothing try to push her down the stairs. Reenactors have spotted "the figure of a woman in a Victorian-era looking dress, looking out the window, and then she disappeared."

Psychic Dorothy Bathgate, brought in to investigate after hours with fort staff, proved surprisingly accurate. She identified locations where wounded soldiers had lain and where mortuaries had operated, all without prior knowledge. On Bastion Three, she described a bearded man among the wounded. Researchers later confirmed a Hasidic Jewish merchant had served there during the 1814 battle, permitted to keep his beard for religious reasons. His obituary corroborated Bathgate's description. "About 70 to 80 percent of the things she said were substantiated later," Bielenberg told the Baltimore Sun. After challenging John Drew's spirit, Bielenberg heard it himself: "I'll swear on this until the day I die that there came a tap like a fingernail at the window."

Park rangers still hear footsteps in empty corridors and find lights switched on after they've been shut off. The fort discontinued its Halloween candlelight tours because, as staff put it, "the supernatural was taking over." Management now requires paranormal investigators to file a "special use permit" to document evidence. Docents stay quiet about their experiences during the day but privately admit to things that "defy logical explanation." Veteran ranger Paul Plamann acknowledges the reports but has never seen anything himself, which might say more about the ghosts' taste in witnesses than about whether they're there.