Governor Calvert House

The Governor Calvert House in Annapolis has a glass floor over North America's oldest known hypocaust, and guests keep seeing faces in it that don't belong to anyone in the room. The hotel's resident ghost Dominic knows he's dead but stays on purpose to watch guests undress, while Room 3202 has given multiple visitors simultaneous nightmares involving demonic creatures.

The sitting room at the Governor Calvert House has a glass floor, and the faces looking back at you through it aren't always your own.

The glass panels were installed to showcase an ancient hypocaust, a Roman-style underground heating system of brick channels connecting to a fireplace, discovered during archaeological excavations by the University of Maryland and Historic Annapolis Foundation between 1982 and 1984. Scholars believe Captain Charles Calvert, Maryland's 14th Proprietary Governor, maintained an orangery here (an opulent greenhouse for cultivating citrus fruits that displayed wealth and power). The hypocaust is believed to be the oldest example in North America. But visitors sitting in the room above it report something else entirely: unfamiliar faces appearing in the glass, reflections of people who aren't in the room, entities that seem to be roaming below or trapped within the glass itself.

Charles Calvert occupied the house at 58 State Circle from 1720 to 1727. He'd converted to Anglicanism to help restore his family's control of Maryland after Protestant-Catholic conflicts caused the Crown to seize the colony. His cousin Benedict Leonard Calvert replaced him as governor in 1727, forcing Charles out in a contentious transfer of power. Benedict was described as troubled and a heavy drinker who "takes more physik than anyone I ever knew." He died of tuberculosis in 1732 at age 31, aboard the family ship while sailing back to England. Charles died in 1734 with early senility. Guests still see figures in 18th-century clothing walking the hallways, possibly the Calverts themselves checking on whatever they valued enough to hide beneath those floors.

The building changed hands many times over the centuries: a mercantile firm in 1766, state barracks in 1784, a printing press office in 1843, the mayor's residence in the 1850s, apartments in the early 1900s. Paul Pearson converted it into a boutique hotel in the 1970s. During 1980s renovations, so much strange activity occurred that a paranormal investigation team was brought in. Their equipment hit the highest readings possible, confirming what staff already suspected.

Then there's Dominic. He's the ghost the staff talk about most, and he's not the romantic kind. A medium who communicated with Dominic learned that he's fully aware he's dead. He just doesn't care. Dominic deliberately stays at the hotel because he enjoys watching guests undress from the shadows of the bedrooms. Accounts differ on his identity: either a disgruntled hotel employee who died in the 1940s, or a man who took his own life on the property. Everyone agrees on the personality. He is devilish and perverted, taking full advantage of his situation.

A woman from the 1940s, rumored to have died by suicide, wanders the hallways after dark. Strange sounds come from behind the sealed latch key door to the attic, and nobody can explain what's making them. TVs turn on and off at night so frequently that the front desk clerk confirms it as a regular occurrence. One guest had it happen three times in a row until they finally shouted "OK, you have our attention now," and it stopped immediately.

Room 3202 is where things get dark. A couple staying during the COVID pandemic reported a terrible night. The husband kept smelling a strange oily, burnt odor that his wife couldn't detect. Both had vivid, simultaneous nightmares: one involving a graphic murder, the other featuring a creature that was mostly human but with animal features. The husband moaned in severe pain and shouted angrily in his sleep, completely out of character. They woke repeatedly sensing something watching them, and described one of the worst nights of their lives despite the comfortable bed. Other guests in that room have reported waking up in agony, as if something was physically hurting them while they slept.

If Dominic sounds like a reason to avoid the Governor Calvert House, consider that the building is one of three that make up the Historic Inns of Annapolis, and it's been operating as a hotel for over fifty years. The ghosts are clearly part of the package. Whether you get the peeping Dominic or the thing in Room 3202 is more or less a coin flip.