Max's Taphouse

A Fells Point bar in a building that has been a brothel, boarding house, and chicken slaughterhouse since the 1800s. Staff see headless chickens in the basement, a former prostitute yells "Get out!" on the third floor, and police K-9 dogs once refused to go upstairs.

The K-9 dogs refused to go upstairs. Baltimore police brought them to Max's Taphouse after an alarm went off, and the dogs sat at the bottom of the stairs and would not move. Whatever triggered the alarm on the third floor, the dogs wanted no part of it.

Max's Taphouse sits at 737 South Broadway in Fells Point, a neighborhood that was Baltimore's waterfront red light district for roughly two centuries. By the late 1800s, Fells Point had 323 saloons and 113 houses of ill repute. Locals called the vice industries "The Three B's": bars, brothels, and boarding houses. The building at 737 South Broadway has been all three, plus a restaurant and a chicken slaughterhouse, since the 1800s. It also spent time as a disco called the Acropolis before the Furman family bought it in 1985.

Ron Furman opened Max's on Broadway in 1986 as a live music venue. Over 1,000 acts performed here before they got famous, including Dave Matthews, Smashing Pumpkins, Hootie and the Blowfish, and No Doubt. In 1994, Ron and his wife Gail pivoted to beer, renaming it Max's Taphouse.

The slaughterhouse past makes itself known in the basement. An employee went down to change a keg and came running back up. Breana Furman, whose parents have owned the place for forty years, tells it plainly: "He came up screaming, 'There are headless chickens in the basement,' and everyone was like, 'What are you talking about?'" Staff have seen them more than once. Spectral headless chickens wandering around near the kegs.

The third floor belongs to someone the staff call "The Lady of the Night," believed to be a former prostitute from the brothel era. She's territorial. Breana Furman says she "doesn't like you hanging out really late. People have definitely heard her yelling 'Get out!'" A woman in a white dress appears on the third floor, and nobody who works there wants to be alone up there.

Near the bar, a male ghost moves through walls and messes with the beer bottles. Witnesses see bottles floating, sliding across the counter, or flying across the room. Bathroom doors lock themselves from the inside when nobody is in the stall.

Fells Point survived the Great Fire of 1904 that destroyed much of Baltimore, so buildings from the 1700s and 1800s are still standing. Sailors from foreign ports mixed with immigrants and sex workers in a neighborhood built on shipbuilding (the famous Baltimore clipper ships were constructed here). The original structures survived. So did whatever lives inside them.

Max's now serves as the meeting point for Baltimore Ghost Tours, which depart from Broadway Square across the street. The tours cover Fells Point's other haunted spots, but the headless chickens in the basement remain the detail people remember. That and the police dogs who wouldn't climb the stairs.