Mt. Ida

Miss Ida Tyson managed this Ellicott City mansion into her nineties, carrying a ring of keys to check every room despite going deaf and needing a cane. She died in 1925, and staff and visitors still hear the distinctive jingling of her keys moving through the hallways.

Miss Ida Tyson went deaf and needed a cane to walk, but she carried a big ring of keys with her everywhere she went. Every room, every closet, every door in the mansion got checked. Staff at Mt. Ida still hear those keys jingling through the hallways, and Miss Ida has been dead since 1925.

The mansion was built between 1828 and 1836 for William Ellicott, grandson of Andrew Ellicott, one of the founders of Ellicott Mills (now Ellicott City). Charles Timanus constructed it. He also built the neighboring Patapsco Female Institute and the Howard County Courthouse. The architect may have been Robert Cary Long Jr. of Baltimore. The house is yellow stucco over rubble stone, Greek Revival blended with Quaker simplicity. A large center hall runs front to back, with a double parlor, original ceiling medallions, and elaborate plaster cornices.

William Ellicott died in 1836 at just forty-three, before the house was finished. The property passed through other hands until Judge John Snowden Tyson and his wife Rachel P. Snowden bought it in the 1850s. During the Civil War, the mansion served as a hospital for wounded soldiers. It later housed the Howard County Times newspaper offices and functioned as a temporary Town Hall during courthouse renovations.

The Tysons filled the house with life, then watched it empty out. Judge Tyson died in 1864. Rachel followed in 1889. Their only son John, an attorney, drowned in a boating accident in 1890. That left three sisters alone in a house built for a much larger family. Cornelia died in 1893. Anna died in 1895. Miss Ida was the last one standing.

She managed the estate into her nineties. By the end, she used an ear horn to hear and a cane to move from room to room. But the keys stayed with her. Ida loved the old house, and the house, by all accounts, loved her back. When she died in 1925, the place was named Mt. Ida in her honor.

The ghost stories started almost immediately. The key sounds come through clearest on the main staircase and in the hallways connecting the front and back rooms. Workers in the building hear the distinctive metal-on-metal clinking that a heavy keyring makes when someone walks. It moves through the house the way Ida used to, room by room, as if she's still doing her rounds.

In November 2019, a visitor on Ellicott City's ghost tour photographed the mansion and claimed to see Miss Ida's figure in the right window by the doorway. Visual sightings are rare; the keys are the main event. A Hallowread conference in 2014 featured a public paranormal investigation at the mansion that attracted both ghost hunters and curious locals.

Ghost hunters have a theory about why Ellicott City is so active. The town sits on massive granite deposits, and some researchers believe granite conducts and stores spiritual energy, creating pockets where spirits can manifest more easily. Mt. Ida sits right on top of that granite.

Locals describe Miss Ida as a benevolent presence. She doesn't scare people or throw objects or slam doors. She checks the rooms. People who've encountered her presence say it feels protective, like someone making sure the house is in order. The last Tyson standing, still doing her rounds a century later.

Mt. Ida now operates as The Inn at Mt. Ida, opened in 2023 after extensive restoration by new owners who purchased the property in 2019. Guests who spend the night sometimes hear the keys before they fall asleep.