Kemp House Inn

A blue ball of light races up the staircase at this 1805 Georgian inn in St. Michaels and slams doors in its wake. Staff believe the ghost of Robert E. Lee (who allegedly stayed two nights during the Civil War) stands at a second-floor window in full uniform, looking so solid that people mistake him for a living person before he vanishes.

A blue ball of light races up the staircase of the Kemp House Inn, and every time it reaches the top, a door slams shut. Staff have watched it happen when the building was completely empty.

Colonel Joseph Kemp built this Georgian brick mansion around 1805 on a prominent lot along Talbot Street in St. Michaels. Kemp was a shipbuilder in a family of shipbuilders. His brother Thomas Kemp constructed some of the fastest Baltimore clipper privateers of the War of 1812, including the famous Chasseur. Joseph commanded the Saint Michaels Patriotic Blues, a company of infantry that defended the town during the Battle of St. Michaels in August 1813. That's the battle where citizens allegedly hung lanterns in treetops to fool British warships into overshooting the town. The Flemish and common bond brick house stayed in the Kemp family until the colonel's death around 1828.

The house eventually passed to Oliver Sparks, a Confederate sympathizer who occupied it with his wife during the Civil War. Local tradition holds that Sparks entertained General Robert E. Lee himself, with Lee spending two nights at Kemp House during a break from military campaigning. Whether that visit actually happened is debated by historians, but the ghost doesn't seem concerned with the historical record.

Staff and guests have seen a uniformed figure matching Lee's description standing at a second-floor window, gazing down at Talbot Street in full military dress. He looks so solid that people mistake him for a living person. Then he vanishes. Staff at both the Kemp House and the adjacent Old Brick Inn believe the figure is Lee, or at least whatever's left of him.

The arguing gentlemen are the other persistent mystery. A housekeeper heard two men's voices in heated discussion behind closed doors downstairs, their conversation intense enough to make out the cadence and emotion if not the words. She opened the door to an empty room. This has happened to multiple staff members over the years. The voices always stop the instant someone enters. Who they are and what they're arguing about is anyone's guess.

Items move on their own throughout the house. Things are found rearranged without explanation. The blue streak of light shooting up the staircase and slamming doors in its wake is the signature phenomenon, witnessed often enough that staff describe it matter-of-factly rather than with any alarm.

The Kemp House now operates as part of the Old Brick Inn complex, which includes the adjacent Wrightson Jones House and a Carriage House. The Wrightson Jones House has its own ghost: a former female owner who sticks to the third floor and has a particular habit of tormenting male guests who sleep in those upper rooms. What she does to them varies by the telling, but the complaints apparently come from men specifically.

The staff at the Old Brick Inn have grown accustomed to their spectral residents. They're happy to share the stories and will point you toward the rooms with the most activity, which is either very helpful or a mild warning depending on how you feel about sharing a room with Robert E. Lee and a sentient blue orb.