The Wayside Inn

The Wayside Inn in Ellicott City is a 1780s granite farmhouse where candles glow in every window at night and guests keep encountering the same unidentified female ghost: footsteps in empty rooms, doors opening by themselves, a white dress in peripheral vision, and a trace of perfume in the hallway.

Every window at the Wayside Inn in Ellicott City glows with candlelight at night. The popular story is that a mother lit a candle when her son left to fight in the Civil War and vowed to keep it burning until he came home. He died. She kept lighting it. The actual explanation is less heartbreaking: the Hartkopfs, who bought the place in 1963, revived an old English tradition of putting candles in every window to signal that a public house had rooms available. It was an early vacancy sign. But the Civil War version is the one people remember, and the candles do give the granite farmhouse an eerie glow after dark.

The building at 4344 Columbia Road was constructed around 1780 as a farmhouse on a tobacco plantation. The architecture follows the Pennsylvania Quaker/German building tradition, using the locally abundant granite that defines Ellicott City's older structures. The design resembles homes found in Lancaster and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which makes sense given the Quaker roots of the Ellicott family who founded the town. The property sits near the Old Columbia Turnpike, an early route linking Ellicott's Lower Mills (the original name for Ellicott City) south to Georgetown in Washington, D.C.

George Washington's name appeared on a nearby tavern ledger, and John Quincy Adams also visited the area. Whether either actually stayed in this specific building is debated, but the inn has been hosting travelers in some form since the Revolutionary War era.

The Hartkopfs gave the property its first historical designation. After them, it passed to the Gerards in 1976, then the Osantowskis in 1980 (who renovated the third floor and opened the building as a bed and breakfast), and finally to Susan and David Balderson, who bought it in 1998 and reopened it in 1999 as the inn it is today.

The ghost is female, and she's been here long enough that multiple generations of guests describe the same things. Footsteps in empty rooms. Doors opening by themselves. A white dress caught in peripheral vision that disappears when you turn your head. And perfume, a soft floral scent that drifts through the hallways when no one else is on the floor.

Nobody has identified her. She's not aggressive, not dramatic. She walks the halls, opens doors, and leaves a trace of perfume behind. Some guests assume she's connected to the Civil War (the candle story bleeds into everything here), but there's no documented death or tragedy tied to the building that would explain her. The inn just has a woman who walks around at night, and nobody knows who she is or what she wants.

Ellicott City itself is one of Maryland's most haunted towns, with ghost tours running regularly through the historic district. The Wayside Inn leans into it, hosting its own paranormal events and collecting guest accounts. They've accumulated enough stories for two separate tour programs. But the female ghost predates all of that. She was here before the Baldersons, before the Osantowskis, before the Hartkopfs. She might have been here before the candles.