Chesapeake Ghost Walk Series just in Time for Halloween
Author of Haunted Eastern Shore Leads 12 Walks on Delmarva
MARION STATION, MD (October 1, 2013) – The elusive Eastern Shore of Maryland is an amazing place to visit in October with such famous ghosts as Big Lizz, Wish Sheppard, William Aydelotte of the Snow Hill Inn and Patty Cannon. This month, Mindie Burgoyne, author of Haunted Eastern Shore: Ghostly Tales from East of the Chesapeake will lead ghost walks through 8 historic towns on the Shore as part of her Chesapeake Ghost Walk series. The eight walks in October will feature scary tales associated with over 60 sites in 5 counties. One of those sites is Burgoyne’s own haunted house – and on that tour, the guests are invited inside for a personal experience.
The October ghost walks include Denton, Easton, Cambridge, Pocomoke, Princess Anne, Marion Station, Snow Hill and Ocean City, (which is scheduled twice). With each tour guests traverse about 1.5 miles on foot while Burgoyne points out places along the way associated with hauntings. She’ll share the history of the place, who lived there, what strange thing occurred and what people say today about haunted activity. By the end of the tour each guest has gained a loose history of the town and many of its famous – or infamous residents which include doctors, farmers, artists, congressmen, governors, African slaves, merchants, sailors, sea captains, widows and children.
“When I craft each walk I try to do so in a way that tells the story of the whole town so that the characters I talk about are placed in a related setting” Burgoyne states. “All haunted stories begin to sound alike after awhile unless you differentiate one from the next by defining the ghostly characters in the context of their time and space – then link that defined character to how people are experiencing its presence in this world – in our time.”
Burgoyne collects her ghostly tales from various sources that include local libraries, regional books, newspaper articles, the folklore collection at the Nabb Research Center at Salisbury University and through personal interviews. After collecting the tales she researches the town history, and then crafts a tour that tells a larger story that connects the individual sites with the town identity. She’ll also mention stories of haunted places near the town that are too far out for the walking tour. In these cases she’ll often provides guests with a map so they can seek out the sites on their own after the tour. All the ghost walks (except Ocean City) include a night-time walk through a graveyard. Since Ocean City has no graveyard, Burgoyne recounts the tale of Captain’s Hill – the one lone marked grave in Ocean City.
When asked to identify her favorite tour of the dozen she’s crafted, Burgoyne stated “Definitely Ocean City. It was the most difficult to put together because it’s not an old town like the rest of the ones in the series. But it has a powerful haunted history – more than most would suspect” Burgoyne says. “Second would be my own hometown of Marion Station because my house is on the tour. The crazy occurrences there are what got me started writing about ghosts. Within a month after moving in we felt like we were living in Amityville.”
Berlin, Crisfield, St. Michaels and Salisbury ghost walks are scheduled for November and December. Guests pay $15 to attend a ghost walk ($9 for kids 8-12), and the Chesapeake Ghost Walk website suggests lodging accommodations and local sites of interest for those who want to travel in from out-of-town.
