This spellbinding book exposes some of Baltimore, Maryland's unknown histories and uncovers 37 hauntings along the water. From the ghost of a drowned boy in Canton to famous ghosts of Fort McHenry, these tantalizing stories pay homage to the more "spirited" residents of the Canton, Fell's Point, Inner Harbor, Federal Hill and Locust Point neighborhoods.

Vengeful ghosts, sea monsters, and America's most haunted lighthouse figure prominently in this collection of eerie in tales from the Old Line State. From the rugged Appalachian Mountains, to the metropolitan center of Baltimore, to the Atlantic Coast come a variety of stories and legends, including Dorchester County’s Suicide Bridge, Fort McHenry’s gruesome hanging ghosts, and a sea captain’s widow whose sad wailing can still be heard coming from her final resting place in the family graveyard.

All the sites in the book have been chosen with an eye toward several criteria, including how accessible they are to the public, how evocative experience a trip to them is likely to produce, and the extent to which they actually appear to be haunted. A great many in the various regions of Maryland have some connection to the Colonial era, the War of 1812, or the Civil War, all significant aspects of the state's haunted history. Maryland is divided into six regions for purposes of this book: Baltimore, Central, D.C. Metro, Eastern Shore, Southern, and Western. Geographically speaking, Maryland is not a large state. It is, however, among the oldest in the country, and has a rich, varied, and turbulent history that has contributed to an exceptionally high number of haunted sites. Because it is relatively compact, Maryland is in many ways an ideal state for a haunted roadtrip -- especially in an era of historically high gasoline prices -- and many haunted sites within the same area can easily be reached on a single weekend-long trip. Indeed, although my own home is currently in Northern Virginia, on the southern side of the Potomac River from Maryland, its furthest point from me is still somewhat less than 300 miles -- as opposed to nearly 500 for some of the most distant points in southwestern Virginia. Note that this outline includes more listings than there will be room for in the book, and that a number of these will either be cut, reduced to sidebars within larger chapters, or listed in the appendix of additional haunted sites. As with Ghosthunting Virginia, research revealed early on a striking number of sites reputed by various sources to be haunted. With space in this volume for only a limited number of these, the authors carefully attempted to identify a representative selection that both emphasized variety and a struck a balance between "must include" sites -- such as the graveyard where Edgar Allan Poe is buried -- and more obscure ones that do not appear in any other books.

PHANTOM FELINES and Other Ghostly Animals Humans aren’t the only creatures whose disembodied spirits can remain earthbound after death. For centuries, ghostly animal apparitions have returned from beyond the grave to warn of danger, comfort a bereaved owner—even to seek revenge against those who have mistreated them. Phantom Felines and Other Ghostly Animals features the best true stories from all over the world, presenting a faithful picture of the many animal spirits that still walk among the living. Featuring cats, dogs, horses, birds, and a menagerie of wild animals, the authentic tales in this unusual book will give you a glimpse into a world that is much closer than you ever realized.

Winner of the 2015 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical! Follow the footsteps of the father of American horror fiction. Edgar Allan Poe was an oddity: his life, literature, and legacy are all, well, odd. In Poe-Land, J. W. Ocker explores the physical aspects of Poe’s legacy across the East Coast and beyond, touring Poe’s homes, examining artifacts from his life—locks of his hair, pieces of his coffin, original manuscripts, his boyhood bed—and visiting the many memorials dedicated to him. Along the way, Ocker meets people from a range of backgrounds and professions—actors, museum managers, collectors, historians—who have dedicated some part of their lives to Poe and his legacy. Poe-Land is a unique travelogue of the afterlife of the poet who invented detective fiction, advanced the emerging genre of science fiction, and elevated the horror genre with a mastery over the macabre that is arguably still unrivaled today.

Collects excerpts from the personal travel journal sketchbooks of forty-three artists, illustrators, and designers.

A vivid social history of Baltimore's prostitution trade and its evolution throughout the nineteenth century, Bawdy City centers woman in a story of the relationship between sexuality, capitalism, and law. Beginning in the colonial period, prostitution was little more than a subsistence trade. However, by the 1840s, urban growth and changing patterns of household labor ushered in a booming brothel industry. The women who oversaw and labored within these brothels were economic agents surviving and thriving in an urban world hostile to their presence. With the rise of urban leisure industries and policing practices that spelled the end of sex establishments, the industry survived for only a few decades. Yet, even within this brief period, brothels and their residents altered the geographies, economy, and policies of Baltimore in profound ways. Hemphill's critical narrative of gender and labor shows how sexual commerce and debates over its regulation shaped an American city.