Ghosthunting Maryland

Michael J. Varhola is a freelance author, editor, and lecturer who specializes in nonfiction and travel-related subjects and runs game manufacturing company Skirmisher Publishing LLC. He has a lifelong interest in the paranormal and has conducted investigations worldwide, including sites throughout Europe and the United States. His other books include Ghosthunting Virginia, Everyday Life During the Civil War, Shipwrecks and Lost Treasures: Great Lakes, and Fire and Ice: The Korean War, 1950-1953. He studied in Denver and Paris before earning a degree in journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park. He currently resides in Spring Branch, Texas.Michael H. Varhola is a professional counterintelligence officer and a longtime resident of the state of Maryland. His lifelong dream has been to be a professional writer, and he plans to begin writing full-time after retiring in 2010. In the meantime, he has been contributing short pieces to his son's books. These include chapters in Shipwrecks and Lost Treasures: Great Lakes and Ghosthunting Virginia, as well at this current work. In his spare time, he is also working on a novel, which is set in the Ottawa River Valley in 1634 during the fur wars.

EXCERPTS SOUTHERN Maryland Peddler's Rock (Port Tobacco): A spectral dog is said to guard this boulder where a peddler was robbed and murdered more than 200 years ago, and its forlorn howling can sometimes be heard near the lonely site. Point Lookout State Park/Point Lookout Lighthouse: The area was one of the two largest Civil War prison camps in the country and thousands of soldiers died there. Researchers have recorded 24 different ghostly voices in the now-abandoned Point Lookout Lighthouse, and mortals have reported cold spots, odd smells, unexplainable footsteps and strange apparitions there. Saint Mary's Historical Society (Leonardtown): One winter in the late 1700s, a suspected witch froze to death beside a seaside boulder in this town after her hut was burned by townsfolk. The rock was later moved to a spot in front of the Saint Mary's Historical Society building, where visitors claim they can feel the malign presence of the witch -- who is still blamed for maladies that occur in the town. Samuel Mudd House (Bryantown): Dr. Samuel Mudd was yet another one of the people imprisoned by the government on the weakly-substantiated suspicion of being involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. His embittered ghost is believed to still dwell within the farmhouse where he and his family lived during the Civil War, and where he died 14 years after President Andrew Johnson pardoned him in 1869.

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