Westminster Hall and Burying Ground

Westminster Burying Ground was opened in 1786 by Baltimore’s First Presbyterian congregation on a site then outside the built-up town. Among its early burials were Revolutionary War and War of 1812 figures such as General Samuel Smith, a former senator and mayor, and James McHenry. In 1852 the congregation built its Gothic Revival church, now Westminster Hall, directly over part of the graveyard, setting the building on brick piers above many of the tombs. The space beneath became known as the Baltimore Catacombs.

Most visitors come for Edgar Allan Poe. The writer reached Baltimore on 28 September 1849, was found in distress at a tavern on 3 October by a printer named Joseph Walker, and died in a hospital on 7 October. The cause is still debated, and the death certificate listed “congestion of the brain”. Poe was buried at the old Presbyterian cemetery in an unmarked grave with perhaps ten mourners. In 1875, after schoolchildren raised money in a “Pennies for Poe” campaign, his remains were moved to a monument near the front of the grounds, beside his wife Virginia and his mother-in-law Maria Clemm; Walt Whitman attended the dedication. The church became part of the University of Maryland’s law school in 1977, and a preservation trust restored it in the 1980s.

The ghost stories grew up in the shadow of this history. Visitors have reported Poe’s figure near his gravesite, and some say it has been seen standing at the altar inside the hall. Other tales speak of General Smith, of a misty figure in white said to kneel at the grave of Lucia Watson Taylor, who died in 1816 at sixteen, and of the “Skull of Cambridge”, a legend of a murdered minister’s head that screamed until it was sealed in cement. The catacombs are described as the most haunted part. Nineteenth-century grave robbing, linked to students at the nearby medical school, forms a grim backdrop to some tales.

The people who run the tours treat the subject lightly. The law school coordinator who has led visitors through the burial ground for four decades answers the question about whether it is haunted with “Who knows?”, noting that ghost hunters and psychics have visited and each come away with a different story. Other claims, such as the story that the wrong body was moved in 1875, are Baltimore lore with little to support them. The graves are those of real people, and visitors should come by day, on a tour or during open hours.

Reports include a figure resembling Poe near his grave and inside the hall, a misty woman in white kneeling at a grave, shadowy shapes among the stones and disembodied sounds in the catacombs.

Poe’s monument at the front of the graveyard, the grave of Lucia Watson Taylor, the catacombs beneath the hall and the sanctuary of Westminster Hall.

The graveyard is a stop on Baltimore’s Poe pilgrimage, which includes an annual birthday celebration, and on commercial ghost tours. The Westminster Preservation Trust runs public tours on selected days.