Chesapeake Ghosts – largest cluster of Heritage Walks in America.
Chesapeake Ghost Tours is the largest cluster of related heritage walks in America. All of the ghost tours are on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. And the tours build on each other, although they stand alone equally as well.
Towns featured in the walking tours in the Chesapeake Ghost Tour series are Cambridge, Easton, Crisfield, Denton, Snow Hill, Pocomoke City, Ocean City, Berlin, Princess Anne, St. Michaels, and Salisbury. The company also has 5 bus tour products, paranormal investigations, and Storytelling sessions. Over 200 ghost stories, tales of the dead, and paranormal experiences comprise the content of the stories on our tours.
Guests get a rich commentary on the First Nations people, Colonial and Civil War eras, and early 20th-century history of these amazing historic towns, plus a large dose of “mystery” that clings to each site on every tour. Sites featured include commercial buildings, hotels, private homes, parks, rivers, swamps, graveyards, and the Chesapeake Bay – and Atlantic Ocean.
Mindie Burgoyne, author of Haunted Eastern Shore: Ghostly Tales from East of the Chesapeake, and five other books on the region has crafted every ghost tour. Each walk has been carefully researched. When guests finish the tour, they’ll know the town and they’ll know its ghosts.
Towns featured include Cambridge, Easton, Crisfield, Denton, Snow Hill, Pocomoke City, Ocean City, Berlin, Princess Anne, St. Michaels, and Salisbury – all in Maryland. The company also offers 5 bus tour products, paranormal investigations, and Storytelling sessions.
“When I craft a tour, 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 a while. What differentiates one story from the next are the ghostly characters, the setting, and how people are experiencing the presence of those ghosts in this world.”
WE DON’T GO INSIDE
PLEASE NOTE: GUESTS AND GUIDES DO NOT GO INSIDE THE PROPERTIES ON GHOST WALKS. Stories of hauntings and unexplained events are shared while standing outside the property on ghost walks. Some properties are entered on bus tours and paranormal investigations.
GHOST WALKS RUN FROM MARCH THROUGH DECEMBER
There are walks nearly every weekend from March through December. During the winter months from the end of December, January, and February our weekly ghost tours are suspended and we do private tours and Storytelling sessions.
HOW THE GHOST STORIES ARE COLLECTED
Mindie Burgoyne collected her ghostly tales from various sources including local libraries, regional books, newspaper articles, the folklore collection at the Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture at Salisbury University, and personal interviews. After collecting the tales she researches the town’s history, then crafts a tour that tells a larger story than just the individual sites. All the tours include an evening walk through a graveyard – except for Ocean City. That town has no graveyards.
THE STORYTELLERS: Chesapeake Ghost Tours has a thorough training process for the storytellers who lead the tours. Each storyteller is trained and tested in Eastern Shore history as well as the folklore of that particular town. Five of the tour guides have attained certification as interpretive guides (CIG) through the National Association of Interpretation.
We recently attended the Berlin ghost walk and Mary was an exceptional guide! We were looking through some of the photos we snapped during our tour and I am curious to know if anyone has ever reported sightings of a person sitting in a chair or another person, possibly a baby, on the left side of the Calvin B. Taylor house. Either way we have a neat photo and fun memories!
Hi Ashley. Thanks for your nice words about Mary. We’ve had a lot of anomalies in photographs, and we’ve had guests experience full blown apparitions (mostly by psychic mediums) at the Tayor House. The staff at the Taylor House were very helpful in assisting us with gathering the history not only of the house but also of the town when I was writing the Berlin tour. The staff I spoke with had never experienced anything supernatural inside the house. But clearly the outside of the house, especially between the Healing Tree and the porch is a “thin place.”
I attended one of your ghost walks and itt was fantastic.
Thanks so much, Sheila. Which walk did you attend? Do you remember the guide’s name? We like to give them positive feedback when we get it. Glad you enjoyed your tour.
Mindie Burgoyne