More New Windsor history

While doing some research of paranormal activity on Google, I came across more history from the Weird in Maryland blog from this post.

I live in New Windsor, MD, which is a typical small, Carroll County town that was a far busier place 100 years ago. There are a handful of small businesses along Main Street, but generally it's mostly a residential area now. We do however now have a small museum, located in one of the oldest houses in town, and rumor has it, we have a few ghosts. Back in the fall of 2006, just before the museum opened to the public, the local history group, the New Windsor Heritage Committee, invited a paranormal investigator to speak with the group. She was from the Gettysburg area and had spend some time a few days taking pictures in the old graveyard right behind the museum.

She told us during the meeting that she had detected a young girl's spirit in the upstairs, and had felt several other presences as well. And the photos she showed us from her trip to the graveyard were jam-packed with orbs.

If any house in town deserves to be haunted though, it's probably the Bloom House down by the railroad tracks, built in the late 1800's. Adam Bloom and his young family moved in to the house in 1890 and he opened a creamery nearby, which was, apparently, quite successful. His oldest daughters attended private school in town and life proceeded on an even keel. But several years later, Adam grew more and more despondent and his daughter Estelle later claimed that he had been heavily influenced by a traveling missionary who convinced him of his own sinful nature. Whatever the reasons, on May 20, 1898, Adam shot himself in his workshop and took quite a few hours to finally die of his wounds, no doubt in a great deal of pain. Local historian, R. Bryce Workman, has written a small book, available at the New Windsor Museum, detailing the life of Estelle (Stella) Bloom and her sister Marion, both of whom had become involved with very prominent writers during their lives, in and around our sleepy little town. At the end, though, Estelle died alone in the old family home, having suffered the ravages of both cancer and too much alcohol.

Also This Haunted Place has a blog entry about New Windsor history.

I was reading an article recently that mentioned that areas with high amounts of limestone may be more prone to paranormal activity. If so, perhaps that explains some of the more interesting features of the little town of New Windsor, Maryland. Apparently some of the purest limestone deposits on the East Coast reside below the surface surrounding this little town.

Near the center of the little town lies the old Presbyterian cemetery, final home to many of the earliest inhabitants of the area. In the south-western corner of the yard can be found the grave of noted physician Roberts Bartholow. Bartholow was born in 1831 in Carroll County and obtained his bachelor’s degree in Arts from New Windsor’s own Calvert College. He then went to the University of Maryland to pursue his medical studies. Having entered practice in 1852 and serving as a US Army Surgeon until 1864, he settled in Ohio on the staff of Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinatti. It was here in 1874 that he first met Mary Rafferty, a ‘feeble-minded’ young servant girl with an ulcerated cancer of the brain. After treating Rafferty unsuccessfully for about a month, Dr. Bartholow decided to try some experiments with electric stimulation of her brain, as he had already determined that her case was hopeless. The experiments went on over the course of several days -as Rafferty did not appear to be in pain with low intensities of current, Bartholow increased the charge until Rafferty ultimately entered a coma that lasted about 20 minutes. She died several days later and though her death was listed as being caused by the cancer, the scarring from Bartholow’s experiments no doubt hastened the end. Bartholow ’s techniques were censured heavily at the time, even in that time of little or no concept of patient consent, but had little long term effect on his career. He died in 1904 and was buried near his parents in New Windsor.

So much for the background story. Several years, the local heritage group invited a paranormal investigator to town. Armed with an array of equipment, she was able to determine that the old graveyard was quite an active place, including the spirits of several Confederate soldiers were were none too happy to be buried on top of each other at the eastern end of the graveyard. Her strongest impression, however, came as she drew near to Bartholow’s stone and noted an almost violent energy coming toward her. Apparently, he was telling here over and over again, “they didn’t understand, they just didn’t understand.”

I absolutely find it incredible that there is so much history in this town.