The Delmarva Peninsula—a place where history isn’t just written in books, but is said to linger in the very air you breathe. For those intrigued by the intersection of verifiable history and spine-tingling folklore, this unique stretch of land, bordered by the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, offers a paranormal landscape as rich and diverse as its history.¹ From the restless spirits of Civil War soldiers to the misty forms of mythical creatures, the stories of the Delmarva are a living part of its cultural heritage.¹

This guide will take you on a self-guided tour of ten locations across the peninsula, each with a history that has given rise to its own collection of spooky legends. Grab your camera, keep your senses sharp, and prepare to explore the Delmarva’s more mysterious side.

1. Historic Easton, Maryland

• Address: Talbot County Courthouse, 11 N. Washington St, Easton, MD 21601 ²⁵
• Historical Significance: Known as the “eastern capital of Maryland,” Easton is the second-largest historic town on the Eastern Shore and the county seat of Talbot County.²⁷ The town’s historic landmarks, including the courthouse, old jail, and Avalon Theater, provide a backdrop for many of its legends.²⁷ Magazine Alley, a narrow pedestrian walkway, was once a street for vehicular traffic.²⁸
• Paranormal Activity: The Talbot County Courthouse is reportedly haunted by a ghost known as “The Colonel”.²⁷ The adjacent Old Easton Jail and Sheriff’s residence is said to have a lingering presence, with an apparition of a “lady in blue” seen by the elevator.²⁷ The Tidewater Inn is reportedly haunted by its first owner, Mr. A. Johnson Ghrymes, whose transparent figure has been seen by a bellman.²⁹ A worker at the inn has also heard unexplained laughter from the basement.²⁹ The Avalon Theater has two known ghosts, including an actress named Marguerite and another who reportedly plays with knives on the third floor.²⁷ Workers at the former Odd Fellows Hall have reported being touched by a ghost and have seen a spirit riding the elevator all night.²⁷

2. Pocomoke Forest (Cellar House Farm), Maryland

• Address: 2643 Cellar House Rd, Pocomoke, MD 21851 ³
• Historical Significance: Known as “Maryland’s most haunted forest,” the Pocomoke Forest is a swampy expanse of bald cypress trees that served as a hideout during the Civil War.⁵ The Cellar House Farm, located on the Pocomoke River, is a colonial-era home dating back to the 1700s.³
• Paranormal Activity: The forest is said to be home to witches, devil worshipers, and human spirits.⁵ The Cellar House is the setting for a tragic tale of a French sea captain who allegedly murdered his wife and child.⁵ Visitors have reported hearing the sounds of a baby crying and a man screaming on the river.⁵ Unseen forces have reportedly touched people, and strange, stationary white lights have been observed.⁵

3. Denton Courthouse Green, Maryland

• Address: 109 Market Street, Denton, MD 21629 ⁷
• Historical Significance: The Denton Courthouse Green was the documented site of two lynchings.⁹ This history of violence and trauma has become a central part of the town’s paranormal lore.⁹
• Paranormal Activity: The town’s accompanying jail is featured on local ghost tours as one of the most “actively haunted” sites on the Eastern Shore.⁹ Ghost tour guides often use the courthouse and jail as a backdrop for stories of past violence and the lingering spirits of those who suffered there.⁹

4. The Atlantic Hotel, Berlin, Maryland

• Address: 3 Church St, Berlin, MD 21811 (Tour Start Location) ¹¹
• Historical Significance: Berlin is a historic, scenic town with a palpable “weird energy”.⁹ The Atlantic Hotel was rebuilt after a fire in 1895 and is a central stop on the town’s ghost tour.¹¹
• Paranormal Activity: The hotel is considered a “spectral hotspot”.¹¹ Visitors to Room 16 on the top floor have reported hearing muffled arguing, the sound of something heavy being dragged, and the unsettling sound of a tricycle’s creaking wheels.¹¹

5. The Victoriana Inn, St. Michaels, Maryland

• Address: 205 Cherry St, St Michaels, MD 21663 ¹²
• Historical Significance: The Victoriana Inn is a charming bed and breakfast constructed in 1865.¹² The town of St. Michaels has a long history, with accounts of cruelty and murder being common during the 18th century.¹²
• Paranormal Activity: This bed and breakfast is said to house a “generous spirit” that is reluctant to check out.¹² Visitors have reported the presence of ghosts, including a young man who died in the inn and whose spirit is said to be locked there, forever awaiting a wake-up call.¹²

6. Wicomico County Courthouse, Salisbury, Maryland

• Address: 101 N Division St, Salisbury, MD 21801 ¹⁴
• Historical Significance: The courthouse is a key site in the city’s history, but it is also a place with a dark past. It has been the location of four murders.⁹
• Paranormal Activity: The courthouse is reportedly haunted by the “Phantom of Salisbury”.⁹ This spectral figure is part of a local ghost tour that also features two haunted firehouses.⁹

7. High Street, Cambridge, Maryland

• Address: 206 High St, Cambridge, MD 21613 ¹⁶
• Historical Significance: High Street is a historically significant thoroughfare and was the setting for James Michener’s famous novel, Chesapeake.⁹ The street has seen many years of history, with spirits from different eras said to walk its length.⁹
• Paranormal Activity: High Street is considered the “most haunted street in Maryland”.⁹ The numerous tales of paranormal occurrences have made it a popular location for guided ghost walks, which weave historical research with stories of the street’s spectral inhabitants.⁹

8. Snow Hill Inn, Snow Hill, Maryland

• Address: 118 E Market St, Snow Hill, MD 21863 ¹⁷
• Historical Significance: Located on a street lined with historic Victorian mansions and inns, the Snow Hill Inn is a well-known local landmark.⁹ The spirits of past owners are said to linger in many of these historic homes.⁹
• Paranormal Activity: The inn is haunted by a young man’s “blood-stained apparition,” whose death remains a mystery.¹⁸ The story of the Snow Hill Inn is a significant part of the local ghost tours and has been featured on cable television.⁹

9. Princess Anne Haunted Jail, Maryland

• Address: 11736 Mansion St, Princess Anne, MD 21853 ¹⁹
• Historical Significance: Princess Anne is a historic town with a reputation for its “harsh content” and “disturbing” past.⁹ The town’s history includes stories of an active haunted jail, a haunted mansion, and a haunted park.⁹
• Paranormal Activity: The ghost tour in Princess Anne highlights an “active haunted jail”.⁹ The town is full of tales about prisoners, spirits, and other paranormal phenomena related to its dark history.⁹

10. NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia

• Address: Wallops Island, VA
• Historical Significance: Wallops has been a hub for military and aerospace research since its establishment as a test range in 1945.²¹ During the 1950s, it was used for high-altitude U-2 spy plane tests, and it continues to be a site for rocket launches.²²
• Paranormal Activity: While the other locations are haunted by human spirits, Wallops has become a nexus for modern-day UFO legends.²⁴ Worcester County, where Wallops is located, has a per capita UFO sighting rate six times higher than that of Lincoln County, Nevada, the home of Area 51.²⁴ Many of these sightings are plausibly explained by the facility’s activities, such as U-2 planes reflecting sunlight from high altitudes or the unusual “milky white clouds” left by sounding rockets’ vapor trails.²²

The Deep Currents of Delmarva: A Historical Essay

The Delmarva Peninsula, a place whose very name is a fusion of the three states it touches—Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia—is a land defined by its distinct geography and a history as rich and layered as the sediment that forms its low-lying terrain.¹ This peninsula, which functions as an effective island thanks to the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal to the north and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to the south, has served as a crucible for a complex and compelling narrative.¹ From the earliest Indigenous peoples to the pioneers of modern aerospace, Delmarva’s history is a microcosm of the American story itself, marked by resilience, conflict, and transformation .

For thousands of years, long before European arrival, the Delmarva was a homeland for numerous First Nations peoples.² At the dawn of the 17th century, the landscape was a mosaic of tribal territories. The southern reaches were home to the Accomac and Occohannocks, who were aligned with the Powhatan of the Virginia mainland.⁴ The central region was the domain of the Pocomoke, a paramount tribe whose lands included all of modern-day Somerset County and parts of Wicomico, Worcester, and Accomack counties.⁵ The largest and most powerful group on the peninsula were the Kuskarawaok, later known as the Nanticoke.⁴ Their dominance was not only in population, with an estimated 200 warriors, but also in trade, as Captain John Smith described them as “the best merchants of all” for their valuable white shell beads.⁴ The relationship of these people to their land was deeply spiritual. For instance, the Nanticoke-Lenape creation story explains how the earth was formed from a small clump of mud brought up by a humble muskrat and placed on the back of a turtle, which grew into the dry land they inhabited.⁷ The presence of these ancient cultures, who relied on the land for farming, fishing, and hunting, shaped the peninsula long before colonial powers arrived.⁶

The European arrival in the 17th century initiated a new, often tumultuous, chapter.² The Delmarva was one of the earliest sites of English settlement in North America, with its first towns established as part of the Virginia Colony.¹ As the Maryland and Virginia colonies flourished, the Chesapeake Bay became a vital waterway for trade, with merchant ships laden with valuable cargo—from tobacco and food to gold—becoming irresistible targets for pirates.¹ This made the region a “hot-spot for pirates” who used the Bay’s secluded coves as sanctuaries to repair their ships and restock supplies.⁹ The most formidable figure to roam these waters was Captain Edward “Blackbeard” Teach, who, according to legend, captured 40 ships in his day.⁹ He often used remote locations like Pagan Creek and Lynnhaven Bay to evade British naval ships.⁹ Another prominent privateer with ties to the area was Captain William Kidd, who, despite legends of vast buried treasure, left little behind; historical accounts suggest he did not land any goods near Lewes, Delaware, with the exception of a single chest belonging to a passenger.¹⁰ The trio of privateers Davis, Wafer, and Hinson, however, had a more significant impact; upon their apprehension, their confiscated loot was used by Virginia authorities to establish the College of William and Mary, a tangible link between the region’s piracy and its educational history.⁹

The peninsula was also a major stage for the human cost of the Civil War. Point Lookout, located at the southernmost tip of Maryland’s western shore, was a popular summer resort before being transformed into Camp Hoffman in 1863, the largest prison camp for Confederate soldiers . Designed for 10,000 men, it was severely overcrowded, holding more than 20,000 prisoners by the summer of 1864 . Conditions were horrific, with filth, contaminated wells, and inadequate shelter leading to between 3,000 and 8,000 deaths out of 52,264 prisoners over a period of just two years . The Denton Courthouse Green in Caroline County was another site of historical trauma, documented as the location of two lynchings.¹¹ These dark events are a somber reminder of the conflict and violence that marked this period in the region’s past.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Delmarva Peninsula underwent a significant transformation, driven by advancements in transportation and an emerging tourism industry. Ocean City, for instance, evolved from a sleepy fishing village, which was only accessible by stagecoach and ferry as late as 1839, into a bustling resort.¹³ The construction of the railroad in 1876 connected the town to the mainland, and the Atlantic Hotel began welcoming guests.¹⁴ In 1933, a powerful storm ripped open a new channel, and engineers made the inlet permanent, which cemented Ocean City’s new identity as a premier Atlantic fishing port and, later, the “White Marlin Capital of the World”.¹³ Similarly, the town of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, was founded as a Methodist camp meeting ground in 1873.¹⁵ A paved highway linking it to Georgetown in 1925 helped it become a premier vacation spot for diplomats and government officials, earning it the nickname “the nation’s summer capital”.¹⁶ On the western side of the peninsula, the town of Cape Charles was a meticulously planned community developed in 1883-1884 as the southern terminus of the New York, Philadelphia, and Norfolk Railroad . The town’s economy thrived by transporting railroad cars and passengers across the Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk.¹⁷

The Delmarva’s history is also intertwined with scientific and military developments. The NASA Wallops Flight Facility, established in 1945 as a test range on Wallops Island, Virginia, has grown into a premier hub for suborbital launches and aerospace exploration.¹⁸ Its activities during the mid-20th century inadvertently contributed to the rise of modern folklore.²⁰ In the 1950s, the high-altitude testing of U-2 spy planes caused a “tremendous increase” in UFO reports, as pilots of commercial airliners flying at lower altitudes would mistake the sun’s reflection off the U-2’s silver wings for “fiery objects” in the sky.²⁰ This trend continues today, with many UFO sightings being directly attributed to sounding rockets launched from Wallops Island, which release vapor tracers that form unusual clouds in the upper atmosphere . This historical interplay between scientific progress and public observation illustrates a contemporary form of myth-making, where unexplained phenomena are not magical but a direct result of advanced, and often secretive, technology.²⁰

In conclusion, the Delmarva Peninsula is more than a geographic landmark; it is a repository of history . The story of this land is written in its ancient Indigenous trails, the wreckage of pirate ships, the solemn grounds of Civil War prisons, and the modern concrete of its highways and launch pads. Each era has left a mark, creating a landscape where the past is not a foreign country but a constant and living presence, shaping the character and identity of this unique corner of the country.

Footnotes

1. [1]: https://delmarvausa.com/delmarva/
2. [2]: https://www.salisbury.edu/libraries/nabb/about/delmarva.aspx
3. [3]: http://www.beachesbayswaterways.org/native-american-heritage.html
4. [4]: https://deldot.gov/environmental/archaeology/hickory_bluff/pdf/sec5.pdf
5. [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_conspiracy_theories
6. [6]: https://www.nanticokeindians.org/about/history/
7. [7]: https://nanticokelenapemuseum.org/news/1380/creation-stories/
8. [8]: https://www.marinalife.com/articles/tales-of-piracy-on-the-chesapeake-bay
9. [9]: https://www.nps.gov/asis/learn/historyculture/history-and-culture.htm
10. [10]: http://www.virginiaplaces.org/myths/hiddentreasures.html
11. [11]: https://clickamericana.com/topics/crime/exploding-the-myths-of-captain-kidd-1909
12. [12]: https://lewespirates.com/
13. [13]:(https://dnr.maryland.gov/Pages/Spirits-of-Point-Lookout.aspx)
14. [14]: https://chesapeakeghosts.com/ghost-tours/
15. [15]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanticoke_people
16. [16]: https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/books/33/
17. [17]: https://preservationmaryland.org/historic-sites-of-ocean-city-maryland/
18. [18]: https://www.ococean.com/about-us/
19. [19]: https://www.rehobothbeachde.gov/experience-rehoboth-beach/history/
20. [20]: https://rehobothbeachview.com/rehoboth-beach-history/
21. [21]: https://www.capecharles.org/community/page/history-cape-charles
22. [22]: https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/182-0002/
23. [23]: https://www.nasa.gov/wallops-history/
24. [24]:(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallops_Flight_Facility)
25. [25]: https://science.nasa.gov/uap/
26. [4]: https://deldot.gov/environmental/archaeology/hickory_bluff/pdf/sec5.pdf
27. [26]: https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/disasters-and-phenomena/u2s-ufos-and-operation-blue-book.html
28. [27]: https://analytics.dkv.global/EI/Historical-UAP-Cases.pdf
29. [28]:(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0GRMdCrUDM)
30. [14]: https://chesapeakeghosts.com/ghost-tours/
31. [8]: https://www.marinalife.com/articles/tales-of-piracy-on-the-chesapeake-bay
32. [29]: https://www.visitvirginiabeach.com/trip-ideas/the-lost-treasure-of-edward-blackbeard-teach/
33. [30]: https://www.pocomokeindiannation.org/Our%20History/index.html
34. [31]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Chincoteague,_Virginia
35. [13]: https://dnr.maryland.gov/publiclands/pages/southern/pointlookout.aspx
36. [32]: https://omeka.library.unt.edu/s/black-denton/page/early-lynchings
37. [33]: https://www.cbf.org/blogs/save-the-bay/2020/10/the-original-inhabitants-of-our-land.html