READERS TALES...Ghosts of Point Lookout Confederate Prison

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Ghosts of Point Lookout Confederate Prison

During my senior year in college (1982) I obtained a job registering campers at the campgrounds of Point Lookout State Park in Scotland, Maryland. Being a college student for most means being poor and things were no different for me. I was fortunate to rent a cabin on the beautiful Potomac River side of the prison camp. At $70 a month it was a real bargain compared to living on campus. This cabin was no more than a two room cinderblock dwelling with hot water and no heat. Though the winters can be brutal there, I didn't mind. The place lent just enough romance to appeal to a young woman.

Things were great until I started being awakened at nights by loud crashes. The sounds came from the kitchen and always sounded as if someone had taken an arm full of pots and pans and thrown them in the floor. Needless to say the noise could "wake the dead". This occurrence happened EVERY night. After the first month or so of living there I obtained courage enough to mention this phenomenaa to some of my friends. They were anxious to hear the crashes and volunteered to stay with me for a few nights. They only needed one. My friends heard what I heard and were just as anxious to leave as they were to come. Since I had experienced ghostly presences most of my life, I was always shaken but not terrified. I stayed.

As word got out of the hauntings at the Guard Dorm, which the cottage was known as, a Park Ranger came to visit me. He wanted to explain that the cottage which was built next to Fort Lincoln and near the site of the Prison Hospital was the site of the burial grounds of amputated body parts from the soldiers who were imprisoned there during the Civil War.

In the spring of 1983 it was time for me to move on. I visited the old Guard Dorm this past summer. It has been uninhabited for some time now. I wonder if things still go bump in the night.

-Cindy.