You might not hear them. You might not smell them. You might not ever touch or see them.

But if you dare to explore the Patapsco Female Institute, one thing is certain: You won’t be alone.

The institute is said to be home to three ghosts — Annie, The Shadow and The Gentleman — each with their own stories and locked in time at the ruins.

Rissa Miller, a local historian who leads ghost tours and lectures, said we shouldn’t look at these ghosts as scary or spooky. Rather, we should feel sad that these spirits are stuck.

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To be clear, she said, nothing bad has ever happened between the ghosts and passersby.

But there have been numerous hauntings, Miller said. Paranormal experts believe Ellicott City, which dates to the 1770s, is very, very haunted.

When two rivers cross, that location is considered a paranormal hotbed, she said. A river is considered a liminal or a thin space, where the spirit world is closer.

A print showing the Patapsco Female Institute, a girls' boarding school located on Church Road in Ellicott City, Md. The school opened on January 1, 1837.
The school opened on Jan. 1, 1837. (Charles Koehl/Maryland Center for History and Culture)

And in Ellicott City the Tiber River crosses the Patapsco River.

It’s also considered a haunted hot spot due to Ellicott City’s composite granite, which includes crystal quartz — Miller calls it “woo woo stuff” — that is known to hold and absorb energy.

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“We’ve got these things that all seem to coalesce at the same spot, and it results in being extra haunted,” she said.

Within the bounds of paranormal Ellicott City is the institute, or PFI, which is home to the three ghosts.

PFI was a Victorian-era girls school that had a national reputation for teaching young girls chemistry, language, literature, math and more from 1837 to 1891, according to Ellicott City’s tourism website.

Miller said this was unusual for the time because the school wasn’t just a finishing school; it gave young girls a real education. Its headmistress was Almira Lincoln Phelps, a famous educator.

Phelps published 10 textbooks, focusing on botany and education for young women, and she helped turn PFI into a thriving school with high academic standards, according to the Maryland State Archives.

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“Now she was also kind of tough, and she was sort of a no-BS kind of lady,” Miller said.

Girls came from all over the country to receive an education under Phelps, and some might have been in for a rude awakening if they ventured there from, say, the South and experienced their first Maryland winter.

That leads us to the tale of the first ghost.

Annie Vanderlot

Let’s set the stage for the ghost of Annie Vanderlot.

To be clear, Miller said, Annie never attended the school nor ever existed. She is an urban legend whose story has been passed down through generations.

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Her tale goes like this: She was a young woman from the South whose parents sent her to receive a world-class education from Phelps. Vanderlot hated it. “She wanted to go back to the South, where it was warm and lovely and people would wait on her hand and foot,” Miller said.

She wrote dramatic letters home, begging her parents to let her leave. But her parents said no.

Winter came — and Vanderlot fell ill.

She wrote to her grandmother this time and asked her to take her home because she was convinced she would die at the institute.

Her grandmother came to fetch Vanderlot, but it was too late.

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She died from influenza.

According to local historian Rissa Miller, there have been numerous hauntings at the Patapsco Female Institute.
According to local historian Rissa Miller, there have been numerous hauntings at the Patapsco Female Institute. (Courtesy of Lauren Engler)

It is probably somebody’s true story but not Vanderlot’s, Miller said.

That being said, there is a ghost at the institute called Annie, she said.

“She appears all over the property,” Miller said. “She appears in different clothing. Sometimes she’s in a day dress; sometimes she’s in her night dress. Sometimes she’s in a fancier gown.”

Annie is most often seen wearing a Victorian day dress with a trim waist, a high collar and a long skirt with a petticoat underneath. Annie was probably a student there, Miller said.

She wears her hair up and down, and she appears to be a teenager.

She is most commonly seen by people walking their dogs.

Kathryne Daniels, a member of the Chesapeake Shakespeare Co., said she had a brush with a girl who might have been Annie. CSC performs at PFI every summer, and Daniels said she isn’t the only one who has had a spooky experience.

During a performance of “Romeo and Juliet,” in which Daniels played the nurse, she walked along a pathway to watch her company perform and a little girl popped up in front of her. She was wearing a white dress with a blue sash, and she had blonde hair.

“I just saw the back of her, and she just walked on and then disappeared,” Daniels said. “And I was like, ‘Holy shit.’”

The moment, though fleeting, has stuck with her, she said, but not in a bad way.

The Gentleman

If you don’t see Annie, maybe you’ll see The Gentleman. He wears clothes from the 1940s and is a residual ghost, Miller said.

“A residual is a scar on time-space,” she said. “They never change. They never vary. They look the same. They appear in the same place. They will never turn and look at you. They will never talk to you. They have no sentience or awareness. They are simply like a recording that was laid down on time.”

The ruins of the Patapsco Female Institute, a former girls' boarding school in Ellicott City, Md.
The institute is said to be home to three ghosts — Annie, The Shadow and The Gentleman. (Ulysses Muñoz/The Baltimore Banner)

The Gentleman will walk across a second floor that does not exist. He will sometimes look out the window — that does still exist at the institute — and disappear.

One summer evening, Lauren Engler, CSC’s production manager, did not see The Gentleman, but she could feel he was there. Engler and another member of the stage management team stayed late at PFI after a show to lock up.

“We were just talking, and I started to get a very panicked feeling, like something just felt bad,” she said. “All of the nerves were held right in my throat, like it was closing up. I was so nervous. And I didn’t mention this to the person I was talking to, but something just told me I did not want to look in the dark window that led down to the pit.”

When the two called it a night and went to their cars, Engler opened her car door, saw her colleague turn on her car’s headlights, and then she heard a scream.

”Did you see him? Did you see that man in the window?” the colleague asked.

Her colleague said she saw a stern-looking man, in an old-timey suit, looking out of first-floor window. He disappeared after the scream.

PFI went through various iterations in its time: a boarding school, a hotel, a private home and a World War I hospital. In the late 1960s, Howard County bought the property. Now it exists as stabilized ruins within the Patapsco Valley Heritage Area, on the highest point overlooking Ellicott City.

Miller said The Gentleman might have owned the property as a private home or was just a visitor.

“Who knows what was happening in that man’s life at that moment?” Miller said. “Even though he just looks quiet and reflective when people see him, there was probably a huge emotional moment for him, and we don’t know if it was happy or sad because he’ll never be able to tell us.”

The partially rebuilt ruins of the Patapsco Female Institute, a girls' boarding school from 1837-1891, sits on a hill overlooking Ellicott City. (Jerry Jackson/The Baltimore Banner)

The Shadow

The third known ghost that haunts PFI is a rare kind, Miller said. A shadow that looks to belong to a man will stand next to you, but there is no person attached to it.

“People have definitely witnessed this, and apparently it’s a moment where you’re looking around, you see a shadow next to you, and then you look and there’s nobody there, but there’s a shadow,” Miller said.

If you see any of the ghosts, Miller said, just say hi. The Gentleman won’t acknowledge you, but Annie and The Shadow might.

“I find just a direct approach like you would have with any other human is a good one,” she said. “Or you could run to your car and hide — that’s also an option.”