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It’s a property that dates back hundreds of years, and in that time, it’s seen its fair share of untimely deaths. But does that mean Linville Manor in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, is the most haunted house there is?

The original home was built in the early 1700s, though a massive fire in 1849 destroyed the original structure. Up until the 1950s, it was owned by the Bowie family (you may have heard about the city north of Upper Marlboro named after them), who rebuilt the home in the same spot, building on the same foundation and same brick-walled basement where the original home stood.

In 2018, the home was bought out of foreclosure auction by a man named Winn Brewer.

Although the structure needed a substantial amount of work, he saw the building’s potential and went all in on trying to fix it up.

“All I knew was, it was a great real estate deal,” Brewer said. “Let’s see if we can make it an event space, maybe a wedding venue. And very quickly, the ghost kind of decided, ‘not quite so much.’”

Brewer admits to always being interested in history and at least amused by ghost stories growing up. Then, guests renting the house out through short-term rental apps and people who bill themselves as ghost hunters and paranormal experts started visiting and having their own experiences.

“So in every single room of this house, there is activity,” Brewer said, as he began a guided tour of the home. “Everything you see in a ghost show happens here. Mists, orbs, unexplained lights, responses, knocks, voices in distant rooms, footsteps, moving furniture.”

In all, Brewer and his friends said they think there’s at least 10 ghosts, including a cat, that haunt the property. He said what really stirred things up was rehab work he did in the basement to replace the boiler system.

“Many paranormal folks, researchers, will tell you that if you disturb the foundation of the home, there’s a good chance you might have paranormal activity to follow,” he said.

While the basement saw substantial renovations when new owners bought the home in the ’50s, Brewer said the bricks that make up the walls date back to 1717, and some of them are still charred by the fatal fire that was sparked in 1849.

“I had this renovation done, we removed the radiator, and at that point, a whole different vibe came over the house,” Brewer said.

“We started hearing footsteps up and down from the basement over and over again. There is an uncomfortable feeling across the house, almost like a very heavy vibe. And even guests that were staying would report this feeling … one group even left a recorder down here, and they heard just very aggressive breathing.”

Maryland’s most haunted

That’s when Brewer called a man named Rob Gutro, a medium who investigates paranormal activity. The two have also teamed up to write a book about the home. 

“What we found was quite a number of — quite a number of ghosts that inhabit the property,” Gutro said. “I ran into a woman that was apparently one of the burn victims from the 1849 fire in the backyard. That’s before we even got in the door.”

Inside, he said, there were five more ghosts in the front hallway as soon as he walked in.

All in all, some of the ghosts are believed to be victims of the fire. Another is a 3-year-old girl named Lily, and who — if you believe in ghosts — was perhaps photographed at least once by one of Brewer’s friends.

In the ballroom, which was added to the home in the ’50s, Brewer said someone, or something, keeps moving a chair into a specific spot facing out to the backyard.

“Airbnb guests would say, ‘Hey, I thought that, you didn’t come into this space when we rent it,’” Brewer said. “I’d say ‘I wasn’t down there.’ I would think that maybe a kid or someone had moved it. But it happened time and time again.”

He later found out a former resident of the home liked to sit in front of the window to watch trains go by when he got sick. In one of the upstairs bedrooms, a room that historically was where women gave birth, Brewer said no matter how neatly made the bed is, one side always looks like someone had laid in it.

It started during the pandemic, and Brewer said he later found out another former owner of the home died in that room, too.

“People will now report … if they slept on this side of the bed, they would hear someone get into the bed beside them at night,” he said, pointing to the other side of the bed. “If they sleep over there, it feels like somebody sits on them in the middle of the night.”

When morning comes, Brewer said people report feeling someone caressing their arms or their cheeks, likening it to a mother’s touch.

“The midwives of this house were extremely good at what they did, and other notable families in the area would actually bring the pregnant mothers here to have their births because the midwives were so well-known,” Brewer said. “So we don’t know if we have the ghost of a midwife. We don’t know if we have the ghost of this expectant mother trying to induce the labor, but people will see a woman in white pacing.”

There’s also been the sound of people slamming doors, walking down steps or standing in front of people laying in bed — especially if it’s a woman sleeping there. But both Brewer and Gutro have come to believe when that happens, it’s not because a ghost is trying to scare anyone.

“We’ve described to guests, like, ‘Hey, if you’re experiencing anything intense like this, it might just be because a ghost is kind of fond of you, like you’re bringing back some kind of happy memory,’” Brewer said.

“We’ve, in fact, since had guests that, once they acknowledge something’s going on, they’ll have a conversation with the ghost, and the room just sort of settles, and he almost becomes like a helper to them in some way.”

“In some rooms where there were traumatic things that happened, or there were emotional things that happened, people who tend to be sensitive and emotionally sensitive tend to have more of a sense of what happened in a particular room,” Gutro said.

Lifting the spirits

While touring the house on Wednesday, Brewer walked the upstairs rooms with an EMF detector, a device used to measure unseen electromagnetic fields in the rooms. If none of the lights were blinking, or only one or two green lights were blinking, it was no big deal.

There were a few instances where the lights would blink into the yellow, orange and red lines, though, even as the reader laid on a bed six feet away from anyone. In the world of the paranormal, it’s supposed to indicate the presence of a ghost, even if you can’t see it.

The activity inside the home really kicks up in the middle of the night — 1:11 a.m. to be exact.

“The ghosts have told ghost hunters, paranormal investigators, that they actually congregate in the lounge around 1:11 to not only remember their past lives, but to talk about the people who are in the house that day,” Brewer said.

Ultimately, the experience wasn’t as spooky as when a reporter from The Washington Post visited a few years back, though it was also a briefer experience.

“There have been countless people who have stayed there, and many of them have had their own interactions,” Gutro said. “So you don’t have to be sensitive, you don’t have to be a medium or a paranormal investigator. You just have to stay there, and you may meet one of the earthbound ghosts that linger there.”

Brewer stays in an apartment he had built on the side of the home. He said he’s communicated to the ghosts that it’s a “no ghost zone” on the property, and that they aren’t welcomed there.

The spirits seem to abide by his rule, according to Brewer. But if they’re there, they’re at least cooperative, he said.

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