These Hampden businesses insist they’re haunted

I moved to Hampden on the promise of jump scares.

Like all snoopy reporters I know, I was curious about where I would be living and soon learned the residence once belonged to an undertaker. The man was said to have installed one of the village’s first telephones into a funeral parlor. I figured his commitment to communication and familiarity with death all but guaranteed me a haunted living arrangement.

I’ve loved my years living in this weird little neighborhood, but I never got that ghostly encounter. No disembodied voices from beyond, nor footsteps across the floorboards ever caught my notice. As a horror enthusiast, I was disappointed.

That was until this October, when Hampden’s merchants and restaurateurs opened their doors for a new walking ghost tour. Turns out, there are hauntings all around me.

About 40 people including my husband and me gathered in front of the Academy for College and Career Exploration high school for the inaugural tour Thursday evening. Some people showed up in spooky szn outfits or graphic T-shirts referencing the 1993 cinematic masterpiece “Hocus Pocus.” Suddenly, the press pass dangling from my neck felt trite.

After we divided into two groups, tour guide Mars Duque led our party north on Falls Road and eventually snaked us up and down The Avenue. The 90-minute tour took us to past some of Hampden’s most recognizable businesses where staff have made ghastly discoveries beneath floorboards or insist they’ve witnessed full-bodied apparitions while alone after dark.

Each business collected their employee ghost stories for Duque, who dutifully recited the tales in a vaguely British accent while sprinkling in a few embellishments. I thought I knew my neighborhood, but there were a lot more claims of paranormal activity than I expected.

The building that is now home to Atomic Books originally served as headquarters for a fraternal order and later housed a speakeasy in its basement during the Prohibition era, Duque said. Sometimes, in the silent hours after dusk, an old dumbwaiter can still be heard whirring and clanking even though it hasn’t been used for decades.

Our party immediately spotted two small figures fluttering in the windows on the second floor, which the order had once used as a ballroom.

Was there a dance studio on the second floor, members of the tour asked.

“Perhaps it’s the ghosts of the past,” Duque said with widened eyes.

Not likely. Two very much alive children appeared to be having a private rave.

One of the tour’s juiciest tidbits came a few minutes later at The Bluebird cocktail room, which also occupies a space once used by a different fraternal order.

I had never before heard that the literary-inspired bar’s crew had discovered its very own Tell-Tale Heart. As the story goes, the crew that renovated the Bluebird was ripping up the old vinyl flooring and linoleum (the horror!) when they found a curious rectangle cut into the subfloor. To their surprise, underneath lay a casket containing a full skeleton.

“It was commonplace amongst the fraternal order to use skeletons, some real, as a reminder that death comes to all,” Duque said.

Bluebird staff had a fairly convincing photo of the skeleton and casket displayed on the community table when our party entered the bar. Duque pointed to the still visible rectangle cut in the subfloor in the the center of the room, which unsuspecting patrons stood over while waiting in line to pay their tabs.

Even the newer Hampden businesses had supernatural stories to share. Modern World, a nonalcoholic and specialty goods store on The Avenue, inherited a Pee-wee Herman doll from the now shuttered Hampden Junque.

Pee-wee’s body remains perched on a shelf during business hours, Duque said. However, staff have reported the doll moving to new locations overnight, never in the same place twice.

Some tales were perhaps taller than others. Rebel Rebel, a clothing store that caters to the goth, punk, anime and horror crowd, claimed the ghost of glam rock icon David Bowie haunted their racks.

“You shouldn’t have taken my name,” staff told Duque he hissed as he merged with the clothes and infected every garment with his energy.

Sure, sure.

Our tour notably did not stop by Bazaar, one of Hampden’s kookier retail offerings. However, several peers on the tour informed me that the second floor is now home to an ouija board museum that’s run by the operators of the Salem Witch Board Museum in Massachusetts. I scribbled a reminder in my notepad to check out the museum out another time.

As the tour wound to a close, our party nearly missed a ghost-hunting demonstration in the basement of Cotton Duck Title Co. located in the 1880s-era building, Historic Hampden Hall.

The experts with Maryland Ghost Getters, one of whom has a day job with Cotton Duck, had already delivered their spiel to the other tour group and packed up their equipment, not realizing our party was still on the way. We intercepted their vehicles in the parking lot, and I was reminded that ghost hunters are not, in fact, clairvoyants.

The staff there have reported locked bathroom doors jiggling when no one is in the building, heavy filing cabinet drawers opening of their own accord and at least two intelligent hauntings — one of a child and one of a farmer named Stephen.

Or is it Steven? As far as I know, the ghost didn’t spell out his name.

The Maryland Ghost Getters crew showed off some of their equipment — night vision goggles, a thermal imaging camera and touch-sensitive cat toys that lit up when disturbed. Members of our tour offered suggestions for how to make contact with the spirits beyond.

I don’t know that any of the businesses proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Hampden is haunted. But proof isn’t what I was hoping to find.

Maybe we’re all just looking for a really good ghost story.