Author To Host OC Ghost Walks

OCEAN CITY — On Friday, Aug. 9 and Saturday, Aug. 10, author Mindie Burgoyne will lead a 1.5-mile ghost walk through the lower historic part of Ocean City.
This will be the eighth Eastern Shore ghost walk in the Chesapeake Ghost Walk series she launched in January of this year.
“Ocean City was the most difficult to research and the most rewarding,” said Burgoyne.
The Ocean City Ghost Walk will begin at the Indian at the Inlet and end at the Henry Hotel, making a circular sweep from the Inlet to 4th Street. Stops will include the Ocean City Lifesaving Station Museum, the Ocean City Pier, Trimper’s Rides, the Atlantic Hotel, the Tarry-A-While Guest House, a Fisherman’s Cottage, and the Shoreham Hotel. Burgoyne hopes to have more than a dozen stops with rich, “ghostly” tales at each one. She will impart a loose but powerful history of the town as the setting and then tell stories about unexplained happenings, apparitions, and tales of the dead, and in some cases, the walking dead.
Burgoyne also challenges the guests to examine their own psychic abilities and discover whether they tend to be more clairvoyant (seeing apparitions), clairaudient (hearing things from the spirit world) or clairsentient (absorbing feelings from the spirit world).
This ghost walk is the first ever for Ocean City. Mindie Burgoyne has spent months researching and interviewing to gather the information needed to craft a tour.
“It was very difficult and I wasn’t sure I could get enough material to put a tour together.” Burgoyne said. “Ocean City isn’t as old as the other towns on my Ghost Walk series. And while there’s a rich history and many historians willing to share information, there isn’t an accessible legacy of storytelling or folklore – at least not on the surface.”
Burgoyne conducted 26 face-to-face interviews when preparing the tour including Sandy Hurley from the Lifesaving Station, historians George and Sue Hurley, Charlie Purnell from the Atlantic Hotel, Brooks Trimper from Trimper’s Rides (and several Trimper’s staff) and welcomed help and advice from Glenn Irwin of the Ocean City Development Corporation and Lisa Challenger, director of Worcester County Tourism. In addition the formal interviews, Burgoyne conducted dozens of phone interviews and combed through genealogical records and the folklore collection at the Nabb Research Center at Salisbury University. The end result is a walking tour that highlights ghosts of hoteliers, sea captains, opera singers, fishermen, ghosts from shipwrecks, suicides and several ghosts believed to be Ocean City legends.
The Ocean City Ghost Walk takes approximately 90 minutes to complete. Good walking shoes and weather-smart clothing is suggested. Cost is $15 for adults and $9 for children 8 to 12 years old. Advanced registration and ticket purchase is required. Guests can purchase tickets on-line at http://travelhag.com/product/ghost-walk-ocean-city-md-friday-aug-9-2013-800-pm
Each tour is limited to 25 people and likely to sell out. There are four tour options — two on Friday evening (Aug. 9) and two on Saturday evening (Aug. 10).
Burgoyne is the author of Haunted Eastern Shore: Ghostly Tales from East of the Chesapeake. Her books are available for sale in the Ocean City Life-saving Station Museum and guests can also add a signed copy of the book to their Ghost Walk registration.
Other walks include Easton, Cambridge, Denton, Crisfield, Snow Hill, Pocomoke and Berlin. St. Michaels, Princess Anne, Salisbury and Chestertown will be added in 2014.