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We’re constantly asked, “Is Gramercy haunted?” What a question. Guests are always intrigued by the history of the Mansion and want to hear ghost stories, especially during the weeks leading up to Halloween. I’ve heard tales of guests feeling vibes in certain areas of the house, or hearing things move in empty rooms during the still of the night. A few have even claimed visions of apparitions and unwelcoming spirits asking them to leave. I recall one eerily quiet Halloween night, sitting alone at the parlor desk with no guests or check-ins scheduled to arrive and hearing doors slam floors above. Perhaps a draft or our housecat Romeow? You better believe I didn’t go upstairs for the rest of the night and counted the minutes until Anne returned from trick-or-treating with the grandkids.While our ghost stories may be few and far between and not nearly as spooky as some other Maryland haunts, I can share some little known tidbits with you. And if you think about those snippets of the past, they sometimes make you wonder… maybe it wasn’t the cat slamming doors afterall.
So fact or fiction? The original owner of Gramercy never lived there. Fact. The house was originally built by Alexander Cassatt, founder of the Pennsylvania Railroad, as a wedding present for his daughter, Eliza. Construction began in 1902 and was not completed until after Cassatt’s death in 1906. Eliza and her husband were living a few miles away in Greenspring Valley during construction of the home. They never lived in the big Tudor mansion on the hill, modeled after the family’s summer home in Bar Harbor, Maine and instead moved back to Pennsylvania.
In browsing the web, I came across this story published about Alexander Cassatt’s death in the New York Times. Cool article. The grandchildren referred to (Cassatt and Catherine Stewart) were in fact Eliza’s children. Apparently, granddad caught a case of the whooping cough from his grandkids during a summer vacation in Bar Harbor a few months before his death and never fully recovered. AJ Cassatt Stewart, Eliza’s son, passed away 6 years later in 1912. I’m not sure of the cause and whether the family was still living in this area at that time. But he was tragically young, nonetheless. I sense possibilities for a haunted soul here… more investigation to follow.
Click here to read more – “A.J. Cassatt Dies; Of Grief, Friends Say.”
