There have been some interesting personal experiences at the circular Baltimore courtroom that was modeled after a similar structure at the Library of Congress.

“We were talking, and she mentioned to me that she had become convinced there was a spirit or some type of presence in the courtroom,” Cohen said. “C’mon!” he thought to himself. “There’s probably a logical explanation.”

Next thing you know, the skeptic got the chills.

“My entire body felt like I was in a grocery store in the frozen foods section, when you open the door - you’re warm, in a warm area, but there’s this coldness around you. I stopped talking and said I had to leave. ‘I gotta leave.’ I literally turned my back to her and walked out. … It was the most unnerving thing ever. Never in a million years would I turn my back on a judge and just walk out. You want to give them the most deference possible.”

As the article points out they speculate that the specter maybe one Roger B. Taney, the 19th-century U.S. Supreme Court chief justice whose name is inscribed on the dome.

Taney was controversial because he was chief justice during the Dred Scott Case. He wrote in his ruling:

“It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in regard to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted; but the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

Yet Taney not only emancipated his own slaves, but gave pensions to those who were too old to work. This character does seem a candidate to be a troubled spirit.

Here are 2 recent public photos from Flickr.com