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Baltimore Courthouse Maybe Haunted

March 23rd, 2008 by djb

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

Ivan S. Abrams posted a photo:

(C) Photograph copyright 2009 Ivan Safyan Abrams. All rights reserved.

Class: Secretary Cutter
Launched: June 3, 1936
At: Philadelphia Navy Yard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Length: 327 feet
Beam: 41 feet, 2 inches
Draft: 15 feet, 3 inches
Displacement: 2,560 tons
Armament: One 5-inch/38 caliber gun (1986)

Address:
Baltimore Maritime Museum
802 S. Caroline St.
Baltimore, Maryland 21231
(410) 396-3453
Fax: (410) 396-3393
Email: admin@baltomaritimemuseum.org
www.baltomaritimemuseum.org
Latitude: 39.28581, Longitude: -76.606293
Google Maps, Microsoft Bing, Yahoo Maps, Mapquest

USCGC Taney is one of seven Treasury/Secretary-class cutters built for the Coast Guard in the Mid-1930s. Home ported in Honolulu, Hawaii beginning in 1937, Taney was attached to Destroyer Division 80 in the summer of 1941 and was in action against Japanese planes during the Pearl Harbor attack. Of the 101 U.S. fighting ships present in Hawaiian waters on 7 December 1941, Taney is the only one afloat today.

At sea for 80 of the first 90 days of war, Taney carried out anti-submarine patrols off Hawaii, and later served as a convoy escort in the Pacific through 1943. Following a major refit, the cutter was transferred to the Atlantic in 1944 where she escorted six convoys between the east coast of the US and North Africa. On 20 April 1944, Taney helped fight off a German torpedo bomber attack on Convoy USG 38 off Algiers. Converted to an Amphibious Command Ship in 1945, she participated in the battle for Okinawa downing four Japanese Kamikazes and one "Betty" bomber.

Known as "The Queen of the Pacific," Taney was home ported in Alameda, CA, from 1946 to 1972 carrying out ocean weather patrol, law enforcement and search and rescue duties. During 1969-70, the cutter was assigned to Coast Guard Squadron III off South Vietnam where she helped interdict the flow of arms along the coast, fired over 3400 rounds of 5/38 ammunition in naval gunfire support missions, and provided medical assistance to over 5,000 South Vietnamese civilians.

Transferred to Little Creek, VA and later Portsmouth, VA, in 1972, Taney completed the last Coast Guard ocean weather patrol in 1977, and from 1977 to 1986 carried out search and rescue duties, training cruises for the Coast Guard Academy, and drug interdiction in the Caribbean. In one 1985 drug bust Taney seized a record 160 tons of marijuana. Decommissioned on 7 December 1986, she is displayed in Baltimore's Inner Harbor along with USS Torsk and Lightship 116.

USCGC Taney is a National Historic Landmark.

Capitolshots Photography posted a photo:

A view of the Maryland State House in Annapolis. Designed by Joseph Horatio Anderson and built between 1772 and 1779, the Georgian structure also served as the United States capitol from November 1783 through August 1784, the only state capitol to have so served. The oldest state capitol building in continuous legislative use, the Maryland State House is a National Historic Landmark. In the foreground is a statue of Roger Brooke Taney, former Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, sculpted by H. Rinehart in 1871.

© Capitolshots Photography