Belmont Manor & Historic Park
Posted: 10.20.2025 | Updated: 10.20.2025
No day is quite as romantic and enchanting as your wedding day. You’ve planned all of the details to the nth degree: from the fashions to the food to the guest list.
Everything is going to be perfect. But what happens when guests show up that you didn’t invite? Guests from past centuries? Restless ghosts that have been known to move dishes, toss food, and cause those in their midst to shudder?
Belmont Manor & Historic Park in Elkridge, MD, is a popular venue for conferences, educational programs, afternoon teas, and, of course, weddings. But with a history that stretches back over 290 years, some who once walked Belmont’s halls in life still linger as spirits.
This has caused surprises, frights, and hours of eerie entertainment for the brave of heart. To experience some other heavily haunted buildings and grounds for yourself, book a ghost tour with DC Ghosts.
IS BELMONT MANOR & HISTORIC PARK HAUNTED?
According to guests, staff, investigators, mediums, and locals, the answer is, absolutely! The manor and grounds are certainly impressive, but that’s just one story. Ghost stories about the manor have been told and published for well over a century.
Honestly, the history is too long and occasionally too dark for the location not to be haunted. Despite this, hundreds of couples have chosen Belmont as the place to begin their marital bliss.
A HISTORY OF LOVE, DEATH, AND EVEN WAR
It’s appropriate that such a popular wedding venue started as a love story. In the 1730s, Caleb and Pricilla Dorsey met on a fox hunt and fell in love. In 1735, Caleb’s father bought the property where the manor and park now sit. He gave it to his son as a wedding present.
Caleb and Pricilla built Belmont Manor, which stayed in their family’s lineage, although under different names, for over 200 years. However, the manor also has an early history of forced labor.
According to tax records, as many as 36 enslaved people served the estate, and they, no doubt, experienced hard times. There is also a report that at least one child died in the house due to influenza.
The lineage of ownership through the Dorsey, Hanson, and Bruce families ended in 1962. One owner, David Bruce, was a noted U.S. ambassador to several nations. He donated the 85-acre estate to the Smithsonian Institute.
It was then used as a setting for meetings and conferences. Generals, vice presidents, astronauts, and other noted personalities used the manor for its quiet, secure location and relative proximity to Washington, D.C.
This included one meeting in particular where plans were allegedly made for the first Iraq War of 1990. The estate was then later owned by the American Chemical Company and Howard Community College.
DIFFERENT HAUNTINGS IN DIFFERENT ROOMS
Guests, staff, and mediums have reported that different ghosts inhabit different rooms of the manor. In one downstairs room, secret plans were made for the first Iraq war, and a ghost from those meetings remains.
He’s a military man, possibly a general, with a curt personality who causes cold shudders to those who feel his presence. Those who don’t know about his military background simply refer to him as the “grumpy” ghost.
In the kitchen and banquet area, there is another entity known as the White Haired Woman. Staff say she’s been known to throw olives and move dishes and silverware.
Upstairs, in a back room, a little six-year-old girl named Amanda passed away in the 1700s or 1800s from the flu. This is supported by several staff and visitors who have seen the specter of a little girl roaming around the manor.
But these hauntings and odd occurrences aren’t just confined to the inside. The property holds a cemetery with 31 headstones marking the graves of family members. Who knows what spirit you might encounter walking among the tombstones at twilight?
THE INVISIBLE CARRIAGE AND ITS PASSENGERS
Over 100 years ago, author John Martin Hammond wrote a book about the Colonial mansions of Maryland and Delaware. In his book, he tells a frightening story about a ghostly carriage and its invisible party that comes to Belmont Manor.
According to the author, this event happens at least once every winter. On dark, windy nights, people inside the manor hear an approaching carriage. But upon opening the front door, those inside see nothing outside.
Yet, they continue to distinctly hear the carriage and its passengers disembark and walk into the house. Once unloaded, the carriage can then be heard driving off toward the stables.
A HORSE BURIED IN FULL TACK AND STANDING
Then, there’s the story of a thoroughbred horse named Billy Barton. He was owned by Howard Bruce, David Bruce’s father. The horse was a magnificent steeple-chase jumper and was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1929.
Billy Barton was the first and only horse to win the four-mile Maryland Hunt Cup and Virginia Gold Cup in the same year. After retirement, the horse leisurely grazed the grounds of Belmont Manor until its death.
When the champion died in 1951, Howard Bruce had Billy Barton buried in full tack and standing up. This was a nod to an old Celtic custom for laying warriors to rest. While this isn’t exactly a scary story, it’s certainly unusual.
Couples planning marriage may look at Belmont Manor & Historical Park in a certain romantic light. But as you can see, there is another, more off-kilter lens through which visitors can view things.
Haunted Washington, D.C.
Hear ye, hear ye! This is your invitation to walk through the epicenter of our nation. Hear entertaining and bone-chilling tales about the ghosts that inhabit the houses and buildings of Washington, D.C. Does D.C. really stand for District of Columbia? Or, lots of Disembodied Citizens? Both are true when you book a ghost tour with DC Ghosts.
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SOURCES:
- https://www.belmontmanormd.com/
- https://usghostadventures.com/washington-dc-ghost-tour/
- https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNob8A8x0Mg/
- https://www.belmontmanormd.com
- https://howardnature.org/history-belmont/
- https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/bruce-david-kirkpatrick-este
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbdJXJJdXeM
- https://www.southernspiritguide.org/life-returns-to-the-dead-of-belmont-elkridge-maryland/
- https://www.instagram.com/p/DHWr5dau6i-/?hl=en
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