Haunted Dundalk Hotel
Way Of The Ray
IN SEARCH OF SPIRITS
by Joseph Giordano October 30, 2002
Co-owner Dave Lari stands with son Michael outside the old Marine Hotel.
photo by Joseph M. Giordano
Ghost hunters check out old Dundalk hotel
Sometimes they come back. And it's the job of the Greater Dundalk
Paranormal Investigators to get them on tape.
"I'm a skeptic," said GDPI president Jamie Fritze on Saturday at the old
Marine Hotel in Old Dundalk, site of the group's most recent
investigation. "I believe in ghosts, but I am always questioning."
Though no ghosts have been spotted at the former lodging, a general
creepy feeling hangs around the hallways and rooms, according to both
Fritze and co-owner David Lari.
"The hotel had a reputation for being haunted and [Lari] wanted someone
to check it out," Fritze said.
The gray, rather imposing structure was built in 1916 for workers who
were laying the first stones that were to become Dundalk. The hotel
continued operation until 1995, when the last two boarders left.
"There were quite a few deaths in the hotel," Lari said on the night of
the investigation. "But there were no reports of ghosts sightings."
The hotel has been in Lari's family since it opened.
Lari and his brother, Richard, are on the grounds every day to see to
the building's upkeep, but neither has experienced anything out of the
ordinary.
"My son did say he and some friends saw a man in the third-floor
window," David Lari said. "All of us were working on the ground floor,
but there was no one upstairs at the time."
Inside the building, the empty hallways of the second and third floors
exuded an almost tangible loneliness on the chilly October night.
In the cold rooms, old striped mattresses are laid bare and empty chests
of drawers hung open, begging for the warm touch of folded clothes.
As the group readied its video and audio equipment on the floors below,
Fritze rocked slowly in a red leather chair in a room on the second
floor as she recalled the one time when she was especially frightened.
Fritze had her first encounter with the unknown several years ago.
"It was before I joined any group in 1996 or '97," said the 22-year-old
W. Woodwell Road resident. "Some friends and I stopped at this place in
Virginia that was supposed to be an abandoned mental institution."
The voices began when Fritze stepped into a dark corridor.
"At first it sounded like rustling leaves, but there were no windows,"
Fritze said. "The sounds grew into whispers. All of us heard it and
decided we had to get out of there."
Eager to satiate her passion for the unknown, Fritze formed GDPI three
years ago and has been hunting ghosts ever since.
The investigators on this hunt were not disappointed, as something
decided to make a brief appearance in the basement.
"My [video] camera kept zooming in and out," said Woodley Road resident
Debi Grzymala, one of the 10 investigators walking through the hotel. "I
also picked up a few orbs zipping around."
In ghost hunting parlance, "orbs" - little balls of light - have been
described as spirits in the process of manifesting into apparitions,
according to Grzymala, a former photo lab technician who said she has
lived in two haunted houses.
Grzymala acknowledges that some of the orbs can be written off as dust
particles, moisture droplets and light refraction. Others, though, can't
be explained.
"The most active place I have been in was the Charm City Inn," Grzymala
said, referring to an Oct. 11 investigation into a bar on Lehigh Street
in East Baltimore. "We picked up the most orbs I have ever seen."
Taking a break from last weekend's investigation, Grzymala and her
husband, Gary, showed off several shots they took from the bar with
their digital camera.
In the photographs, globes of light show brightly from various spots
around the pool tables. But the highest concentration of activity was in
the bar's basement, where a woman is said to be buried.
"My video picked up a lot of orbs flying around," said Grzymala, who
said she is also sensitive to spirits. "It was a very active place."
The Charm City Inn investigation produced a voice-like noise that showed
up on a tape player left in the basement by the group's newest member,
Liberty Parkway resident Theresa Phillips.
"It sounds like a sigh," Phillips said while reviewing the tape for
group members during the hotel investigation.
The "sigh" comes out of nowhere. There is silence from the empty
basement on most of the tape until something hits the recorder and a
short exhalation can be heard. The tape hisses into silence again.
"I don't know what it is," Phillips said. "But it is weird."
After reading an article about GDPI in The Eagle last year, Phillips,
37, contacted the group and eventually joined it.
"It's a lot different than what you see on TV," Phillips said. "But it's
still fun and exciting. I'm a skeptic to a certain degree, but I do
believe."
One GDPI member, 37-year-old Dorothy Brigandi, has been ghost hunting
for almost a decade.
"The scariest place I have been to was the Farnsworth House in
Gettysburg [Pa.]," Brigandi said. "There we got a video of an attic door
opening and closing by itself."
Although there were a few odd incidents at the hotel, one was
particularly unsettling.
"A friend of one of the members who stayed with us at the hotel fell
into a type of sleep paralysis," Fritze said. "It was as if something
was holding him down or sitting on his chest."
Last year, Fritze's group joined the American Ghost Society and became
Baltimore's ambassador.
As of Tuesday, GDPI was still analyzing data taken from the hotel
investigation.
Now, the group has set its sights on the Westminster Church catacombs in
downtown Baltimore, which it will investigate in the near future.
Fritze encourages those interested in the supernatural to come along on
an investigation, but issues a warning to those thinking a visit from
GDPI will bust any paranormal problems they might have.
"We don't come to solve a problem," Fritze said. "We come to find out
what's causing the experience."
©The Dundalk Eagle 2002