6. What Did Mom Do?

Was Robert poisoned in 1929?  Does a spirit from 1743 still roam the cobblestone streets of Baltimore?  And did you know that the best hiding place is under the tables of the ballroom?  The Low Budget Ghost Squad is in the middle of a mystery at the Lord Baltimore Hotel... and someone is watching us.

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Transcript

Robert fielding thought he was having a leisurely breakfast with his wife at a fancy hotel.  but things took a turn.  Robert wouldn’t survive… and what happened in their suite on the 18-th floor would set off a ghostly mystery… for the low budget ghost squad to solve.

Hi there – this is episode six of our new season at the lord Baltimore hotel in Maryland.  

i’m Natalie

I’m Alison

And guess what?  I’m Ethan.  

Nat:  this low budget ghost squad came together when we solved a mystery at the crescent hotel in Arkansas. 

Ethan and that was season one.

Nat:  And this time we’ve been telling you about a deadly love triangle at the lord Baltimore and this mystery dates back to 1929.

Alison:  deadly love triangle – it sounds like a dateline episode.

Nat: or a lifetime movie.  Really either one… because we have a dead husband, Robert, who may have been poisoned while eating breakfast.  A wife, hannah who had a boyfriend, Jonathan, who worked at the hotel, which makes it easy when you’re trying to cover things up back in 1929.

Ethan:  and both Hannah and Jonathan – we think- have been trying to talk to us in the ballroom.  Where they’re still hanging out. The lights are always blinking there but only when we’re in there.

Alison: and Ethan has a shadow figure friend – who may or may not be so friendly.  If only he or she would talk to you.

Ethan:  they’re not my friend, alison.

Nat: but it’s all happening here at the lord Baltimore built in 1928. And this building is tall and big. Supposedly it took more than five million pounds of steel just to build the framework...  And if you laid out all the piping... it would run about 40 miles… that’s about the distance from Baltimore to Washington d-c.   

Alison: It’s seen its share of history, fancy dinners, debutante balls, a world war – when you could only stay for five days and then you had to go during the war.

Ethan: but some people who checked in here – before the war are still here and haven’t gone. 

MUSIC

Nat: we’ve made two friends – Christopher who works here –we seem to always see him in the lobby.  he gave us what he found in the hotel archives – and it was a security report about the death of Robert fielding in 1929 which is at the center of our story.

Alison:  but he also gave us a journal that his aunt had in a box.  You see, he’s related to Jonathan – some multi-great uncle thing.  I don’t know. It’s very ancestry-dot-com.  

Ethan: but this journal actually belonged to Hannah. It was found with Jonathan’s things when they died. Together.  Hit by a trolley in front of the hotel on Christmas eve soon after her husband had died.

Alison: she had been staring at something in the window – saying Robert’s name.

Nat:  in that journal we first found a flyer for a Christmas eve celebration at the Washington Monument.  now remember, there’s one in Baltimore…which we did not know at the time.  Apparently that year they had what’s called an old English Christmas Eve – with trumpeters playing carols and I guess that might have been fun.   But as for her journal entries – one of the final ones was dated December 23.  The day before she died.

Alison: She said Jonathan was trying to sell =the necklace.= and that can only be one necklace.  The diamond one that’s been missing.  The one that robert’s family was desperate to get back after he died – supposedly of a heart attack.  But hannah had claimed Robert had sold it when the stock market crashed.  They didn’t believe her because it had been in his family forever.

Ethan: but she wrote that she’d rather die than give it to his family because they were already snooping around the hotel looking for it.  

Alison: Hannah had pretty much moved into the lord Baltimore since Jonathan was working there and she could afford it now that Robert was dead.

Nat:  according to her journal – Jonathan had to go get the necklace from the secret hiding place…that’s what she called it.  and he went to an area of Baltimore called fells point to find a guy who was known to buy stuff - when you really don’t want a lot of questions asked about it.

Alison:  So, let me tell you about Fells Point. It’s pretty much the oldest part of Baltimore because it didn’t burn during the great fire of 1904 that we’ve talked about – so the buildings there are very old.  We ate dinner next to a building that’s been there since 1771.  So you can imagine there are plenty of ghost stories down there.

Ethan:  it’s on the water so you had the best ship builders who worked had there  

Nat: and during the war of 1812...you’d have sailors called privateers leave from fells point.  They were private citizens but president James Madison said – hey… y’all go on out there and seize those British ships that are coming after us. because England had the world’s greatest navy at the time,  And that made the British want to destroy fells point.  But they didn’t.

Alison: and did you know – not too far away – the first deaths of the civil war happened in 1861.  Things were starting up… These soldiers from Massachusetts were changing trains close by – and a crowd gathered.

Ethan:  that area had many confederate supporters…so here were union soldiers in that city.  

Nat:  you can imagine things did not go well – people threw stones, then at some point somebody fired a gun.  And all heck broke loose.  In the end – some soldiers, and civilians were killed.

Alison: But fells point eventually became a place where some not-so-nice things were going on. Like Illegal things.  

Nat:  like selling liquor – you had speakeasies…and really from what I can tell – some of those bars really weren’t so hidden.  The city didn’t seem to enforce the u.s. liquor laws.  The federal agents had to come in and do that.  And Jonathan, our ghost, got caught up in that mess that day we went to go sell the necklace.

Ethan: the guy who Jonathan went to see to sell the necklace lived in a hotel- boarding house thing.  That year in 1929, the YMCA took it over. It used to be called the Anchorage.  

Nat: this was like a hotel for sailors mainly.  And I guess so did this shady guy who bought shady jewelry.  I can only image what that was like in there.

Alison:  but when the YMCA took it over, it had 105 rooms… anybody staying there had to promise to behave, and stay sober...and yeah, you had to bathe.  Back then you had to make that a rule about that.

Nat:  the place we’re talking about eventually became the Admiral Fell Inn – which is around today and it’s also on a lot of haunted hotel lists.

Ethan: the oldest part of the building dates back to 1770

Alison: - many people who were sick with the flu during the outbreak in 1918 – came here to stay there when it was the anchorage.  We didn’t find a record of how many people died in there – but I mean you can only imagine.

Ethan: so the ghost stories – these people woke up one night because their dog was barking in their hotel room – and they saw a sailor sitting at their window ledge and then he vanished.

Alison:  other people have reported seeing a woman who looks like a nurse and she has some sort of medical chart with her.  I mean, I wouldn’t cross her.  but I have to say according to the book “Haunted Fells Point” – a guy who claimed to have seen her, then saw her in an album of historical photos from the hotel.  she had been working there during the flu epidemic.

Nat:  and others have heard what sounds like a loud party going on…when there wasn’t anyone there… they had actually evacuated the hotel because of a hurricane.

Nat: and remember those people who claimed their dog alerted them to a ghost sailor – well they also claimed, that their dog one time was barking and wanted out of the room…so they put him on a leash and started walking – and the dog led them to a tiny area where the founder of Fells Point, Edward Fell is buried.  And some say – they’ve seen him walking along the cobblestone streets nearby.

Nat: we actually recorded that in front of the fell family gravesite because it sounded cool.  So now you know.

Alison: so… back to the place where Jonathan had come to sell this necklace to some shady guy…

Ethan:  the guy tried to steal it from Jonathan instead…and so Jonathan knocked him out with a lamp and ran out.  at least that’s what Hannah wrote in her journal.

Nat:   but when he came out of the building – some local guys had held up a big truck that was carrying beer – it had been confiscated from one of the bars… because it was illegal to have so they were stealing it.  jonathan joined in…to try to blend in because he didn’t know if that shady jewelry guy was after him.

Alison:  all he knew was that he was desperate to get back to Hannah who was at the lord Baltimore hotel waiting on him.  that was December 23, 1929.  

Ethan:  they would be killed in the trolley accident the very next day.

Nat:  Now, her journal ends with the line – he’s sealed it up.  it may be a while before we can find a way to sell it.

MUSIC

Nat:  while we were talking we all heard the noise outside the door but didn’t think anything of it because you know we’re at a hotel and there are rooms across the hall.  

Alison: but I looked out the peephole anyway and I saw that security guard – Augustus walking away.  so mom tries to open the door quietly, but not so quietly so we could see where he goes – but that didn’t work. It just gets his attention because it made so much noise.

Nat:  ok well – I didn’t know it was going to be that loud.  He said hello again.  He said he was just making his rounds.  

Ethan: I’d never seen up there before. 

Nat:  I knew we needed to find our friend Clovis again.  According to security logs she and her mom were there after Robert Fielding died in his suite there in the hotel.  and I may have suggested that we also needed to go into the ballroom again... just to see… you know… how things are going.  Maybe Hannah and Jonathan will communicate with us again. But no one agreed with me about that last idea.

Alison:  in my defense, I was exhausted.  And I’d much rather find our 102-year-old friend.  I think she’s nicer than those ghosts. I mean she wants us around.  Plus, we had a suspicious guard I’d like to avoid… and he seems to hang out where Jonathan and hannah hang out.

Ethan: and I wanted to find no ghosts today.

Nat: so I went into that ballroom alone.  It was quiet – I mean, I’m surprised no one was working in there or a cleaning crew was around.  I walked around and stood in that side parlor where all the strange stuff happens.  And I said – Jonathan?  Hannah?  Are you there?  nothing. Not even a light blinking. At least not yet.

Ethan:  I was waiting on my dad to finish up a phone call – we were in the lobby, but that’s when I looked up at the mezzanine for some reason. You know, where we heard those strange voices.   I saw the shadow figure up there.  and the way his head was turned – it looked like He was looking straight at me.  I saw something shiny again like I did when the elevator randomly took me up to the 19th floor.  And that shiny thing was on the shadow guy.  But he wasn’t really a shadow anymore… he started to become more like a person…I mean, as much as a ghost can.  And he had on a dark blue jacket with shiny metal buttons.

Nat: Ethan, I’m going to interrupt you for a second.  So you say he had on a dark blue jacket and shiny metal-like buttons.  Now I don’t know if you guys remember but we told you in a previous episode that this hotel worker had been in the ballroom and she saw three people and they were standing the moonlight was coming in through the three big windows there.  One was a guy who was wearing something like that.  The other was a woman and then there was another man.  I don’t know.  So Ethan, what happened next?

Ethan: We was looking straight up at me so I went up there.  I tried to record this – because I did have a full battery at first… but not anymore.  But then it was completely gone.  And this figure in front of me said – “do you know who I am?”  How do you answer that?

Nat:  no, shadow man I don’t know who you are.

Ethan: well, I said -Are you Robert Fielding?  And he said – yes, young sir I am, and I need your help.

Alison:  now during all this, I had found Clovis again in the speakeasy.  I went over to her.  and her granddaughter seemed to be trying to calm her down. I asked her – are you ok?

Nat:  back in the ballroom - the lights started blinking – I got words that didn’t really make sense on our ghost app that shows you what ghosts are trying to tell you.  I got the vibe that whatever was doing this… was really mad.  I mean it was erratic.  And when I was in there the word “leave” appeared.  I know, I need to get the rest of the squad.

MUSIC

Ethan:  I was on the mezzanine - the Robert Fielding’s ghost kept fading in and out  – he had apparently used up all my battery power from my phone and there was nothing left to help him become visual. but before he was gone he said… I’ve been the one talking to you.  I’m glad you could understand.  you can’t let him get it. and I yelled Who?  But he was gone. At that point, my dad was up there looking for me.  so I said we need to find mom.

MUSIC 

Nat: remember when we went to fort mchenry in a previous episode – and you could feel the walls for warm spots in the jail area– well, I had decided not to leave and I’m going to feel the walls in the calvert ballroom.  You had these murals that were painted in 1944. And there I was touching all of them.  I’m sure the hotel loved that.  And I got to one spot that felt warm.   The one that showed the Washington monument…again that’s in Baltimore.  And y’all - there was a slash across part of that mural. like someone had ripped at it.  and I swear I don’t think that was there before.

Alison: so I was in the speakeasy... and trying to have a conversation with Clovis – her granddaughter was trying to calm her down.  she said someone had asked her about the day Robert Fielding died.  But she didn’t remember who it was. Her granddaughter said it’s something she doesn’t like to talk about.  Clovis then motioned for her to be quiet… and then she said – I can speak for myself. I don’t like to talk about it because it’s just hard.  I was so young and had never seen anything like that.  He was dead.  And I haven’t seen anything like it since. She said -  you don’t remember a lot from when you were that young.  And by the time you’re my age you remember a lot less.  But I can still see him.  mama took off running into that room where Hannah came out screaming.  I followed her because I was scared.  Mama tried to push me out when she saw him – but it was too late.  He was slumped over, his head was turned facing me.  that smell of bourbon – I can’t ever touch that stuff because just the smell brings back that image.  And I swear it took me years to eat eggs again. They were on his face like they had been shoved into his mouth.  Horrible sight.  That face.   And I should have just told all three of you this the first time you mentioned Jonathan and Hannah, but I just couldn’t go back there.  I can’t even go on that floor.  My mother couldn’t either – they had to move her a few floors down. I think the 16-th floor.  Where you guys are.

MUSIC

Nat:  back in the ballroom – as I went to go touch that ripped portion of the mural, I heard a voice behind me – it was Augustus the security guard… and he said – well, that’s a problem and he got on his walkie talkie – please don’t let him think I did this. please don’t let him think I did this.  that was all that was running through my head.   he said – I gotta go report this and he left.  I was going to follow him but I heard a side door open and I saw Christopher standing there, you know our friend who works at the hotel… he was looking into the side parlor where all the ghost activity had gone down.  and he was talking to the lights.

Alison: I went looking for mom and found ethan and dad instead.  We went toward the ballroom and saw Augustus walking out saying something into his walkie talkie… something about the mural and vandalization.  And I asked ethan and dad - What did she do?

Nat: at that moment I’m inside the ballroom trying to listen to what Christopher is saying.  Let me tell you I am hiding under a table at this point – they all have long tablecloths so I didn’t think he could see.  

Alison: I’m sure the ghost could though and that whole production it took to get down there.

Nat:  but I realized my phone was already silenced from the last time it went off with a bunch of people around.  You can’t look too crazy ghost hunting.  

Alison: but you’re hiding under a table.

Nat: with good reason.  Y’all - Christopher had his own app.  and he was talking to hannah and Jonathan asking about the necklace.  But I was thinking were jonanthan and hannah trying to tell us that the necklace may be buried at the washington monunment because that was mural that had been ripped or slashed or something.  It was built in 1815.. just after the war of 1812 so it would have been there in 1929.  but =where= could it be there if it’s there?  the monument is huge.  All these thoughts are running through my head.  and I’m trying to hide from Christopher there crouched down under the table. I mean you should have seen me. which I’m shocked I was able to even get up from there

Alison:  without making a loud noise.

Nat: yes because that’s something that I do.  But I did get up without making a loud noise…and I’m thinking at the time. - we’re going to have to go to the Washington monument to find that necklace.   but what happened next changed everything.  I learned something about my ghost app right then… it doesn’t just transcribe what a ghost is trying to tell =you=… it will pick up whatever it’s saying…to whomever.  Even to Christopher.  Jonathan’s great great I don’t even know how many great nephew

Ethan:  let me say during all this and after the security guard had left… we went to go inside to see what mom may have done – and we saw Christopher talking to the lights.. and tried to hide because he then turned to walk out the door.  

Alison: ethan and I jumped behind the desk in the coat check area and dad ducked into this dark storage area.  I mean, could you have picked a creepier spot?

Alison:  ethan and I are peeking over the counter and we see christopher coming  out and he’s saying out loud while reading his phone – “distracted them” and then he said the word “find handprint.” He then walked down the stairs.

Nat:  now by this time I was up from under the table.. and I came running out to find my family there and I’m trying to tell them everything as we ran down the stairs and reached the mezzanine… and we watched Christopher in the lobby below and he was sneaking behind the front desk… and he had a key card in his hand.  And Ethan then said – you can say it  

Ethan: I told you guys - I know where he’s going and we have to get there first.

Coming up on the low budget ghost squad – 

There’s a big ghostly showdown in the ballroom that somebody has been waiting decades for.   

 And we end up somewhere we shouldn’t be – do you expect anything less?

The low budget ghost squad is part of spellbound productions.

Mom did all the writing, editing, directing, producing and really telling us what to do.

That’s right – and thank you to Lucinda Peterson for the art work for the show… and thanks to alison and ethan… for playing along – and I hope everybody is enjoying it.