Fort McHenry National Monument

Fort McHenry is the star-shaped fort whose defense in September 1814 inspired the national anthem, and it later served as a Civil War prison and a World War I hospital. Retired park ranger Bruce Bytnar, who worked there from 1975 to 1977, wrote that two sightings of a ghostly soldier marching along the outer battery were reported in that time, one by a fellow ranger and one by members of an employee's family who lived in the park. Stories name the soldier as Lieutenant Levi Claggett, killed in 1814, as William Williams, a formerly enslaved man who enlisted and died in the battle, or as an unnamed soldier of the 1850s. Rangers and visitors also describe footsteps, lights switched on and voices from the old prison cells. The National Park Service does not promote the ghost stories, which are ranger and visitor lore.