OCEAN CITY GHOST WALK - Friday - Saturday August 9 & 10th

MARION STATION, MD - On Friday, August 9th and Saturday, August 10th, author Mindie Burgoyne will lead a 1.5 mile ghost walk through the lower historic part of Ocean City. This will be the eighth Eastern Shore ghost walk in the Chesapeake Ghost Walk series she launched in January of this year. Burgoyne will have researched and crafted nine walking tours focused on folklore, hauntings and tales of the dead by the end of 2013. "Ocean City" she says, "was the most difficult to research and the most rewarding."

The Ocean City Ghost Walk will begin at the Indian at the Inlet and end at the Henry Hotel, making a circular sweep from the Inlet to 4th Street. In between stops will include the Ocean City Lifesaving Station Museum, the Ocean City Pier, Trimper's Rides, the Atlantic Hotel, the Tarry-A-While Guest House, a Fisherman's Cottage, and the Shoreham Hotel. Burgoyne hopes to have more than a dozen stops with rich, "ghostly" tales at each one. She will impart a loose but powerful history of the town as the setting and then tell stories about unexplained happenings, apparitions, and tales of the dead ... in some cases, the walking dead. Burgoyne also challenges the guests to examine their own psychic abilities and discover whether or they tend to be more clairvoyant (seeing apparitions), clairaudient (hearing things from the spirit world) or clairsentient (absorbing feelings from the spirit world).

This Ghost Walk is the first ever for Ocean City. Mindie Burgoyne has spent months researching and interviewing to gather the information needed to craft a tour. "It was very difficult and I wasn't sure I could get enough material to put a tour together." Burgoyne states. "Ocean City isn't as old as the other towns on my Ghost Walk series. And while there's a rich history and many historians willing to share information, there isn't an accessible legacy of storytelling or folklore - at least not on the surface."

Burgoyne conducted twenty-six face-to-face interviews when preparing the tour including Sandy Hurley from the Lifesaving Station, historians George and Sue Hurley, Charlie Purnell from the Atlantic Hotel, Brooks Trimper from Trimper's Rides (and several Trimper's staff) and welcomed help and advice from Glenn Irwin of the Ocean City Development Corporation and Lisa Challenger, Director of Worcester County Tourism. In addition the formal interviews, Burgoyne conducted dozens of phone interviews and combed through genealogical records and the folklore collection at the Nabb Research Center at Salisbury University. The end result is a walking tour that highlights ghosts of hoteliers, sea captains, opera singers, fisherman, ghosts from shipwrecks, suicides and several ghosts believed to be Ocean City legends .... who just aren't willing to leave, even though they're dead.

The Ocean City Ghost Walk takes approximately one and one half hours to complete and guests will walk about 1.5 miles. Good walking shoes and weather-smart clothing is suggested. Cost is $15 for adults and $9 for children 8 to 12 years old. Advanced registration and ticket purchase is required. Guests can purchase tickets on-line at http://travelhag.com/product/ghost-walk-ocean-city-md-friday-aug-9-2013-800-pm Each tour is limited to 25 people and likely to sell out. There are 4 tour options - 2 on Friday evening (Aug 9) and 2 on Saturday evening (Aug 10).