Professor doubles as “Ghost Guy”

By Maria Michelli

Chains clang and metal doors slam in the Cecil County Detention Center. Inmates chat and create a disturbance. Sounds normal, except the prisoners are long gone, and the building was converted to a retirement center in 1985.

In the new jail, on Landing Lane in Elkton, Md., prisoners are held down by “phantom Indians” until the sun comes up. The Native American burial ground underneath the prison was not respected.

By People’s Plaza, in the Turnquist housing development in Cecil County, heavy footsteps are heard on carpeted floors. Cabinets and refrigerator doors are left open, and lights flicker. The neighborhood was built on top of the wreckage of 81 passengers, whose plane was struck by lightening in December 1963.

Ed Okonowicz, author, storyteller, and University of Delaware professor, told these and other ghost stories at Historic Elk Landing, in Elkton, Md., on September 30. In this program, “Spooky Ghost Tales of Cecil County and Maryland,” Okonowicz entertained audiences with his unique brand of ghost stories, based on factual events and interviews in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Elk Landing has its own share of spirits, including the ghosts of former owner, Mary Hollingsworth, and a young soldier who put out his cigarette on some ammunition. These days, according to Okonowicz, Mary walks through the walls of the Hollingsworth property, while the twelve-year-old boy floats across the Elk River, regretting his choice to smoke against his mother’s wishes.

Okonowicz has been telling ghost stories since 1993, when the Delaware native met his first storyteller. He started out in public relations for the university, but when he found it wasn’t creative enough for him, he moved to freelance feature writing for newspapers and magazines.

At the time, Okonowicz knew nothing about storytellers and he was uninterested when he was assigned an article on one. However, once he began talking to her he was hooked.

“I stayed for three hours and talked to this woman,” he says. “Then I took a graduate storytelling course, and I decided to start doing that.”

Storytelling has become a career for Okonowicz, who says it is incorporated in his teaching and writing.

“That accidental meeting with that woman changed my life,” Okonowicz says. “The storytelling helps me deliver the stories that I write in the books, but it also feeds more stories. It helps in the classroom to create a nice mix. It’s an nice juggling act, they all relate and feed off of each other.”

Okonowicz develops his programs by matching a time period with the geographical location and regional history of the site. The programs change as new stories are discovered and developed. He says each location has its own legends, but some stories evolve based on audience reactions and children’s comments.

Okonowicz creates cemetery tours and ghost walks at other historic sights in order to draw interest to the history.

“Sometimes people will call you in and say we have this historic plantation, can you develop a ghost tour?” he says. “The ghosts serve to entice people to learn about the history. People come to a campfire to be scared, but it’s a trick. They end up finding out all this neat stuff and they want to learn about it.”

Okonowicz says although some sites look down on using ghosts to attract visitors, he feels his tours are a great way to raise money and share the history of a particular site. However, he says if his programs were advertised as historical, people wouldn’t come.

“Ghost history, they come for, but you give them the history while you’re doing it,” he says. “People like that stuff, and you’ve got to get them in the door. Folks will walk away with a good dose of history that they normally wouldn’t be exposed to.”

Communications professor and historian Mike Dixon provides the history half of many of Okonowicz’s programs.

“He’s the historian, and I’m the ghost guy,” Okonowicz says.

Dixon has been on the Board of Directors of Elk Landing since Elkton purchased the property from Hollingsworth descendants in 1999. Dixon says he met Okonowicz while taking one of his tours, and since then, the pair has been creating programs together.

“I went on one of Ed’s walks at Fort Delaware and I saw it as a great opportunity and a way to make history more fun,” Dixon says. “The way people want to get their history has changed over the years. I have definitely borrowed from Ed as a storyteller.”

Elk Landing Director of Programming and Events Bruce Leith says although he has yet to see any spirits in the house, he still enjoys the ghost walk.

“It’s a great fundraiser for the place,” Leith says. “It brings attention to Elk Landing and draws people to our other events.”

For Okonowicz, storytelling has created a career in books. In 1994, he started his own publishing company with his wife, Kathleen, called Myst and Lace.

Since, he has been voted “Best Local Book Author” in 2005 by Delaware Today, and published 26 titles, mixing history with mystery. His books include the nine volume series, “Spirits Between the Bays,” “Terrifying Tales of the Beaches and Bays,” “Possessed Possessions,” the “DelMarVa Murder Mystery Series,” and multiple volumes about historical ghosts, lighthouses, and local folklore.

Okonowicz says he enjoys his job because it keeps him out of the ordinary.

“I get to go everywhere from restaurants and inns, to cemeteries and plantations,” he says. “It’s fun, as opposed to a classroom or a library.”

Is he excited for the ghost walk?

“This is my life,” he says.