The haunting of Auburn House

By Rebecca Kirkman on October 28, 2021

Flickering lights, footsteps, misplaced objects—these are some of the mysteries that visitors to the Auburn House have reported over the years. And each year, as Halloween draws closer, the stories and questions intensify.

For many, the explanation is Martha, the resident ghost of the historic building on the university’s south campus. 

According to TU lore, Martha was a young nanny or maid who died in a fire that ravished the Auburn House 172 years ago on Oct. 29, 1849—long before it was part of the Towson University campus—leaving only the foundation and three basement doors intact. While a “Baltimore Sun” story from the time doesn’t mention any deaths associated with the event, the legend has persisted for decades within the university, which acquired the Auburn House (rebuilt in 1850) with the purchase of 23 acres of land from Sheppard Pratt in 1971.

What’s making Martha mad?

Alexa Demski, assistant director of alumni outreach programs, first learned about Martha in 2013 when she was working for the Tiger Athletics Fund. At the time, many of the athletics staff were based in the building.

“I heard about Martha on my first day in the office,” Demski recalls. “It was the running joke as I went around meeting everyone, to watch out for her. You naturally laugh it off until you’re in there and random things would happen—then you would wonder who did something that made Martha mad that day.”

Demski says the creepiest experiences often happened when she was alone—objects falling off desks without being disturbed, doors creaking after everyone had left and the window in the back third-story room—rumored to have been Martha’s—flying open on days without any wind.

The most hair-raising moment, however, was when Demski went to drop off supplies late one evening after working a men’s basketball game. She noticed the light on in Martha’s room, though the lights had been turned off before the game.

“For some reason my keys had trouble unlocking the door that night, but after eventually getting into the space I turned on the first-floor light and proceeded up the stairs,” Demski recalls. “As I continued to the second floor, I started getting the eeriest feeling, like someone was behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck were raised.”

Instead of bringing the supplies to the third floor, Demski rushed back downstairs and left them inside the front door. “I ran down, locked the door and, while walking back to my car, I looked up, and the light was off,” she says. “I made sure to not go into the house after work hours moving forward, to not disturb Martha at night.”

In 1975, the university renovated the building, restoring it to the original 1850 Victorian style. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places the same year.

From 1976 to 1993, the Auburn House served as the Towson Club, a dining club for faculty, staff and others associated with university activities.

The first recorded mention of a ghost in the Auburn House is in a 1982 issue of “The Towerlight,” according to a Special Collections and University Archives blog post. 

In October 1992, the university leaned into the legend with the opening of Martha’s Pub, a short-lived venture designed as an after-work gathering spot for alumni, faculty and staff in the stone-walled basement. A “Towerlight” article about the pub’s grand opening recounts stories from members of university police and maintenance staff of shadowy figures, lights mysteriously turning on and windows blowing open.

Twenty years later, the same types of stories continue to be passed down.

It’s coming from inside the house

It had just started snowing on a November evening when building mechanic Andre Passas parked in front of the Auburn House to do a walk-through of the building. When he got to the basement, he heard the front door slam shut and footsteps walking above him.

“I figured it was someone from TUPD, because they come and check the place out too,” recalls Passas, who has worked for TU for 13 years. When he reached the first floor, expecting to see someone, the building was empty. “When I opened the front door, there was snow on the ground and no footsteps.” 

On other occasions, Passas has found the windows in the third-floor room open. “I’ll close and latch the windows, and then I’ll do my other buildings, and I might ride back past Auburn House, and the window will be open again,” he says. “That’s happened twice for me, and other people have said the same thing.”

A presidential jump scare

Towson University President Kim Schatzel first heard whispers about a ghost named Martha when she visited the building for the first time. In the half-decade since, the TU president has added her own unexplained experiences to the legend.

Most of them, she says, happen in the early morning or late evening, when there’s less activity on campus. “If you go in by yourself, or at certain times of day, it’s got a creepy feeling,” Schatzel says. “But we always say hello to her when we walk in.” 

While entertaining donors over dinner at the historic home with her husband, Trevor Iles, and Vice President for University Advancement Brian DeFilippis, Schatzel began to tell the story of the house’s history and the legend of Martha. With the meal, they had enjoyed some white wine, and the bottle was sitting corked in a bucket of ice beside the dining table. 

“I got to the part that I'm talking about Martha, and the cork flew out of the bottle,” Schatzel says. “It hit the ceiling, and then fell to the floor.” 

“We had five people there that went, ‘Wow.’ That's my Martha experience.”

Who’s that in the family photo?

Despite the spine-tingling episodes, staff consider Martha a Tiger.

“Many of us enjoy hearing stories of Martha because it’s a connection to the history of the land and spaces we now occupy,” says Deputy Director of Athletics Tricia Brandenburg, who started working at TU nine years ago when the athletics offices were in the Auburn House.

Although she hasn’t had any firsthand experiences with Martha, she has heard the stories from colleagues since her first day on the job.

“We really do feel that Martha is part of our TU family.”