Phantom Felines And Other Ghostly Animals - Gerina Dunwich 2006

The Ghost Cat of Regester Street
Phantom Felines

by Amy Lynwander and Melissa Rowell, Fell’s Point Ghost Tours

The Baltimore neighborhood of Fell’s Point is one of the oldest in the city. It was spared from destruction by the Great Fire in 1904 and contains many fine examples of Federal Period architecture. Fell’s Point was founded in 1730 by a Quaker shipbuilder from Lancaster, England, named William Fell. He envisioned the neighborhood becoming a shipbuilding center. In time his vision came to pass, and many ships, including the famous Baltimore Clipper Ship, were built in this neighborhood. Fell’s Point was also home to a large number of privateers. Privateers held “Letters of Marque” for the U.S. government that allowed them to legally seize British ships and any cargo aboard them during the Revolutionary War. Naturally, the British reviled this neighborhood and its inhabitants, and gave it the nickname, “that den of pirates.” During the Battle of Baltimore in 1814 the British were specifically trying to reach Fell’s Point in order to raze it. They never made it past Fort McHenry and the neighborhood was spared.

All of the people living in Fell’s Point during the 1700s, its golden days of shipbuilding, were connected to the maritime industry in some way. There were ship captains, Caulkers (including the famous African American abolitionist, Frederick Douglass), tavern owners, ladies of the night, free blacks, and slaves. The rich and poor lived elbow to elbow, with the grand houses of the moneyed adjoining the tiny alley homes of the less prosperous working poor. One of these alley homes is now home to a mysterious feline spirit.

Regester Street is a tiny alley street just one block from the Fell’s Point Square, the center of this small village. Its charming tilting homes are crammed together and one can only imagine the lives of the inhabitants packed inside those walls. One building in particular is a way station for lost souls. More than five ghosts, one of whom is the ghost of a gray cat, inhabit the building. The owner of the house has been a resident there for more than fifteen years. Many guests who have visited her have commented on her gray cat.

“I saw your cat in the living room. When I tried to pet it, it hissed and ran away,” one guest said.

The owner of the Regester Street house has no pets. As time wore on more and more people told her that they had seen her cat in various rooms of the house. She had no idea why people kept seeing a gray cat in the house. A few years later she was having some contract work done on the basement of the house. The workers were digging up the earth beneath the floor in preparation for installing a new floor. They then uncovered the body of a petrified gray cat, one that appeared to have been dead for quite some time. The animal was desiccated with its skin still on its body—and patches of gray fur were clinging to it! The mystery of the gray ghost cat was solved.

One evening a tour guide for Fell’s Point Ghost Tours was standing in front of the house telling the story of the gray cat, among others, when a member of the audience began to heckle her. This woman told the tour guide that there is no way that the cat’s fur could have survived such a burial. As the tour group turned to leave Regester Street the woman tripped and fell onto the pavement. She said that a gray cat had just run between her legs. No one else saw the cat.