The Glosbe Grove Inn is the central location for my upcoming novelette, "A Cross to Bare." Learn a little about the haunted B&B, located near an inlet of Chesapeake Bay.
Halloween! Halloween! Let's nerd out for a bit.
WARNING: the below skims the surface of how an author's brain works during the research and planning phase. If that's not your jam, scroll down a teench for an excerpt from A Cross to Bare.
When I started brainstorming this holiday novelette, I knew the general idea I wanted to flesh out. A woman encounters a ghost, things go bump (between her thighs) at night. This left me with figuring out the vehicle. What would be the storyline or draw to get my FMC to this ghost?
A haunted house was the first stop, however, I was not feeling the idea of basing an adult-centered story there. Then I remembered researching B&B's (bed & breakfasts) in Maryland a few years ago. Several of the locations I found had an eerie feel about them. Smash those two ideas together, boom, a haunted B&B.
Location, check. Now for the ghost.
Last year, the fam and I took in the musical, “American Prophet: Frederick Douglass In His Own Words.” I am not sure if it's still running, but if you get the chance, check it out.
In the musical, a major part of Mr. Douglass' history before becoming the iconic historical figure we learned about was his migration from Maryland to New York. This was done under the guise of his being a seaman, he traveled north by boat and then train in a naval officer's uniform provided to him by his wife.
JUMANJI! (that's what I say when I have an idea)
Let's build a character who, though not a slave himself, operated in a similar time pre-death.
Location, check. Ghost, check. Now for some background.
We have a Black woman who is a Halloween enthusiast. She travels to southern Maryland for a weekend stay at a haunted B&B. But why is it haunted? To understand a spirit that walks the halls and the grounds of a certain space, one should look at the history of that space...
Welcome to the Glosbe.
The Glosbe Grove Inn was a hotel built in the 1840s by a wealthy seaport owner turned Maryland land developer, Samuel Clemons. The property was built and fronted for a freedman by the name of Hiram Wooten, a former naval shipmate of the developer. The inn was supremely situated as a high-end rest stop for the traveling bourgeoisie, and political and military officials traveling by ship. Wooten’s vision held a secondary, more personal benefit, as temporary hideout lodging for Black men and women fleeing captivity in the South.
The property saw immense success in its nearly one hundred years of operation before being damaged beyond repair by a mysterious fire in 1941.
The three hundred fifty acres of land the inn sat on in Prince Anne County, Maryland, attracted immense interest. No matter the amount of money or agricultural experts brought in, no one could take advantage of the vast expanse of land that existed near Chesapeake Bay. Not a single crop was yielded in the eighty years since the fire.
Experts considered the soil surrounding the property to be too acidic to farm. Natives of nearby towns, however, passed down stories of a haint named Captain Cross being the true culprit. His legend began the same year as the fire. The same year, the vast lush acreage also turned to a brittle, dry brown, and the soil hardened.
It wasn’t until the fall of 2019 when four sisters bought and restored the inn for its original purpose– that the Glosbe and its land began to live and breathe as intended, somewhat. As a historical property, it saw modest gains in its first year of reopening. But rumors of sightings of the captain are what caused a spike in interest and visitors, as the inn landed on numerous haunted hotel lists.
In the four years since its revitalization, no one has thought to question why the haint haunts this place, until now. It's that curiosity that ignites a whirlwind of interaction promising to make this Halloween unlike any ever experienced.
