On this week’s episode of Ghost Hunter, TAPS took a ride down to Waldorf, Maryland to spend a night at Samuel Mudd’s home, where the local owner states that the home is haunted and unexplainable events been occurring on a regular basis. Taps ( The Atlantic Paranormal Society) is a ghost hunting agency that visits expected haunted places and tries to disprove that the places are hunted.
For you who don’t know who Dr. Samuel Mudd was, I’m going to give you a little history lesson. Dr. Samuel Mudd was the son of a large plantation owner, that attended Georgetown College and then graduated from the University of Maryland, where he studied medicine. Mudd married a woman named Sarah and set up a practice on a farm in Waldorf, Maryland.
Mudd was an advocate of slavery and supported the Confederacy during the Civil War.Mudd was know to express his dislike and hatred for Lincoln and his policies.
About four o’clock in the morning, two men arrived at Dr. Mudd’s farm on horseback. This was the following morning after the Lincoln assassination. The two men were John Wilkes Booth and David Herold. John Wilkes Booth was in severe pain with a fractured leg, he received from falling to the stage after shooting the President. Mudd welcomed the men into his house, placing John Wilkes Booth on his sofa and later taking him upstairs to a bed where he treated his injury.
The next day Mudd had a carpenter construct John Wilkes Booth a pair of crutches. Later that day of April fifteen John Wilkes Booth and David Herold left to thier next destination of Parson Wilmer’s. John Wilkes Booth did not leave the house until he shaved his mustache in Mudd’s home.
When Lt. Alexander Lovett, came to Mudd’s house on April 18, a military investigator tracking Boot’s escape route. Mudd claimed that the man whose leg he fixed was a stranger to him.
Not to get into the whole Trial Of Dr. Samuel Mudd, there were many witnesses that saw Mudd with John Wilkes Booth and David Herold weeks before the President’s assassination. With all this evidence Dr. Samuel Mudd was charged with conspiracy to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Samuel Mudd was spared by one vote from receiving the death penalty. The Military Commission sentenced Mudd to life in Prison.
In 1867, an outbreak of yellow fever overtook the Dry Tortugas, claiming the lives of fellow conspirator Michael O’Lauglin and the prison doctor. Mudd assumed the role of the new prison doctor.
President Andrew Johnson pardoned Mudd in March, 1869. Mudd returned to Maryland. Mudd died of pneumonia in 1883.
That was my little history lesson on Dr. Samuel Mudd. I hope that you now know who this man was and what kind of role he played in history
When TAPS arrived at the farm the current owner gave them a little more history of the farm and the family. The Mudd family did not have Lady Luck on their side. Sarah Mudd had a nanny that would look after her twins. One dat there was a freak accident where one of the twins was up high on something, fell and broke her neck. Where she was rushed to an upstairs bedroom and died in that bed. The child was only 8 months old.
The owner then told TAPS of some of the strange things that occured at the house. First , strange things would happen on the couch that John Wilkes Booth was laid on when he first entered the house. Second, they would here a woman’s voice. It was probably Sarah Mudd crying over her baby. Thirdly, that the room that the child died in thing would move around or they would see indentations in the bed. Lastly, they said that they would see a group of people in the back yard around a well in the back yard.
Darkness came and the TAPS crew was ready to investigate. As two of the crew members were in the child’s room upstairs, things started to happen. Then fist thing that happened is that the camera battery went dead. This usually happens, because an entity needs power around it to manifest. The crew quickly replaced the battery. As one of them was by the camera he kept on feeling a static charge in his had. The other crew member swore that something had slapped his hand. Was it the child? No one knows for sure.
After that experience they walked outside with a thermal scanner. Not being outsider for more that a couple of minutes they captured a figure walking right in front of them. There was no one outside, because they would of heard someone or seen someone. The figure was less than ten feet in front of them. After this, they decided to wrap things up and head back to headquarters where they would review all the video and sound clips.
After their review, they meet up with the present owner of the farm and let her know there findings. They basically found two things. First, it was the figure that walked in front on the thermal imaging camera. They could not explain it. Second they discovered a voice in one of the recordings that was not the crews. It said “I am not guilty” Was it Dr. Samuel Mudd trying to tell them a message beyond the grave? No one knows. TAPS did agree that there are some supernatural things happening on the farm and would like to come back to investigate some more.