At a highly acclaimed college in West Virginia, there is an initiation rite of passage at a certain girls sorority. This rite of passage is to spend the night alone at one of the towns cemetaries, sitting in the lap of a statue. This statue sits on top of a tomb of a lady called Agnes. The legend has it that Agnes died from a broken heart when she was jilted by her fiance. The initiation ritual had been performed for years. On one evening the sorority sent a young lady into the cemetary for the initiation. When they came back the next morning, they found the girl still sitting in the lap of the statue. She was dead. She had hand marks all over her body, as is she was in the clutches of supernatural hands. You see, the lady was said to be a direct decendant of Agnes's Fiance. Perhaps Agnes finally had some revenge.
During the turn of the century craftsmen were allowed to express themselves in cemetery art...thus you see angelic statues and the sort.
One of Baltimore, Maryland's statues gained a reputation for being more then just cemetery art.
When Union General Felix Agnus the publisher of the Baltimore American, died in 1925, he was buried in Pikesvilles Druid Ridge Cemetery a few miles outside of the Baltimore City limits. A rather unusual statue was placed on his grave. It was a small black angel that appeared to be perching on top of the grave stone.
During the safety of daylight , many people regarded the angel as a beautiful addition to the graveyard art of the cemetery. The sculptor was one of the premier turn-of-the-century artisans in Maryland and the statue was highly regarded for the detail and artistic beauty..... until darkness fell and the strange events near the grave of General Angus began.
For some who encountered the angel in the darkness, she was known as "Black Aggie". People who met the angel in darkness regarded her as a symbol of terror. As Black Aggie's legend grew, stories began to appear in Baltimore papers...to say nothing of the conversations of those who had an interest and believed in the dark side of life. There was a significant amount of interest in Black Aggie....as the stories abounded that her eyes glowed red at the stroke of midnight.
One story was that Aggie was a nurse in Baltimore in the early part of the century. She was well liked, but then strange things happened and she was accused of a horrible crime. The town lynched Aggie only to discover her innocence the next day. Out of communal guilt, the people responsible for her wrongful death commissioned a statue for her.
The legend grew.... and it was said that the spirits of the dead rose from their graves to gather around her on certain nights and that living persons who returned her gaze were struck blind. Pregnant women who passed through her shadow (where strangely, grass never grew) would suffer miscarriages. Other Black Aggie stories say that any virgin placed in the outstretched arms of Black Aggie will lose her virginity in 24 hours; If you say Black Aggie's name in a mirror three times at midnight in the dark, she will either appear behind you, stab you, make you lose your mind, or transport you to hell ... or possibly all three depending on to whom you talk.
local college fraternity decided to include Black Aggie in their initiation rites. Not really believing the stories, the candidates for membership were ordered to spend the night sitting beneath the form of Black Aggie, their backs to the grave of General Felix Angus.
One night, at the stroke of midnight, the cemetery watchman heard a scream in the darkness. When he reached the Angus grave, he found a young man lying dead at the foot of the statue.... he had died of fright.
Just another legend that grew over the years into a ghost story? Maybe, and then, maybe not.
One morning in 1962, a watchman discovered that one of the angel's arms had been cut off during the night. The missing arm was later found in the trunk of a sheet metal worker's car, along with a saw. He told the judge that Black Aggie had cut off her own arm in a fit of grief and had given it to him. Apparently, the judge didn't believe him and the man went to jail.
However, a number of people did believe the man's strange story and almost every night, huge groups of people gathered in Druid Ridge Cemetery. This continued to happen nearly every night and finally, by 1967, it had gotten so bad that the descendants of Felix Angus had the statue removed from his grave site. They donated her to the Smithsonian Institution.
Today, Black Aggie sits somewhere, probably covered in cobwebs, but no one knows where she really is. In 1987 the Smithsonian deaccessioned Aggie, who was now known asThe Agnus memorial . Another Aggie mystery is that the Smithsonian had no information about the legends surrounding the ghostly sculpture. The Agnus memorial was given to the General Service Administration in 1987. One of the GSA roles is to dispose of "excess' governmental property. Although GSA owned Aggie in 1987, she was reported being at the Smithsonian as late as 1992. No further information about the location of Black Aggie is available from either GSA or the Smithsonian. The Baltimore Ghost seems to have disappeared.
A Baltimore Sun Reporter, who wrote about Black Aggie in 1992, is under the impression that while the Smithsonian did not have Aggie as part of their regular collection, that she was still on the grounds tucked away in an alley. Black Aggie isn't being exhibitied, and officially lost. "Maybe, just maybe," wrote a columnist for the Baltimore Sun, "They're not taking any chances."
The grave of General Angus can still be seen in the cemetery, although Black Aggie has been gone for more than 30 years.
