Feb
1
2010
Baltimore and the Legend of the Phantom
Author: SamEvery city has its legends. Baltimore is one of the most historically rich cities in the United States, and therefore, is filled with myths and legends, some of recent origins, and some of times very long past. In the summer of 1951, one such legend created the catalyst for an episode of what could be called mass hysteria in the city. People who lived in the neighborhood of O’Donnell Heights were locking the doors of their houses, and staying in their Baltimore luxury hotels the minute the sun went down.
There were many newsworthy stories at this time in history, the Cold War and the Korean War had been in the headlines for months. But during the summer of ’51, news of a mysterious stalker bumped everything else off of the first page. The two newspapers, The Evening Sun and The Sun, may have been in part to blame, as the two competing papers fanned the flames of the community’s panic. Ask anyone today who is familiar with this time, and no one has been able to understand the furor that was caused, how it got just so big. By the time police investigators began looking into the reported sightings, the entire town was in a panic, and the mysterious stalker was blamed for everything from minor break-ins to stealing children from their beds in the middle of the night.
On any given night police would receive more than 200 phone calls of alleged sightings, but no one was ever actually attacked. Some teenagers were arrested that summer, for petty pranks, but no phantom. People who have looked into the case years later, speculate that there never was a phantom, that the mass hysteria was fueled by the dueling newspapers, and that peoples’ imaginations took over and ran a muck. It’s like the old boogey man story, no one has ever seen the boogey man, but small children will behave when the boogey man is mentioned. It’s the power of the imagination, and what a strong power that is.