Live Ghost Hunting at the Lord Baltimore Hotel: Where Were All the Ghosts?

The Lord Baltimore Hotel is supposed to be one of the most haunted hotels in Baltimore.

So naturally, when I sat in a dark hotel room surrounded by REM pods, EMF meters, cat balls, voice recorders, a spirit box, a red balloon, and a red ball specifically purchased for a little ghost girl named Molly, I expected something to happen.

Anything.

A light.

A noise.

A mysterious voice.

A ghost accepting the five dollars we offered as a paranormal appearance fee.

Nothing.

Welcome to another live ghost hunt with the Spooky Cat Lady, where sometimes the most honest paranormal evidence is twenty minutes of ghosts completely refusing to cooperate.

During this livestream, we were staying in a suite on the 17th floor of the historic Lord Baltimore Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland, only two floors below the famous 19th floor where much of the hotel's paranormal activity supposedly takes place. We experimented with several pieces of ghost-hunting equipment, attempted an EVP session, tried a spirit box, and invited some of the hotel's legendary spirits to visit us.

The result?

A lot of nothing.

And that's actually worth talking about.

The Haunted History of the Lord Baltimore Hotel

The Lord Baltimore Hotel opened in 1928 and quickly became one of the landmarks of downtown Baltimore. The 22-story French Renaissance-style hotel stands 289 feet tall and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Unfortunately, its opening came at almost the worst possible moment.

Less than a year later, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began.

This part of the Lord Baltimore's dark history isn't merely ghost-tour storytelling. Historical accounts document multiple suicides associated with the hotel during the Depression era. Sources connected with the hotel have long claimed that more than 20 people jumped from the building during that period. Baltimore Magazine reported more than 20 documented jumps between 1929 and 1932.

That's grim enough without adding anything supernatural.

But, of course, humans are very good at adding ghosts.

And the most famous one at the Lord Baltimore is a little girl named Molly.

Who Is Molly?

According to the hotel's most popular legend, Molly was a young girl whose family lost everything during the Great Depression.

The story says her parents took Molly to the top of the hotel and the family died after jumping from the building. Molly is now supposedly seen wandering the 19th floor wearing an old-fashioned dress and playing with a red ball.

Guests and hotel employees have reported seeing a little girl and, sometimes, a mysterious red ball moving through the hallways. The hotel itself continues to feature Molly prominently in its paranormal events and describes her as a young girl said to roam the 19th floor.

There's just one problem.

I can't find good evidence that Molly's story actually happened.

And I'm apparently not the only one.

The Baltimore Banner searched historical newspapers and found no account matching the story of Molly and her parents jumping from the hotel together, even though newspapers do contain reports of other suicides at the Lord Baltimore.

That distinction matters.

There were real tragedies at the hotel.

There are reports of a little girl being seen there.

But connecting that apparition to a specific girl named Molly whose parents jumped from the hotel is another step—and so far, that step seems to belong to legend rather than documented history.

That's one reason I brought a red ball with me.

If Molly likes red balls, let's test the claim.

We Brought Molly Some Toys

Our room was on the 17th floor, so we weren't quite in Molly's supposed territory. Later that night, we planned to investigate the 19th floor after the hotel's Skybar closed.

For the livestream, though, we stayed in our suite.

And I came prepared.

We had a red ball for Molly.

We had a red balloon.

We had cat balls that light up when they're disturbed.

I had even purchased a cute little stuffed bunny.

Basically, if Molly really does like toys, our hotel room should have looked like a paranormal Chuck E. Cheese.

Earlier in the investigation, we had also performed a sort of séance where we invited Molly—and several of the hotel's other reported spirits—to come visit our room.

We waited.

The REM pods remained quiet.

The cat balls had activated a little earlier, but not in a way that gave me anything particularly interesting or repeatable.

No red balls rolled across the room.

The balloon didn't mysteriously move.

The bunny remained aggressively unhaunted.

At some point, you have to admit that bribing ghosts with toys isn't working.

More Than Just Molly

Molly may be the celebrity ghost of the Lord Baltimore, but she isn't the hotel's only reported apparition.

Guests and employees have described figures wearing clothing that appears to come from another era, including apparitions around the mezzanine and common areas. Current paranormal events at the hotel also include reports of footsteps, crying, unexplained touches, elevators traveling to the 19th floor without being called, and other mysterious activity.

During our investigation, we had also heard stories associated with several other supposed spirits, including a bellboy called Sam, a woman associated with the ballroom, and a man in a fedora reportedly connected with the mezzanine.

I invited them too.

I'm an equal-opportunity ghost hunter.

None of them appeared particularly interested.

A Ghost Hunt Inside Our Hotel Suite

One advantage of livestreaming from our suite was that I could show viewers exactly how much equipment we actually bring on these investigations.

Ghost hunting can start looking slightly ridiculous when you spread everything across a hotel room.

We had multiple EMF meters.

A compass.

Flashlights.

A grid light.

A sound meter.

A wind meter.

A CO2 meter.

A voice recorder.

A thermal camera.

REM-style devices.

Cat balls.

And eventually, a spirit box.

This isn't because I believe every gadget detects ghosts.

Quite the opposite.

Part of the reason I use so many environmental tools is that we don't know what a ghost is—or whether ghosts exist at all.

If something strange happens, I want to know what else was happening in the environment at the same time.

Why Measure CO2 During a Ghost Hunt?

One device I showed during the livestream was our CO2 meter.

That may not sound particularly spooky.

It isn't.

That's why I like it.

High levels of carbon dioxide can cause symptoms including headaches, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, dizziness, and a general feeling that something isn't right.

Those aren't proof that someone seeing a ghost is actually experiencing elevated CO2, either.

But environmental conditions are exactly the kind of ordinary explanations we should be checking before reaching for a paranormal one.

The goal shouldn't be:

How can I prove this room has a ghost?

It should be:

What is happening in this room?

That's a much better question.

The Black Light Ghost Hunt

I also brought out a black light.

Some paranormal investigators believe ultraviolet light may reveal things that aren't visible under ordinary lighting.

Do I have evidence that ghosts glow under black light?

No.

But wandering through a hotel bathroom with a black light does reveal something.

Hotel bathrooms are terrifying.

I found several mysterious specks on the wall.

Ghost residue?

Probably cleaner.

Hopefully cleaner.

There are some paranormal mysteries we are better off leaving unsolved.

Trying an EVP Session Live

Eventually, we decided to try something much simpler.

An EVP session.

EVP stands for electronic voice phenomenon, and the basic idea is that a recorder might capture a voice that wasn't heard by the people present at the time.

I placed the recorder down rather than holding it because handling a recorder produces scratches, bumps, and other noises that can later sound suspicious.

Then I asked whether any of the spirits we had invited earlier were present.

I asked them to say their names.

Then we immediately played the recording back.

Nothing.

No mysterious whisper.

No voice answered my question.

No ghost politely announcing, "Molly."

Just us.

That's not unusual.

Sometimes I've gone home from an investigation convinced we captured absolutely nothing and later noticed something interesting while reviewing hours of audio.

That is why I don't consider listening once through a tiny recorder speaker in a hotel room to be a complete EVP analysis.

But during the livestream?

We heard nothing compelling.

Then We Tried the Spirit Box

With the EVP session going nowhere, it was time for the spirit box.

This is where things become much trickier.

A spirit box rapidly scans radio frequencies. Because those frequencies contain actual broadcasts, you naturally hear fragments of speech, music, and other sounds.

The paranormal theory is that spirits somehow manipulate those fragments to communicate.

The problem is obvious.

There are already voices in the box.

Humans are extremely good at finding meaningful words in unclear sounds.

If I ask:

"Is Molly here?"

…and half a second later the radio produces something vaguely resembling "yes," my brain desperately wants those two events to be connected.

But was it Molly?

Was it a radio announcer?

Was it a commercial?

Was it random audio that resembled a word?

Was I primed to hear "yes" because that's what I was waiting for?

Those are questions we need to ask.

During the livestream, I repeatedly heard overlapping voices, but I couldn't identify anything that I thought clearly answered our questions.

That is exactly what I said while we were live.

I thought we were hearing radio.

Molly, Are You Here?

I asked Molly whether she had finally arrived.

Nothing convincing.

Then I tried Sam.

Earlier, we had jokingly offered him five dollars to come visit our room.

Apparently inflation has reached the afterlife because five bucks did not do the job.

I asked Molly's supposed parents whether they were present.

I asked about the story of their deaths.

I asked whether Molly's legend was true.

Nothing produced an answer I was confident enough to call paranormal.

And that's especially important with Molly because we already have reason to question the historical story attached to her.

If a spirit box produces something that sounds vaguely like "yes" after I ask whether Molly died at the hotel, that does not suddenly become historical evidence.

A noisy radio cannot fill gaps in the historical record.

"Say My Name"

Finally, I tried one of the harder spirit-box questions.

Instead of asking something that could be answered with a vague yes or no, I asked whoever might supposedly be present to say my name.

That gives us a much narrower target.

If the box clearly said "Roxanne" in direct response, I would find that much more interesting than a random "yes."

We listened.

None of the responses sounded like my name.

Strike three.

Ghosts 0.

Radio 1.

Was That a Shadow?

At one point during the session, I thought I saw a shadow beneath the hotel-room door.

Now this is exactly the kind of moment that can become dramatic very quickly in a paranormal video.

A shadow!

Someone is outside!

Molly?

Sam?

Mysterious dead businessman from 1931?

Except we were staying in a functioning hotel.

There was another occupied room nearby, and we had already heard those guests leave earlier.

So when I saw a shadow underneath the door, the most obvious explanation was that somebody had simply returned to their room.

That's not debunking.

That's investigating.

You don't need a paranormal explanation when the normal explanation is standing ten feet away holding a hotel key.

Nothing Happened—and That's Okay

As the livestream continued, I began joking that maybe the Lord Baltimore wasn't haunted after all.

We had been there for quite a while.

No strange shadows wandering through the suite.

No objects moving.

No unexplained bangs.

No compelling EVP.

No obvious intelligent responses from the spirit box.

The REM pods were quiet.

Our other equipment wasn't producing anything dramatic.

And after spending much of the day investigating, we were tired.

Very tired.

My husband had reached the point where he was watching television with the sound turned off because ghost hunting had apparently become less entertaining than silent TV.

That might be my new official measurement of paranormal activity.

The Husband Boredom Scale.

Quiet Investigations Are Important

This is one reason I wanted to do occasional live ghost hunts.

Edited paranormal videos can accidentally create a distorted picture of what an investigation is actually like.

Most ghost hunting is quiet.

Extremely quiet.

There are long stretches when nothing happens.

You ask questions.

Nothing answers.

You stare at the equipment.

Nothing moves.

You change experiments.

Nothing happens again.

Then you wait some more.

A finished paranormal video might compress hours of investigation into twenty minutes.

That is necessary for entertainment—nobody wants a six-hour video of me staring suspiciously at a REM pod—but it can create the impression that paranormal activity happens constantly.

It doesn't.

At least not for us.

The livestream showed that.

But Isn't the Lord Baltimore Supposed to Be Extremely Haunted?

Yes.

That's what makes this interesting.

The hotel openly embraces its paranormal reputation. It hosts ghost tours and paranormal investigations, and its own event listings discuss Molly, the 19th floor, unexplained elevators, apparitions, and other reported activity.

Other investigators and hotel guests have reported strange experiences there.

CBS Baltimore even conducted its own investigation and reported some potentially interesting equipment responses, although its reporter ultimately concluded that there was no confirmation that those responses came from Molly and that their overnight cameras captured nothing notable.

That's actually a conclusion I appreciate.

Something unexplained happening isn't automatically evidence of a ghost.

And somebody else having an experience doesn't mean I will have one.

So Is the Lord Baltimore Hotel Haunted?

After this livestream?

I can't say that it is.

I also can't say that it isn't.

What I can say is that during this particular portion of our investigation, we did not capture anything that convinced me paranormal activity was taking place.

And I'm perfectly happy saying that.

The building has a genuine history.

Real tragedies happened there.

There are decades of ghost stories and eyewitness reports.

There is a famous legend about a little girl named Molly.

But legends, history, personal experiences, and scientific evidence are four different things.

Sometimes they overlap.

Sometimes they don't.

That's what I'm trying to figure out.

One Investigation Doesn't Settle Anything

A quiet night at a supposedly haunted location doesn't prove ghosts aren't there.

But neither does one unexplained noise prove they are.

That's why repeat investigations matter.

If Molly truly interacts with red balls, can we get that behavior repeatedly?

If elevators mysteriously travel to the 19th floor, how often does it happen and can we eliminate ordinary elevator programming or mechanical causes?

If a particular device activates, what else in the environment could activate it?

If we capture a voice, is it reproducible?

Can another recorder capture it simultaneously?

Could it be contamination?

Those questions aren't nearly as exciting as screaming "GHOST!" into a camera.

But they're much more interesting to me.

The Real Investigation Wasn't Over Yet

This livestream was only a small part of our night.

We still planned to head up to the famous 19th floor after the Skybar closed and spend some time investigating Molly's supposed territory.

So maybe the problem wasn't that the Lord Baltimore ghosts didn't exist.

Maybe they simply weren't willing to travel down two floors to our suite.

Which seems lazy.

We brought toys.

We offered money.

What more do these ghosts want?

For these twenty minutes, though, the Lord Baltimore gave us something that doesn't appear nearly often enough in paranormal entertainment:

a negative result.

We looked.

We listened.

We tested.

And nothing clearly paranormal happened.

That's still part of the experiment.

Because if I'm ever going to tell you I found something I genuinely can't explain, you should also see all the nights when I didn't.

That's how we separate the strange from the ordinary.

Or at least try.

Have you ever stayed at the Lord Baltimore Hotel?

If you've had something strange happen there—especially on the 19th floor—I want to hear about it. Tell me what happened, where you were in the hotel, and whether there was anything else around that might explain it.

Maybe Molly was just avoiding me.

Until the next ghost hunt, stay spooky, cats.