Secreted horse skull

According to the second edition of the self-published Spirits of Frederick by Alyce T Weinberg (1992), the owners of an 1810 stone house in Walkersville, Maryland, discovered during renovations in the 1980s a horse’s skull in the dining-room ceiling.

Weinberg writes: “One day when construction workers were chipping away at the ceiling, one member of the crew reached his hand inside the cracked plaster and pulled out the skeleton of a horse’s head. It was picked clean, bleached and almost intact with its jawbone and some teeth… There is no indication of how the horse might have died, or whether it was a family pet or reliable steed that plowed the fields or whether the bones were found in a field that was cleaned by scavengers. Was it hidden as a ghoulish prank or for more significant reasons?”

Weinberg does not make the connection, but reading this, I immediately thought of FT articles about animal skeletons entombed in old buildings, often at thresholds or within metaphorically important fixtures such as hearths, most likely as magical wards against evil or ill luck. Granted, a horse is a less obvious household protector than the usual cat or dog, but the apparent placement above the family table seems resonant enough. I must note, however, that Weinberg does not tell us whether the 1980s dining room was used for that purpose as early as 1810.

She goes on to relate that two weeks after the skull’s discovery, the homeowners’ own horse, Dawn, was found dead “of unknown causes”. The homeowners viewed the discovery as an “omen”, a “foreboding of the death of a beloved family pet”. “For Karen Green,” Weinberg writes, “the memories of her own horse and the mysterious dining room skeleton will be inextricably linked.” A superstitious reader would go further, and suggest that disturbing the skull had caused Dawn’s death. In any case, at the time of Weinberg’s writing, “The mystery skull is sitting at the bottom of a closet, waiting to be mounted as a conversation piece.”

I cannot make this a conversation piece with Weinberg, who died in 1987, so I thought I’d present it to FT readers instead. I also recommend her slim, engaging book to anyone interested in the lore of Appalachia or the midAtlantic states. Moreover, now that I am promoted to full professor and in theory empowered to be as eccentric as I like, I would be pleased to hear from any readers with knowledge of forteana in western Maryland or the surrounding region. My postal address is c/o the Department of English and Foreign Languages, Frostburg State University, 101 Braddock Road, Frostburg MD 21532, and my email address is arduncan@frostburg.edu.

Prof Andy Duncan

Frostburg State University, Maryland