Exposing Baltimore’s Creepy Side

In a marathon trip to Baltimore, the We’re Out of Here bloggers explored far beyond the Inner Harbor. We checked out DC’s underrated neighbor’s creepy side — a haunted bar and the Edgar Allen Poe-themed restaurant. This article originally ran in Feb. 09.

I like Baltimore. Maybe because it reminds me of Cleveland: gritty, on the water and, to use a travel writer’s favorite word: unpretentious. So, Baltimore is where I chose to spend my birthday.

Clipper City

First, I hit up Clipper City brewing company’s beer tour. Embarrassingly, I always find myself at some micro brewpub or beer destination (check out this post on Frederick, Maryland’s Flying Dog Brewery). I am becoming a beer snob. However, compared to the Flying Dog tour, Clipper City’s was lacking. No unlimited samples, only four beers on tap and no rowdy tasting room pub that spills out onto the lawn. The tour — though funny and informative, unlike the unintelligible, rambling of the Flying Dog tour guide — was way too long. After 40 minutes of hops, bottles and beer packaging, I headed back to the tasting room.

Dining with Poe

Second, We’re Out of Here visited Baltimore’s Edgar Allen Poe themed restaurant/pub, Annabell Lee Tavern. Named after the Poe love poem, this restaurant is worth a visit if only to sample the best sweet potato fries. (Yelpers also rave about the duck fat fries, but we didn’t cough up the extra $2.) The food (pub standards with an upscale twist ; we had the lamb sliders and snapper tacos) is delicious, the drink menu thorough and the place cozy.

Baltimore’s Haunted Bar

Afterward, we met two friends and headed out to two classic Baltimore bars: Brewer’s Art, the cavernous Belgian beer bar located mostly in the cellar of a Victorian mansion, and Club Charles, a haunted dive.

After a ten-hour beer marathon, I don’t remember much of what Club Charles looked like: just its red decor and creepy mural of hell, which someone claimed was painted by WPA artists in the 1930s. My friend who is writing an article on the subject for her magazine BMore Live insisted the place is haunted and showed us eerie photographs of white blobs. She said the owner had been avoiding her, because during a previous interview with a reporter, a ghost shoved the owner. She fell down the stairs and broke her arm.

Fortunately, we made it out intact. However, when we arrived back at our car, we found it had a flat tire. (Must have been the ghosts.) Watching the other half of We’re Out of Here change a flat at an inner city gas station was the perfect way to end a birthday.

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