01/06/2026
Long post about my visit to Middleham Chapel and cemetary yesterday, January 4.
If you saw my post yesterday about my visit to the cemetery, there’s more to the story. I’m ready to share it.
Middleham Chapel, in Lusby, Maryland, was built in 1748 to replace a frame or log structure that had been on that site since as early as 1684. According to the website for the chapel, it is called a “Chapel of Ease”, a secondary structure to meet the primary church’s parishioner’s needs and have a way for those who were scattered throughout a large area to still be active in the parish without having to travel great distances; it was slow going in those days, after all. The primary church, in this case, was Christ Church Parish, which is located in what is now called Port Republic in Calvert County, Maryland. Christ Church was built in 1672, and as population growth and movement in the region increased over time, it became untenable for Christ Church to meet everyone’s needs. Middleham Chapel was constructed as a way to make life a little easier for parishioners and church leadership in the area alike. It’s also likely (and this is speculation on my part, mind you) that with such a far flung community, it may also have served to keep religious divisions and the like from disrupting worship and care for the church community itself.
I’ve been living in Calvert County for nearly 15 years, and up until a few weeks ago I didn’t even know this chapel and cemetery were nearby. Truth is, for a history nut like me, I haven’t explored the history that’s literally in my back yard. I haven’t had time because I’m always working on things. These days, though, I make time.
So when someone wants to go to a historic site and get help finding gravestones of those who served during the Revolutionary War, I’m ready to hop in the car and go.
And that’s what happened this past Sunday afternoon. It was a brisk, maybe-forty degrees sunny day. My friend Adam was on the hunt for grave markers, and I told him I’d help him look.
I don’t know that I actually helped him, though. I got to the Middleham Chapel site a little late because even using the Waze GPS app, I got lost and confused the app to the point where I had to double back to get there without its help.
As I turned into the drive and headed for the chapel, I got hit with a wall of energy right away. It wasn’t anything bad; spirits there were curious why we were visiting. Adam had already looked over markers on one side of the chapel, which was a good thing because I looked at a few of the tombstones and many were just worn down by the elements, making many of them virtually indecipherable.
We started to wander between the graves and looked for anything on the markers that might indicate someone had fought in the Revolutionary War. There are so many notable names on the stones, names I recognize from road signs and towns here. I was able to get a full history lesson on some of the families thanks to Adam. The entire visit was like this; wandering, stopping to look, hearing a story about a founding family member or three, and then continuing on. Markers were sometimes lined up, sometimes under a tree, some so small that you didn’t notice them until you nearly fell over them.
There was a woman (spirit) watching us the entire time from the chapel. I just kept seeing her move around to see what we were doing. I kept seeing the name “Elizabeth” in my mind, and mentioned it to Adam.
When we got to a particular row of stones that were a little closer to the chapel, Adam pointed out that we were looking at the graves where the Parran family was buried (the Parran name is well known in this area). The moment he said the word “Parran”, I heard a woman speak into my right ear, very clearly, saying “Yes”. It startled me but then the woman I saw in the chapel was outside near us, and had a little girl with her. I just blurted out, “The woman who’s been watching us from the chapel is out here with her daughter; she says her name is Elizabeth and her daughter is here. Her daughter’s name is Mary”. We weren’t sure what the “Yes” answer actually meant. We didn’t find the name Elizabeth inscribed on the stones we were looking at at the time, so Adam decided to wander into a wooded area to see if her grave was there since he had found church records suggesting they might be there. They weren’t, so we just kept walking around, sort of getting closer to the chapel as we moved around.
For me, I felt like I was being pulled around. Elizabeth and Mary were gone suddenly, but I saw Elizabeth holding Mary and watching again from inside the chapel. Seconds after I saw her in the window, I saw her walking out of the chapel, without Mary. Perhaps she thought her daughter might be in danger with strangers walking around outside? Elizabeth kept moving in and out of the church, and finally I asked, “Were there people buried inside the church? Because Elizabeth keeps going in and out of the church and seems to be in there most of the time”.
It wasn’t even seconds after I said that I started hearing other names, and I’m fairly certain it was Elizabeth’s voice that was giving them to me. “Cook”, I said to Adam. “But more than one. And… Addison. But I don’t know why I’m hearing these names”. Adam didn’t recognize any of these names in his research.
I have to stop here for a second and say that I had no intention of reading this area - I’ve been kind of overtired lately and I just wanted to help a friend, explore a bit, and get some sunshine. I went to look for markers. But I couldn’t stay on task. I just kept circling around in one small area. Adam walked back looking a little surprised and showed me what he was reading on his phone. He had done some research while I was spiraling around in a five foot wide circle while staring at the chapel and repeating to myself, “What does this mean?”.
He was able to find information using an AI search, and found a site called “Historical Graves of Maryland, Chapter 3”. All of the names were connected; there were graves INSIDE the chapel, and there are old inscriptions there (see images with this post). The names Addison and Cook were there in the chapel. And so were those of Elizabeth and Mary Parran.
There are some mysteries that I haven’t solved - I keep hearing someone repeating a nursery rhyme, the one with the cat and the fiddle. It’s associated somehow with the church but there was nothing there that displayed it.
And then there’s one more thing I want to bring up that really leaves me stumped.
Mary’s daughter passed away in 1744 at the age of 1 and a half. Yet when I saw her with Elizabeth, she looked about 4 years old. She is very clearly 1 and a half years old.
Elizabeth told me they are still there because she loves the place, and Mary wants to experience what life is like on earth, with her mother at her side, teaching her about nature and human nature and whatever else Mary wants to learn. “When she is ready to leave, we will leave together happily”, she says. They spend time in the chapel and just like us, go out when it’s sunny and warm outside. They sometimes talk to other people (though are not often heard), and Elizabeth has certainly been seen by others. Both of them occasionally will touch a living person, either with a hand on a shoulder or by putting their hand on someone else’s hand. I don’t know about all the experiences there, but that’s what she tells me they do. They’re not wanting to harm anyone. They’re simply trying to experience human connection. That is something they actually miss.
The implication of Mary’s age discrepancy is clear: Mary is growing up here even though she is a spirit being now. Elizabeth isn’t aging; Mary is. And that makes Mary approximately 281 years old now here in the third dimension. Elizabeth is watching her daughter grow up.
Think about what this means. A human spirit aging in the spirit dimension (possibly 4th or above) is actually aging a single year in roughly 112 years here in the third dimension. I’ll leave it up to others to figure out what that means in other time intervals.
If my math is correct (feel free to check), this has huge ramifications when considering eternity as a real idea. Is eternity actually finite at some point? How long does a human spirit actually live in the fourth dimension, fifth dimension, or some other dimension we can’t comprehend?
For me, at this point, it is what I do with the time that matters. And it’s sweet that Mary is experiencing the world from the same vantage point.
Many thanks for reading this far, if you made it this far!
