Are Ghosts Real?

[00:00:00] Karena Ingram, host: Welcome to Free Admissions, the Walters Art Museum podcast where we bring art and people of every background together to inspire creativity, curiosity, and connection. I’m your host, Karena Ingram, your guide through today’s tales of art, terror, and the supernatural. Cauldrons are bubbling, jack-o-lanterns are glowing, and October is officially here, which only means one thing: Spooky season has begun.

Today we’ll chat with our Associate Curator of Asian Art, Dany Chan, about some objects in our collection that may appear scary at first, but a closer look reveals that they’re rife with good fortune. Then we’ll learn about the creepy-crawlies that can haunt museum halls with our Preventative Conservator Sarah Freshnock.

But first, the biggest question of all: Are ghosts real? And do they wander the very galleries of the Walters Art Museum after dark? To share tales of encounters with the great beyond, here’s our Head of Installation and Production, Mike McKee.

No tickets necessary. Free Admissions starts now.

[00:01:13] Mike McKee: Hello, I’m Mike McKee. I’m the Head of Installation and Production at the Walters Art Museum. I’ve been at the Walters since 1989, which brings us up to about 36 years.

Are ghosts real? There is not a lot of evidence captured proving that ghosts are real, but I do personally believe that objects contain energy and that spectral beings may influence the objects that hold that energy.

The first instance of any kind of curiosity about ghosts in the museum happened in 1997 when we were preparing to de-install the 1974 building. Myself and a coworker were working in the Egyptian galleries, where there are also large near Eastern reliefs.

I had to leave for a moment to go fetch a tool elsewhere, and when I came back, my coworker was standing upright, no longer kneeling on the floor with a kind of a vacant stare, and he was a little more pale than he was. “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked him. And he was pretty certain that I had returned to the room a few minutes prior, only to realize that he was in the room alone, but something had come into the room before I got there that alerted him. And I kind of felt like that was my first opportunity to question whether or not we were really alone in those galleries holding things related to the distant past.

That’s the 1974 building. That building is filled with artifacts that go back 7,000 years and at the time also held 19th-century objects, so a pretty good span of time, and that was really the only time moving those objects that something kind of unexplained happened.

One of our buildings is connected to an adjacent building, and the connection is a long hallway that has several doors along that hallway. Security reported having gone through and locked all the doors, and as they were leaving, one of the doors previously locked clicked and opened by itself. That might have been a ghost.

In 1991, the Walters acquired the Hackerman House, a building that was constructed on Mount Vernon that’s an old house, and old houses hold memories, and that house is not different.

There’s a finicky wooden cabinet original to the house, and the door sticks. The key doesn’t always work, and this one particular time, the key just would not turn the tumbler in that cabinet door. So we called the locksmith. Locksmith couldn’t come in that day, so he was gonna meet us the following morning. And before he arrived, I just tried one more time and the key just turned without any problem, almost as if the ghost in that house was saying, “No, no, don’t get into this room today. Come back tomorrow.” That was one instance in Hackerman House that seemed a little strange. “Huh? That didn’t work at all yesterday.” And then today it just opened up.

That One West Hackerman House has other mysteries. There was a time when we removed a vitrine, which is a plexiglass box, from a display case. It only had two drilled holes in it, and they were relatively symmetrical. And when we went to put the box back on, the screw holes didn’t match up. So we turned it back around, ’cause it’s symmetrical, and they still didn’t fit. Somehow the holes no longer lined up with where they did originally. Never could explain that. I don’t wanna blame it on a ghost, but I don’t not wanna blame it on a ghost either.

The building has lore. Others have witnessed small girl cloaked in a black veil. She seems to hang out on the elevator sometimes. It’s a curious elevator. It’s a hot elevator in the summer. It’s really like a chimney. When you get on there, sometimes you feel like you might not be alone.

There’s another room in One West that at some point in time the temperature and the humidity worked together in such a way to cause a condensation ring that went around the perimeter of the room about four feet down from the ceiling. Never were we able to identify how this happened, why it happened, what caused it. Another curious opportunity for some ectoplasm to perhaps manifest itself in an otherwise quiet building.

I have never seen a ghost at the Walters, but I’ve seen things move. We were hanging a painting from wires, and we wanted the painting to be centered between a fireplace and an exterior wall. The painting, although it is suspended, rests pretty solidly where it was, but it wasn’t in the center. And when I stepped back to measure, the painting literally moved by itself over about a half an inch to find itself on center.

The building may be haunted, but they are friendly ghosts.

[00:06:27] Karena Ingram, host: Thanks so much, Mike. Of course, these ghost stories are unconfirmed and all in good fun, so please no ghost hunting in our galleries…but if you find yourself on the One West elevator, see if you notice a strange shift in temperature.

As Mike mentioned, with a museum full of objects from across time and place, you’ll stumble across some works that are strange, otherworldly, and even downright scary. Now they say that you should never judge a book by its cover, and the same can be said for art.

But what do you do when the cover is a dragon’s face glaring back at you with eyes like fire? Some things in the museum might seem a little scary at first glance, but when you look closer at their historical and cultural context, the story can shift from frightening to fascinating. In fact, some scary objects are actually guardians here to protect you on your journey.

To chat about scary guardians in Across Asia: Arts of Asia and the Islamic World, here’s Dany Chan.

[00:07:27] Dany Chan: Hi, I’m Dany Chan, Associate Curator of Asian Art here at the Walters Art Museum, and I’ve been here six years now. And our new Asian art galleries also have opened for two years, so that’s been very exciting to take some time to look back at the opening and the installation.

But you know, now that we have all these objects on display, I have found in the past two years that I can do so many different tours in those galleries. And I think I’m very proud that we were successful in setting up the themes and the object groupings so that we’re able to have these, just lots of stories to really dig into with all of our visitors. And so I know for this month’s theme we’re focusing on like, you know, scary things, spooky things, creepy-crawlies, and you know, we’ve picked out two sets of objects today that, you know, at first glance they look scary and spooky, but ultimately they’re not.

The first object is a Pair of Architectural Terminals in the Form of Dragons. Now, I have to say, I think like among, you know, pop culture, I think dragons are perhaps one of the most famous mythical beasts coming out of China and China’s history.

They look terrifying. Like if you look at their faces, they look to have, like, lion-type heads, but snake-like bodies. Even their faces have these whiskers that just adds a menacing look to them as well. And also, I have to say, that menacing look is exploited by the fact that these architectural terminals would have been decorating like the rooftops of Chinese buildings and other forms of architecture. And so, in a way, you know, if you look up, they serve almost like the same purpose as gargoyles. If you look up and you see their menacing faces, it can be intimidating. But I feel like them being on the rooftops also is very expressive of what they are believed to be able to do.

The image of dragons or the idea of dragons have existed in Chinese culture since like the fifth millennium BCE, so very ancient, ancient mythical beasts. But they are also important animals in Chinese culture and thought. They are associated with so many great things, like they are symbols of power. They are related to having the power to bring on rain, and for a long time, they are also believed to be one of the very few animals that can move between worlds. You know, they can move between the human world, the underworld, the supernatural world.

And so one of the earliest images that we find of dragons are in a funerary or a tomb setting, where it was believed that when you die, your soul can then ride upon a dragon, and the dragon takes you into the afterlife. But they’re also, in certain contexts, the dragon—especially the dragon with five claws—were a symbol of imperial authority in ancient China, a symbol of the emperor. And so that speaks again to the power, the might of this beast. And as many of you may already know, you know, within the Chinese Zodiac, the dragon is one of the animals associated with the zodiac, and it is the only mythical animal out of all of the twelve.

So I would actually have to say this second object, the netsuke, I find it creepier than the dragon ever will be. It is a tiny carved ivory sculpture of a toad and a skull. Now the skull definitely looks scary, and the toad—it’s ugly. It’s got warts, it’s got bug eyes, but it’s one of those things that are, it’s so ugly, it’s cute. So both objects are installed in the gallery, so I hope that after hearing this, our visitors would go and visit this toad and you know, they can let me know if they agree with me.

But interestingly, the skull and the toad on their own are very symbolic within Japanese culture. But put together, they’re, like, extra special! In Japanese culture, the skull or the skeleton actually has Buddhist connotations. It’s related to this idea of accepting like the fleeting nature of life. You know, it’s a reminder that we are born, we live, we die, return to becoming just nothing.

You know, it’s a bittersweet acceptance. So seeing skulls or skeletons in Japanese imagery, half of the time they appear in menacing contexts. You know, there are definitely some great woodblock prints out there that shows people encountering menacing or dangerous, potentially dangerous skeletons.

But ultimately it serves as a reminder of one’s mortality. In that way, it should be somewhat comforting to be reminded of that mortality. It goes with this belief that, you know, if you accept that you will eventually die, that should be a motivating factor for you to actually live your life to the fullest. And so that’s why I call it a bittersweet symbol.

Now, the frog or the toad, their symbolism in Japanese culture is very cute, I think. So the Japanese word for “frog” or “toad” is kaeru, and it sounds exactly like the verb kaeru using different characters, and the verb means “to return.” The fact that these two words sound the same, really led frogs to become powerful symbols of things returning.

And so in an optimistic context, the frog can symbolize the return of wealth to your family. It could be the return of good fortune to your life. But when mixed with the skull, which is a reminder of the cycle of life and death, put those two symbols together and it becomes a reminder of you returning to your origins.

You know, after having lived your life, you just go back to where you came from. And so again, bittersweet symbolism, especially together. But you know, in a more optimistic way, the frog on its own has also become symbols of more positive things. As I mentioned, you know, a return of wealth and good fortune, but it also can be given as gifts. So images of the frog or the toad, you can give it to a gift—to a friend who are going on a trip, and so you are, you’re wishing that they would have a safe return journey. Or if you have someone who is going into surgery at the hospital, you can give them a gift of a toad image wishing them a successful return out of illness.

I feel like with all of these creatures, you know, the dragon, the skull, the toad, they really represent this expression, like, “never judge a book by its cover.” You know, they look scary, they look menacing, they look intimidating, but fortunately, they all have powerful and wonderful associations within their cultural context.

[00:14:19] Karena Ingram, host: Thanks, Dany. You can see the Pair of Architectural Terminals in the Form of Dragons and Netsuke in Form of Skull and Toad in Across Asia: Arts of Asia and the Islamic World on Level Four.

[00:14:31] Erin Mellott: Hi, my name is Erin Mellott and I am the Senior Manager of Donor Relations and Development Operations here at the Walters Art Museum. I have been at the museum for six years and I am excited to share with you about our Day of Giving.

The Walters Day of Giving is on November 3rd, 2025. For four years, this annual giving day has raised critical funds to help conserve an object being treated in our conservation lab. This year’s goal is to raise $15,000 in one day. I invite you to join us by making a gift at any level at TheWalters.org/Give.

Thank you for supporting this important work!

[00:15:05] Karena Ingram, host: Of course, not every spooky thing in the museum is a menacing artwork or a spirit roaming the halls. Sometimes the real creeps are much smaller…much, much smaller.

That’s right. One of the things that museums fear the most are pests. While you and I can think of them as uninvited Halloween party guests, our conservators see them as very real threats to the collection. So, “if there’s something weird and it don’t look good, who are you gonna call?” Our Preventative Conservator!

To learn more about common critters that can gallivant through museum galleries, here’s Sarah Freshnock.

[00:15:41] Sarah Freshnock: Hi everyone. I’m Sarah Freshnock. I’m the Assistant Preventive Conservator here at the Walters Art Museum, and I’ve been at the Walters for a little over two years now. And I am the Preventive Conservator here, and I’m the first Preventive Conservator at the Walters.

Preventive conservation is a somewhat new area of focus for conservators. It’s always been a part of what we do. It’s the backbone, in my opinion, of conservation. We’re trying to prevent damage, prevent risk, so that the artwork can be preserved and be accessible to the public for forever. I kind of think of myself as almost like the primary care doctor of the museum. We’re trying to hold it all together and then if things go wrong, which they rarely do, but sometimes things are happening under the surface, they go to my incredible other colleagues in objects, paintings, book and paper, et cetera.

Because of that kind of “everywhere, all at once” preventive conservation ideology, I work with almost everyone here in the museum with this goal of long-term preservation. I like to say that I handle everything that artwork comes into contact with, which is kind of like an abstract statement. But I really mean that in that the relative humidity and the temperature, so just like the air that’s around artwork, the light levels in the galleries, the materials that the artwork may be touching or may be really close to.

And then also pests, which is, you know, why we’re here today, to talk about those bugs. I was like, “bugs is probably, like, the unprofessional term,” but pests, which is like a wide range of things. Probably some things people are thinking about, some that you’re maybe not thinking about as often.

We have the conservation window on Fridays and Saturdays, small plug, where you get to actually come and like speak to a conservator. We have the window open, you can chat with us. We have projects, things we’re working on and topics that we’re interested in, and this past weekend I was talking about IPM.

IPM, Integrated Pest Management, is also a large part of my job. And I was showing pests under the microscope and kind of talking about why we look for pests, why we care about pests in the galleries, and people were like, “Oh, I didn’t even think about that.”

And makes total sense. Why would you? The galleries are spotless. You would never even think there are any pests there. But we live in a bug world. There are bugs everywhere. We’re never going to get rid of them. They’re like a part, an important part of our ecosystem, but they can damage artwork. There’s lots of different types of bugs that are interested in artwork, and by interested in artwork, I don’t mean that, like, they’re like seeking out paintings to eat.

[00:18:09] Karena Ingram, host: They’re not looking for a Monet.

[00:18:11] Sarah Freshnock: They’re not like, “Ooh, I’m really hungry today.”

But, mainly though, they’re interested. It’s usually organic materials. So fabric, textiles, paper, basketry, feathers, hide. There are also, you know, can be different types of beetles that are interested in wood, especially furniture, which I think a lot of people kind of jump to, like, ooh, a furniture beetle, that makes sense.

But mainly it’s organic materials that pests are interested in. And then there’s also kind of incidental pests that we find in the galleries that can be interested in artwork, but are often more just kind of like things that we don’t necessarily want to have in our public spaces, like cockroaches, rats, mice.

Because we’re an art museum, in art spaces, we can’t introduce, really, chemicals to limit pests. And so IPM, Integrated Pest Management, is mainly, you know, prevent, monitor, identify, and then provide solutions as necessary. And so prevention is a huge part of making sure that we keep pest populations under control here at the museum. We’re trying to really create an environment that is—I mean this in like the nicest way possible—hostile to pests.

We don’t want pests feeling comfortable in our spaces, because even if, you know, there’s a rogue cockroach, which can be interested in paper materials, usually they’re just out there scavenging for whatever they can find. If we catch a cockroach and then a bunch of other carpet beetles, which are really interested in taxidermy, especially in feathers and textiles and other things, you know, a bunch of different domestic beetles, they want to eat that cockroach. And so when we have—I’m really getting the nitty gritty here for this scary factor—we really try to keep all pests under control because the introduction of one thing is then a food source for lots of other pests.

We check our pest traps. We have them out in the galleries and engineering, an engineer and I, Carrington Scott and I, once a month go through and check all of our traps. We track what we’re looking at, we bring out the microscope, and we track them on a spreadsheet, and I create a lot of different graphs talking about our pest population. So, how are our domestic beetles from one month to the next? How are they year to year? How are they building to building? And so that’s kind of what we do for the basis of our IPM. We’re trying to prevent it from happening in the beginning.

So a lot of the bugs that we see in the galleries level, the pest that we see in the galleries, are pretty typical. You may see spiders. Lots of spiders. Tiny little spiders. Spiders. We see a lot of silverfish. We’re in old buildings and they’ve got a lot of gaps. Silverfish are kind of everywhere. And we see some spring tails, which are these tiny little—I say cute because, they’re not really cute, but I think they have these like little tiny tails, which are fun. And those aren’t gonna impact the artwork, but they do mean that you have like some humidity in your space, so it’s kind of a fun indicator to say, “Oh. We have some, like, moisture in this space.”

But then we also see some bugs that are not great for the collection. We see domestic beetles, occasionally odd beetles, hide beetles, lots of other kinds of pests that could negatively impact the collection if they were to go kind of unchecked in collection areas.

We see some powderpost beetles, furniture beetles every now and then. Luckily, we—and I probably am like jinxing myself, so I’m knocking on all wood—we don’t see very many moths in the collection. And then typically once you kind of, like, once you have one moth, you have a problem.

And for a lot of the pests I just mentioned, we see like one or two every now and then, and those are usually incidental intruders. But what happens if we start to see a lot of them is, it means we have some sort of situation occurring, whether that was a candy bar that went unattended under a bench accidentally for a week or so and it kind of has caused a problem, or there’s a hole in a wall somewhere in a gallery and it’s causing a problem.

And so usually we go and I try to hunt that down, and there’s different ways you can do that. I look at the trap and I try to pinpoint where we’re seeing a lot of those pests. We can use kind of lures that send out a pheromone that attracts those pests that are in question. Luckily for us, most of the collections that are gonna be impacted by pests here at the museum, other than furniture, are typically inside cases, which really help us kind of limit access to the collection.

And then we also just do a lot of monitoring. So there are objects in our collection that have been impacted by pests, and so every month I just give them a good glance over, because while we can treat objects that have pest infestation issues, and by treating them, I say we freeze them at really low temperatures for a couple of days. Or you can do an anoxic treatment where you put them in an airtight bag and then you displace that air with nitrogen or CO2 gas to kind of remove all of the air around that object and that kills the pests.

So we can kill the pests, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not going to be reinfested by something later in the object’s life. So we’re always keeping an eye on things, especially our taxidermy collections, because those are often the most tasty for pests. And then, yeah, we’re just monitoring, we’re identifying.

We don’t have that many crazy pest situations here at the Walters. I will say, because we’re in downtown Baltimore, we do get some, like, beefy cockroaches. I don’t know. Karena had asked if there was any scary or like potentially shocking pest situations, but I will say, luckily, not that many that I can even think of in this moment. But there is nothing kind of worse than, like, picking up a pest trap and, like, holding it to your face.

Like, you, you don’t realize that there’s a big cockroach in there, but there is, ’cause it’s like usually they, like, are kind of, their little antennae are poking out ’cause they’re so big, but every now and then Carrington or I will be in the galleries and we’ll pick up one that we didn’t expect to have and we—it’s like a response that you can’t control. We both, like, scream, throw the trap, like it’s, they’re so big, they’re so scary. But yeah, that’s kind of, I think the worst that can happen in my opinion. But I’ve gotten better, I think, you know, you fake it till you make it. When it comes to catching and picking up cockroaches, somebody has to be in charge.

If you’re interested in learning more about conservation, learning about possibly how to become a conservator, or how we got to where we are, if you’re interested in talking about pests, I can’t guarantee that I will be there in the window, but somebody will be there!

And we have the Conservation Window, which will be open Fridays and Saturdays. We’ve shifted the hours slightly, which is a new thing, and we’re very excited about it. So Friday hours will be from 10 [a.m.] to 1 [p.m.] to really get in touch and interact with our fun school groups that are coming into the building often during that time period. And then on Saturdays, our normal schedule from 12:30 to 4 [p.m.]

Come find us in the Conservation Window on the fourth floor of the Centre Street building, right in kind of the Across Asia exhibition. We’ll be talking about really fun conservation topics, some artwork, and you might be able to touch something depending on who’s there. Maybe a piece of ivory, maybe a piece of parchment. You just never know. So come visit us.

[00:24:54] Karena Ingram, host: Thanks Sarah, for all that you and your team does to keep the artwork safe.

Free access to the Walters Art Museum online and in person is made possible through the combined generosity of individual donors, foundations, corporations, and grants from the City of Baltimore, Maryland State Arts Council, Citizens of Baltimore County, Howard County Government, and Howard County Arts Council.

To learn more about engaging with or supporting the Walters, visit TheWalters.org/Give.

A big thanks to Mike McKee, Dany Chan, and Sarah Freshnock for chatting with us today. Free Admissions, the Walters Art Museum podcast, is made possible by Marketing and Communications Director Connie McAllister, Communications Manager Sydney Adamson, Head of Graphic Design Tony Venne, Graphic Designer Rachel Minier, Manager of Web Dylan Kinnett, Content Writer Erin Branigan, IT Specialist Frank Dickerson, and edited and hosted by me, Karena Ingram.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please leave us a review and share this episode with your friends. You can visit TheWalters.org for more information and to plan your visit.

Hope to see you at the museum soon!