Revolutionary War stone barracks on the Maryland School for the Deaf grounds, where Frederick folklore says the groans of Hessian prisoners carry across the campus at night.
242 South Market Street, Frederick, MD 21701
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The surviving barracks sits on the active campus of the Maryland School for the Deaf. The exterior is viewable from South Market Street; there is no public ticketed admission to the building.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat sidewalk along South Market Street; the building stands inside a fenced active-school campus.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1781 · Revolutionary War prisoner-of-war barracks for British and German (Hessian) troops · Military hospital after the 1862 battles of Antietam and South Mountain · Original building of the Maryland School for the Deaf campus from 1867 · Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971
Maryland contracted for a pair of L-shaped stone barracks at Frederick in the summer of 1777, during the American Revolution. Construction stretched on, and the surviving building was not completed until roughly 1781. The buildings and grounds were used to house British and German prisoners of war, including the Hessian auxiliary troops hired by the British crown, which gave the site its enduring nickname.
After the Revolution many of those German prisoners were paroled and settled in and around Frederick, a town that already had a large German-speaking population. The barracks went on to serve a range of public uses across the next century, including a state armory and a venue for the county fair.
During the Civil War the barracks again held the wounded. Following the Battle of Antietam and the Battle of South Mountain in September 1862, the building was pressed into service as a military hospital for soldiers carried back from the fighting a short distance to the west.
In 1867 the grounds were given over to the Maryland Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, later the Maryland School for the Deaf, which still operates there. One of the two original barracks was demolished in 1871; the second survives. The Hessian Barracks was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 25, 1971. In January 2026, construction crews working near the barracks uncovered historical human remains, prompting an archaeological review of the long-used grounds.
Sources
The Hessian Barracks is the subject of one of Frederick's most-repeated ghost stories, collected in local folklore writing on the town. The basic version holds that the grounds where Hessian prisoners were held during the Revolution still carry the sound of their suffering, and that visitors near the campus after dark have reported cries and groans with no obvious source.
A second, more dramatic version adds a barracks fire. In that telling, the building is said to have burned one night with prisoners trapped inside, and the men killed in the blaze are the ones heard calling out. The fire detail is not supported by the documented history of the site, which records the barracks surviving into the modern era as part of the Maryland School for the Deaf, and it is best treated as the embellished branch of the legend rather than a recorded event.
The stories predate any organized ghost tour and circulate as oral folklore tied to the genuinely grim history of holding wartime prisoners on the grounds. No documented evidence supports the supernatural claims, and because the barracks sits on an active school campus, the lore is encountered from the public sidewalk and in print rather than on any after-dark visit.
Notable Entities
View the surviving 18th-century stone barracks from the public sidewalk along South Market Street. The building stands on the Maryland School for the Deaf campus, so the interior is not open to general visitors; a Maryland historical marker on the site describes its Revolutionary War and Civil War use.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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