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It starts out as a feeling — an intuitive sense — that the building has secrets of its own.

But walls can't talk, so visitors of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine have to ask museum staff about any "stories" associated with the East Patrick Street structure.

You know, like ghosts and spirits.

Advances in military medicine during the Civil War are not the only stories told at the museum. The history of the expansive three-story, brick structure and its spiritual activity quietly attracts psychics, paranormal groups and ghost tours, who stop at the museum's doorstep after the last visitors leave.

Some people dismiss the feeling and never know that the real Dr. Richard Burr—not the mannequin in the museum's display— used a part of the building as an embalming station after the battles of South Mountain and Antietam.

Or, that for more than 100 years — until 1978 — the Carty family operated a mortuary and cabinet-making business inside the building.

Staff and visitors alike say they have heard small, childlike footsteps in the third-floor hallway or have seen a woman dressed for another century roaming the halls of the museum.

A pool of heavy, dark energy in front of the third-floor elevator stops psychics in their tracks. Orbs of light sometimes are caught in the glare of a photographer's lens.

George Wunderlich, the museum's director, said the building's alternative history has a special place in the city.

"This building has had unusual stories associated with it for a number of years, and it's a part of the history of the building, and this building is part of the fabric of downtown Frederick," he said.

According to literature from the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, the Carty building was the site of a furniture and undertaking business begun in 1832 by James Whitehill. A lumber yard and planing mill were located at the rear of the property.

During the Civil War, Whitehill provided caskets and wooden burial markers to General Hospital No. 1 at the Hessian Barracks (now the site of the Maryland School for the Deaf).

Whitehill sold the business to Clarence C. Carty after the war. Since then, the building has gone through several extensive renovations and expansions in 1892, 1922 and most recently in the late 1990s.

Wunderlich said that while he can feel the building's past energies and uses, he believes that energy is just another force in the world, like wind or sun.

The historian is careful about which group he allows unfettered access to roam around the building's two public floors, earthen basement and the private third-floor office space.

He fields various inquiries from interested parties with questions of his own: How credible is the group? What is its purpose in visiting? Is it for entertainment or learning?

If a group is simply interested in cheap thrills, forget about it. "That's not something I'm willing to exert my staff for," Wunderlich said.

Alexandra Windsong, owner of The Healing Way on West Patrick Street, thought the National Museum of Civil War Medicine would be a perfect place for her students to practice using their intuition.

Windsong, who lives in Thurmont, teaches a series of classes called "Developing Your Intuition" which has quickly become her most popular and fastest-growing class at The Healing Way, a center for holistic growth and healing.

Students in the class learn how to tap into their intuition at the most basic level —their inner voice—and use more intricate exercises in distinguishing intuition from wishful thinking and channeling into a place's past energy and history.

Windsong, who is also a psychic, has taken her classes on field trips to the Antietam National Battlefield and the Schifferstadt Architectural Museum on Rosemont Avenue.

In an interview last month, Windsong said she chooses a field trip site if she knows that something is there. A good site will have enough energy for students to pick up on — either from previous occupants or events that have happened there, she said.

On Oct. 17, Windsong and seven of her students arrived at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine without knowing a single fact about the building's past history and usage.

With clipboards in hand, the group silently wandered from the collections room to every dimly lit nook and cranny on the third floor, taking notes and observing the shifting energies in each room, without talking to one another.

Orange light from the Carroll Creek parking deck spilled through the closed blinds into several dark offices. The floors creaked underneath the students' footsteps.

After 20 minutes on the third floor, Windsong and her students regrouped and talked about what they experienced. Sue Kemp of Cascade said an old, caned wheelchair in a woman's office provided her with the mental image of a frail, barely there woman.

"Do you feel that the woman is actually there or is it a memory?" Windsong asked Kemp.

Kemp, who is looking to start a Hagerstown-based group that would investigate the paranormal, said the image she was getting in her mind was just a memory.

It was in the deputy director's office that Jen Horning of Middletown picked up on the sense that children once played in the room. "When I went over to the fireplace I heard a baby crying," Horning told the group.

Karen Thomassen, deputy director of the museum, said she has heard many groups tune into the same presences and tell the same stories during the 12 years she has worked at the museum.

Thomassen quietly listened to the class' comments. A month ago, she had led Windsong through a separate tour of the building and deliberately withheld information about the building until she heard Windsong's experience.

"She's nailed some of them that I've heard for years," Thomassen said, comparing Windsong's findings with previous groups' experiences.