If you say her name three times in a dark room with a mirror, she’ll appear and scratch your face.

If you sat in her lap at midnight, you’d die instantaneously, perhaps of fright. Especially if you looked into her (sometimes glowing red) eyes.

Her spirit wanders the cemetery at night, looking for intruders.

Black Aggie is the name given to a statue that once sat at the Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville on a plinth bearing the name “AGNUS.” Her statue now rests in a public garden in Washington, D.C., but the folklore around Black Aggie remains powerful in the Baltimore region, especially for those who grew up hearing about her from friends or older siblings.

So, who is the statue?

It’s not entirely clear when folks started calling the statue, which depicts a seated, somber figure wearing a shroud or cowl, “Black Aggie.” The statue was not designed to look like a specific person. In fact, it’s an unlicensed replica of another funerary statue at the Rock Creek Cemetery that’s sometimes called “Grief.”

Matt Lake, a folklore expert and author of “Weird Maryland,” said he loves the Black Aggie story because of how it evolved — pretty much from the time the statue was installed in the 1920s.

“There is history to it. This is something that actually existed,” he said.

Around 1905, Brig. Gen. Felix Agnus, a soldier-turned-diplomat-turned-Baltimore-newspaper-man, commissioned a statue for his family’s plot in Druid Ridge Cemetery. The statue he was delivered was Black Aggie, though this was before she earned that moniker.

Teenagers began visiting the statue, seeking thrills and horror, shortly after Felix Agnus died, according to a history collected by Lake. Those visits irritated the family, and by the 1950s, were irking cemetery officials.

The statue was removed in 1967 and donated to the Smithsonian. Since it wasn’t an original work, it was put in storage until it was transferred to the General Services Administration in 1987. At some point in the ‘90s, the GSA moved it to its current courtyard display.

But Black Aggie’s power is not in her history. Her power is in the mythology that evolved around her, demonstrated by that mythology’s staying power in the minds of Baltimoreans still today, almost 100 years after the statue was erected.

When a Banner reporter asked in a Facebook group dedicated to old photos and history from Baltimore about memories tied to Black Aggie, the post received more than 250 comments from people sharing stories.

People described her as “the terror of slumber parties” and recalled being gathered in a circle by the older kids to be told the story of how she’d haunt — or kill — anyone who visited. They recounted visiting the site of the statue as a rite of passage or a hazing ritual.

Kat Peach lives in Catonsville, and described herself as a Black Aggie “junkie.” She got interested in ghost stories as a child. Her parents would often go on historic or architectural tours and, to keep from getting too bored, Peach’s father suggested she start asking about ghost stories.

“From a very young age, I was always really into ghost stories and into the folklore behind the ghost stories. I like the way these tales are conveyed,” she said. “I was like a little Wednesday Addams kid.”

On rainy days during school in the ‘80s, Peach and her friends would pile into a bathroom, turn off the lights and attempt to summon Black Aggie, she said.

That early exposure to creepy stories shaped who she is as a person, as someone who’s still deeply interested in folklore, she said.

“My generation had a way to take part in this sort of local tradition of Black Aggie without needing the statue. We still had our own Black Aggie rituals,” she said.

How to see her today

To visit Black Aggie today, you’ll have to take a trek to Washington, D.C. She rests in a public courtyard by the Dolley Madison House and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

The courtyard is open to the public Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. If you enter the courtyard from nearby Lafayette Square, the statue will be on your left and down a few stairs. Enter from H Street, and the statue will be on your right as you walk down a breezeway toward a fountain.

Or you could always try summoning her in the mirror.