Oak Hill Cottage

Oak Hill Cottage from Mansfield Tourism
Oak Hill was built by John Robinson in 1847 on a hill overlooking the town of Mansfield, Ohio, close by the railroad he had helped to build. Robinson and his family lived at Oak Hill until 1861, and five of his twelve children were born there.

Dr. Johannes Aten Jones bought the Gothic Revival home in 1864 at the urging of his bride, Frances. Author Louis Bromfield played at Oak Hill Cottage as a child and wrote about the house in his 1924 novel "The Green Bay Tree," calling it "Shane’s Castle."

The property was divided and sold in 1923 after the eldest Jones daughter, Ida, died. Leile, another of the Jones' daughters, moved back into the house in 1947, and sold the cottage and its contents to the Richland County Historical Society in 1965.

Now it's a museum, open for tours and sightseeing - and there are more things in Oak Hill Cottage than meet the eye.

First, there are the usual sensory phenomena. Visitors claim to feel a stifling presence of someone watching them, some even suffering panic attacks, and other oddities, such as the lights on the chandelier flickering on and off. And that's just the starting point.

One ghost reported is that of an elderly female, wearing period clothing, most often seen on the main stairway. If you spot her, never fear - she's said to be friendly and seems happy to see visitors admiring her home; she may even welcome you. It's supposed that she's Frances Jones, who truly loved the cottage.

She's also been seen fluffing the pillows and dusting in the cottage rooms, still a neat housekeeper after all these years (some say it's an old maid still doing her duty, but we prefer to agree with those who think it's Frances, keeping her pride and joy homestead up to snuff).

Other spooks are more site specific.

A back stairway leads a small landing, one which is reportedly frequented by the spirit of a young boy dressed in white stockings and knee pants. He's thought to be the shadow of one of the Robinson's sons who died in the home and spent his days playing on the landing.

In the basement, the apparition of an old man haunts the furnace area, and he has a bad vibe. No one can quite identify him, but it's no wonder he's ornery, being stuck in the cellar for all eternity.

Stop in if you get the chance. The house has a great history, and you may get to take in more than the furniture and art. You may be lucky enough to meet an old inhabitant or two.

George Rogers Clark Park

Fort at George Rogers Clark Park
OK, first, let's not get lost. This isn't the national park in Indiana or the City park in Louisville, but a local park in Clark County, Ohio, by Springfield. Still, it's an impressive little area; they pack a lot of attractions into its 250 acres.

This is where the Shawnee village of Peckuwe (Piquia) and a small British stockade stood until Colonel George Rogers Clark drove the combined Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, and Wyandot tribes out of Clark County on August 8th, 1780.

The Battle of Peckuwe was the largest action of the American Revolution west of the Allegheny Mountains. Standing beside the local Miami, the other tribes had been pushed out of Pennsylvania by the white settlers and were trying to draw a line in the sand in Ohio.

Beside fishing, picnicking and other outdoor goodies, the park features the George Rogers Clark Memorial and the Davidson Interpretive Center, which gives a history of the battle and the era. The Hertzler Museum is there, too; more on that later. In 1980, a triangular fort and blockhouse, modeled after the larger one in the village, were built. There's a lotta Ohio history on display there.

Of course, shades of the big battle's participants have been reported; Indians, colonial soldiers, and even ol' George himself have been sighted roaming the fields. Hey, the spirit of frontiersman Dan'l Boone, a long time foe of the Shawnee and active in Ohio Valley campaigning against them, is supposed to be a ghostly park visitor.

The star spook attraction may or may not be the Hertzler House. Daniel Hertzler, whose land the park sits on, built the home in 1854 for his wife and ten children, and was killed there in 1867 by robbers looking for the banker's rumored cache of cash.

It's now a museum and supposed to be haunted by Hertzler, whose murderers were never captured. The legend is that a face can be seen peeking out the window from the road.

It's believed by conspiracy theorists that tour guides avoid talking about the lore for fear that people will stop visiting the park. Others say the guides avoid the topic because it's hogwash and they don't want blamed for noisy ghost hunters nebbing through the neighbor's windows at night in search of ectoplasm. Both sound plausible enough.

If you ever get to visit the park, there are exhibits aplenty to learn the Ohio Valley's colonial history. And if you're lucky, you may even get to see some of the folk who made that history at the same time.

Satan's Hollow

We were checking out Ohio for some of its witchy past, and hey - we discovered that not many witches seemed to ply their craft there.

But we did find an urban legend concerning a storm sewer where some devil worshipers used to chant and sing, and figured "close enough." This is the tale of Satan's Hollow, a series of drainage channels located by a small creek in Blue Ash, a suburb of Cincinnati.

It's said a group of satanists used to meet in the pitch-black, cave-sized tunnels (you can easily walk upright through them) and conduct their rituals, including, of course, animal sacrifice. The followers of Beelzebub were said to have brought forth spirits and were visited by the kingpin, Satan himself, during their ceremonies.

They gathered in an altar room, and even opened a direct gateway to Hades, now marked in graffiti and tagged as "God's Chamber," a manhole with an impressive drop; it seems deep enough to reach China, if not the depths of hell. It doesn't appear that the coven is active anymore; teens with spray paint seem to have taken over the complex. But the cultists have left their reminders behind.

Female screams can be heard at night echoing through the concrete conduits. There have been reported sightings of various apparitions, including floating skulls and a demon, not to mention the usual assortment of earthly critters drawn to a nice dark cave.

The star spook is the "Shadow Man," one of Old Scratch's loyal demons, left to guard the tunnels. Kinda appropriate that one of the Devil's boys is keeping an eye on a sewer, hey? He gets his name because the imp has a human form, but it's completely blacked out, like a floating shadow.

One reader shared his experiences there: "We heard a girl's voice saying 'help me' and there was a black figure walking back and forth that just disappeared. We freaked out and started to run, and it felt like something grabbed me and my brother by the ankles when we were running out up the side hill, and we felt like we were being dragged."

There are a also couple of Satan's Hollow YouTube vids out, filmed by intrepid explorers of the occult. One group has seen and heard spooked-out things, the other just walked through with nary a sighting.

Urban legend or not, Satan's Hollow is the perfect place to spawn a scary tale; black as sin, echoes resonating, occult symbols (and no small amount of obscenities) covering its walls... a shadow man would be the ultimate finishing touch.

The Legend of Brubaker Bridge

Photo by Anthony Dillon from Bridgehunter
OK, we end our legends segment with one of the better-known hauntings in Ohio, that of Brubaker Bridge. The bridge was built in 1887, crossing a small stream known as Sam's Run Creek in Preble County, by Gratis.

The span was small, and in the middle of nowhere. It was quietly used as a rural shortcut for decades, when in the 1930s something terrible happened. A carload of teens returning from a Grange party wrecked on the covered bridge, apparently at high speed, and their bodies were scattered everywhere.

The accident was at night, and it wasn't until late the next afternoon that a local farmer checking his cattle discovered the carnage. A gang of locals gathered at the scene, and carted away a dozen bodies, a gruesome toll on the community. The victims were buried, and the whole episode was hopefully laid to rest.

But it wasn't. The farmer who originally spotted the bodies was driving across the Brubaker Bridge afterward with his wife when his truck died. Before they could get out, they heard 13 knocks and a whispering, hissing sound, like a "shhhhh." Others traveling over the old bridge experienced the same phenomena.

The neighbors put their heads together, and made a startling discovery; there were actually thirteen teens missing from the party; one of the bodies hadn't been found, that of a boy who was known to disappear from home for days on end. They again gathered at Brubaker Bridge to search, but came up empty.

According to local lore, anyone who tries to cross over the Brubaker Bridge at night will find that their car stalls, sometimes with flickering lights, and the missing youth will tap on the vehicle, trying to get your attention, accompanied by whimpers of pain. He just hopes that someone will find his body and lay him to rest.

The bridge is also known as "crybaby bridge" because of the whispering sound, and some claim seeing approaching headlights, presumably from the doomed vehicle, but no cars ever appear.

Hey, thirteen people, a covered bridge...what better stuff could a legend be made from? There are a couple of small holes in the tale, though.

Now no one has ever discovered a newspaper clipping of the accident, and 13 kids is a lot to cram into a 1930 era vehicle, though possible. The bridge itself was renovated in 2006.

But one thing has never changed. There's still a body looking for peace after all these years, and it seems like after eight decades, he still isn't giving up.

The Spitzer House

C.M. Spitzer House
The Victorian-style Queen Anne Spitzer House was built in 1890 for Brigadier General Ceilan Milo Spitzer. Spitzer and his cousin Adelbert later got into banking, and their Medina, Ohio home became one of the the first Bond Houses (akin to a modern day brokerage) in the United States outside of New York City.

It's been a B&B since 1994, regularly recognized for its excellent service by industry reviewers and guests, and is filled with antiques, stained glass, lacy linens, Longaberger baskets, a cherry staircase, featherbeds, collectibles, and Victorian charm. Oh, and ghosts.

It's regarded by many as a haunted house, and was noted in the "Haunted Ohio" series of books, along with Bed and Breakfast's list of spooked-out inns.

First, it has all the accouterments common to a old home with a history. Visitors and staff have reported feelings of presence, touches and taps from an invisible source, objects that were moved or re-arranged, cold spots, voices heard when no one was present, flickering lights, slamming doors, and the sounds of a young girl's laughter.

And if you lust for a room with your own ghostie to spend the night with, this is your kinda place.

One such cubbyhole is called Ceilan's Room. A stern-looking apparition has been seen there and at the top of the steps, thought by many to be the old general himself. Anna's Room is said to be frequented by the sad ghost of a slow-witted servant girl who is claimed to appear with some regularity, sometimes on the back stairs.

Evelyn's Room features the sounds of someone pacing the floor. Sydney's Room has a sense of gloom; a psychic picked up on a small boy's presence.

Bed and Breakfast relates a story about a female apparition who appeared with limited facial features except for a heavy jaw. She was a short, stout woman, in her 20s, wearing what the Edwardians called a "wrapper" or housedress. She fired questions, asking her surprised witness about the family, and then disappeared as quickly as she came. Where she fits in with the other cast of other-wordlies, we're not sure.

Hey, just wander around if you can't book a properly haunted bed. Piano playing from an empty parlor has been reported, along with two men who can be heard talking in the dining room when no one is there.

You can do one better. It's listed on the Inn Shopper as being on the market for $650K. So if you've been hankering to get into the haunted inn biz...

Loveland Lizard

Loveland Lizard image from Weird Things
Next, we'll head across Ohio towards Cincinnati, and check out the reports of its mean green machine, the Loveland Lizard (or frog).

The Algonquin Twightwees (the Miami tribe), lived in Ohio's Miami Valley and were the first to tell tales of a froggy creature. As early French explorers came by, the Twightwees warned them of a lizard-like creature that could not be killed. They called this critter Shawnahooc, meaning "demon of the river."

But after a couple of centuries spent fighting the expansion of the settlers, the Miamis were forced to relocate to Kansas, and with them went the Shawnahooc legend.

That is, until May, 1955. A businessman reported that he saw three or four frog-faced creatures gathered under a bridge near Loveland.

They were described as three-foot tall, with wrinkles instead of hair, broad chests, and wide mouths without lips, like king-sized frogs. One of them is said to have held up a wand that shot sparks. A strong odor of alfalfa and almonds was reportedly left behind after the varmints vacated the bridge.

The witness couldn't decide whether he had seen fairy-tale trolls, creatures that were half human, half frog, huge reptiles, or spacemen.

As the years rolled into decades, there were no further reported sightings of the Loveland Frog. Then the long arm of the law got involved.

On March 3, 1972, a police officer was patrolling a section of Riverside Avenue that runs along the Little Miami River in Loveland, Ohio. The policeman saw what he thought was a dog lying in the middle of the road, and slowed down his cruiser on the icy road, unsure of the animal's condition.

The cop stopped his patrol car and got out with his flashlight to check if the dog was injured or perhaps even roadkill. Suddenly, the creature crouched on two legs, and the officer realized his sighting wasn't a dog at all, but something entirely different.

It was three to four feet tall, 50 to 75 pounds, with leathery skin, maybe a short tail, and a head and face like a frog. Whatever this creature was, it glanced at the patrolman and leapt over the road's guard rail toward the river.

The officer reported the odd event to the police dispatcher, though never filing an official report, and later returned to the scene with another policeman. All they found were markings from something that had scraped along the hillside as it made its way to the river.

Two weeks later, another police officer saw it, again lying in the middle of the road. When he got out of his car to haul it to the shoulder, it got up, climbed over the guard rail, eying the policeman, and disappeared toward the river.

The cop took a shot at the creature, but it never slowed down and escaped into the waters of the Little Miami River.

A farmer in Loveland also claimed that he spotted a froglike creature during the same time frame.

A local publicity firestorm erupted, based a little bit on the sightings and a lot on Loveland politics and efforts at embarrassing people and evening scores, not an uncommon tack in small-town editorial rooms (or big city ones, for that matter.)

The second peace officer pooh-poohed the whole affair, claiming that he saw someone's tossed-out, overgrown pet lizard. He took a shot at him in an effort to bring the critter in and clear the first officer's reputation. His guess was that either he winged it and it eventually died from the wound, or that the cold got it.

An investigation came up empty, suggesting that the officers saw an escaped Nile monitor lizard or a large iguana, which can be over six feet in length. So did the sightings.

Did they actually see a lizard-man? Well, there are reports of them from other places. Some of the more renowned are the Lizardman of Wayne, New Jersey, the Giant Lizard of Milton, Kentucky, and the Lizard Man craze that swept Bishopville, South Carolina in 1988.

But for Loveland, it seemed the end of the story. The twentieth century passed by without anymore lizards littering the local roads. But...

In 2000, a visitor on vacation reported seeing the Loveland Lizard on the way to his hotel. He described it as a 4-foot-tall creature that was part human and part lizard or frog. He said it had scaly skin, webbed hands and feet and was holding a wand-like stick. Sound familiar?

The tourist tried to take a photo of the creature but he hit the flash instead of the shutter button and scared it off. Pity; a picture is worth a thousand words.

Wright-Patterson's Spirits In The Sky

The Arnold House
Hey, military dudes are usually pretty solid citizens. Their training precludes them from flights of fancy, lest they let loose the dogs of war on the wrong target.

But Wright-Patterson AFB, near Dayton, Ohio, claims to be home to a handful of wraiths, reported and confirmed by base personnel.

Spook Central is the old base hospital and pediatric clinic, known as Building 219. The three brick story structure, now offices, has a famous boy spirit, a blond lad that looks like he's maybe 10 years old. He's both been seen and heard playing in the premises, sometimes creating quite a disturbance in his youthful exuberance.

Other Building 219 spook stories go back to the 1990's, when the shadows of some older gents were spotted roaming the halls.

The staff even nicknamed one of the mists Harvey, after a doctor that committed suicide in the building. He was said to visit his old haunt every day. The tale was covered in a 1996 piece carried by the Wright-Patterson AFB's Skywrighter magazine.

The sightings are usually made on the third floor, which was once home to the OR, or in the cellar, which had been used as a morgue.

The workers say that you can see through the spirits, but they're solid enough that you can determine their sex and age. Man, those military reports are thorough!

Yet others claim to have seen the spook of an elderly woman in Building 70, a warehouse and shipping facility. She's described as average build and weight, wearing a white shirt with a ruffle at the neck, and a blue polyester dress. She was said to look like a three-D hologram by one of the folk that saw her.

Also reported were the sounds of crates being dragged across the floor and metal objects falling off of shelves. There have been stories told of voices calling out employees' names, along with footsteps, shadow figures, and soft glowing lights.

And then there's the Arnold House (Building 8, if you're keeping score), the oldest structure on the base. It's the former home of General Henry "Hap" Arnold, built in 1841 as a farm family's homestead. Rumors abound of strange voices and footsteps heard from within when it's deserted, along with the sound of children giggling.

Some claim that the ghost of the former General has been seen in his old digs. Investigators say there may be five spooks haunting Hap's house.

Let's not forget that there have also been stories of alien corpses being kept on base along with their trashed saucers in the infamous Hangar 18, but we'll leave that tale for the UFO bloggers.

The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) checked out the reports of unexplained phenomena at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for the Sci Fi Channel show Ghost Hunters, and called it one of their most successful investigations ever. The program aired last year, and had some great paranormal action in it.

And if you're wondering why the prim and proper Air Force would let a gang of spook hunters on base, the reasoning was simple. The show has an audience of 3 million people between the ages of 18 and 34, “which is the Air Force’s target recruiting audience,” according to a spokesman. At least that's one mystery solved.

After all, who better to recruit for the fly boys than a spirit in the sky?

Chief Joc-O-Sot and the Erie Street Cemetery

Joc-O-Sot's grave from Cleveland.com
Born in 1810, Joc-O-Sot was a Sauk chief and warrior during the Black Hawk wars of 1832. After a series of massacres, battles with the US militia, and cholera, the Indians were defeated for once and all and sent west.

Joc-O-Sot worked as a fishing and hunting guide in the Cleveland area after the hostilities. He later joined a theatrical troupe run by Dan Marble, and Joc-O-Sot toured Europe in Marble's Wild West show to earn some money for his now impoverished tribe.

He became a celebrity in England, even having a pow-wow with Queen Victoria. But an old wound he received during the war flared up, and he sensed he was on the way to the spirit world.

He hurried back to America, wanting to be buried with his Sauk tribesmen in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Travel wasn't exactly zippy back in his day, and he never quite made it home, getting as far as Cleveland before succumbing in 1844. He was buried in the city's oldest boneyard, the Erie Street Cemetery on Ninth Street.

This didn't sit very well with Joc-O-Sot's spirit, and the first bit of lore claims that his outrage at being buried in Cleveland instead of home manifested itself when he shattered his tombstone. Some blame lightning, but hey, someone had to loosen that bolt from the skies, right?

Other say vandals did the dirty deed, and their story has a spooky twist. They claim that the evil-doers were driven insane by a curse laid on them by Chief Thunderwater, a Seneca that was a local Indian rights activist. He died in 1950, and was buried beside Joc-O-Sot, where we suppose he keeps a watchful eye on the spook of his roaming brother.

And local legend has it that Joc-O-Sot's ghost will wander the grounds until he makes it back to his people. It may be that his spook is all that's left at the cemetery. Some think his body was spirited away, perhaps to another burial site or maybe by medical students or doctors in need of a skeleton.

Erie Cemetery is in a prime real estate spot in Cleveland, and developers have often tried to buy it and dislodge its dead. It's alleged that the protective spook of Joc-O-Sot has dispatched a couple of the land-grabbers to the spirit in the sky in dramatic fashion. One guy even tried to frighten the Chief away by littering his grave with decapitated sheep. But hey, it's pretty tough to scare the dead.

Through the years, Joc-O-Sot has had his own protector. Three stalks of maize grow every year next to the chief's grave. Some say a Sauk woman visits to placate his restless spirit, while others say the gods send the corn to nourish him until he makes his final journey to his tribal lands.

His spirit sometimes crosses the street to haunt Jacobs' Field, home of the Cleveland Indians. Some say it's to show his displeasure at the team mascot, Chief Wahoo, an insult to native Americans throughout the land. Others think it's because the field is built on an old Indian burial grounds.

Either way, a sighting of Joc-O-sot never fares well for the hometown nine, and superstitious fans leave trinkets like feathers and shotglasses on his gravestone, maybe hoping he'll haunt the White Sox instead.

Erie Cemetery has other spooks, too. There's also the Woman in White who is known to flag down drivers near the front gate for a ride home. But hey, the paranormal world is loaded with Resurrection Mary tales. How many Indian chiefs get to spook a ballyard?

Hocking Hills Haunted Horrors

Moonville Train Tunnel from Haunted Hocking
Hey, H&H decided to take the easy way out of posting today. While surfing the web, we came across a great website called Haunted Hocking, kept by the Hocking Hills Investigative Team (HITS).

Hocking Hills is a 200 mile ride west from Pittsburgh, located south of Columbus, Ohio. And judging by its eerie tales, it's well worth a weekend jaunt. Some Hocking Hills haunts are:

* Ash Cave Lady: She's a shadowy apparition dressed in 1920's attire that likes to follow tourists as they wend their way along the trail.

* Ash Cave Lights: These are green and yellow orbs that have been reported floating around the cave.

* Athens Asylum: We don't know if this former sanitarium dating back to post Civil War days is spooked out or not, but its' old bones were featured on Fox Family Channel's television show Scariest Places on Earth.

* Conkle's Hollow: William Conkle was the first to settle in his neck of the woods, and fell so in love with the place that he just couldn't leave, even in death. It is said his spirit still roams his hollow that bears his name, decked out in 18th century gear. His friendly spirit watches over visitors, but he'll turn mean if you plan any harm to his woodlands.

* Georgian Manor: What's a spook site without its very own haunted B&B?

* Hope Furnace: The spirit of a watchman who had fallen into the fiery furnace and burned to death over a hundred and forty years ago has been seen carrying an orange lantern while he ambles over the Hope Furnace, as if walking on air where old building roofs once connected to the furnace.

* Lavender Lady: It is said that as a local woman was crossing a RR trestle, she was struck and killed by a train. Legend has it that her ghost still walks the area under the bridge, where her broken body landed after the accident. The scent of her lavender perfume still lingers.

* Moonville Brakie: A RR brakeman took a nap while waiting for his train to take on supplies, and helped his rest with a little taste of likker. Well, the train pulled out without him, and in his haste to climb aboard, he fell under the cars and met his doom. The ghost of the man is said to be seen stumbling down the tracks inside the Moonville tunnel with lantern in hand, eternally trying to catch the train before it leaves the station.

* Old Man's Cave: Richard Roe went out to get some water for himself and his hounds one winter day at the turn of the 19th century, and found the stream frozen. All he had with him was a bucket and his musket, so he tried to break the ice with the butt of his weapon. It went off, and he fatally shot himself. Local lore claims that those camping at the park campground have heard the baying of Roe's hunting dogs on full moon nights, crying for their master to return.

There's a couple of more stories on the Haunted Hocking site, plus the HITS investigations. Stop by, you'll enjoy the tales.

Mahoning Valley's Haunted University

Sweeney Center

We bid a fond adieu to the Pen and head northwest, to the home of Sylvester the Jester and Lady Miss Kier - yep, on to Youngstown, Ohio.

Our next stop is Youngstown State University, home of the Penguins - and the paranormal (as if a 7' penguin mascot isn't scary enough!).

The Wick Mansion was built in 1906 by Col. George Dennick Wick, president of Youngstown Steel, and his wife, Mollie. It sits at the intersection of Wick Avenue and Route 422.

The wealthy couple didn't have long to enjoy their new digs. In 1912, the Wicks booked a cabin aboard the Titanic. Mollie was saved after the unsinkable liner sank; the Colonel went down with the ship.

Mollie returned to her Youngstown mansion, never to remarry. After she joined George in the afterlife, the house was sold to the Wellers. In the 1980's, YSU bought the property and turned it into dorms known as the Wick House.

Weird stuff happened there, as witnessed by the students. The front door would open itself, blinds would roll up the window panes, and the lights would flash on and off. The staff even unplugged the lights, but they still burned bright. People experienced an uneasy, eerie feeling in the old Mansion, especially at night. And no wonder.

Rumors were that Mollie was still in the building. One resident accused her of stealing her socks - we suppose even spooks get cold feet - and several students reported seeing an etheral female haunting the lobby.

Once, YSU workers saw a face staring at them from the second floor window, where Mollie and one of her daughters had passed away.

The university closed the dorm several years ago, and it's now the home of YSU's Disability Services. But the spooky shenanigans with the lights and blinds can still be spotted by the residents of the next-door Weller House at night. Mollie must be afraid of the dark.

We soldier on to the Kilcawley House, a residence attached to the University's hub, the mid-campus Kilcawley Center.

Strange voices, gurgling and raspy, have reportedly been heard in the back stairwell of the K-House. This is the same stairwell where, according to university lore, a janitor met his fate years ago. Some say he died from a tumble down the stairs, while others say he hung himself.

His shade has been reportedly seen roaming the sixth floor, where students also say they hear unexplained scratching noises and the sound of the wind whistling through the hall.

That story sent us scampering to the nearest church. Well, actually, it's not a church now, but it was when it was built in 1908. The holy house eventually became Dana Hall, and currently the building goes by the name of the Sweeney Welcoming Center, YSU's recruiting and admissions office.

If you're new to the school - and why else would you be in Sweeney Hall? - try to stay out of the basement. It's urban legend is that a reverend committed suicide there, and for his eternal purgatory, his sad spirit is ordained to forever roam the place of his self-inflicted doom.

From the serenity of an old chapel, we're off to the livelier pad of the Sigma Tau Gamma fraternity on Broadway Avenue. There's more going on there than just the usual keggers and mixers.

The house is a rental, and it's been a halfway house and later a home to other Greek organizations during its time. And according to some of the brothers, the old residents of its past have never left.

There have been reports of footsteps when no one is around, things being dragged around in an empty cellar, and mumbling voices in the stairway to the basement. The front door has opened, but nobody's there. People have experienced stereos turning on by themselves and cupboards opening on their own volition.

One brother even claimed that the spook of a young girl watched him from the kitchen doorway and then disappeared.

Psychics have visited the place, and sensed trouble in the basement. One said there was a malignant spirit that resided in a side room, and could feel that a violent act took place in the cellar, involving a couple of girls. Both are places where the Sig Taus have felt uneasiness.

Some of the brothers believe the place is haunted. Other say that they've never heard or seen anything out of the ordinary in the admittedly creaky and creepy old house. Who to believe?

(These tales were reported in a series of articles over the years by the YSU student newspaper "The Jambar." H&H thanks them for keeping the lore of the University alive.)

Cleveland's Castles

Franklin Castle from Forgotten Ohio
OK, we're gonna continue our road trip this weekend, taking a little jaunt to the shores of Lake Erie to check out a couple of Cleveland's haunted castles.

Franklin Castle, in Cleveland, Ohio, was built in 1865 by Hannes Tiedemann off of Franklin Avenue. Tragic deaths began to curse the family in 1881 when his 15-year-old daughter Emma succumbed to diabetes. Not long after that his aged mom died.

During the next three years Tiedemann would bury three more children, giving rise to speculation that there was more to the deaths than meets the eye. Hmmmm.

Over the next several years, he did extensive work on the castle by adding secret passages, concealed rooms, and hidden doors inside while adorning the outside with gargoyles and turrets. (During Prohibition, a new tunnel was supposedly constructed that ran from the grounds all the way out to Lake Erie to shelter bootlegging operations, so old Hannes didn't do all the dirty work.)

Some say his building frenzy was just his way of taking his wife's mind off the recent death of her daughter. Others maintain that the rooms and passages were designed so that Tiedemann could do his evil on the QT, murdering his niece and even his own daughter, Emma, among others, without being found out.

And some believe that Mrs. Tiedemann herself had the passages created so that she could sneak past her violent and overbearing husband undetected.

The house subsequently belonged to a German brewer and the German Socialist Party (rumored to be Nazis that spied on the activities on Lake Erie from the house), who were alleged to have machine-gunned some traitors to the Fatherland in the home.

Strange occurrences have plagued all of the residents. Voices, eerie organ music, shaking light fixtures, and many apparitions have been reported. There are rumors of an axe murder in the front tower room, the victim sometimes being seen standing in the window.

A servant girl was supposedly killed in her quarters on her wedding day for refusing Tiedemann's advances. He's said to have shot his mistress Rachel for wanting to marry another man. Her gasping for breath and death rattle can be heard in one of the rooms. Geez, he didn't get into wedding festivities very well, did he?

The secret passageways around the ballroom are said to be where Tiedemann hung his illegitimate daughter Karen. Her ghost is the star of the castle, usually spotted on the third floor in "the cold room," named because it stays ten degrees colder than the rest of the house.

Karen, according to legend, lost her life in a fight between her father and her boyfriend. She and her beau were supposedly hung from a rafter to make the deaths look like suicide. Karen was just a teen at the time, and her ghost is described as a tall, thin woman dressed in black, often seen by the locals.

The Romano's bought the house in 1968 and reportedly had encounters with wraiths that were so frightening they even attempted an exorcism. They called in a Catholic priest for help, but he allegedly refused to bless the house because of the overwhelming evil he felt when he stepped inside its doors.

In 1975, the owner at the time went searching for the secret passageways, and he found more than he bargained for. He uncovered a pile of old human bones. Another of the rooms was found to hold at least a dozen baby skeletons.

Today, Franklin Castle is managed by Charles Milsap, who has announced plans to turn the property into the Franklin Castle Club. Although he began offering memberships, little work has been done to restore the Gothic mansion. In fact, "The Most Haunted House in Ohio" is rumored to be on the sheriff's sale list for unpaid back taxes.

It's probably better to let sleeping spooks lie.


Squires Castle from Prairie Ghosts
Squire's Castle is located in Willoughby Hills in northeast Ohio. It was built by Feargus B.Squire in the 1890's. He was a beaucoup wealthy man and one of the founders of the Standard Oil Company. Squire had a grand estate in Cleveland but always wanted a home in the country.

Late in the 1890's, Squire purchased 525 acres of land near Cleveland, planning to build that summer estate for himself, his wife and daughter. A few years after buying the property, a gatehouse went up.

It had three floors plus a basement, in which avid hunter Squire designed an private trophy room for the skins and heads of the beasts he had shot. It would serve as their summer home until a righteous manor could be built.

There is an urban legend about the cottage claiming that it's haunted by a ghostly woman carrying a red lantern who walks the building at night. She's supposed to be the shade of Rebecca Squire, Feargus' wife. She hated the old pile of stones, much preferring to remain in the city with its bright lights.

In her restless state, she developed insomnia whenever she stayed at the cottage and would sleeplessly pace about the house at night, carrying a small red lantern to light her way through the gloomy halls.

On one fateful night, Mrs. Squire wandered into the trophy room of the house, a place that she usually avoided. No one really knows what happened next, but it's thought that Mrs. Squire became frightened of something in the room. Perhaps the mounted animals spooked her in the dim light.

Whatever the reason, she began screaming in terror and in her haste to escape the room, she tripped and fell back down the steps. She was discovered dead a short time later, the victim of a broken neck.

A cool tale, though not close to being wholly factual. The family actually sold the castle in 1920 and Mrs. Squire didn't depart this vale of tears until 1929. She died of a stroke, not a broken neck. Oooops!

Nevertheless, there are still reports of hauntings and red lights floating through the cottage and grounds at night. And it's believed that to this day, she is doomed to roam the halls and rooms of the castle she so despised carrying her lantern and spookily screaming in her anguish.

Oddly, her apparition is often seen on the second floor - which no longer exists, having been razed years ago. And she can't haunt the trophy room in the basement. It was filled in with cement to both keep the rowdies out and to help stabilize the remnants of the cottage. But that's OK - Rebecca never liked the place anyhow.

If you want to find out if the tale is so, Cleveland runs the ramshackle property as part of its Metropark system. Give it a visit, and watch your step. It's covered in graffiti, and the insides are pretty well gutted. It's even spookier now!