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Overview
Run down the apparitions that float about Rubber Citystreets and façades like the shadow of a passing blimp. Stroll along forgotten canals amid the restless chatter and clank of spirits cut down before their hard lives became easier. Catch a show at the Civic Theater with a ""former"" engineer who prophesied that death wouldn't keep him from work. A more restive spirit is that of John Tedrow, a twenty-something mauled and murdered during a drunken brawl in 1882; he wails for help and resolution.
In this ghostly tour through Akron's haunted and sometimes brutal past, paranormal specialist and historian Jeri Holland digs into the ghost tales and local legends that linger here like this city's industrial heritage.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609493677 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcadia Publishing SC |
| Publication date: | 01/09/2011 |
| Series: | Haunted America |
| Pages: | 128 |
| Sales rank: | 1,103,028 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Stone-Throwing Ghost
Stone-throwing poltergeists have been around since at least AD 500, when Helpidius, the personal physician of Theodoric the Great (ruler of the Ostrogothic kingdom in modern-day Italy), was inundated with falling stones. For a number of months, his home in Rome became famous for the "flying stones," which dropped down on his roof from invisible sources. Again in AD 858, a farmer along the Rhine River near Bingen, Germany, found himself attacked by falling stones. He believed that a demon was assaulting him, and a priest was sent from Mainz to rid his body of the aggressive spirit. As the priest began the exorcism, a flood of stones struck him from behind.
On November 29, 1591, the Lee family was bombarded by stones inside their home in Oxfordshire, England. The rocks varied in size from small pebbles to small boulders weighing upward of twenty-two pounds. They scoured the place for clues; there was no perpetrator to be found and, more surprisingly, no holes in the ceiling where the stones materialized. These falling rocks stopped in May 1592 when their eldest son, twenty-two-year-old George, died. Across the Atlantic ocean, another stone-throwing poltergeist began an attack on the home of George Walton in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in June 1685. A shower of several hundred pebbles fell on the roof of the house. The family rushed outside and found themselves in the middle of a rain of stones. They could see that the pebbles were appearing out of thin air several feet above the house. The shower soon stopped, but it repeated a few days later and continued randomly several times until around November, when the attacks ended.
Then, on an autumn day in 1878, it happened in Akron, Ohio. German-born Michael Metzler and his wife, Maria, had immigrated to the United States in hopes of a better life. They lived for some ten years in Akron until 1878, when Michael and his family moved into a larger brick house situated at 1219 High Street. The area was known by locals as Hell's Half Acre — a blue-collar neighborhood with a reputation for brawls caused by drunken Akron Iron Company workers. Michael and Maria lived in this rough neighborhood with their six children, ages one through thirteen, as well as Maria's seventy-two-year-old mother, Bridget Noss. Michael supported his large family by working as a plasterer at a local factory.
On the bright Tuesday morning of October 8, Maria Metzler was husking corn in their adjacent field when she began being pelted with stones. Unable to find the source of her attack, she ran for the cover of her home. A short while later, her children were outside carrying out their chores when they, too, were struck with rocks varying from a walnut to a chicken egg in size. Finding shelter inside their home, they discussed the incidents and came to the conclusion that someone was playing a nasty prank.
At dusk the following evening, Mrs. Metzler again attempted to husk corn in the field. To her surprise, it happened again. More stones, this time accompanied by clumps of earth, flew at Maria. The outdoor events continued, and by Thursday morning, the stone hurling invaded the safe haven of their home. Maria and her ten-year-old daughter Emma were standing outside by a door that led to the cellar when a large pebble was hurled from inside, striking the young girl in the face. The oldest daughter, Mary, was sitting in a chair inside the home when a stone struck her. At times, pieces of coal and brick were thrown in place of the stones. All of these objects appeared to fall straight out of the ceiling or were launched mysteriously from the dark corners of the room.
News spread quickly throughout the town's 16,500 residents. Friends and neighbors gathered to keep vigil at the house, watching for poltergeist activity. Reactions were similar to what you might expect in today's modern times. Some people laughed at the Metzler family; others wanted to get a piece of the action. A few people had theories on how and why it was happening. Rumors spread rapidly, from mundane trickery to supernatural forces. Perhaps Bridget Noss was a witch. Surely one of the Metzler daughters had become quite crafty at throwing things discreetly.
Several journalists visited the Metzlers' home throughout their ordeal and became part of the story when they, too, were showered with wet, warm rocks. It wasn't long before the story became nationwide news — a difficult feat to accomplish 130 years ago. "So great has the excitement become that on Sunday, it was estimated that nearly two thousand persons visited the premises," reported the Akron City Times on October 16. "In the evening, the crowd took the form of a mob, and there were numerous altercations and disturbances."
By the following week, the distraught family had had enough; they called in professionals for help. Mr. Metzler summoned Reverend John Baptist Broun, pastor of St. Bernard Catholic Church, to conduct an exorcism of the rock-throwing entity. Reverend Broun arrived at the Metzler house at 10:00 p.m. that evening and prayed for the departure of the evil presence. As soon as he finished giving the holy rites, two stones fell at his feet, barely missing him.
In the 1929 Akron Topics magazine, reporter William Montgomery Clemens (nephew to Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as author and satirist Mark Twain) recalled his own visit with the Metzlers and what he dubbed the "Stone-Throwing Ghost" in 1878:
We entered the living room and closed and locked the two windows and doors. Now I sat next to the grandmother and held both of her hands. The little girl was perched upon the lap of my companion. Mr. Metzler was away at the factory where he was employed. Mrs. Metzler sat near the stove, knife in hand paring potatoes. At her feet was a large pan. Thus we had set the stage for tragedy or for comedy.
And what happened? I was asking Mrs. Metzler for her possible explanation of the manifestation. There were tears in her eyes as, holding the knife in an outstretched hand to emphasize her words, she cried, "It is a curse upon this family."
At that moment a small stone the shape and size of a hickory nut, fell, apparently from the ceiling, and struck Mrs. Metzler on the arm. The stone was warm and wet. Later a larger stone — the size of an egg — fell and struck me on the shoulder — a slight touch like a tap of a finger, the stone fell at my feet, but did not roll or move from where it fell. Like a piece of putty it clung to the floor.
Still other stones fell on that eventful morning all coming, apparently, from the ceiling. We watched for their coming too, and all appeared to have their origin eight or ten inches below the unbroken ceiling plaster. The stones did no damage but they caused deep wonderment.
Two weeks later, it all ended just as mysteriously as it had begun. The events at the Metzler house were never explained. To this day, the incident remains an unsolved mystery. The farm was razed many years ago. A parking lot now occupies the land where the home once stood, on the east side of what is now South Broadway Street, about three hundred feet north of East Voris Street in South Akron.
Were Bridget Noss, the suspected witch, and her granddaughter Emma in cahoots on a masterful prank? Or was something far more sinister behind the Akron poltergeist activity and other cases throughout history?
CHAPTER 2The Juvenile Detention Home Murder
Mrs. Bonham?" called Ruth, a seventeen-year-old inmate at Summit County Juvenile Detention Home, to the motherly matron.
"Yes, dear," Eula Bonham answered through the locked door of the second-floor girls' dormitory room.
"Will you fetch my scarf that I left in the common room?" Ruth asked with a nervous giggle.
Thinking that her girls were becoming quite forgetful lately, the gray-haired matron agreed to the request. "Certainly."
At 8:30 p.m. on that November evening in 1955, two of the girls huddled in the dorm trying not to show how scared and nervous they were; they stooped behind their three roommates, who hid on either side of the door. One girl was given instructions to cover the matron's mouth. Two other girls held the belts to be used to bind her arms and legs. A fourth girl readied herself to hold the old woman down while the last teen would shove a washcloth, soaked in ammonia she had hidden in a cold cream jar, into her mouth.
These five teenagers, aged fifteen to seventeen years, all had a past that had landed them inside the Summit County facility. Zelda was the sixteen-year-old wife of a fugitive who had escaped from a prison in West Virginia. She had been arrested the previous November; authorities had hoped that she would provide information on his whereabouts. Shirley and Margaret, both fifteen, were placed in the detention home after running away from home several times. Fifteen-year-old Merl had been involved in a robbery at knifepoint. Ruth had been relocated to Akron from the Girls Industrial School in Lancaster, Ohio, in order to testify at the trial of a man accused of contributing to her delinquency.
Eula Bonham had been a matron at the Summit County Juvenile Detention Home, built in 1930 on Power Street, for sixteen years. In her years of service, she developed a positive reputation and was well liked by both her fellow employees and the teenage girls in her care. On this particular day, Sunday, November 27, Eula was particularly happy, as giddy as a schoolgirl. Her first marriage had ended in divorce, yet on December 1, Mrs. Bonham had plans to remarry, this time to a wonderful man. Though she was exhausted and ready for bed, Eula was willing to go out of her way to help out her girls. Little did she know that this simple act of fetching a scarf would put an end to her happiness, her plans to marry and her life.
When Mrs. Bonham returned with the scarf and unlocked the door, the five girls sprang into action. Merl, fifteen, later recalled the event for the press. "I was supposed to hold her mouth so she couldn't scream," she said. "But I couldn't because she had cold cream on, and her skin was slippery. Then, four of us knocked her down on a bed, and I tied her hands and feet." (Bruising on Bonham's throat indicated that she'd been strangled at some point.) "Before we left, I hit her twice over the head with a shoe because she was still struggling. Then, I dropped the shoe and ran."
The other girls in the dormitory said that Merl and her accomplices had been rehearsing the escape for some time; they had discreetly stocked up on ammonia in an empty cold cream jar. In order to keep the others quiet, the gang of girls threatened to kill them if they spoke a single word about their plot to anyone.
The five girls ran out into the hallway, past the other locked dormitory rooms, and down into the basement. They used a shovel to smash out a window. The boys' dormitory supervisor, twenty-nine-year-old Ralph Roebuck, heard the commotion from the first floor. He was watching a group of twenty-nine boys in the recreation room. Later, he reported that he witnessed the five girls escape out the smashed window, but he made the decision not to chase them for fear that the boys would try to escape, too.
One by one, they crawled out to experience that wonderful feeling of freedom. Unfortunately for the girls, this freedom was confusing and frigid due to a few major oversights. Late November in Ohio can be quite cold, yet none of the girls thought of grabbing a coat. They also didn't plan where to go once they escaped the building or even how they were going to get there. While they were standing in the freezing cold, deciding where to run, the matron lay unconscious inside the dorm, quietly choking on the cloth. She died of suffocation within fifteen minutes of her attack.
Just a few hours after the escape, Merl and Margaret walked into the police department and turned themselves in. Zelda surrendered to police after hiding in cellars for nearly twenty-four hours in below-freezing temperatures near the detention home. Ruth and Shirley, however, hitched a ride with a truck driver at a service station up to Cleveland. The duo ended up riding back with the driver and were dropped off the following day at another gas station in Akron. They hid there to keep warm. The station attendant alerted the authorities, who found them huddling in the corner of the restroom. Ruth, covered in crime cult tattoos, said that she was sorry but added, "We wouldn't have got caught if we'd moved fast."
Following their surrenders and captures, the other girls also expressed their remorse for Eula Bonham's death. They said that the ammonia cloth was meant to knock her out, not kill her, while they escaped. They pled guilty to manslaughter, and each received sentences of up to twenty years. Two of the girls were sent to Marysville Reformatory. The remaining three served their time at a girls' industrial school in Delaware, Ohio.
On December 1, instead of a beautiful wedding, mourners gathered at Akron Baptist Temple for a gloomy (but love-filled) funeral. Eula Bonham was laid to rest in Glendale Cemetery.
In 1960, the Summit County Juvenile Detention Home was moved to a new facility on Dan Street. The Power Street building was then used for a while by the Summit County Children Services Board before it was turned into a women's prison from 1982 to 1990. Today it serves as a residential correctional facility for Oriana House, a chemical dependency treatment agency.
In the many years following her murder, some Akronites believe that Eula Bonham's ghost has haunted the Power Street facility where she passed away. They believe that the second floor, which housed the girls' dorms where she was killed, has the most ghostly activity. The room where Eula died has a particularly uncomfortable vibe to it.
In the late 1980s, when the women's prison was at that location, inmates and employees claimed to hear footsteps, moving furniture and other peculiar noises within the building. Windows opened and closed on their own accord throughout the second floor, and televisions and radios turned on and off at random times. Even the front desk typewriter sporadically would type as if operated by unseen hands. One witness, a female deputy, claimed that a pen flew out of her pocket and that a pizza slice levitated out of her hand. Her cigarette, sitting in a nearby ashtray, was knocked to the floor.
Last names have been omitted for reasons of privacy.
CHAPTER 3The Ghost Blimp
One of the most intriguing mysteries of World War II — and one still not solved — is the disappearance of Flight 101 and its crew. It's a different sort of story, and not your traditional type of haunting, but the tale involves an Akron resident and a Goodyear airship designed and built just outside of Akron, Ohio.
At 6:03 a.m. on the morning of August 16, 1942, Flight 101 departed Treasure Island, California. Navy Airship L-8 was one of twelve blimps that composed Squadron 32, which routinely patrolled the Pacific Ocean, carefully watching for Japanese submarines approaching the coast. On board was twenty-seven-year-old Lieutenant Ernest D. Cody and Ensign Charles Adams of Lakehurst, New Jersey, who set a course west out over the vast ocean. Cody, the pilot of the blimp, had lived in Akron before arriving at Moffett Field and was married to Helen Haddock, the daughter of Akron Goodyear employee Richard L. Haddock and his wife, Juanita.
The mission was a relatively simple one: conduct an antisubmarine patrol along the coast of California, traveling from Treasure Island (just north of the Golden Gate Bridge) to the Farallones, a chain of small islands some thirty miles west, before heading north to Point Reyes and returning the blimp to Moffett Field at the southern end of San Francisco Bay. Normally, the flight called for a crew of three men, but foggy weather conditions on the bay reduced the crew to two in order to make up for excess water weight from condensation. At 7:42 a.m., Lieutenant Cody radioed the base to inform staff that he and Adams had located a possible oil slick on the ocean. The men were heading to its location for further investigation. That was the last message ever heard from the two men aboard the L-8. In fact, it was the last sign of Cody and Adams ever recorded.
Three hours passed without any word from the blimp. Nervous commanders prepared to dispatch a rescue crew to search for the airship. As the blimp floated over Mussel Rock, onlookers could see that the blimp was in trouble. Bruce McIntyre, one of the first eyewitnesses to see the aircraft, shared his observation with a reporter: "It was dished on top and appeared to be drifting with its motors off ... It was so low I could see shroud lines [used by the ground crew for landing and takeoff] almost touching the hilltop."
Thirty minutes later, the gray airship was spotted resting against a cliff along the Pacific coast eight miles south of San Francisco. Civilians nearby at Lake Merced Golf Course witnessed the L-8 soaring inward from the sea and watched as the blimp disappeared behind two hills, where it snagged on a cliff near Fort Funston Park. The gondola carved deep scratches into the cliff as it smashed against the shore, bending the propeller blades and packing the right engine with dirt and debris. As a rescue crew approached, the blimp gently rose and began to drift inland. As it flew toward Olympic Golf Club, one of the two depth charges (antisubmarine explosives) on board the airship was dislodged from its rack and fell to the golf course near the ocean. The shore patrol immediately notified Moffett Field.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Haunted Akron"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Jeri Holland.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface 7
Acknowledgements 9
Introduction 11
The Stone-Throwing Ghost 15
The Juvenile Detention Home Murder 19
The Ghost Blimp 23
Botzum: A Real Ghost Town 30
Libertine Dixon; The "Brave" Indian Hunter 43
Will-O'-the-Wisps 48
The Ohio and Erie Canal 52
High Bridge Glens 59
The Blazing Red Ball 53
Mary Campbell and the Lenape Indians 72
The Phantoms of River Styx 81
The Historic Portage Path 87
Ghosts of the Civic Theater 100
The Submariner's Trunk 105
Historical Ghosts 109
Conclusion 113
Appendix I Common Paranormal Terms 115
Appendix II Local Paranormal Groups 123
Sources 125
About the Author 127