Haunted Ohio: Ghostly Tales from the Buckeye State

by Chris Woodyard

Overview

Haunted Ohio: Ghostly Tales from the Buckeye State, includes index, index of stories by county, addresses of haunted places open to public, bibliography

Visit that altered state of consciousness: Haunted Ohio, a collection of over 125 Ohio ghost stories. There you'll meet a haunted garden-party dress, the actress who vanished from her dressing room and who still takes curtain calls, and the headless motorcyclist of the Great Black Swamp. Read about Thomas Edison's machine to talk to the dead, phantom soldiers, Ceely Rose, who poisoned her entire family, and author James Thurber's real-life "Night the Ghost Got In." These are mostly "true" ghost stories based on interviews and personal experiences, with a few folktales thrown in. There are tales as old as Native American ghostlore, as new as the one about a haunted airplane. There are stories about haunted presidents and haunted cemeteries. There are tales of the dead and famous and of the faceless dead.

Stories from the following Ohio counties: Ashland, Auglaize, Butler, Champaign, Clark, Clermont, Columbiana, Coshocton, Crawford, Cuyahoga, Defiance, Erie, Fairfield, Franklin, Greene, Guernsey, Hamilton, Hardin, Knox, Lawrence, Licking, Mahoning, Marion, Medina, Meigs, Miami, Montgomery, Morgan, Morrow, Muskingum, Noble, Perry, Portage, Richland, Sandusky, Summit, Tuscarawas, Vinton, Wood, Wyandot.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780962847202
Publisher:	Kestrel Publications (OH)
Publication date:	03/10/2024
Series:	Haunted Ohio
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	226
Product dimensions:	5.02(w) x 8.01(h) x 0.45(d)
Age Range:	11 - 17 Years

About the Author

Chris Woodyard is an Ohio writer and historian. In addition to nine books on Ohio ghost-lore, as well as three volumes of historical ghost stories, she is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, on the popular and material culture of Victorian mourning and death and A is for Arsenic: The ABCs of Victorian Death, illustrated by Landis Blair.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpt from Haunted Ohio: Ghostly Tales from the Buckeye State
Copyright @ 1991 Chris Woodyard

A Malicious Spirit

One of the other ghosts of the Victoria is a ghost of a trauma. At the turn of the century, a young girl named Lucille* was seated in one of the boxes at the Victoria. In those days folding screens were placed at the entrances of the boxes to keep out drafts and to hide the maid who accompanied the young woman as chaperon. Somehow the chaperon was lured away, and a violent madman dragged Lucille behind the screen and assaulted her. Other theater patrons heard her screams and rescued her before she was murdered by the lunatic. The Dayton newspapers fumed that it was an outrage when young women couldn't attend a matinee in safety.

After the incident, Lucille and her family moved east. Lucille married and lived to be an old woman and died a natural death. But something of that violent assault lingered on to haunt the box. It was said that whenever anyone of a vicious temperament, anyone with anger in their heart came into the box, the temperature would drop.

For years Hastings, who had been an actor, thought that the box, which was called "the left box" in contemporary newspaper reports was at "stage left" or the right-hand box as you faced the stage. In the late 1970s, some mediums visited the theater. They felt "angry energy" in the opposite box—the one of the left as you faced the stage, or "house left." This turned out to be the true site of the assault.

Five years later Hastings and his friend Steve* were checking the house before leaving for the evening. Steve is a psychologist and he didn't know the story of the box. As Steve entered the box, he let out a yell.

Hastings says, "I came rushing upstairs, calling, 'What happened? What's the matter? I heard Steve exclaim, 'I feel like I've been slapped! By the time I got to him, he was sitting in the back of the theater, his face in shadow. 'Did you Lucille get into an argument? I teased him.

"He mumbled something about an insect bite. As he moved into the light, there, imprinted very clearly on his face, visible even through his beard, was the red mark of a hand print."

Why would Lucille single out Steve? I asked Hastings. Was he a violent sort of person? He smiled slightly, "He was a very angry person; one of the angriest people I've ever known."

Table of Contents

Prelude: All Flesh is Grass
1. The Haunted Garden-Party Dress: Clothes to die for
2. Dearly Departed: Ghostly lovers
3. It Is Very Beautiful Over There: Mr. Edison calls up the dead
4. The Ghostly Grandpa: Children and the supernatural
5. Old Soldiers Never Die: Custer's last march, John Brown's soul
6. The Phantoms of the Opera: Theatrical ghosts
7. Grave Matters; Final resting? Places
8. A Ghost Around the House: Household hauntings
9. Resting in Pieces: Dis-embodied spirits
10. Our Haunted Presidents: From The Harrison Horror to Harding's Doom
11. Eternal Rest Grant Unto Them, O Lord: Haunted houses and servants of God
12. The Old School Spirit: The ghosts of higher education
13. The Happy Haunting Grounds: The haunted skull and other Native American hauntings
14. Ghost Writers: Ohio's haunted authors
15. The Headless Motorcyclist: And other haunted conveyances
Appendix: Haunting People: Ghost-hunters, tale-tellers and tours
References
Other Terrifying Tours
Index
General
By Location