The Inn

Not a lot has happened to me lately as far as paranormal goes, however my wife started working at this Inn near King’s Island. I won’t say which one, in fact “Inn” isn’t part of the name, because I don’t want to draw any attention to them that they might not want. My wife loves working there, and I don’t want to ruin it for her.

However, the land around King’s Island in Mason, OH is supposed to be haunted because of an explosion that took place on the land years before there was an amusement park built there. The explosion killed quite a few people, and now the amusement park is supposed to be haunted and was even featured on the show Ghost Hunters. What they didn’t do on that show was go the Inn to investigate.

Since I’ve been hanging out there with her and talking to the other employees, they’ve told me all kinds of things about the place, mainly one particular room where guests complain about eerie things happening, like feeling someone sit on the edge of the bed when there’s nobody there, or feeling the presence of others in the room when they are alone.

One night I took a trip through the place to find the room, and before I got to it I could feel the electricity in the air build so high it had my hairs standing on end. The closer I got to the door, the worse it got. Finally when I got to the door I felt as if I was being watched from the other side, maybe through the peep hole. Just a feeling though, no actual evidence otherwise.

I was told another thing about that room, that one night just about a week ago it flooded down into the basement. Except there was nobody in the room when it happened. Apparently the tub overflowed and leaked into the basement.

And then there was the night I stopped in to use the bathroom before picking my wife up to take her home. It was about 4 AM and I was the only one in the bathroom. Once I was done I washed my hands and then used the electric paper towel dispenser to dry my hand. I waved my hand in front of the eye and it spit out a sheet of paper. I tore it off and dried my hands. I turned and left the bathroom. Once I got just on the other side of the entrance, I heard the paper towel dispenser shoot out another towel. I turned to look and of course, nobody was there.

When I told the front desk people about my experience, they just laughed and said they’d add it to the growing list of stories taking place all the time there.

One night I plan to stay the night in that one particular room, the one that over flowed. I’d love to see what all that electricity in the air was about.

That Silverton Home

When I had to leave my Grandmother’s house just after she passed away, my girlfriend and I moved into a house in Silverton, OH. We didn’t have much of a choice in where to go and we didn’t have much time to find a place. We really only moved into this house because we had to. Personally, I really didn’t care much for it, but accepted it for what it was.

Shortly after moving in, odd things started happening. I dealt with it, my wife was freaked out by it, and after we left eight months later, I’m glad we had gone.

The house was tiny and the basement was strange. Every time I went to the basement I felt as if someone were watching me. I would go down there alone, but never liked to. And I don’t scare easily. One thing that happened regularly in the house was the sound of what sounded like a gallows’ trap door dropping. And the sound always seemed to come from the basement.

In the kitchen we had a blind covering the window. It was the type that you had to tug on to get it to go up. We never had luck with it, as it was old and didn’t work properly. We always had to tug on it constantly just to get it to do something. Unless it wanted to go about things on its own, which it did more than a few times. Without being touched by us, the blind would roll all the way up effortlessly. We assumed it was just because it was old and didn’t work right, but the spring inside that helped it to roll up wasn’t so great. When we’d get it to go up, we had to force it to go all the way up, and it did so slowly, most times not even making it all the way up. When it did it on its own, however, it would go all the way up, quickly, as if it were brand new.

I know that is something that can be explained away, but it is an incident, regardless of what caused it, just like this one. In the living room there was a light on the ceiling in the center of the room and it had a pull string on it. The first couple of times it happened I was in another room and just heard it. I would hear a click coming from that pull string and I would look at it and although the light was never on or off when it shouldn’t be, the string would be swaying hard, as if someone had tugged on it and let go.

That had gone on quite a few times until one day I was sitting in the living room on the couch without the TV on and I was just relaxing. I had my head back on the couch and I was looking right at the light when it happened. Talk about a racing heart.

The rest of our problems occurred outside. We had some horrible neighbors. Almost every day that we lived there we would find garbage in our front yard. This garbage was never found in any other yard around us, but after picking it up a few times I’d discover more of it in our yard the same day. I never caught them doing it, but I know they were.

On more than one occasion while I was cutting the grass in the backyard, I would go along the fence that separated our back yards and nothing would be there, but on my return trip around the yard I would find several pieces of garbage littering the yard, right alongside the fence. Thinking about it now I should have had my wife keep an eye on the yard from the house to see who was doing it, but we never did.

Aside from the garbage, I can’t explain the other things. At night, I’d let my dogs outside and I would sit on the back porch while they did their business. All too often they would get to the porch with me and look up at the top of the neighbors garage and growl or bark, usually growl, and their hair would stand up. I never saw anything there.

On one night I happened to catch some movement in the back of their yard. They had a small shed in the back corner of their yard that was on the other side of the fence from our yard. Behind their yard was a privacy fence. On this night, I saw a shadow move from the shadow the shed made on the fence out about five feet from it, making its own shadow on the fence. It was dark, but I could make out that it was just a shadow, and there was nothing to cause it. The shadow was the form of a person, and in order for it to be there, the person would have to have been standing right in front of the fence, but nothing was there. I kept an eye on it for ten minutes and it never moved again. I never saw that shadow there again.

I don’t know what was going on in the house, and I never felt anything strange in particular, but I always felt as if I wasn’t alone in the house. I’m glad we’re gone, I hated the house, the neighbors, and the city.

Malabar

A few years ago I had planned a trip to Mansfield Reformatory to do an all night ghost hunt. What a blast that turned out to be, so much so that I’m looking forward to going back as soon as possible. Well, I have been looking forward to it since then, which was about 7 years ago now… yeesh…

Anyway, before I went there I was informed to check out this other place on the way, which happens to be down the road from the Reformatory. It’s called Malabar Farm State Park, and it’s nestled deep in the back woods of Mansfield. Get good directions before going or take someone with you who knows their way around, or you won’t get there.

The thing with Malabar is, it’s haunted by the spirit of a woman who used to live there named Ceely Rose. In 1896 Ceely murdered her family there. You see, she was in love with the neighbor boy, Guy Berry. They both attended the same one room school house, which is still standing just down the road from their houses. The kids there used to make fun of Ceely for being slow, and he stood up for her. She fell in love. He was too nice to say he wasn’t interested, so she persisted by telling everyone they were going to get married.

Apparently, her dad was furious that she was spreading these lies, and he forbid her to ever see him again. This made her so mad that the next morning she made them all breakfast, dumped some rat poison in their cottage cheese and they all ate. Her father died right away, her brother died about a week later. Her mom didn’t eat as much of it, so she survived. Eventually though, after her mother spoke of moving them away from the area, and of course away from Guy, Ceely re-poisoned her mother and finished the job.

Ceely was finally caught and tried for the murders. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was sent to the Toledo Asylum. In 1915 she was shipped off to the Lima State Hospital where she lived until 1934. It would seem now, though, that Ceely is back at home, close to her one true love, Guy Berry.

I pulled all of that info from a piece Mark Jordan had written a few years ago about it. Mark has written a play about it and the theater group he’s apart of performed it on the stage in the main barn there at the park. He told me that they had technical issues the entire time as well. I believe he’s either still writing it, or he has written a book about Ceely as well.

Luckily when I went, I was met by Mark Jordan who got me there on the first try and gave me a nice tour of the place. While I was there, I did encounter some things, but instead of thinking back 7 years and telling it again, I hunted down an email I had sent to Grave Addiction about my time there. Here’s part of that email with the details of what I’m writing this blog about.

We then decided to go in the barn since most of the people had cleared out. I immediately walked over to the back door that everyone had the problems with and I felt a little presence there. I started taking pictures and Laura and Mark just kind of walked around a little bit. Suddenly I got a strong feeling of a serious presence right near the front corner of the stage on the side of the door.

I got lightheaded quick, as sometimes that happens with me and strong energies. I grabbed for the beam and realized I had to sit down. Mark had just walked past me so I turned to him and told him I needed help, but I think it all happened so fast that he didn’t know what to do and so I just sat myself down on the bench. The feeling stayed with me, almost tormenting me.

I got up and said I had to leave the barn and I walked out as fast as possible without running into anything, because at this point my mind was very clouded with this energy and the pictures and thoughts pouring into my head. When I got outside the energy was still with me, though going away. It felt like the presence was making sure I left the barn.

And the vision in my head of who it was…chilling. I only experienced this kind of anger in a “spirit” one other time and that was scary enough…it was the Bobby Mackey ghost. So I definitely wanted to leave. But this is what I saw. It was a woman for sure. She was wearing a bonnet and a dress, both of the period when I guess Ceely would’ve been living. Both seemed to be a dark red color. All I saw past that was the look on her face, and it wasn’t friendly. She had her teeth gritted and a very angry look on her face.

Whether this was Ceely or someone else, I don’t know. I didn’t get a name. Actually, I didn’t get anything more than what I just described. That and the thought that whoever this woman is, she doesn’t want me there and she was VERY angry. Come to think of it, the feeling was also kind of like she was just very mad that there were all these people there, probably all day, and she didn’t want any more company, so she escorted me and my company out.

I don’t know. Whoever it is, it didn’t seem like Ceely to me. And I only say that because everyone that emailed you seems to like Ceely’s ghost and say she’s playful. This one wasn’t nice or playful, at least to me. I want to go back sometime though to do a more thorough investigation.

I then sent another email to the site with what I’m about to tell you. When I had visioned that lady in my head, it was disturbing. The face was creepy and the anger was real. It’s been burned in my head ever since and still haunts me occasionally. After I sent that email I did a search on Ceely Rose to see if there was a picture of her anywhere and I found one that sent chills up and down my spine. The picture showed the same face that was burned into my memory. Here’s that picture.

Creepy. So, that’s my story. I walked around, went on a great tour of a great place and was chased out by Ceely. I’d love to go back there as well to get a little more investigating in. Maybe the next time I go to Mansfield Reformatory…

The House That Raised Me Pt. 5

Recently I got to speak to my dad about the things that happened in The House. I asked him if there were any occurrences that happened that I might not know about. This is what he told me.

We had a pull down staircase that led up to the attic. This staircase was in the ceiling of the Utility Room. He told me some of the first things to ever happen in the house was this staircase, coming down, completely unfolded, on its own.

Both the first and second times it happened he’d go up to the attic, which we didn’t use for anything, and he’d search around to make sure nobody was up there. He’d also check the back door, which was just a few feet from the staircase, to make sure it was locked. Everything always checked out, and the staircase only did this a couple of times.

Skeptical, my step mom said that it probably just fell open. My dad had her try to open it, and she couldn’t. It was a new staircase and it was very hard to pull down. I remember as a kid living there, my sisters and I would sometimes play up there, and it was always difficult to open the staircase.

He also told me of the back door, always slamming open or shut. Nobody would ever be there.

I never knew of these things. And then he told me this…

I originally posted about what had gone on between the owners of the house who owned it before the people we bought it from. Well, my dad just told me a different story.

He had spoken with one of our neighbors who had lived on the street many years. He told my dad that the man and wife did have an argument, however, instead of the woman leaving the house and then being locked out by her husband causing her to dive back into the house through the living room window, he had shoved her during the fight and she went through the window, the broken glass slitting her throat and killing her. Apparently, the man then killed himself in the house.

My dad also told me the people we bought the house from had told my mom and dad that they were selling because his uncle or dad had won the lottery and were building them a nice new house somewhere. Our neighbor told us it was because of the hauntings in the house that drove them out, and they had only lived in the house for a year, maybe less.

The House That Raised Me Pt. 4

As I was going over in my head all of the incidents that I have encountered to see if I had left anything out, I realized I had. There were a few more things that had happened in The House that I had almost forgotten about, and they had all happened to a friend of mine, John. I mentioned him during the Apartment stories.

When I was growing up and living in The House, John lived just a block down the road from me and we were the best of friends. During the summer, we lived with each other. He’d be at my house for a week and then we’d go and stay at his house for a week. We ran the streets all the time. Every now and then while at his house, some strange things would happen but nothing really noteworthy, but while he was staying with me at my house, some strange things happened to him.

One night I awoke to see him standing in my room in front of the door, which was open. The hall light was on, so the room was lit up pretty well. I asked him what he was doing and he said someone poured water on him.

I got up and looked and honestly, it looked as if he had pissed the bed. His boxers were completely soaked. He said he woke up when he felt something being poured on him and he heard a guy laughing in the hallway, but he saw nobody.

He had left a glass of water on my book shelf and it had less water in it than when he had taken his last drink before us going to bed, but the water that was missing wasn’t enough to cover what got wet.

I looked at my bed, and the wet spot was cold. He definitely had not pissed the bed. I smelled it too just to make sure.

My bed at that time was a twin, just a mattress sitting on a piece of plywood which was held up by the frame. Whatever got him wet, soaked him, the mattress, the plywood, and the water was dripping from the plywood onto the floor, which also had a little puddle on it. A lot of water had been dumped on him.

We checked the house. Everyone was asleep and really, the only person it could have been was my dad, and that’s just not something he would do. Never mind that we could hear him clearly in his own room, snoring loud enough to wake the dead. No pun intended.

Another time, I woke up one morning to find he was gone. He had stayed the night, but there was no sign of him. I walked to his house and asked him what had happened. This is what he told me.

He had gotten up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. He walked out of my room and into the hallway and just as he got to the bathroom door he heard his name. He looked into the living room and in the very dim light he could make out a form on the couch. He told me the voice sounded like my step mother. She asked him by name if he could go home, so he said he would. He used the bathroom, got his stuff and left.

After I heard about this I was pissed. This was something my step mom would have done at this time, for no reason at all. I went home and confronted her about it and she was legitimately shocked. She said she never did that and would never do that. Really, there was no reason for him to go home, and I know for sure she would have done something like that and even lied to me about it, so I’m not too sure on this, but either way, it was odd.

The last incident, which I didn’t find out about until just a couple of years ago, was again at night while he was staying with me. He woke up to get a glass of water. He walked into the kitchen, got a glass and filled it from the tap. He walked into the living room and sat down on the couch to take a few drinks. While sitting there, the TV turned itself on. The TV we had then could only be turned on by the knob on the TV, there was no remote.

He told me he just sat there, drinking his water and watching TV, not quite sure what to make of it, but his heart was racing. He took another drink, went back into the kitchen and sat the half full glass on the counter and went back into my bedroom and laid down on the floor. He said he was wide awake the rest of the night.

During the night, he heard the TV shut off, but he hadn’t heard anybody get up or move around. As soon as the sun came up and the house was lit up, he went back into the kitchen to find his glass was gone from the counter and put into the dish drainer and it was completely dry.

After speaking with my dad recently and telling him about the TV incident with John, my dad said the TV did that all the time. It never happened to me, but apparently it happened to my dad a few times as well as a couple other people.

The Apartment Pt. 4

Christmas time came and Tammy came back to the apartment to have a little get together with some of our friends. We typically got together the night before Christmas Eve, called it Christmas Steve, and had a good time.

I had sprung my ankle the day before, so I wasn’t doing much to help get ready, but everybody else had it covered. My girlfriend was there, the one who bought me the tab book, and two other friends were there, John and Jessica.

While they were all mostly in the kitchen and dining room making tasty treats for the night, I was sitting in my chair in the living room. I had hobbled to the VCR and put in a tape that we were all going to watch. I can’t remember at this point what it was, but that isn’t necessary.

I had the VCR on pause, while I waited for the rest of them to settle in; the remote to the VCR in my lap. At one point, the video started playing. I knew that VCR very well, and this wasn’t one of its functions, to just randomly play whenever it felt like it. Apparently, whatever it was we were about to watch was something Pink wanted to see.

I picked up the remote and paused the video again. Only a couple of seconds went by and the screen turned completely blue as it did when there was no signal being broadcast, and the tape ejected out of the VCR. I guess if we weren’t going to watch it right away, we weren’t allowed to watch it at all.

I had my girlfriend push the tape back into the VCR and everything for the rest of the night went without a hitch.

Lastly, one night I had been out late driving around with Jessica. We spent the night talking about ghosts, like the ones in her house bothering her and Pink. When she dropped me off at my apartment at, I do believe 3 AM, I climbed the steps to the first floor and opened my door. I instantly felt a presence at the door, and it was strong. I said, “Oh, hello Pink”. I could feel the presence move past me in a hurry and leave. I laughed. Apparently Pink didn’t like his new name.

Nothing after that ever happened there, that I can recall. The only thing I regret is not talking to more of my neighbors to find out if things were happening in their apartments as well. I had figured, if an entire house can be haunted, then why not an apartment building? After all, the spirit has full access to each apartment. Chances are good my place wasn’t the only one haunted. If only I spoke to someone…

The Apartment Pt. 3

Christmas time came, and Tammy and I had gone out shopping for gifts. We had a great time out shopping, and when we were done we both went back to the apartment to wrap the gifts we had bought. We spent the evening hanging out, having a good time. When we were done, we were getting ready to leave so that I could take her back to her parents house. I had been telling her about the ghostly incidents and she was a little more freaked out about coming back to the apartment, so it took her awhile to finally stay there, which she eventually did.

Just as we were about to leave, both of us standing by the door, neither of us talking, checking over our pockets and such to make sure we weren’t forgetting anything, we heard something break the silence.

Each one of the strings on my acoustic guitar were plucked, one by one, low E to high. We looked at each other, both of our faces pale, eyes wide. And then we heard my guitar slide from where it had been leaning against the wall in my bedroom onto the floor with a thud. We both walked into my bedroom and there it was, laying on the floor next to the tab book. The pick was still stuck between the three strings.

This meant only one thing… the pick had to be removed for those strings to be plucked. If it hadn’t been, those strings wouldn’t have made a sound, at least they wouldn’t have made the sound they did.

I left the guitar there on the floor and we both left. The incidents with Pink were almost over, but not quite.