In mid-July my friend "Chip" and I drove the few minutes from my house to the abandoned schoolhouse on the corner of SR 23 and Rathmell Road, otherwise known as the Hartman Farm Schoolhouse. This building was in use as a school from 1897 until roughly 1910, after which it was used as a kind of town hall for some time. I've driven by it for years but never took the time to look inside; I dont know of anybody else who has, either.
Another angle
The school served the families of the workers on what was once the largest functioning farm in the United States: the Hartman Farm. Around the turn of the century most of the area that is now the far south end of Columbus belonged to Hartman, who became rich by selling a patent medicine called Peruna. Peruna contained a lot of liquor but maintained its claim as a medicine, which helped temperance advocates feel better about themselves when they became inebriated from the stuff.
Although I've never heard anyone say the place is haunted, it was still pretty creepy. We went in through the back door, which was boarded over but not too hard to break through. In the back room we encountered a broken-down sink standing in the corner and a lot of peeled-up paint and carpeting on the floor.
The sink in the back room
The place turned out to be bigger than we had imagined--six rooms, plus a foyer at the front door. Three bedroom-type rooms, a hallway, and a main room. We found no sign that the place had ever been a schoolhouse, not even in the crawlspace underneath, but we did find a thermometer in the frame of one of the back windows. We also found some women's magazines from the 1960's, along with some old-fashioned beer cans and liquor bottles. Bums probably used to stop off here before they boarded it up.
A poor-quality picture of the thermometer I got See the five-digit phone number?
It was pretty neat. I took pictures, and will post the rest of them soon.
