An old Greek Revival house on East Town Street which is said to be haunted by the ghost of Louisa Kelton, the wife of the man who built the place, as well as his granddaughter, Grace Bird Kelton. At one point it was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Nowadays the Kelton House is rented out for weddings (for a good laugh check out the "Alison and Jaron get Married" page) and parties and also gives tours. Any ghost here has been commercialized so badly it might have already left out of embarassment. It's located at 586 East Town Street, phone (614) 464-2022.
A Victorian-style house just north of East Broad Street in a surprisingly nice little section of downtown, this was the home of James Thurber, Columbus's most respected author (though not its most famous, now that R.L. Stine is around). James Thurber lived here from his childhood up through his years at OSU (my school). He was State House reporter for the Columbus Dispatch, and later had a lucrative career as a cartoonist and humorist. His stories were collected in My Life and Hard Times, and one of them, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," was made into a movie starring Danny Kaye and Boris Karloff. All of this is pretty impressive when you look at his work and realize how unfunny he was. His house qualifies as haunted mainly because of an incident he wrote about in the story "The Night the Ghost Got In." He claimed to have heard footsteps walking around and around downstairs in the kitchen and then running up the stairs. I was never very interested in this until I heard somewhere that the history of the Thurber House includes a man who killed himself after pacing around the kitchen table and then running upstairs to blow his brains out. James Thurber himself later wrote about the story behind "The Night the Ghost Got In," describing the times when he and his brother heard the noises and his later investigations. A writer-in-residence once glimpsed the ghost in an upstairs window from the back parking lot and described it as "a hefty, somewhat stooped, black torso shadow, apparently dressed in a raincoat with the collar turned up." Unfortunately, this is one of those stories that's used more for humor than anything else, and the ghost has no doubt been scared away by the generations of Mrs. Harvey's eleventh grade English students who are required to tour the house every year. The house itself is pretty interesting, though, and the people who staff it are very friendly. The weirdest thing about the place is the resident author who lives upstairs in the attic. It's located at 77 Jefferson Avenue, phone (614) 464-1032.
An old graveyard on Sullivant Avenue on the west side, formerly a military prison for captured Confederate soldiers. There are currently 2,087 Confederate dead buried in this two-acre graveyard, mostly victims of the smallpox epidemic that occurred during the winter of 1863-4. The people held here were mainly prisoners from Union victories at the battles of Fort Donalson, Tennessee, and Mississippi River Island No. 10. At its peak in 1863 Camp Chase held 8,000 men, but toward the end of the war it was, ironically enough, turned into a cemetery. The ghost of Camp Chase is called the Lady in Gray, and she has been seen walking with her head down between the graves, crying for either Benjamin E. Allen or an unknown soldier, both of whom regularly receive fresh flowers from an unknown person. During a 1988 Civil War reenactment, a large number of people claimed to have heard the sound of her crying, but if you've ever met a Civil War reenactor you know how reliable that story is. Maybe she's there; who knows. Right now Camp Chase is a cool old cemetery in a nice Hilltop neighborhood, open all day to visitors. It's located at 2900 Sullivant Avenue.
The arch at Camp Chase
A terrible quality but still cool old photo
over the wall of Camp Chase Military Prison
See the people walking around?
Probably the coolest place in the entire city, the old Ohio Penitentiary stood on Spring Street just west of downtown for 164 years, from 1834 until 1998. At its peak in 1955, the Pen held 5,235 prisoners. It held some pretty famous ones too, among them William Sidney Porter, also known as O. Henry, who wrote more than a dozen stories inside, including "The Gift of the Magi"; Sam Shephard, the Cleveland doctor who was wrongfully accused of mudering his wife, served ten years thanks to our wonderful criminal justice system, and was eventually released due in large part to the efforts of F. Lee Bailey--the TV show "The Fugitive" was based on the Sam Shephard story; and Charles Makley and Harry Pierpont, associates of John Dillinger, who were eventually gunned down during an escape attempt. The Ohio Pen was also home to a vampire in the late 1800's; a man named James Brown (not to be confused with the big-haired black singer) was sentenced to life imprisonment after he killed one of his shipmates at sea in the Indian Ocean in 1866 and drank his blood. He was dumped off in Ohio for a few years by Massachusetts. The place was closed down in 1979 but stood empty for nearly twenty years, during which my friend Ryan had the opportunity to infiltrate the place and look around. He described towering cell blocks, a flooded basement, a rack of keys, and paintings and murals done by the prisoners. He also said that it was possible to sit with your back against one wall of a cell and touch your feet to the other, if that gives you any idea of the comfort level of this place. Why is/was it haunted? Many reasons. For one, hundreds of people were executed here, first on the gallows and then in the electric chair. Countless people lived miserable lives and died here. One of the major events occurred in 1930, when an inmate set a fire in an escape attempt and 300 inmates died in the ensuing fire. Rumor has it that the guards deliberately delayed the unlocking of the cells to teach the prisoners a lesson. After that screams and moans were said to emanate from inside the walls. One of the great regrets of my life is that I never went there. In 1998, in spite of the efforts of the Columbus Landmarks Foundation, city planning assholes had the entire structure demolished to make way for a parking lot for the new hockey stadium. Great progress.
A great place full of history, the Ohio State House is one of the country's oldest. It was built in 1857 (using prison labor from the Old Ohio Pen) and was used as a hospital for wounded soldiers during the Civil War, as well as an armory. When Abraham Lincoln's funeral train came through Columbus on its way to Illinois, Lincoln's body lay in state in the State House rotunda while thousands of people filed past for a final look. Since then the State House has been kept up very well and is an easy place to tour, either with a guide or by yourself. The basement especially is an interesting thing to see, with its low ceilings and fat pillars. It is reputed to be haunted by the ghost of Tom Bateman, a Senate clerk who was apparently so concerned with keeping things in order that he never stopped. His ghost is supposed to go down the steps and out the east doors each day at five o'clock, generating cold chills and flickering lights. The other story is surprisingly boring: a bust of Thomas Jefferson "jumped" off its stand, apparently by itself. I guess it's not possible that it just fell. Yours truly came pretty close to getting a job as a Senate page at one point, and I had the opportunity to do some work inside when I was doing an internship with a local lawyer. I recommend a self-guided tour (guided ones are available all the time) although the only ghosts you'll probably encounter are those of the thousands of poor people starved to death by chamber of commerce Republicans. The State House is hard to miss on the southeast corner of Broad and High.
Now an alternative-type high school in Columbus, Fort Hayes was once a military post. In 1865 a private was killed by an overheated cannon fired for Abraham Lincoln's funeral train's passage through Columbus (see State House entry above). The soldier was supposedly killed by his commander, whose daughter he was in love with. There is also a ghost in a World War Two uniform that haunts the school.
Built in 1926, the Palace was once the place to go in Columbus. Just about every famous singer or comedian of the 40's and 50's appeared there at some point. It eventually fell into disrepair and was renovated in the 1970's, during which time the magician Harry Blackstone, Jr., performed there. He organized a seance in the lobby to try to contact a friend of his father's but ended up getting a wrong number: the ghost of a man who was murdered in the theater. The participants described the scene as being extremely frightening, and one in particular claimed to have been confronted with spots of "heavy, dark air" on the second floor. I've been to the Palace and never felt anything, but that doesn't mean nothing's there. This is actually one of the darker legends about Columbus landmarks. The Palace is located at 34 West Broad Street, phone (614) 431-3600.
A small school in the northeastern corner of downtown, Columbus State is only about thirty years old. Why is it haunted? It was built on top of an old Catholic cemetery which was used until the mid-1800's. Every time they put up a new building they find more bones, which are then sent to a church for consecration and burial, but apparently that's not enough for the ghosts, who remain so pissed that they harass night workers and local cops. According to a recent article in The Other Paper, some custodians have quit because of the disturbances, and some cops refuse to patrol certain floors alone. I've known more people than I can count who went to Columbus State, and none of them ever reported anything strange. One friend of mine was in a play in Nestor Auditorium, where a custodian claimed to have heard his name called, and he reherased at night. Nothing. But who knows; they say that the disturbances come right after they exhume more bodies. Columbus State is located on Cleveland and Grant Avenues north of downtown.
Ghosts of OSU
Ohio State is where I go to school. Just like any college that's been around since 1870, OSU has a few ghost stories. Most of these are adapted from the Halloween issue of The Lantern.
Pomerene Hall/Mirror Lake
Dr. Clark, a professor in the early part of the century, got depressed about a mining investment and committed suicide. His body was found where Pomerene Hall now stands. Mrs. Clark swore never to leave him, and when she died in the 1920's her ghost began to haunt Mirror Lake in a pink dress. Dr. Clark haunts Pomerene Hall, where he slams doors and does other ineffectual ghostly things. Mirror Lake and Pomerene Hall are located off of Neil Avenue in the mid-1000's, and are available to visit pretty much all the time.
Hopkins Hall
The story with this one goes that a girl was stuck in an elevator all night in Hopkins Hall, which is the art building. For some reason this caused her to have a mental breakdown, and she wrote things all over the walls of the elevator. She eventually graduated but was later killed in a car accident, and it is said that people sometimes find notes or scratchings in the Hopkins Hall elevator that say, "I'm still mad at OSU for what they did to me." Hopkins Hall is located on Seventeenth Avenue west of College Road.
Bricker Hall
When Herbert Atkinson, a member of the Board of Trustees, died in the 1950's, his ashes were placed in the wall of Bricker Hall behind a plaque. Since then lights have flashed and the man himself has been seen drinking punch in the lobby. I have been here--I actually waited for a meeting in front of the plaque--and I didn't see anything. Oh well. Bricker Hall is a few buildings west of Hopkins Hall.
Orton Hall
The oldest building on campus, Orton Hall is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of its namesake, Edward Orton, the university's first president. He used to read in the tower, before the trademark bells went in, and it is said that you can still see the flicker of his lamp at night. He is also reputed to chill the air and make noises in an attempt to make students behave. But the really weird ghost is that of a prehistoric man with "humped back, thick hair, and a protruding forehead" which is supposed to slam doors, bang on things, and make noises since he can't speak. Is this the ghost of some dead football player? Or does it have something to do with the geological museum in the back of the building? I've been in Orton Hall and never experienced anything like this. It's located on the south side of the Oval.
The Columbus Landmarks Foundation is a great organization dedicated to preserving places like the ones here; if you've got some extra money laying around, consider donating it to them.
