Is Something There?

Check out these close-to-home spooky places for your next long weekend

HBO’s Chernobyl won praise for its authentic portrayal of the 1986 nuclear disaster at the site and the clean-up efforts afterward. Not only a hit show, it has served as the catalyst for a rise in the number of tourists that visit the Chernobyl reactor site and Pripyat, the long-abandoned city that was created for the energy plant’s thousands of employees and their families. Over 10,000 tourists each year snap the eeriest selfies among the dilapidated buildings and macabre landscapes, including the never-used Ferris wheel.

Dark tourism of this sort has caught fire. Defined as “tourism involving travel to places historically associated with death and tragedy,” the main attraction is a site’s historical value rather than its associations with death and suffering.

While you may balk at the notion of visiting a place like Chernobyl, where the 1,000-square-mile exclusion zone was only opened up to tourists in 2011, there is no shortage of goosebump-inducing sites right here in the state of Ohio.

Athens Lunatic Asylum - Athens, OH

The 151-year-old facility now owned by Ohio University and known locally as The Ridges was, at the time, hailed as a bastion of cutting-edge rehabilitation for the mentally ill. However, funding for facilities and programs like those offered by the Athens Lunatic Asylum slowly evaporated over the years. Funding scarcity had a twofold effect on this and similar facilities. The first being the fact that tens of thousands of mentally ill individuals were released out into society to essentially fend for themselves. Second, those facilities whose funding pipelines didn’t dry up were soon operating far beyond capacity as families scrambled to find a suitable place for their loved ones.

Facilities such as these were known to be particularly brutal. During Athens Lunatic Asylum’s formative years – 1868-1870 – 132 women were diagnosed as exhibiting sexual desire and strong emotions. Hysteria, as it was known at the time, led to treatment that included freezing, shocking, kicking and even lobotomization to rid them of their "sickness."

CREEPY FACT: A LOBOTOMY IS A FORM OF PSYCHOSURGERY IN WHICH CONNECTIONS ARE SEVERED IN THE BRAIN’S PREFRONTAL CORTEX. THE FIRST TRANSORBITAL LOBOTOMY WAS PERFORMED ON A LIVE PATIENT IN 1946. IN THE U.S., APPROXIMATELY 50,000 PEOPLE WERE LOBOTOMIZED.

Margaret Schilling, one such hysterical patient, was found dead on the floor of a sealed room after wandering off inside the building. A white stain in the shape of Schilling remains on the floor where her body was discovered. This macabre campus landmark is also a place where some students claim that a woman can be seen waving from the bay windows. Would you be bold enough to wave back?

Part of the main building is now the Kennedy Museum of Art, while the rest of the building is closed office space. However, you can still tour the surrounding grounds and see the old tuberculosis ward graveyard.

Malabar Farm - Lima, OH

The story may sound familiar. An awkward farmer’s daughter falls madly in love with the neighbor boy. The daughter feels as though her family is keeping them apart, so she feeds them a meal laced with rat poison.

Celia Rose did just that one summer morning in 1896. Ceely, as she was known to family and friends, was described as a person who spoke with a stutter and operated on an intellectual and emotional level as children seven years her minor. The neighbor boy, Guy Berry, was five years her junior. Berry was one of the polite few who would converse with Ceely, which caused her to become infatuated. Multiple explanations exist as to why the two were kept apart, but Ceely definitely didn’t approve.

She served her family some tainted cottage cheese, ultimately murdering her father and brother. The mother, Rebecca, had apparently not eaten as much the first time around and survived. However, not to be kept apart from Guy, Ceely served her mother a massive dose of rat poison after threatening to move away, killing her. As a result, she became one of the first patients at the newly minted Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

The original Rose family home stands to this day, with tours for those who dare to enter. Some individuals believe that Ceely’s spirit still lingers in the old home and, on nights with a full moon, her ghost can be seen peering out of windows. Others have reported witnessing Ceely roam the grounds, perhaps with Guy Berry still on her mind.

“I’ve heard a lot of stories from people who have witnessed strange things,” says Victoria Cochran of the Malabar Farm Foundation, an all-volunteer, non-profit group. “We used to have a play and during production some people claim to have seen or heard strange things. There’s a long history of people who have claimed to have had sightings, especially in the girls’ room.”

CREEPY FACT: DESPITE THE SITE’S TRAGIC HISTORY, HUMPHREY BOGART AND LAUREN BACALL WERE MARRIED AND SPENT THEIR HONEYMOON THERE IN 1945.

Loveland Castle - Loveland, OH

Upon returning home to Ohio, World War I veteran Harry Andrews decided to build his own home. However, this wasn’t any old home that he had in mind. Andrews had his sights on something much bigger – like a castle. With no prior architectural experience, Andrews set to work on building his castle by hand. Using homemade bricks and rocks that he picked from the banks of the Little Miami River, Andrews worked and lived in the structure – with minimal outside assistance – for the next 50 years.

Andrews died from complications from a fire he had started on the castle roof. It’s said that the spirit of Andrews is responsible for slamming doors, footsteps and unexplained knocking by castle volunteers. Tourists at this site may be dealing with more than one apparition though, as Andrews himself reported having some of the same experiences. Whatever the case may be, it would be in your best interest to arrive with your ghost hunting gear in tow.

CREEPY FACT: ANDREWS HID A SECRET ROOM IN THE CASTLE GARDENS. THE ENTRANCE WAS ONE OF THE ARCHES IN THE ARCH WALL. IT WAS ONLY DISCOVERED AFTER IT COLLAPSED FROM YEARS OF NEGLECT.

This article was originally published in the Sept./Oct. 2019 issue of CityScene Magazine.