On March 9th, 1869, the following appeared in The Cairo Evening Bulletin in Cairo, Illinois:

I actually tried to find out if there was a trial involving a man named Brown and the murder of an editor from Dayton before 1869 but was unsuccessful. Could this be a very old example of an urban legend?

An even stranger article appeared in The Arizona Republican on October 23^rd, 1902:

An apparition of the devil is reported from Mt. Olivet Church, Marion, Ohio. The visitant, when seen, is always at a window looking out. Color in the daytime: a sickly green. Color at night: a lurid red.

One would think that a story like this would’ve gotten some press in Marion. However, neither of Marion’s two newspapers, The Marion Daily Mirror or The Marion Daily Star, mentioned the devil or, for that matter, even a Mt. Olivet Church in 1902. How the editors of the Republican ended up with the story is a mystery.

A far more plausible story ran in The Marion Star on July 30th, 1937, detailing the “antics” of the Marion courthouse clock.

Recent antics of the ancient courthouse clock are becoming a serious mystery to Sherman Dixon, for the last 36 years one of the building custodians and probably the oldest county employee in point of service. The massive timepiece, by far the largest in the city, several times this year has stopped during the night and then started up again – which simply isn’t possible for it to do all by itself, Mt. Dixon says.

To anyone who isn’t a bird, the clock is virtually inaccessible and there are only three sets of keys to the door which leads into the attic. All are held by the janitors and other county officials who are not suspected of complicity in the mischief. John Haines, Stationary engineer, is similarly puzzled.

This postcard, courtesy of Marion resident Mike Crane, shows the Marion Courthouse (and its misbehaving clock), circa 1920. Anyone interested in looking at a nice collection of old photos, postcards and other assorted Marion miscellanea should check out www.youscurvyknave.com/Sites/Marion.

The article doesn’t imply that the clock’s behavior was the work of supernatural forces. On the contrary, Mr. Dixon suspected “miscreants” of messing with the clock, though he wasn’t able to adequately explain how they could’ve carried out such mischief. Anyone interested in seeing the original article can download the PDF file here.

On November 2nd, 1904, this article concerning Marion County appeared in The Hartford Herald, a newspaper serving the tiny town of Hartford, Kentucky.

Haunted through life by the terrible impressions made upon him at the hour of his birth, George Yeager of Richmond [sic] Township, has been driven insane and was to-day sent to the State Hospital.

On the day he was born a terrible thunderstorm was raging, and about the hour he was born a bolt of lighting struck near the home of his parents, frightening his mother almost to the point of unconsciousness. Then, too, while Life was bringing him into the world, Death had laid claim to his father This, added to the other harrowing experiences, so unnerved the mother that she has never been well mentally as she was before.

That these vivid impressions upon Mrs. Yeager communicated themselves to the sub consciousness of her child, are evidenced by the fact that he has…had an unnatural fear of thunderstorms and death in any form.

The finale of this strange life tragedy came to-day with the commitment of the man to the asylum.

Despite mistakenly referring to Richwood Township as Richland Township, the basic story seems at least plausible. And of course, Mautz-Yeager Road, which is presumably named after the Yeager family, runs through Richland Township, and this detail lends the article a certain amount of credibility.

Lastly, the following short article turned up in a book published in 1997 called A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities:

In another bizarre report, Dr. T.B. Fisher of Marion, Ohio, described the case of a lady who had felt something moving in her stomach for four months. She was ridiculed by her friends as a hysteric, but she silenced them by vomiting a nearly fully grown mouse, which Dr. Fisher kept in a glass jar in his office as a pet.

There’s no question that Dr. Fisher was indeed a member of the Marion community. According to the 1907 History of Marion County, Dr. Fisher opened his practice in 1835 and faithfully served the people of Marion until he retired in 1882. He also served two terms as Marion’s mayor. Why such a well-regarded figure would tell such an outlandish story is uncertain.

It’s an early Friday evening in the fall of 1947. 16-year-old sophomore Roxie Green has just returned to Prospect High School by school bus after attending a football game in Chesterville. Roxie and one of her girlfriends, Norma Jean Sparks, walk to Norma’s house in Prospect. After talking for a bit, Roxie says goodbye and begins walking the four-and-a-half miles to the Green home on Lauer Road. As she makes her way along Route 47, a man pulls up alongside her and asks her if she needs a lift. Taking him up on the offer, she jumps on the running board of the car and tells him where she lives. Roxie Green, however, never makes it home.

The Suspect

Ray Shappard as he appeared in The Marion Star on December 13th, 1947.

Roxie went missing on September 19^th, and while it would be over a week before the people of Marion County learned what had actually happened to her, the sheriff’s department almost immediately had a suspect in her disappearance: a balding and “slightly built” 32-year-old Prospect man named Ray Shappard. The reason for law enforcement’s interest in Shappard was simple: A few witnesses had come forward saying they had seen an older model Ford in the area around the time Roxie disappeared, and Shappard drove a 1928 Model A Ford.

On Sunday, September 21^st, 1947, Sheriff Leroy Retterer and his Deputy, Edward Fink, paid Shappard a visit at his parents’ home in Prospect. When Deputy Fink asked Shappard where he had been on the afternoon of September 19^th, Shappard claimed he had been at work at the Scioto Ordinance Plant until clocking out at around 3:30. After work he had gone to a few bars in Marion and then to Prospect where he picked up his wife and child. Shappard took his wife and child over to her foster-parents’ place before leaving to pick up some groceries. Under questioning, however, he admitted that he had actually driven in the direction of Waldo to buy beer. He was gone for about an hour and Mrs. Shappard later told Sheriff Retterer that he had returned without any groceries. Members of law enforcement speculated that it was while he was driving to Waldo that he spotted Roxie Green walking home. However, the sheriff lacked the evidence needed to arrest Shappard, and he remained a free man while the search for Roxie Green continued.

Roxie Green’s whereabouts were still unknown on September 28^th when Sheriff Retterer asked Shappard to come in for another round of questions. That night Shappard admitted he may have hit a girl with his car on the 19^th, though he couldn’t really remember. When Sheriff Retterer carefully asked him where he would’ve hidden the body in such a situation, he named a section of woods southeast of Prospect where he frequently hunted. Wasting no time, Sheriff Retterer and a few other officers drove Shappard out to the woods he had mentioned, but they found nothing. Oddly, when they returned to Marion, Shappard said that he might be able to remember more if he got a good night’s sleep. The sheriff obliged by putting Shappard in a single cell for the night. The next morning Shappard asked someone to bring his wife to the jail because he needed to speak to her. It was shortly after talking to her that Shappard was ready to confess what he knew about Roxie Green’s disappearance.

A Murder Confession

The September 29^th, 1947 edition of The Marion Star carried details of Shappard’s confession. Obviously, this is Shappard’s version of events and so while one may question whether it’s accurate or even believable, it’s certainly incriminating:

I started out from Prospect to get some beer. As I drove east on Route 47, I saw the girl walking along the road and stopped to give her a ride. She got on the left [running board] of my car. We started up the Lauer Road. I didn’t know just where she lived and as we passed a house, she jumped off. I couldn’t stop because the brakes were bad. I went down to the next house and turned around. When I drove back, I found her lying along the road. She was knocked out. I got out and put her in the front seat. I was going to take her to the doctor. I got back in the car and started south. When I got to Route 47, I turned east to the Rittenhouse Road and then went south again to the Norton Road. Before we got to Norton, she came to and began to holler and scream. I kept on driving east through Norton to this country road. She kept screaming and finally said she would get me for kidnapping. I got out of the car and she was out. I hit her over the head several times with [a] hammer and then threw her into the weeds.¹

Even today, a murder of such brutality is hard to imagine. (According to the article appearing in the Star on September 29th, “a hole about three inches long and an inch wide showed plainly in the skull.”) And if the crime itself were not callous enough, Shappard’s actions after the murder were even more appalling. He told law enforcement that after leaving Roxie’s body near the side of Norton Road and getting rid of the hammer, he drove to Waldo where he had a few beers before returning to Prospect. Incredibly, he took his wife out dancing later that night.

Of course, upon hearing Shappard’s confession, the sheriff immediately placed Shappard under arrest and asked him if he could take them to the location of Roxie’s body. Shappard said he could. Sheriff Retterer, along with Marion County Prosecutor James Reed, once again took Shappard out to the southern part of Marion County, though this time Shappard directed them to a section of Norton Road just east of the Olentangy River that’s on the Marion-Delaware County line. Almost immediately they spotted Roxie’s partially hidden body. A short time later they recovered the blood-stained hammer as well.

Shappard’s Motive

Shappard’s motive for killing Roxie was never entirely clear. Officials speculated that after Shappard found Roxie unconscious, he decided to take advantage of her. That’s why he put her back into his car rather than run up to the Green house for help. After she came to in his car, Shappard claimed she began “yapping” and “threatened to get me for kidnapping.” Shappard panicked and that point and grabbed the hammer lying on the back seat. When asked directly if he had sexually assaulted the girl, Shappard first told police, “I don’t think so.” Later he denied assaulting the girl altogether. Because of the condition of Green’s body when it was finally recovered, Marion County Coroner E.H. Morgan couldn’t “ascertain whether there had been a criminal attack.”

Seeking Justice

Roxie Green is buried in the Marion Cemetery. Her classmates helped pay for the gravestone.

On Wednesday, October 1^st, 1947, the day Roxie’s funeral was being held, Common Pleas Court Bailiff Fred Miller was busy assembling a grand jury to consider Shappard’s case later in the week.  Unsurprisingly, the grand jury indicted Shappard for the murder of Roxie Green.

By December of 1947 a jury had been selected, and the trial got underway on the 10^th. It soon became clear that Shappard’s defense attorneys, Ralph and Dwight Carhart, were not going to argue that Shappard hadn’t killed Roxie. The sheriff had Shappard’s confession, after all. But the Carharts did argue that Shappard’s crime against Roxie was one of “impulse” rather than premeditation and thus they were hoping for a verdict of manslaughter rather than murder. For his part, County Prosecutor James Reed had no problem convincing the jury to return a guilty verdict.² However, their verdict also carried a recommendation of mercy for Shappard. This meant that Shappard would receive a mandatory life sentence but would be spared death. On December 17^th, Sheriff Retterer transported Shappard to the Ohio penitentiary in Columbus where he began serving his life sentence.

_____

¹ This was not even the first murder in Marion County where the weapon of choice was a hammer. History of Marion County relates a story of James Lefever, who, on May 14^th, 1874, beat Frank Johnson to death with a hammer in Lefever’s Green Camp blacksmith shop. While Lefever claimed in court that a drunk and belligerent Johnson had threatened him first, the court apparently didn’t buy Lefever’s self-defense claim. He was found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to life. For reasons unknown, the governor pardoned him just four years later.

² One minor but interesting historical tidbit about the jury noted in The Marion Star was that one of the jurors, a truck driver named Carl West, was the first African American to ever sit “on a jury hearing a first degree murder trial in Marion.”

Though most of us think of the Palace Theatre as a venue offering up mostly family-friendly entertainment, there was a time when the management was willing to show something a little more daring.

It was 1974 and The Exorcist was causing a stir all over the country. The film, based on the bestseller by William Peter Blatty, concerns the demonic possession of a 12-year-old girl. Even more disturbing, the events depicted in both the book and film are reputedly based on actual events. Even after almost four decades, the film still has the power to shock:

When the Palace began running previews for the film in the spring of 1974, a lot of people around town were unhappy with the thought that the Palace might actually show a film that, to quote a petition prepared by local church leaders, was “obscene, blasphemous and sacrilegious.” These church leaders eventually presented this petition to Marion City Council along with a letter urging Palace manger William Hatch not to run the film. They were hoping that Council members would sign the letter before they sent it to Mr. Hatch. In the end, five council members did just that. Council President Thomas Fetter was quoted in The Marion Star as saying the film was “obscenity of the worst kind.” Still four other council members didn’t sign the letter. In voicing his reason for refusing to sign such a letter, councilman John Maniaci said, “I have no right as an elected official to tell people they can’t go to the film if they want to.”

The Exorcist is now generally considered an American classic. In 2010 it was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant.

In the middle of the controversy was Mr. Hatch, and one can sympathize with the tough position he was in. The film was, after all, already a blockbuster, and he stood to make money by showing the film. (According to Todd Berliner’s 2010 book Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema, the film was the third highest grossing movie of the 1970s. Only Star Wars and Jaws earned more money.) Of course, Mr. Hatch also must have felt a great amount of pressure not to show the film: The petition presented to Marion City Council had an estimated 8,000 signatures.

In the end, it seems Mr. Hatch decided to go ahead and run the film since a number of Marionites remember seeing it there. Ironically, because of the film’s terrifying portrayal of the devil, it may have actually caused an increase in the number of people turning up at church around that time. As Mary Ann Grimes Witt puts it, “My brother, Al Grimes, saw it at the Palace. I remember he came home and was so moved by the movie [that] he re-found his religion that day!”

Erie Train No. 3 pausing in Marion on its run from New York to Chicago.

On March 7^th, 1885, the Marion Daily Star reported that Caledonia resident Albert Hunter – or at least pieces of him – had been found “strewn along the N., Y. P & O Railroad track from Water Street to a point a mile east of town.”

Hunter was a partner at Hunter and Pittman Dry Goods in Caledonia, and he had left his shop the night before saying he would return soon. Hunter never returned, however, and early the next morning a man named C.E. Warwick was walking along Water Street when he found an overcoat lying near the train depot. After showing it to some other people in Caledonia, they all came to the conclusion that “a terrible accident had befallen someone and [a] search was instituted for further evidence.”

Indeed, something terrible had occurred. As the search party proceeded east, “Brains, pieces of skull, entrails [and] the arms and legs were scattered along the track, the body being literally torn to pieces.” Other belongings – a watch, a pass book, a revolver – were all identified as Mr. Hunter’s. Since the revolver had one empty chamber, the obvious conclusion was that Hunter had killed himself. Whether it was the bullet or the train that actually did him in, however, was (and remains) a mystery.

…

I suppose that, like a lot of people in Marion, I have mixed feelings about the trains that rumble through town day and night. There have been times when I’ve thought I’d lose my mind as a train has rolled slowly by at five miles per hour (or not at all) and made me late for work. Still, who hasn’t been lying in bed late at night and listened to the lonesome (though somehow comforting) sound of a train whistle blowing in the distance? Although passenger trains no longer pass through Marion, freight trains—around seventy-five per day according to local train buff David Luyster—continue to pass through town. Quite simply, living in Marion means living with trains.

Although there were two roads passing though Marion in the 1840s, they were not without their disadvantages. For one, the roads were privately financed and thus charged a toll. They were also often impassable in bad weather. Farmers who needed to transport their crops to market needed a better solution, and when the first rail line came to Marion in 1852, the farmers quickly realized the two big advantages trains offered: they were relatively cheap, and they were reliable. As Marion became more industrialized, the importance of the railroads only increased. Clearly, then, trains have always been a fundamental part of Marion’s history and identity, and so it should come as no surprise that they turn up in some of the more gruesome and spooky stories as well.

To read more train stories, including the one about the haunted railroad crossing near LaRue, pick up a copy of Haunted Marion, Ohio.

Is this overgrown property, located on Salem Road, the site of the Mongoloid House?

Everybody in Marion County knows about the Mongoloid House, right? As a kid growing up in the 80s, I remember my dad scaring us with stories about a house out in the country where strange people lived. There’s a good chance you’ve heard a Mongoloid House story or two growing up, too.

When we started this web site back in the fall of 2008, the Mongoloid House was at the top of our list of stories we wanted to research. We had originally hoped the roots of the story might at least be grounded in some historical facts, and we had really hoped that there might be a written record of these facts. However, after spending a dizzying number of hours in the Ohio Reading Room of the Marion Public Library, we’re convinced the Mongoloid House exists as a purely oral story, passed around from person to person and from generation to generation. With that in mind, we decided that the only way to find out about the Mongoloid House was to talk to people in Marion. In an effort to get to collect information, we decided to set up a survey on this web site where people could contact us with what they know. We also appealed to readers of the Marion Star through our blog. So far, we’ve heard from well over 50 people.

So far we’ve used the information we’ve collected to develop some (admittedly flimsy) ideas about the:

• Origin of the name
• Location in Marion County
• Origin and evolution of the Mongoloid House legend in and around Marion

Because it’s a local legend, the information we have collected is often vague and full of contradictions and sometimes just plain nonsense. Please keep in mind, then, that this article is just an attempt to organize that information rather than validate it.

The House with the Strange Name

One obvious question about the Mongoloid House concerns the origin of such a strange (and these days, politically incorrect) name. Although a few people have said that they know the place as either the Mongoid House or the Salem House, the overwhelming majority of the people contacting us said that they know the place as the Mongoloid House.

And why, exactly, was it called that? Here’s a theory: Maybe there really used to be a house out in the county where people who were mentally ill or developmentally disabled or just plain weird lived. Unsure of what exactly made them different, people simply started referring to them as “mongoloids”.

Survey comments left by people answering the question “What stories do you know about the Mongoloid House?” appear to support this.

For example, one contributor wrote:

I’ve heard various stories, [ranging] from an inbred family to a family with children with mental handicaps. I’ve heard of people harassing the family with spotlights on the house or other acts of misdeed. I’ve heard the mongoloid family would throw rocks at cars and hang from the trees or jump out of ditches at passersby or that they would fire shotguns into the air from the house as a warning.

Another person responded on our Marion Star blog with what appears to be first-hand knowledge on the Mongoloid House:

Back in the late 60′s and very early 70′s, many of us made the trip to the house. Some came out of curiosity and some came to antagonize. The term “mongoloid” was used due to the peculiar-looking people living on the property. Were they inbred? Mentally challenged? Who knows. They had high foreheads, big heads, stocky builds and close-set eyes. Some kids would sit in front of the house or in the drive and honk their horns. [The people in the house] would come out and

shoot at the cars or beat on them with ball bats. They definitely existed. Can I blame them for shooting and beating on the cars? Not now. When I was young, I thought they were crazy. Now I understand they were responding to the kids who came to antagonize [them]. They eventually moved out of the county. Can’t say I blame them.

Of course there is also the possibility that there was a family with the name “Mongoloid” or, more realistically, “Mongoid.” However, we haven’t been able to find any documentation of such a name in Marion County.

Salem Road

When asked about the location of the Mongoloid House, most people told us Salem Road just north of Route 529. Indeed, there are a few secluded buildings situated on that piece of (private) property. Strangely, there is not much left of the actual house; a fire all but destroyed it a few years ago.

By the time this photo was taken in late 2010, a fire had clearly gutted the house.

Heather Ingle had this to say about that particular location:

I went the house in around 1994. The house was standing and walls were all intact. There was graffiti on the walls like “Leave while you can.” and “This is hell.” I looked around [and was] scared out of my mind. I remember there being a basement but no stairs [leading down to the basement] and none [lying collapsed below] in the basement.

Then in 2009 I went back to the house. At the time I didn’t know it was the [same] house. We were just out with friends and told us they knew where a haunted house was. So we pull into the driveway, and I told everyone I had been there before. We didn’t get out but just took pics. When looking at the pics [later], we could see orbs.

Then in 2010 we went back in the daylight. When we got out, my husband wanted to go to what was left of the house. We looked around and it was super creepy. Each barn was weirder than the next. We took pics to look at later. The creepiest place of all was a tall barn in the back. It has several windows, three of which are down on the bottom left. My kids took a pic and, after looking at it on the computer, there is a hole in the ground where those windows are.

However, not everyone agrees about the location of the Mongoloid House. Some of the more credible stories come from people who name roads like Kenton-Marseilles Road East, Marseilles Galion Road East and Morral Kirkpatrick Road as the site of the Mongoloid House. For anyone familiar with Marion County roads, these are not even close to Salem Road. What does this information mean? Was there more than one Mongoloid House? Did its location in the local stories somehow change over the years? When did the house on Salem Road burn down and what was the cause? Many of the people naming roads other than Salem were relating information that is well over thirty years old. Could it be that these people were simply not remembering correctly?

The Origins and Evolution of the Mongoloid House Legend

Mongoloid House stories have been circulating around Marion for at least 45 years. One survey taker claims to have first heard of the Mongoloid House in 1964. In addition to the 60s, every decade that has followed is also represented in the survey answers. Quite a few people even said they had first heard about the Mongoloid House this year, 2010. With so many different years represented, it’s instructive to examine the evolution of both the stories people have heard and the experiences they have had over the years.

Consider this story related by Debbie Howard about her experience at the Mongoloid House in 1968:

There were two families who lived on same side of the road. [An old man lived in one house while some of his relatives lived in another.] The home the old man lived in looked like a weathered shack in the weeds. It sure didn’t look like anyone could have lived in it. At the time I remember there weren’t many other homes on this road. There were 2 or maybe 3 other [houses on the road], so it was not heavily traveled. If anyone went by the house slowly, stopped or honked the car horn, the old man would come out and chase your car with his car. He had paths through the fields and would use them to cut through and come out in front of your car blocking you. It would scare everyone so much they’d turn around in the road and leave. [Supposedly] he had his wife’s corpse lying in a casket in his house, but no one really knows. They called the old man “Flash” because of his swiftness. He would come out of nowhere and suddenly be looking right into your car, again scaring those who bothered him and his family.

A few of us went out to the Kenton-Marseilles Road location. We drove by real slowly, and before we knew it, headlights were right behind our car and gaining on us. Then they were gone. We were laughing when this old car suddenly came out of the field. We were scared and knew what people had said about Flash was true, and we didn’t stay for more “excitement.”

Contrast the previous story with this brief entry from Heather Ayers, who first heard of the Mongoloid House in 2004:

[I've heard] that [there are] hunched-back people with big heads that are over-sized for their bodies and that they will chase you then kill you.

Dave Cornelius contributed this story, which he says took place between some time between 1968 and 1970:

[While we were] shooting the loop with the car full [of people], one of the girls said, “Let’s go out to the crazy people’s house.” While sitting in front of his house blowing the horn and all [of us] turned to the house yelling, an old vehicle suddenly appeared right on the rear bumper flashing one headlight. Our driver was so busy looking at the house he waved for the old vehicle to pass. Somebody was getting out of that old vehicle when I shouted, “He might have a gun!” By then the girls were crying and screaming as [our] “slow poke” [driver] pulled away with the man in pursuit. From then on we called the guy who had chased us “Flash.” And I have never forgotten that night.

Again, contrast Dave’s first-hand account with this anonymous contribution from someone who first heard about the Mongoloid House in 2010

I heard that there was a man who lived there with his sister, and they had children who were mongoloids, and as soon a he found out, he hung everyone in the house, set the house on fire and then killed himself.

See the difference? The older stories tend to be much more detailed and personal while the newer stories tend to be vague and with the knowledge often second-hand. It appears that the early Mongoloid House stories had their origins in a very specific and real experience (i.e. antagonizing one particular family out in the county) while the newer stories tend to be vague because the family central to the Mongoloid House is, for whatever reasons, gone. In the absence of the “mongoloids,” the stories from the last two decades have tended to focus, for whatever reasons, on the house and property on Salem Road. As a result, a story like this from someone who first heard of the house in 1992 is more typical:

There were claims that if you drove out on Salem road, turned off the car and sat there that these people/spirits would come and rock the car and try to get in and the car wouldn’t start back up until they left or decided to leave you alone.

Other Peculiarities and Loose Ends: Flash

One character who cropped up in a few of the stories, all of them dating from the 60s and 70s, was a guy named Flash. Since different people mentioned him independently, we can only assume he was a real person.

On our Marion Star blog, someone anonymously contributed this experience with Flash:

One of my friends drove us out there, [and] we stopped in the middle of the road and waited. In about two minutes, a moderately sized man came from behind one of the buildings, screaming like a madman and with a rake. We waited until he could almost reach us and pulled away.

The real identity of Flash remains unclear. Was he a member of the family that inhabited the Mongoloid House? And what happened to him?

Other Peculiarities and Loose Ends: Forgotten Ohio

Long before this web site, Andy Henderson posted a little piece on his web site, Forgotten Ohio, about the Mongoloid House. Here’s the story, as it appears on his web site:

The story goes that a Civil War veteran who lived there killed his wife and children and then hung himself in the barn. Today if you visit the barn you might hear the strange noises which many report. The house is also said to be haunted, although it was merely built on the site of the murder house and is not original.

Andy, who isn’t from Marion, told me he received his information anonymously and has no idea about its origins. In any case, it is very likely that this one paragraph has helped to recast the Mongoloid House as a haunted house story for a whole new generation of (mostly young) people who have typed “Mongoloid House” into an internet search engine. As a result, the influence of this story is clear in the Mongoloid House stories of younger people.

Kari Hall, who first heard of it in 2010, had this to say:

The man was a Civil War veteran and he and his wife couldn’t have kids. Suddenly she got pregnant and they ended up having 2 kids. During a fight they were having, she told him the kids weren’t his, and so he killed them in the barn with a shot gun and then killed his wife in the basement before killing himself.

Likewise, Adam Caldwell, who heard about the Mongoloid House around 2008, offered this variation:

There was a soldier who lived there with his wife and two kids. He tortured his wife and killed his two kids, followed by hanging himself. The house was burned down, and then built again, but then burned once again. What I have heard and felt myself is dogs whining loudly and the smell of sulfur in the second story of the barn. If you go into the basement of the house for more than two to five minutes, you start to feel things touch you.

The Mongoloid House legend has been around for years, and we suspect that some version of it will be floating around Marion for years to come. Why? For one, people simply love being scared, and the Mongoloid House offers that opportunity to anyone willing to drive a few miles out into the country. More importantly, young people have always been central to the Mongoloid House story, and as long as there are teenagers driving around with nothing to do on a Saturday night, there will always be the Mongoloid House. Wherever and whatever it is.

If you have any stories or information about the Mongoloid House that you’d like to pass along to us, please feel free to fill out our survey or contact us at spooks@spookymarion.com. Any photos are also welcome. We will continue to update this story as we learn new information.

The receiving vault in December 2010

Located near the center of the cemetery, the receiving vault was built to protect the freshly dead (from the elements and, more importantly, from grave robbers) until their graves could be prepared. It has also, historically, been the site of some strange activity—activity that, some would argue, continues even now.

The first odd incidents began after guards were stationed there to keep watch over President and Mrs. Harding’s bodies as they were being interred there while the Harding Memorial was under construction.

Seventy-seven years later, the local ghost hunters Eerie Paranormal gathered evidence of a decidedly spooky nature.

To get the rest of the story, pick up a copy of Haunted Marion, Ohio!

Although stories about UFOs began appearing in the Star starting on the 5th, the first story about a sighting specifically in Marion County appeared on July 7th, 1947. Under a front-page article with the headline “Saucers Seen All Over U.S.,” a smaller article appeared about a couple in Marion who had purportedly seen an aerial “saucer.”

Two Marion residents were added today to the growing number of persons who reported seeing the “flying saucers.” They are the first to report from this locality.

Mr. and Mrs. Earl Huntsman of 175 Pearl Street reported they saw a number of disks Friday night about 10:30 while driving near Iberia on their return home from Galion. They said the disks were high in the sky and when they passed over clouds, a reflection was cast from the disks.

The said the disks were round, did not seem to be going in a definite direction but would fly back and forth, looking like lights in the sky.

By the next day, even more Marion County residents came forward claiming they had seen flying saucers.

J.W. Campbell, president of the Campbell National bank at LaRue, and his assistant, Orville Boblenz, saw the saucers about 10:30 Friday night, Mr. Campbell said today. The two were about five miles apart when they noticed the unusual performance of what they took to be reflections in the sky.

Mr. Campbell explained that he was driving home from Morral when he saw the lights shining in front of his automobile. After he discovered it was not a reflection from lights of a car behind him, he got out of the car, thinking there must be some birds flying low in front of his auto. When he saw the “things” from the outside, they appeared to be reflections in the sky, he said.

“They were about two feet long and very thin,” Mr. Campbell said. “There must have been two or three of them. They were travelling very rapidly in the sky and seemed to be circling back and forth, first bright then disappearing. I watched them for about three miles while I was driving south. Then a black cloud came across the moon, and they disappeared. They seemed to be very distant in the sky. I believe they were reflections of some kind.

Mr. Campbell said the saucers resembled reflections from a light but that there was no beam leading to them. He hesitated to mention his experiences, he said, because he had heard no one else talk of the saucers. At the time he had not read any accounts of the appearance of “flying saucers” over the county. When Mr. Boblenz also mentioned seeing them at the same time, Mr. Campbell was convinced his eyes were not playing tricks on him.

After discovering that the saucers have gained nationwide attention, Mr. Campbell said he has kept an eye to the sky for the past several nights in hopes of seeing more, but nothing has appeared.

If one considers the dates and times, it appears that the Huntsman couple and Mr. Campbell and Mr. Boblenz saw the same UFO.

Naturally, the question is Why was there suddenly a huge increase in the number of UFO sightings in such a short amount of time? If one ignores the most obvious (but least likely) scenario – namely, that people were really seeing flying saucers – there are a few other possible explanations for the surge in UFO sightings.

Kenneth Arnold with a drawing of the UFO he allegedly saw.

One reason for the increase was probably the Kenneth Arnold case. On June 24th, 1947, businessman Kenneth Arnold claimed he saw a group of nine UFOs while flying his plane near Mt. Ranier in Washington. Although this was certainly not the first report of an unidentified flying object, it was the first to receive significant media attention. According to Frank G. Wilkinson, author of The Golden Age of Flying Saucers, Arnold described the UFOs as moving “like a saucer would if you skipped it over water.” This is actually the origin of the term flying saucer. Willie Maartens, in his book Mapping Reality: A Critical Perspective on Science and Religion, writes that, “Within weeks [of the Arnold case], hundreds of reports of these flying saucers were reported across the US.”

To add to the hubbub, just as UFO sightings were peaking, the Roswell Incident occurred. In an Associated Press story appearing on July 8th, public information officer Lt. Walter Haught made this shocking announcement: “The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriffs office of Chavez County.” Unsurprisingly, the media interest in the story was intense. However, in his Report on the UFO Wave of 1947, author Ted Bloecher writes that many people were increasingly treating reports of UFOs with skepticism and even outright derision. Embarrassed by Haught’s statements about the Roswell crash to the press, the Commanding General of the Eighth Air Force stated on July 9th that, in fact, a radar-tracking balloon had been recovered by the RAAF personnel and not a “flying disc.” By July 11th, news of flying saucers was no longer front page news (at least in Marion).

Just eight months later, on March 6, 1948, tucked between a story about a fire in Galion and news about the Marshall Plan, this small but attention-grabbing article appeared:

Strange Object Seen In Sky Over Marion

Something akin to a flying saucer was observed by Marion residents in the sky Thursday evening just before sundown. The object, which seemed to be cloudlike, was described as elongated in shape, with a dark substance at the front of it. Moving slowly in the western sky, it curved to the right and took off in a southerly direction. The object remained visible for some time the observer reported.

And in this fashion the UFO sightings continued, in fits and starts, through the 50s and 60s. It wasn’t until the early 1970s that another rash of sightings occurred, and again Marion played a small role in it. But that’s a Spooky Marion story for another day.

This image of the Palace is courtesy of local artist Joe Howard. More of his work can be found at www.howardart.com

When the people of Marion think of the Palace Theatre, they’re probably more apt to think of great live entertainment than ghosts. However, a few inexplicable events at the Palace over the years have led to rumors that it may have a spook or two. Anyone who’s ever been in the Palace would certainly attest that its design – the plush red seats and curtains, the dim lighting and the way the darkness hanging above the audience makes the interior appear larger than it actually is – lends it an otherworldly quality.

We’ve included a few of these uncanny incidents in Haunted Marion, Ohio, and we’re sure there are even more strange stories about the Palace waiting to be heard.

The creek at the corner of Gearhiser and Prospect-Mt. Vernon Roads where Penton left 9-year-old Nydra Ross' body.

Neither the killer nor his victim is from Marion – the former is originally from Columbus while the latter is from Dayton. He’s heading north out of Columbus (where he committed the crime earlier in the day) and eventually enters Marion County. On the floor of the killer’s van lies the lifeless body of the girl. At some point the killer leaves the highway and begins cruising the deserted county roads east of Waldo. He’s looking for a place to leave his victim’s body, and at the intersection of Gearhiser and Prospect-Mt. Vernon Roads, he spots the small creek running parallel to Prospect-Mt. Vernon Road. And so it is there on the creek bed that he dumps his victim, 9-year-old Nydra Ross.

She’s not the first child he’s killed.

Satisfied that his victim is well-hidden among the spring foliage, the killer gets back in his van and heads back to Columbus. The fate of Nydra Ross will remain unknown until the following fall. It will be an even longer wait until the killer is once again in Marion, and this time it will be to stand trial with nothing less than his own life at stake.

The Girl

On September 27th, 1988, a hunter making his way through the brush found what appeared to be human bones and called the Marion County Sheriff’s Department. Marion County Coroner Robert Gray initially speculated that the bones had been lying in the elements for at least a month and possibly even six. He also determined that the bones belonged to a black girl, possibly ten or eleven years old, 4-foot 6-inches. These details led local law enforcement to speculate that the bones were those of Nydra Ross, a Dayton girl who disappeared from her aunt and uncle’s Columbus home on March 31st, 1988, while on a visit there.

To determine if the bones really belonged to Ross, investigators took bone marrow from the bones and blood from Ross’ mother, Wonder Ross.² They sent the samples off to a lab in New York, and by January of 1989, investigators had their answer: the girl was Nydra Ross. However, the exact cause of death was unclear due to the length of time the body had been outside. The coroner could find no evidence that the girl had been stabbed or shot and concluded that she was most likely strangled to death.³

The Killer

Throughout the Nydra Ross investigation, law enforcement focused almost exclusively on one man, Columbus resident David Penton. The evidence linking Penton to Nydra Ross was circumstantial but compelling. Penton worked with Nydra’s uncle and had, in fact, spent the night at Nydra’s aunt and uncle’s house the night before the girl went missing. Most damning was a large blood stain found in the carpeting under one of the seats of Penton’s van. Although police couldn’t conclusively prove that the blood was Nydra’s (in the late 80s DNA was just beginning to appear as a tool in criminal investigations), it was another fact Penton couldn’t easily explain.⁴ On May 11th, 1990, a Marion County grand jury indicted Penton for aggravated murder and kidnapping. He faced a possible death sentence.⁵

The trial of David Penton got under way in Marion on April 4th, 1991, over three and a half years after Nydra’s body was discovered.⁶ By this time, Marion County Prosecutor Jim Slagle was ready to present his case: Penton was a pedophile who had somehow lured Nydra into his van where he sexually assaulted and then murdered her.

In addition to the physical evidence, Jim Slagle also called to the stand several men who had been incarcerated with Penton right after he was arrested in Columbus . All of their stories were remarkably similar. One ex-con testified that Penton admitted he had talked Nydra into getting into his van where he then raped and strangled her.⁸ Another former inmate testified that Penton had attempted to have sex with Nydra, but when she resisted he “smacked her and [realized] he couldn’t take her home. And that’s when he strangled her to death.”⁹ Whether Penton murdered her during the course of the assault because she resisted or because he became afraid that she would later tell someone about what he had done to her remains unclear to this day.

On April 20th, 1991, the jury found Penton guilty of aggravated murder and kidnapping, and on April 24th they recommended a sentence of 30-years-to-life. For her part, Nydra’s mother reacted to the verdict by saying, “I’m very happy about it. Now he won’t be able to hurt anybody else’s child.”¹⁰

Although the jury could have sent Penton to the electric chair, they ultimately decided that “the state did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the aggravating circumstances of the crime outweighed the mitigating circumstances.”¹¹ Shortly thereafter, Penton began serving his sentence in Marion at MCI.

Not the End of the Story

Throughout the trial other disturbing information about Penton began to emerge. Two of Penton’s ex-wives reported that he had sexually abused their children. Penton was also convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Texas in 1985 after he shook his infant son to death. He appealed the conviction and, after posting bond, fled Texas (presumably going back to Ohio).¹² What’s more, in late April of 1991, authorities in Texas announced that they were “investigating…Penton in connection with the deaths of three Texas girls.” Penton had lived in Fort Hood, Texas during the 80s while serving in the military.¹³

David Penton will be eligible for parole in March of 2027 when he's 69 years old.

Finally, in May of 2003, Texas authorities charged Penton with the murders of three Dallas-area girls, Christi Meeks, 5, Christie Proctor, 9, and Roxann Reyes, 4. Once again, David Penton was facing the death penalty.¹⁴

In the summer of 2003, Penton was extradited back to Texas to face the three murder charges.¹⁵ On January 6th , 2005, David Penton, in order to avoid facing execution, pled guilty to murdering the three Texas girls. He returned to Ohio to continue serving his life sentence for the Ross murder but with the addition of three life sentences for the Texas murders. At the time, Marion County Prosecutor Jim Slagle told the Marion Star, “The bottom line is that he is going to be in prison for the rest of his life.”¹⁶

In the wake of Penton’s Texas convictions, evidence has surfaced that Penton may have murdered even more children. In an article appearing in the Tyler Morning Telegraph in Tyler, Texas, detective Gary Sweet of the Garland, Texas police said that Penton was suspected in the disappearance of at least three other Texas girls. Sweet went on to say that, “Penton has made claims to killing more than 50 children across the states. I personally believe the actual number is between 25 and 30.”¹⁷

Penton is currently incarcerated in the Toledo Correctional Institution. The actual number of his victims remains unknown to all but, presumably, Penton.

_____

1. The Marion Star, September 27th, 1988

2. The Marion Star, November 28th, 1988

3. The Marion Star, January 31st, 1988

4. http://www.prisonerlife.com/articles/articleID=53.cfm

5. The Marion Star, May 11th, 1990

6. The Marion Star, April 4th, 1991

7. The Marion Star, April 13th, 1991

8. The Marion Star, April 12th, 1991

9. The Marion Star, April 13th, 1991

10. The Marion Star, April 20th, 1991

11. The Marion Star, April 24th, 1991

12. The Marion Star, April 24th, 1991

13. The Marion Star, April 28th, 1991

14. The Marion Star, May 23rd, 2003

15. The Marion Star, August 8th, 2003

16. The Marion Star, January 8th, 2005

17. Tyler Morning Telegraph, March 4th, 2007

The Harding Hotel, as it appeared on a postcard in 1948.

The Harding Hotel is one of Marion’s more historic buildings, and if one believes the stories of Donna, a woman who works there and who I had the good fortune to interview in late 2010, it’s also a building with a spook or two:

When we got down to the basement, she showed me what used to be a room for dancing and drinking, especially during the Prohibition era. Part of the old bar was even still leaning against the wall. Another room she showed me was full of old pieces left over from when the hotel was renovated back in the ’90s: pieces from the cornice molding, ornate iron railing and light fixtures.

She eventually led me through to the maintenance room. “This is where I’ve had a few weird experiences. One morning when I came in here, I turned on the light and suddenly I felt something move up the back of my neck and through my hair. Not like the wind but like, I don’t know, a presence.” When I asked her how often this has happened, she responded, “All the time.”

It was when we headed up to the third floor, however, that she told me her strangest ghost story.

To read the rest of the story, pick up a copy of Haunted Marion, Ohio!