My name is Melissa and I, along with my husband Gary, rented an upstairs apartment [on] Sargent Street back in the ‘80s. There are two buildings on the street that are mirror images of each other. One is named “The Netherlands” and the other is named “Tennyson.” We lived in the Tennyson and during [that time] many unexplained things happened…”

She went on to outline some of the incidents she had experienced while living there. Intrigued, I sent her an e-mail, and we eventually arranged a phone interview. When I called her a few days later at her home in Washington State (where she and her family have lived since leaving Marion in the mid-80s), she mentioned that she had kept a journal while she was living at the Tennyson. This journal is, I feel, important for two reasons: First, it lent her story a certain amount of credibility. After all, why would she keep a record that she never could’ve known she would be telling more than 25 years later? It also gave her story a fantastic amount of detail that simple recall couldn’t have provided. And so over the course of a 90 minute interview, she spoke while I furiously tried to jot down notes. What follows, then, is Melissa’s story.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Well, my name’s Melissa Cooper, and I grew up in Marion on Uncapher Avenue. When I was 17 and still in high school, I got married to Gary Cooper. Yeah, that’s really his name. [Laughs] We’re still married. We lived in the Tennyson from ’85 to ’86. I was in the OWE program at Harding, and I worked full time at city hall as a receptionist for the transit system. I was also still in school. My husband was working nights out at the Marion Industrial Center.

How did you come to live in the Tennyson apartment building?

We used to walk home from Harding to Gary’s grandma’s house on Wilson Avenue, and we always walked down Sargent Street. My husband would always point to it and say, “I’m gonna get that house for you someday. We’re gonna live there.” At the time, we thought it was a mansion. We had no idea it was an apartment building. And then I saw an ad in the paper for an apartment, and when we pulled up to the address, it was that exact place.

The apartments were nice, actually. When we lived there, the owners were quite studious about the upkeep of the place. And they were gorgeous inside.

The building was divided into four apartments. The downstairs had two apartments on each side, and the upstairs was the same. There was also a shared attic and a huge basement. Anyway, we lived on the top floor on the left side. 136½ Sargent Street.

The Tennyson apartment building in 2012.

So after you guys moved into the Tennyson, what began to make you think the place was haunted?

My husband was working third shift, and so I was alone in the apartment most nights. Actually, I was often the only person in the whole building. We had a neighbor lady who lived across the hall from us, but she worked nights like my husband did. There was also an old lady who lived right below us and a man who lived on the other side on the ground floor. But during the winter months, which was when a lot of weird activity was happening, both of the downstairs neighbors were gone. They each had places in warmer areas that they went to during the winter.

Well, on one of those nights, I noticed what sounded like a man walking around in heavy boots in the attic. That confused me because I had the only key to the attic. The entrance to the attic was outside our apartment in the hallway. There was only one key – a skeleton key – which the landlord’s gave to us since we were closest. If anyone needed in the attic, they would just come to us for it. Anyway, when I went out to check, I noticed the light wasn’t on up there. So I thought that whoever had been up there must’ve left. So I went back in the apartment, and I could still hear footsteps up there. So I took a flashlight and started up the attic stairs. I remember thinking, What am I doing? I’m walking into danger. This is stupid. There must be somebody hiding up here. Of course, I got up in the attic and turned on the light and didn’t hear any more noises. When I told my husband about it later, he said it was probably an acoustic trick.

And then on the next night – literally the next night – it happened again. First I heard the voices of two men, and I couldn’t discern what they were saying, but by the tone it was obvious they were bickering. And then all of a sudden the voices stopped, and I heard what sounded like scuffling. Like they’re shoving each other around. And then it sounded like one of them fell to the floor. And I heard one set of boots dragging something across the floor. Now this is impossible because all of us in the building had our stuff stored up there, so there wasn’t room to drag anything. So I told my husband about this again when he got home, and he just said that it was probably somebody out in the parking lot of Danny’s Pizza fighting and that the sound was bouncing off of the roof, making it sound like it was coming from the attic. I remember thinking, Well, whatever.

It sounds like your husband was skeptical at first.

Yeah, and I remember being a little irritated about that. But then I thought that maybe he was right. But then other strange things started to happen.

Like?

Later I started smelling cigar smoke in the house. I didn’t smoke, so I thought it was one of the neighbors, but none of them smoked either. Then I started smelling perfume, too, and I chalked that up to the old lady downstairs. I thought it must be coming up through the floor, but what was weird was that when I would smell these things, I felt as though someone was looking at me. When I smelled the perfume, I wasn’t as scared; but when I smelled the cigar smoke, I felt intimidated, like someone was staring at me and not in a friendly way.

I also remember that one day I walked in and the stereo was on, so I figured my husband was home. He wasn’t, though. And the stereo was just blaring away. When I tried to turn it off, it wouldn’t go off. I reached down to unplug it, and I noticed that it wasn’t even plugged in, and this thing was going full blast! The neighbors actually made a complaint to the landlord that day. Anyway, the second I picked up the plug, the stereo went off. So I said to my husband later, “What’s your explanation for that?” And he said I probably pulled the plug out of the wall while I was trying to turn the stereo off.  But the stereo was playing while I could see the plug lying on the floor!

And then our TV started coming on by itself. And it would always come on full blast, and again I heard from the landlord about the noise. When I told my husband about this, he still thought there was some kind of sensible explanation. But then one night he was sick and stayed home, and the TV came on in the middle of the night. He said, “What the hell is that?” And I said, “That’s the TV coming on by itself.” He got up, and sure enough the TV was on. He said, “I thought I turned the TV off?” When I told him he had, I think that’s when he started to have his doubts about rational explanations.

We also had some strange occurrences with the bedroom lights. They had these sconce fixtures with keys at the bottom that you had to turn. But they would both come on at the same time without anyone touching them. My husband thought it was an electrical problem, but an electrician who checked the wiring said everything was fine. In fact, he was confused about why they came on at the same time because he explained that they were not wired to the same circuit!

I remember one time we were talking about the lights, and I said, “Look, I’m telling you that there’s something going on in this house!” And my husband said, “No. The fact that they’re coming on at the same time tell me it’s something electrical.” As soon as he said that, the lights went off, one at a time. “Well, what now?” I said. And he said, “It’s just these two lights.” I told him, “Just these two lights?!? What about the TV and the stereo? You’re not getting me!”

Some nights, just as we would start to go to sleep, the closet door outside of our bedroom would open. This was a pretty heavy door, too. It would open and creek, and then it would slam shut. As soon as we would start to doze back off, it would do it again. After awhile my husband started dealing with the fatigue, you know? Because he couldn’t get any sleep.

Do any other events stand out in your recollection?

I would constantly hear someone taking a bath in our bathroom. I could hear splashing. I could even open the door, and it wouldn’t stop. I got so used to hearing someone taking a bath that one time I actually walked in on a friend of mine while he was in the tub. He said, “What the hell? Couldn’t you hear me taking a bath?” And I said, “I always hear somebody taking a bath in here – even when nobody’s in here!”

I’ve already mentioned the attic, right? Well, this guy – the one I walked in on in the bathtub – stayed up in our attic for a week one time while he was hiding out from the police. We were pretty wild kids. [Laughs] Anyway, one day he came down and said, “What did you want last night at four in the morning?” I said, “What? I wasn’t up there last night.” And he said, “Yes, you were. You poked your head up and said something to me.” When I told him I hadn’t, he just assumed he’d dreamt it. That was his explanation. But I’m not so sure…

So it seems like the attic was the focus of a lot of weird activity.

Yeah, it was. Sometimes it was just noises up in the attic. My husband said he heard what sounded like someone dropping a big glass ashtray up there. I remember hearing what sounded like someone throwing a croquet ball against the wall and then letting it bounce a few times on the floor.

Since the noises always seemed to happen just as we were dozing off, after about six months we were starting to feel exhausted. I mean, we were bickering because we were so tired.

Do any other incidents up in the attic come to mind?

Well, this one time we were hanging out with some friends and we heard this boom, boom, boom sound from up in the attic. We went up there several times and couldn’t find out what would make that noise. After we came back downstairs, we heard it again. Everybody’s eyes got really big, and Gary said, “We’re gonna put an end to this.”

The young married couple: Melissa and Gary.

We had a really heavy trunk in the attic that Gary’s grandpa had made. Anyway, he had me stand downstairs while he picked up the end of the trunk before letting it fall. And it made the exact sound we had heard. It definitely wasn’t some raccoon or squirrel up there doing that! A little bit later we heard the same pounding up in the attic, and again we went up there and went through the attic carefully. At the time we even thought it was possible somebody was hiding up there. Anyway, we started back down the stairs, and just as he was locking the door, Gary realized that he hadn’t turned the light out at the top of the stairs. Well, just then we heard what sounded like a man run down to the stairs and stop on the other side of the door breathing hard. It was just an awful sound. The door had this thick leaded glass window, and although we could see through it, no one was on the other side. My friend Frankie took off running and wouldn’t come back after that. I asked him years later why he wouldn’t come back, and he said that he was afraid that whatever was on the other side of the door would follow him home.

I wanted to ask you: Up to now, everything you’ve described has been either something you heard or smelled – spooky things but essentially harmless. Did it ever go beyond that? Did anything happen that made you feel as if you were in danger?

Yes. My husband had a class ring that his grandma had bought him. And it was huge. My husband wears a size 13-and-a-half ring. He’s built like bigfoot. [Laughs] Anyway, it’s what we used as a wedding ring when we got married since we didn’t have money for a proper ring.

Well, one time he took it off and laid it on the kitchen counter to wash his hands. When he went to pick it up, it was gone. We looked on the floor. We looked down the drain. It was just gone. And so Gary, who was getting ready to go to work, told me, “Find that ring!” So I searched that whole place and couldn’t find it. Later he called me from work to ask me if I’d found it. I still hadn’t and felt really badly about it. Later that night I went in the bathroom to wash my hands, and I took my wedding rings off and put them in a little dish there on the sink. After I got done washing my hands, I realized the rings were gone. My first thought was that they had gone down the drain. So I went to get a flashlight, and that’s when I saw my husband’s ring sitting on the kitchen counter. Right then I knew something was toying with me. And now it had my wedding rings! I remember I started crying because I was scared. I remember even saying out loud, “That’s not funny. These are my wedding rings. They’re precious. How could you mess with someone’s wedding rings?” Just then I heard a glass break in the bathroom. When I went in there, the wedding rings were on the sink where I had left them, and a glass that I had sitting on the sink had fallen to the floor and smashed. I think that was the first time I told my husband that I wanted to move. I thought that if this thing could move something, then I’m scared.

Is that when you decided to move out?

No, we didn’t have the money to move out. I mean, I wanted to leave! Actually, that reminds me of another attic incident. We were arguing one night because I wanted to move out. Finally, I just left, you know, to give us both a chance to cool off. Well, my husband said that the second I shut the downstairs door, all hell broke loose up in the attic. He eventually took a six pack of beer up there, sat down and said, “All right, here I am. You want to scare me? Well, scare me.” Immediately he heard this weird noise he couldn’t quite place until he saw what looked like the lid to a coffee can or Cool Whip container, and it was spinning on its side like a coin. But just like that, it looked like an invisible hand slapped it down flat. That’s when he ran. He said he dropped his beer and ran down the stairs. When I came home a while later, he told me about what he had seen. We went back up into the attic, and eventually took a buckeye and sat it in the middle of that big trunk I mentioned earlier. We sat it right in the middle of that big old trunk and said, “Come on, move the buckeye. Just move it an inch. Prove to us that you’re here and that you want us gone.” Nothing happened. In fact, we sat there so long that we got bored and eventually went back downstairs. But as soon as we got back downstairs, we heard an awful ruckus going on upstairs. Although we had always heard a lot of noises up in the attic, nothing was ever disturbed. But that night when we went up there, it was a big mess. Everything – boxes, old furniture – was upended. Everything except the buckeye.

Where were your neighbors while all of this was happening? Did they ever say anything? Did you ever discuss anything with them?

I talked to all of our neighbors at some point. But most of the weird stuff happened during the winter months, and, like I said, that’s when the downstairs neighbors weren’t even living there. After winter when they were back, I asked them if they had ever heard or experienced anything weird up in the attic, but they all said no. In fact, the guy downstairs said that the only thing in the building that bothered him was us. [Laughs] See, a lot of the noise they were blaming on us wasn’t really us.

Up until this point there were two manifestations – there was the perfume, which you associated with a woman, and the smoke, which you associated with a man. But you said in your e-mail you’d also heard a baby?

Right. Well, it’s like this: One time our rent money went missing. At the time, I accused my friend Benny of taking it, but he swore up and down he hadn’t. Anyway, it was while our rent money was still missing that I invited a girlfriend over to spend the night. While she was over, she asked if she could borrow my Polaroid camera. When I went into the closet to get it, I opened the box to make sure it had film, and there was my rent money. In the camera case. I must have had some look on my face because my girlfriend said, “Melissa, what’s wrong?” And I just said, “My house is haunted!” I kind of told her the stories about what had been going on, and she said that she didn’t really believe in ghosts, and she thought it was all dumb.

A little while later, we were sitting in the living room and this huge shadow passed by the bedroom door. I saw it but didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to spook her, but then she said, “I thought you said Gary was at work.” I told her that he was. And she said, “Well, who’s in your bedroom?” I told her there was no one in my bedroom. “No,” she said, “I just saw Gary walk by the door.” “Angie,” I said, “he’s at work. I’m telling you my house is haunted. There’s no one there.” She still didn’t believe me, so we got up and looked around the apartment, and she saw there was really nobody else there. So we sat back down in the living room, and she said, “Turn off the lights so that I don’t have to see it.” I thought that was really funny, and I told her, “Don’t worry. The lights’ll go off by themselves in a few minutes.” Which they did, and that really freaked her out.

It was right after the lights went out that we heard the baby start to cry up in the attic. Now it was January, and I didn’t really believe there was a baby up in the attic. Eventually we went up there, and of course there was no baby. By then, she was getting pretty spooked. We went back into the apartment, and I started to tell her about more of the weird things that had happened in there, and while I was telling her this, we heard the baby in the bedroom. At that point she was done. She said that she wanted to call her dad and go home, and I was saying, “Please don’t leave me here!” At that point we were both sitting at opposite ends of the couch, and suddenly we heard the baby crying in between us on the couch. We ran out of the house and straight to Danny’s Pizza, which was right there on Center Street. Angie called her dad from there, and I asked if I could go with her, but her dad wouldn’t let me. He said, “She’s a married woman. It would be inappropriate for her to spend the night at our house.”

So I went back up to the apartment, turned on the TV and went to bed. As I was dozing off, the blinds snapped up and some of the windows flew open. Snow was blowing in through them. I remember just getting up and getting dressed as fast as I could. I was leaving with no idea of where I was going to go. As I went through the rest of the apartment, I saw that cupboard doors and drawers were open. The refrigerator was open. Even the bird cage was open, and the birds were flying around.  I ran out of the apartment. It was about three thirty in the morning, and I sat outside waiting for my husband to get home at six thirty. I remember I didn’t even have my own shoes on – I’d put on a pair of his boots – and I was frozen. I told him, “I’m not going back up there, and you can’t make me.

Eventually, though, he talked me into going back up there. The place was in the exact shape it had been when I ran out. It was just a wreck. So we closed everything up and went to bed, and after that everything seemed to settle down for awhile, though we still heard occasional noises up in the attic.

The actual journal that Melissa kept during the winter of 1985.

But then a few weeks later, we woke up to discover a good inch of snow on the bedroom floor from an open window. Actually both windows were open. What woke us up was the snow plow in the parking lot. When we got up, everything in the house had been opened again. That was the first time my husband had had that experience, and so we were both scared.

Did you ever talk to you landlord about what was going on at your place?

Well, one time he and his wife came over to collect the rent money, and I just asked him directly: “Do you know anything about the history of this place? Has anybody ever died here?” He started to say something, but his wife, who was a more severe type of woman, gave him a look, and he shut right up. Instead, his wife said, “No, why?” And I said, “Well sometimes we hear weird noises.” “Well,” she said, “it’s an old place, and they sometimes make strange noises.”

What was the landlord’s name?

You know, for the life of me I can’t remember their names. I know it might be useful in tracking down information about the Tennyson, but I can’t remember them.

Do any other disturbing incidents come to mind?

One night we were in bed and heard what sounded like glass breaking. We got up and both of us fully expected –I wrote about this in my diary –to find everything in the house broken. But instead all of the windows, drawers, doors and so on were open again. As we were going through our apartment, Gary noticed that Marilyn’s door was busted. Marilyn was our neighbor right across the hall. She was working that night, but Gary had come home early because of bad weather – he drove a forklift out at the Depot, and it had just been too cold to keep working outside that night. Anyway, he called the police and said that someone had broken into the place. As for me, I just assumed it was a ghost. I mean, after all we had seen at that point.

When the cops showed up, though, they accused us of breaking into Marilyn’s place! We said, “Why would we break in and then call the police?” The cop just said, “Because you want to make yourselves above suspicion.” Marilyn showed up a little while later, and she went in and looked around but said nothing was disturbed or missing. She finally told the policeman, “I’ve lived next to these kids for awhile. They’ve never taken anything. I’ve got stuff in the attic worth money. If they wanted to steal from me, they wouldn’t need to get into the apartment.”

Later, after the police left, I talked to Marilyn. I asked her if she had ever heard anything strange in the attic or felt uneasy in her apartment. She said she’d never heard or felt anything. Nothing.

That had to be disheartening. Did anyone else witness any strange occurrences in the apartment?

About two months before my brother Matt died, we got on the subject of one of his old girlfriends. I’d really liked this particular girl, and I asked him why she had stopped coming over to our place at the Tennyson. That’s when he told me that once, while they were sleeping over at our place, they had experienced something strange.  Matt said that the two of them had been sleeping on our couch, and she kept waking him up all night to tell him that somebody was walking through the apartment. At one point she said she even saw what looked like a dark shadow of a man leaning over her, and she could feel him breathing in her face. My brother said she was just dreaming. Finally, she woke him up and said, “Do you hear that in the kitchen? There’s something going on in the kitchen.” And so Matt, thinking it was me making the noise, got up and went into the kitchen and saw that nobody was there but that all of the drawers and cupboards were open. He never told me about that at the time. Anyway, that’s the reason his girlfriend stopped coming over.

When did you finally move out of the place?

We actually got evicted. One day the landlord knocked on the door and handed me the eviction notice. When I asked why, he said it was because of the noise. It was the guy downstairs who had complained. Like I said, at the time my husband didn’t want to leave because we really didn’t have the money to move.

After you moved out of the Tennyson, you moved into another apartment. Did anything happen there or was it all quiet?

Nothing out of the ordinary happened at the new place. It was an apartment house over on Pearl Street, I think. We lived there for about a year before heading west.

And how did you end up in Washington?

Well, it’s probably pretty clear from what I’ve told you so far that we were kind of partiers. [Laughs] There were a lot of bad influences in Marion, and there was a lot of trouble for us to get into because there was nothing else to do. When Gary’s grandmother gave us some money, we decided to drive out to Washington to visit my brother who lived out there. And we stayed. My husband ended up getting a job at Boeing, which is where he still works.

As we wrapped up our conversation, I realized there would be no revelation that would make sense out of all of the strange incidents Melissa and her husband had experienced. Even haunted house stories, after all, usually have their own kind of logic. However, in Melissa’s case, she never uncovered a murder that had taken place in her apartment or that the building was built over Native American burial grounds or any of the myriad other “reasons” we have come to expect for a haunted house. Her story was just a series of inexplicable events that have stayed with her all of these years. In fact, part of her motivation for getting in touch with me was to see if I could find out anything about the house that would offer an explanation for her strange experiences there. My efforts to find out anything, however, have been unsuccessful. There simply doesn’t appear to be any documented history – haunted or otherwise – associated with the Tennyson. That said, if anyone has any information about the Tennyson, please feel free to leave a message below or send us an e-mail at spooks@spookymarion.com

-Josh Simpkins

Luther

On July 19^th, 1989, a few kids were paddling down Flat Run Creek in Tully Township when they spotted shoes in the brush along the creek’s edge. Maneuvering their canoe a little closer, they realized the shoes were attached to a body.

The Ohio State University anthropology department reconstructed Luther's face but to no avail.

Removing the man’s remains from the creek, law enforcement almost immediately suspected that he was a murder victim. For starters there was no I.D. on the man nor could investigators find a boat or car belonging to him. An autopsy later provided more substantial evidence supporting foul play. Specifically, former Marion County coroner Dr. Robert Gray told the Columbus Dispatch in 1992 that he believed, “the man died of a .22-caliber bullet wound to the larynx.” Although the sheriff’s department ran down “hundreds” of leads, the identity of the man – by now investigators were referring to him as “Luther” – remained a mystery.

In 2007, however, the sheriff’s department tried one more time to find out Luther’s identity. The plan was to extract a DNA sample from Luther’s remains and submit it, along with his physical description, to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center. The NCIC is a database containing a vast amount of crime-related information, and the hope was that Luther’s profile would match one the thousands already on file. Unfortunately, Luther’s profile didn’t generate any hits, and his identity remains unknown to this day.

Vicky

How Vicky may have looked while alive. Investigators called her “Vicky” because her bones were discovered on Victory Road just south of Linn-Hipsher Road.

On March 10^th, 2007, nearly 18 years after Luther was found, Larry Higgins Jr. was out poking around in the brush near Victory Road. The area has always been a popular illegal dumping site, and Mr. Higgins was hoping to find some metal he could scrap. Instead he found what he initially mistook for a Halloween decoration. As he got closer, though, he realized that the skull he had spotted was, in fact, real.

On March 14^th, 2007, Marion County Sheriff Tim Bailey announced at a press conference that they were certain only that the skeleton was that of a young woman. As was the case with Luther, investigators also suspected that she was a homicide victim. An attempt to match her with a missing person listed on the NCIC database, however, yielded no hits.

Officially, the Luther and Vicky cases remain open (though very cold). Still, there’s always the possibility that a crucial piece of evidence will come to light or that someone with information will come forward. And then we will at last learn the names Luther and Vicky had when alive rather than the names given to them in death.

_____

“Body Found Here.” The Marion Star 20 July 1989: 1A.

Dreitzler, Bob. “Marion County Coroner for 35 Years Swaps Job with Assistant.” The Columbus Dispatch 6 April 1992: 02B.

Edwards, Randall. “Help Needed to Identify Dead Man.” The Columbus Dispatch 28 August 1989: 04D.

“Identity of Body not Determined.” The Marion Star 21 July 1989: 1A.

Peppard, Bevin. “Dump Hunt Uncovered More Than Just Trash.” The Marion Star 13 March 2007: 1A.

Peppard, Bevin. “Sheriff: Bones Thought to be Female.” The Marion Star 15 March 2007: 1A.

Peppard, Bevin. “What happened to ‘Luther’?” The Marion Star 20 May 2007: 1A.

“Skeletal Remains Found in County.” The Marion Star 11 March 2007: 1A.

While some of the structures pictured here are probably still salvageable – local landmarks like the Union Station and the Harding Hotel are proof that such run-down buildings can be restored and put to good use – others are probably beyond saving and will be demolished in the coming years. Of course, this is especially unfortunate for the buildings that are historically significant

These photos are by no means a comprehensive collection of Marion’s “ruins” but rather the beginning of a collection we hope will grow. That said, anyone with photos (new or old), ideas for photos or information about photos already shown here should leave a comment below or drop us a line at spooks@spookymarion.com. Last but not least, a special thanks to Kirk Wyckoff, who was kind enough to contribute many of the photos shown below.

This once-grand house, located at 247 North Prospect Street, originally belonged to the Kellys, a prominent local family that later included Judge Robert Kelly. According to local resident, Phyllis Ingmire, the Kelly family had the house built in the 1870s. It is now a rental property. Photo courtesy of Kirk Wyckoff.

The construction of the Prospect and State Street overpasses in the 1960s made many of the houses on both streets less desirable places to live, and many have fallen into disrepair. Photo courtesy of Kirk Wyckoff.

This house, located on the corner of Blaine Avenue and West Church Street, has certainly seen better days. However, the craftsmanship that went into its construction is still evident even now. It must have been a sight to behold at one time.

Founded in 1904 by W.H. Houghton, the Houghton Sulky Company built world-class sulkies (lightweight, two-wheeled carts, usually horse-drawn) for 103 years before finally closing its doors in 2007 due to financial difficulties. Photo courtesy of Kirk Wyckoff.

In his book about Marion, Stuart Koblentz writes that the oldest part of the building was originally a Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church until Marion’s rail lines were built, and it was no longer ideal for quiet church services. The structure was later used as an industrial manufacturing space, first by the Huber Manufacturing Company and later by the Houghton Sulky Company. Photo courtesy of Kirk Wyckoff.

An advertisement for Houghton Sulky that appeared in Time Magazine on March 15th, 1937, stated: “Houghton Sulky – Proudly manufacturing the world's finest quality show horse vehicles. Quality is a hallmark of Houghton training and show vehicles. Traditional quality is a blend of elegance of design, the highest quality materials, and demanding standards of craftsmanship. Houghton Sulky carries a full line of carts for horses, ponies, and miniature horses.” Photo courtesy of Kirk Wyckoff.

According to Aaron Turner’s website Old Ohio Schools (www.oldohioschools.com), the Tully Township School out in Martel was built in 1915 but closed its doors in 1987. The building, however, is not abandoned. When this photograph was taken in late 2012, people were living in at least part of the building. Photo courtesy of Kirk Wyckoff.

The Tully Township School shortly after its completion. Photo courtesy of Aaron Turner.

The former Courtesy Budget Inn, located at 1361 Harding Highway East, was once a modestly priced motel but has been sitting derelict for the past few years. The rooms that occupied the east side of the complex have already been razed, and it seems reasonable to assume that the rest will not escape the wrecking ball much longer. Photo courtesy of Kirk Wyckoff.

The motel is located in a heavily-trafficked part of Marion, a fact that’s likely to appeal to developers in the coming years. Photo courtesy of Kirk Wyckoff.

The Courtesy Budget Inn during its more respectable days. Photo courtesy of Randy Winland.

Although originally a Mansfield-based company, the Isaly name played a part in Marion life for many years. This particular building, located at 202 North Prospect Street, is all that remains of a group of buildings that housed the dairy plant as well as the Isaly offices. Photo courtesy of Larry Henne.

Brian Butko, author of Klondikes, Chipped Ham, & Skyscraper Cones: The Story of Isaly's, writes that this particular location was in use from 1915 to 1947. He goes on to write that the Isaly brand began to decline in the 1960s and disappeared completely from Marion in the 1990s when The Isaly Shoppe went out of business. Photo courtesy of Kirk Wyckoff.

This building, located at the end of Rose Avenue (past the halfway house), is a bit of a mystery. Although the words “Steam Shovel Co.” are still visible on the west side of the building, its purpose and when it was in operation remain unclear.

The same building seen from the east or Leader Street side.

Rocky's Cyclery and Fitness has been at this location for nearly forty years.

Viewed from the side, one is struck by how big and rambling Rocky’s actually is. Just off of the sales area in the front of the building is owner Carol Poston’s office and a well-equipped workshop, both of which most regular customers have wandered into at one time or another. There’s also an apartment on the second floor. Anyone venturing a bit deeper into the building to, say, the dimly-lit rooms in the basement or the squeaky-floored rooms behind the workshop will most certainly find a great number of bikes as well as the parts needed to service them.  And just maybe, one might also come across a ghost or two.

The tire room where, according to bike mechanic Jessie Greene, the tires have a habit of moving by themselves.

Jessie Green, a Tri-Rivers student who’s been working at the shop since the beginning of the year, has a tire problem – specifically, they don’t want to stay put. On the day I was at Rocky’s, he took me down into the basement where the tire room is located. Jessie said that often and without explanation the tires move. “I’ll leave the tire room with everything where it should be and when I go down there again, the tires will be scattered or in piles. I’ll come back upstairs and be like, ‘Who moved the tires?’ And nobody’s been down there.” Another mechanic, Thaddeus Smith, says the door leading to the rooms behind the workshop routinely opens and closes by itself, though whether it’s just a draft or something more ethereal is something he wouldn’t speculate on. Annette Stark, a former tenant in the apartment over the store, says that while she was living there she and her daughters always felt as if someone were watching them in the hallway leading to the apartment. “I would [also] hear what sounded like footsteps coming from the attic.”

Rocky Rhoades, the shop’s namesake, opened his first bike shop in 1972 in downtown Marion before moving to the current building in 1974. In 2003, having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Rocky sold the business to Glen Poston, himself a passionate and devoted bike rider, and Glen’s wife, Carol.

Rocky's was once home to a funeral home, as evidenced by this 1929 Marion phone book listing and advertisement.

Before Rocky bought the building, the property had been, according to Stuart Koblentz, the private residence of a family named Miller and, according to Carrie Hutchman, Indoe’s, which was a store offering “heating, appliances and televisions.” More interestingly, according to Hutchman, “Between 1929 and 1931 it was the Hess, Markert & Axe Funeral Home. From 1934-1938 it was known as the Axe Funeral Home, L.A. Axe, director.”*

Naturally, it would be convenient to argue that it was during the building’s years as a funeral home that a few restless spirits settled there. For her part, Carol remains skeptical. However, she says that, “if there are a few ghosts, I like to think they’re friendly ones.” Or maybe just mischievous ones who delight in unnerving bike mechanics by hiding their tires or shutting doors on them.

*For those readers who are members of Facebook and are interested in Marion’s history, I recommend becoming a member of the “Growing up in Marion, Ohio” Facebook group. The nearly 3,000 members have a wealth of information about our hometown as well as a willingness to share it. They were certainly helpful in the development of this story.

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 Mike's nice collection of old photos, postcards and other assorted Marion miscellanea should check out his website: 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 Richland Township as Richmond 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. Readers can also contribute information by adding a comment below the story.

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, submit a comment below or contact us directly 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 now-defunct local ghost hunting group Eerie Paranormal gathered evidence of a decidedly spooky nature.

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