A Real Horror Story

Please note: An expanded version of this story, which includes interviews with people who lived in the Silver Street house, is in our book Haunted Marion, Ohio.

“You guys know any haunted houses around Marion?”

It was just an idle question, something to make the time go faster at work. I had been telling my coworkers about how my nephew and I were kicking around the idea of starting a web site devoted to Marion’s more macabre side.

“I know one,” said my coworker Fawn. “My brother lives next to a supposedly haunted house on Silver Street.” Since I had grown up on Silver, I was immediately interested in her story.

“Yeah”, she continued, “it’s near the corner of Silver and Commercial. Supposedly some guy murdered his family there. And there’s this thing with some of the upstairs windows. No matter how many times the owner fixes them, they always break again. That’s all I know, though.”

silverstreethororhouse
The house in question in December of 2010.

Later, I asked my mom if she’d ever heard anything about a murder on Silver Street. “Seems like there was one while you were in college. But I don’t really remember what happened.”

I eventually tracked down the story and found that Fawn was basically right. However, as I read through the brutal facts of what had happened, I began to see this as more than just a spook story based on rumors and half-truths. This was a story of real evil.

According to the October 11th, 1995, edition of The Marion Star, Wayne Thomas, a man with a history of domestic violence, murdered his girlfriend, Mary Welcome, and her nine-year-old son, Christopher Hook. Police speculated that, “Thomas…beat Welcome’s head against the baseboard in the downstairs living room, pinned her to the floor and strangled her. He continued upstairs and cut Christopher’s throat with a butcher knife.” Thomas took the easy way out by shooting himself up with a massive dose of insulin. Unfortunately, Mary’s father, Charles Hook, made the horrific discovery on Saturday, October 7th, 1995. He had gone over to the house because he had not heard from his daughter for a few days and had grown worried. Rightly so. The three had arrived in Marion only six weeks prior and were renting the house, located at 306 Silver Street, from Mr. Hook.

Seth and I pulled up across from the house. It was just another run-down house in the run-down end of town. My old neighborhood. We snapped a few photos, our mood somber. A few windows were indeed missing. I don’t know how they ended up broken out, but I suppose it didn’t matter. Far more important things had been broken in that house.

The Merchant Ball

Marion’s best known oddity.

Please note: A expanded version of this story appears in our book Haunted Marion, Ohio.

For anyone digging up stories about Marion’s spookier side, the Merchant grave is the natural starting point. In fact, it would be hard to find anyone in Marion who hasn’t at least heard of the grave and its mysterious revolving ball. Ripley himself deemed it interesting enough to include in his newspaper column in 1929.

Personally, I remember hearing about the ball as a kid and picturing a huge glowing ball suspended in the shimmering air, it’s rotation slow and deliberate.

Alas, the reality, as always, is a bit of a let down. But more on that in a minute…

According to the Marion Cemetery Association web site:

In 1886 the Merchant family of Marion constructed what they thought would be a beautiful and fitting grave monument for their family burial plot in Marion Cemetery. Within two years after its construction, someone noticed that the 5,200 pound polished granite ball atop the pedestal had begun to rotate. The only unpolished spot on the ball was now visible, indicating the ball was on the move. The Merchant family, being concerned about this, brought the erection crew back to the site to re-set the ball. It was not long before the ball again began its now continuous movement.

Various explanations have been proposed for the ball’s movement: the Coriolis effect, the seasonal expansion and contraction of the ball, seismic activity. However, since it’s a grave, there are also those who suspect some otherworldly explanation. Still, there is no record of any gruesome or even untoward stories about the Merchant family that would suggest that their grave should be haunted. The real reason behind the ball’s movement remains a mystery.

Seth had already been to the Merchant ball, but this was my first time seeing it. (I had unsuccessfully tried to find the ball once before. However, I was only able to find some other huge ball that, apparently, doesn’t move.) I stood dumbly in front of it, maybe hoping to see some slight movement, while Seth snapped a few pictures. However, according to the book Weird Ohio by Loren Coleman, Andy Henderson and James Willis, the ball only averages two inches of movement per year which means, literally, I would be better off watching grass grow.

Jeez.

Still, facts are facts, and if one presents the facts just right, it does sound like a good story: “So listen, in my hometown there’s this 5,000 pound granite ball in a graveyard. And, nobody knows why, but it moves under its own power, and….”