{"id":2046,"date":"2015-09-16T08:48:18","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T06:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/?p=2046"},"modified":"2015-09-16T20:13:14","modified_gmt":"2015-09-16T18:13:14","slug":"hershel-the-harding-freshman-building-ghost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/?p=2046","title":{"rendered":"Hershel the Harding Freshman Building Ghost"},"content":{"rendered":"

From 1915 to 1996, the school known at various times\u00a0as\u00a0Harding High School, Eber Baker Junior High School and, lastly, the Harding Freshman Building stood on West Church Street between Union and Orchard Street. According to a 1996\u00a0Marion Star<\/em>\u00a0article, the building was built to accommodate Marion’s growing population, which was spurred by a booming local economy. Thousands of students passed through the school’s\u00a0doors during the\u00a0nearly seven decades it was open, and even now many older Marionites recall the years they attended there\u00a0with a great deal of fondness.<\/p>\n

\"freshman
A postcard featuring an early photo of the school, courtesy of Mike Crane. Anyone interested in looking at Mike\u2019s nice collection of old photos, postcards and other assorted Marion miscellanea should check out his website<\/span><\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although the students may not have been aware of\u00a0it, some\u00a0staff members believed that there was also another, otherworldly presence in\u00a0the building.\u00a0In an article\u00a0<\/a>appearing\u00a0in\u00a0The Marion Star<\/em>\u00a0titled “Ghostly Caretaker Makes His Rounds,” staff writer Darlene Slack reported on the\u00a0unsettling experiences members\u00a0of the school’s kitchen and custodial staff had had\u00a0over the years with a ghost\u00a0they eventually nicknamed “Hershel”:<\/p>\n

Custodians and cooks arriving in the early morning hours began experiencing things they ‘just couldn’t explain.’<\/em><\/p>\n

The odor of cherry flavored pipe tobacco was the most distinctive of the occurrences because it was the same kind used by a custodian who had worked there and since died.<\/em><\/p>\n

‘I’d go down to turn the heat on in the boiler room and I could smell pipe tobacco just as plain as if somebody lit it. I’d turn on the lights and look for the smoke,’ said [custodian] Woody Jordan.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jordan never saw the smoke, but once he did find the ashes. He arrived early one morning after a night of fresh snowfall and found coffee made, a cup that had been used to drink some of it, and ashes in an ashtray.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jordan<\/em>\u00a0knew there weren’t any tracks to the door he had entered. ‘I went window to window, door to door, checking for tracks leading to the building,’ he said. He never found any.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As more of these stories\u00a0began to circulate, they caught the interest of English teacher Charles Mosher, and he began to collect\u00a0them.\u00a0Although he was initially skeptical, he eventually became convinced that staff members\u00a0truly\u00a0believed\u00a0they were having\u00a0brushes with the supernatural:<\/p>\n

These people were no kooks. They were sincere. I had no feeling they were embellishing stories to get me excited. They weren’t trying to convince me of anything. They were just sharing.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Mosher, Hershel\u00a0was especially fond of pranks. Staff members would find their coats hanging upside down in the closet; the lights in\u00a0locked rooms would\u00a0mysteriously turn on. At times like these, Mosher said, the staff members were more amused than scared.<\/p>\n

However, Hershel was also quite capable of frightening\u00a0people. Again, according to Mr. Mosher:<\/p>\n

\u00a0As a custodian was dry mopping the hallway on the second floor one day, he heard steps behind him, turned around and saw no one. He kept mopping until he felt a hand touch his shoulder and squeeze it.<\/em><\/p>\n

[The custodian] said the hair stood up on the back of his neck. It really frightened him. Then the footsteps went around him and past him down the hallway into the library. The library door opened and closed, and…Hershel was gone.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When Tri-Rivers opened in 1976, Harding High School’s\u00a0vocational students began attending school there. This meant that there was now room at Harding for freshman. The Freshman Building, which by the early 80s was in a state of disrepair, closed in 1983 and sat empty for over a decade as the city tried to figure out what to do with it. Finally, unable to sell \u00a0or develop the building, the city decided to demolish it.\u00a0One can only wonder if\u00a0Hershel was still haunting the long-silent school\u00a0when the wrecking ball began crashing\u00a0through its\u00a0walls during the summer of 1996.<\/p>\n

\"freshman
The front page of the August 6th, 1996, edition of The Marion Star<\/em>. When the demolition was complete, only the gymnasium (which later became a recreation center) was left standing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

– Josh Simpkins<\/p>\n

_______<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/p>\n

The Marion Star<\/em>, November 15th, 1978<\/p>\n

The Marion Star<\/em>, August 6th, 1996<\/p>\n

There’s No School Like an Old School. An\u00a0Illustrated\u00a0History of \u00a0the Public Schools in Ohio’s Marion County<\/em>\u00a0by Donna Converse Lawrence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From 1915 to 1996, the school known at various times\u00a0as\u00a0Harding High School, Eber Baker Junior High School and, lastly, the Harding Freshman Building stood on West Church Street between Union and Orchard Street. According to a 1996\u00a0Marion Star\u00a0article, the building was built to accommodate Marion’s growing population, which was spurred by a booming local economy. […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-ghosts-and-hauntings","category-landmarks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2046"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2081,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046\/revisions\/2081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}