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(Revisit) Season 2: Ohio Urban Myths, Lore, and Legends
148 Plays7 months ago
This week, we’re on a break, so we’re revisiting one of our most popular episodes from Season 2 - Lore Lore & Legends. Who's ready for some hauntings and history?!
We're heading to Sara's home state of Ohio for this special episode for Season 2 Local Lore & Legends. Are you familiar with Ohio urban legends? How much do you know about The Monster of Minerva, or the only known witch trial to occur in Ohio? Like many other states we’ve covered, Ohio has its fair share of urban legends, spooky tales, and mysterious creatures. With some expert insight into the best Ohio legends and mysteries, the Not Your Average Bucket List hosts take everyone on a chilling adventure through the state.
Ohio Urban Legends We’ll Cover
- What are some of the best Ohio urban legends?
- What really happens overnight in the Ohio State Reformatory?
- Ohio Melon Heads
- The Only Known Witch Trial To Occur in Ohio
Timestamps:
(06:00:00) Ohio Has Its Own “The Watcher” Letter Writer
(9:45:00) A Few Haunted Spots In Ohio
(11:40:00) The Hauntings of Margaret Shilling
(20:57:00) The Ohio State Reformatory
(29:46:00) The Only Known Witch Trial To Occur in Ohio
In this episode, our hosts dig into some of the best Ohio urban legends and haunted tales. Plus, as always, take a look at these OnlyInYourState articles for more creepy Ohio articles:
The Ultimate Terrifying Ohio Road Trip
Ohio Urban Legends & Cryptids: An Interview With An Expert
Not Your Average Bucket List Podcast
Get In Touch!
If you have personal experiences with any of the local lore and legends mentioned above, call or text 805-298-1420! We’d love to hear your thoughts on these creepy, potentially haunted places and maybe even share your clip on the show! You can also reach out to us via email at [email protected].
Recommended
Transcript
Unexpected Stories from Ohio
00:00:06
Speaker
This is not your average bucket list by Only In Your State, a podcast about exploring the hidden gems right in your own backyard. So I didn't expect researching this episode, Ohio, to have such a blast doing it. I genuinely, like there are a couple of things that I was just researching and I'm like, oh man, I can't wait to talk to Sarah about this. And I wasn't expecting that from Ohio.
Every State's Haunting Legends
00:00:33
Speaker
Okay, I don't know, but I feel like every time
00:00:35
Speaker
we go to a place it's like oh dang I you know I don't want to hold on uh yeah but I like South Carolina and uh there's one recently too it was there some other southern state was like wow that is wild too yeah but yeah I I don't know I feel like every state just has these like seedy underbelly ghost sort of stories that you just
00:01:02
Speaker
pass was wild man. Yeah, stuff went down. So I know you are born and raised in Ohio. Is that correct?
Sharing Local Lore and Legends
00:01:10
Speaker
Correct. Okay, so I'm sure you have some really cool insight into local lore and legends.
00:01:17
Speaker
just based on growing up there word of mouth. I feel like that's how you find out the best stuff is just swapping stories with friends. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of stories, but also I don't know what are some stories that just like my family told me like, Oh, there's this warlocks grave up in the cemetery on the hill. I'm like, Oh, okay, sweet. And there's a busted grave. But you know, I think it's just like a specific
00:01:43
Speaker
Denison sort of story or they just made it up on the walk there. No idea. Interesting. Yeah. So rumors get started.
00:01:52
Speaker
I know, but it's almost like how we were talking about, you know, the Minerva monster or Squonk, like these little hyper-local, I know, I looked up more pictures of Squonk and it just breaks my heart.
Exploring Haunted Places in Ohio
00:02:03
Speaker
I can't. But yeah, it's interesting. And some of the bigger legends that we're gonna talk about today, I was, you know, I did grow up knowing and I knew friends and family who explore the places and I explore the places and it's just, you know, really interesting.
00:02:21
Speaker
And it's not so, I think today we're not so much focusing on like the, like the crypt is necessarily, cause we have some, sure. And we can talk about it, but for me, my focus has always been on these like crazy haunted places or places with like really dark lore and rundown spots and that are still standing. And it's just really cool to explore. Nice. I think I'm excited to hear about some of the places that
00:02:50
Speaker
you have come up with and maybe even ones that you've personally been to, is that a thing?
Ohio's Eerie Locations
00:02:56
Speaker
Okay, cool.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, there's no way for me to, I can send you some things for the show notes and I'll probably overlay some things for the video, but I do have some media just from me going to these places and having family that's gone to the places. Oh, that's cool. Awesome. I have, um, do you want to just give like a quick rundown of some of the places you want to talk about today? Just to let people know.
00:03:21
Speaker
Absolutely. So yeah, Ohio does have a lot of places that are allegedly haunted or has some creepy things happen. And it's not just limited to a couple of the places we're gonna talk about today. So I am going to
00:03:35
Speaker
And just trigger warning, we are going to be mentioning mental health institutions that back in the day were pretty brutal, so just FYI there. But so one of them is the Ridges, which is the Athens Lunatic Asylum. Another is just Ohio University campus at
Cleveland Torso Murders
00:03:53
Speaker
large. There's a lot of just historical buildings and a lot of rumors, kind of like the Third Eye Man or the Three Eyed Man that you talked about for.
00:04:02
Speaker
South Carolina? Yes. Yeah. And then also, I mean, just before I get into those, I just want to actually touch on some other legends that if you aren't familiar, we can always dive into or if you can research on your own, whatever we want to do, but say, you know, the Cleveland torso murders, which you've heard of those. No.
00:04:24
Speaker
Okay. Um, I don't have it on the docket for today, but we can always circle back because it's a really interesting, um, true crime sort of story that I only learned about maybe in the last couple of years, like listen to all these like true crime podcasts. I didn't know anything about it.
Haunted Moonville Tunnel and Lakeview Cemetery
00:04:39
Speaker
And then also the, uh, Moonville tunnel, um, which is allegedly haunted the Lakeview cemetery has, um,
00:04:49
Speaker
It's, so the graves in the Lakeview cemetery are beautiful, but there's one in particular that's famous and it's called, I think it's the Hasoro, not Hasoro, Hasoro Angel, and it's the Angel of Death victorious. And this beautiful, I think it's copper angel statue just looks like it's crying all the time. And I think it's from like weather and wear, but if you Google it, it's just kind of like beautiful and terrifying angel statue, which is amazing.
00:05:15
Speaker
There's also a tuberculosis hospital in Lima. There's Helltown, which is an abandoned town near Mawson Mills, which is actually very close to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. So if you're ever exploring the national park and you come across this like little deserted
00:05:31
Speaker
road with a blocked off. It's a haunted place called Helltown.
The Unsolved Circleville Letter Mystery
00:05:36
Speaker
So not to be confused with the famous Circleville pumpkin show, which is awesome, by the way. I don't want to upsell some fall festival in the middle of our Lauren legends, but I love the pumpkin show. It's famous in the nation, if not the world, because they just have all of these pumpkin celebrations and a parade and
00:05:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's great. But unrelated to that, there was a circle bill letter writer, which is very, very similar to the Watcher that we talked about in New Jersey. A little bit less focused on a house and more so one person sending just vulgar, violent messages and letters to people in the town. And I don't think they ever figured out who it was. There's also an abandoned park in Medina County called the Chippewa Lake Park.
Rogue's Hollow: From Crime to Legend
00:06:23
Speaker
And then near me alone, there's a lot of like little local legends. So like the Canton Palace Theater is a historic theater that has been restored over time. And I actually saw my first concert there.
00:06:36
Speaker
And it's allegedly haunted just because it's, you know, just a long standing institution and it's a historic building and there are just like little legends of like the organist goes and things that have happened in the building, which is really cool. And then there was this, my group of friends, they told me about this thing called
00:06:54
Speaker
this place called Rogue's Hollow, which we've actually wrote about on OnlyInYourState.com. It has some level of legitimacy. It's an abandoned town, which is now just a little historic site with a mill and just a path you can go on. Back in the day, it used to house a lot of criminals and gangsters and things like that. There's been a lot of
00:07:18
Speaker
you know, murdery kind of events that have happened there. And it has its own crybaby bridge, of course, as you do. And there's a spot nearby called the Devil's Triangle. And I think this is kind of dipping into like, oh, friends telling friends stories, let's go to the Devil's Triangle at
Daring Urban Legends: The Devil's Triangle
00:07:35
Speaker
midnight. But
00:07:36
Speaker
where people would dare each other to go to Rogue's Hollow at night and go across the Crybaby Bridge, go to the Devil's Triangle and all this stuff. So it reminds me very much of, what's the town of Pennsylvania that Silent Hill was based on? Centralia. So like the abandoned mining town with the fires burning underneath only without the fires, anyway,
Ohio's Cryptids: Melonheads and Bessie
00:08:03
Speaker
so. Yeah, that's-
00:08:05
Speaker
That was my sorry for the ramblings, but these are just some of the things that you can come across in Ohio. Was there anything that you discovered in research that you're like, wow, this is awesome. I want to talk about it or? Yeah, there was one, actually two stories that I was fascinated by. One of them was about the Melonheads in Kirtland, Ohio.
00:08:30
Speaker
Never heard of it. What? Awesome. Great. I was really, I was setting out to research and I was like, you know what? I really want to find some like very obscure things that, you know, maybe Sarah would appreciate rather than, cause of course like the Minerva monster and I think you guys have your own Loch Ness called Bessie. Is that right?
00:08:54
Speaker
I need to alphabetize all of our Loch Ness monsters in the United States because... Cessi. Cessi. Champion. Happy. Happy. I'm going to create a spreadsheet and throw that in the show notes. We can make a line of plushy Nessies for the United States. How adorable is that? Cute. Like the garbage pail kids, but Loch Ness monsters? Yeah. Cool. I love that.
00:09:18
Speaker
Um, so yeah, I'm going to talk about that a little later. And then also the only known witch trial in Ohio. Did you know about that? Such a fascinating story and I can't wait to dive in, but I would love for you to jump in on the first thing that you really want to talk about.
The Ridges: Haunted Asylum
00:09:34
Speaker
This is local Lauren legends, Ohio, Sarah, local resident expert.
00:09:42
Speaker
Well, you're overselling it. Okay. So the first thing, actually both things I'm going to talk about are, like I mentioned earlier, are more of just haunted spots. And the first being the ridges. So in Athens, Ohio, where you, Ohio State, or Ohio, sorry, Ohio university, it's a big, they're not the same, where that university is, is
00:10:09
Speaker
used to be a lunatic asylum. So it opened in 1874. And it was supposed to be treating specifically, just, you know, criminally and mentally insane patients back in the day, however, they documented them. And a lot of them were pushed to this place by the court system. So, I mean, I think this is like a common, a common history for all of these hospitals in this day and age, like the 1800s, early 1900s.
Ghost of Margaret Schilling
00:10:35
Speaker
They established these places in sanitariums knowing that they wanted to treat these people but they didn't have enough information and eventually it led to overcrowding and the conditions were just awful because as the number of patients diagnosed and put into the system over the years just kind of ballooned
00:10:53
Speaker
there's you know dropping quality of life and care not to mention during a certain time in history is whenever some really violent and invasive practices were starting to be used so electroshock therapy lobotomies including like a transorbital lobotomy which if you're not familiar they just basically go in through your eye with an ice pick and separate the corpus callosum and just like
00:11:19
Speaker
Yeah, just shove it around like, Oh, we did something. So that was like a lot of the history of the ghosts kind of go back to that, like poor conditions, overcrowding, terrible experiments, you know, trying to treat these people who were, I'm 100% certain just misdiagnosed, misunderstood, and we just didn't have the information at the time. Yeah. And one patient in particular,
00:11:42
Speaker
in particular that is said to haunt the, um, I think she specifically haunts the tuberculosis war, but I'm not a hundred percent sure is Margaret Schilling in December of, I think 1978, allegedly she was playing hide and seek with the nurses, but she was so good at it.
Athens: Haunted University and Witches' Point
00:12:02
Speaker
She was never found. So she disappeared. And as the story goes, like the entire staff was looking for her. She was found later.
00:12:11
Speaker
And when they find her, she had passed away, and her remains stained the floor of the room she was found in. And to this day, you can see her outline on this concrete floor. How much later was she found? I think over a month, several weeks.
00:12:30
Speaker
Yeah, so she was gone for so long and the staff couldn't find her, she had passed away and started to decompose. Wow. Right. So yeah, great care in these times, right? Oh boy. And so now Margaret Schilling is one of the ghosts.
00:12:49
Speaker
that haunt the ridges. And even beyond her ghost, there is a lot of just kind of like local lore that's surrounded, that surrounds the ridges because right now a big portion of the hospital has been converted into school buildings and art buildings.
00:13:05
Speaker
But there are still parts of it, at least in the late 90s, early aughts that were still kind of like cordoned off as, you know, we can't use these. So actually, my cousins went, my cousin went to Ohio University and they snuck into the abandoned tuberculosis ward.
00:13:23
Speaker
And we're taking pictures and take, and I, as we've said before, I'm not like an a hundred percent believer, but there were, there were orbs in the pictures. There were like children's wings with like painting, like paint peeling off the side. And it just looks like awful, which jealous by the way, I wish I would have gone there in that state. Um, so it's, you know, it's just kind of like a fascination for people who go to the college, who live in the town.
00:13:48
Speaker
And Athens in general, like I mentioned earlier, is just a haunted town with a lot of historic buildings and even parts of the university being haunted. And also, because there were so many people pushed through the system by the courts that they didn't have the money or the knowledge to have a proper burial once they died. So most of the graves are just unnamed or numbered. You don't know who's buried there.
00:14:12
Speaker
And a lot of the cemeteries, if you look at a map form a pentagram, I mean, you know, anything loosely can be a pentagram, but the cemeteries are formed in a pentagram and there's even one that has a circle of graves that people claim is like a witches meeting point in the cemetery. So for me, I think the biggest draw to the ridges in general is that they're just trying to like,
00:14:41
Speaker
paint over all of these horrific things that have happened in the hospital and all of these horrific deaths and experiments.
Haunted Ohio University Buildings
00:14:47
Speaker
And they're like, well, we, this is where we have class now and we're going to hang some art in the hallways. Hopefully it's fine. And we're not, you know, pissing anyone off. Oh, wow. Gosh. Yeah. That's terrifying. And it's beautiful too. Like the, the buildings are just like these gorgeous brick buildings. It looks like a castle, like, you know, but would you want to study there?
00:15:09
Speaker
like would you want to go and I know I'm asking the wrong person just like imagine having an evening class there and you know it's dark you have to walk home after that
00:15:25
Speaker
I think I would love it. I'm kicking young Sarah in the butt. Why didn't I ever know about this whenever I was graduating high school? If I was going to go to a college, why not go to an extremely haunted college? Of course, naturally, yes. Yeah, that's intense. Oddly enough, OU is also known as a party school, so there's this weird juxtaposition of, oh, you're
00:15:49
Speaker
There's supposedly like Native American burial grounds and all these like cemeteries and witches and hauntings, but also let's get wrecked. It's fine. Escapism. Well, I mean, so, okay. If you have these universities that are they trying to bury the history? Like, are they embracing it? Are they just kind of like, those were the times, sorry.
00:16:20
Speaker
You know, like, what's their follow up on that? So for the ridges, it kind of feels like the latter, like, well, it is what it is. We're not moving the cemeteries. These buildings are nice. How many? So I do think the Ohio State Reformatory leans into it a different way. And it is just primarily focused on, like, yes, things were awful here. And they're haunted. And they just heavily lean into that. Although there are ghost tours of the Ohio University and things like that. I don't feel like it's the same focus as some of these other places.
00:16:49
Speaker
Right. It's more just like tourism-based versus, yeah. Interesting.
The Melonheads Legend
00:16:57
Speaker
So why don't you tell me about the Melonheads question mark? Right. Yeah. So that was exactly the same sentence I said in my head. The Melonheads? What could this possibly be? And yeah, so Kirtland, Ohio. Do you know where that is? It's okay if you don't.
00:17:16
Speaker
Okay, cool. I do not. So there is this local lore about a group of children that they've been dubbed the Melonheads. And there are a couple of different stories about how they came to be. Basically, it all comes back to this doctor, Dr. Crow.
00:17:34
Speaker
and spelled a bunch of different ways, but Dr. Crow. Basically, Dr. Crow was said to be performing experiments, unusual experiments to say the least on children.
00:17:48
Speaker
Basically, their heads became very malformed. They were very large, hairless. Their accounts that these children were already suffering from a disease. But Dr. Crow apparently was injecting more fluid into their brains and exacerbating the issue. So yeah, as the legend goes, basically, one of them was that all the children killed Dr. Crow. They revolted, killed him, retreated into the forest.
00:18:18
Speaker
Right. I love a good revolt. Then they just went into the forest and legend says that they could still be seen in the forest, but only around Halloween.
00:18:33
Speaker
There's another legend that it sounds a little bit more far fetched that they feed on babies. We don't know about that, but yeah. But yeah, there's a lot of people that are fascinated by these children who grew up and now they just live in the forest and this mad scientist, that the house burned down, that they all lived in and apparently Dr. Crow burned to death.
00:18:59
Speaker
Uh, so yeah. Yeah. This like pack of wild children lives in the woods. I don't know where Kirtland is, but this is fast. I never heard of that. That's terrifying. I'm glad they killed the doctor. I hope they donate babies. Yeah. Right. There's another, another part of this legend is too. They were saying that, um, the government was responsible for doing experiments on the children. Oh God.
00:19:25
Speaker
Yeah. And then the kids were all sent to Kirtland to see Dr. Crow. So that's a whole other ballgame there. But yeah, so this one was pretty fascinating to me. The legend got very popular on the internet and a lot of websites.
00:19:48
Speaker
Because also like, it wants me, it wants me, I want to understand like, where does this legend come from? Were there kids with, you know, hydrocephalus and they just were unfortunate, you know, fortunate kids and then someone made up the story about this doctor or what? How did it evolve? Like, that is crazy.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah, apparently they were saying that it got very popular on websites like Creepy Cleveland and Dead Ohio, and users started offering their own versions of the story, but I think that's where it probably lost maybe some of its credibility because people were just adding their own spin on it, not sure. Oh, so I definitely drove through it last weekend.
00:20:37
Speaker
I'm like, that sounds kind of, yeah. Yep. Awesome. Yeah.
00:20:44
Speaker
I want to do like a haunted tour of Ohio, I think, or even beyond Ohio this year. After learning so much, I think it'd be great. Yeah. Okay. Agreed. All right. What's next on yours?
Ohio State Reformatory's Haunted History
00:20:54
Speaker
So the next on my list is the Ohio State Reformatory, which we've covered multiple times on onlyinyourstate.com. And I visited multiple times. So if you're not familiar with the Ohio State Reformatory, if you've ever seen
00:21:11
Speaker
the Shawshank Redemption or Air Force One. That is the big Cassie building in that movie. Like they filmed it at Shawshank or Shawshank at the Ohio State Reformatory. So if you're a movie buff, fun, you can have a tour and you can see like all the little spots that
00:21:26
Speaker
Andy Dufresne did his stuff. But additionally, it was an actual prison. So as the story goes, it was designed. It's beautiful. It looks like a castle. And originally, the goal of the prison was to, well, in its name, it was reformatory. It wanted to take the inmates, reform them, rehabilitate them, and release them. So I think it was built. Let me see.
00:21:55
Speaker
1896 took 10 years and basically at first it was successful. It was great. But then overcrowding, they were pushing too many inmates there. And instead of a reformatory, I think in the 1960s, it was transformed into basically a max prison. Like it's just full of people, violent crimes, violent offenders, and it was never intended to be that way. So because of its declining state,
00:22:24
Speaker
and all of the prisoners inside who were violent towards themselves and each other in the guards, it got to the point where it just unmanageable. So there are famous stories of certain parts of the prison. So like solitary confinement, there are specific stories that deal with certain cells down there. There's a shower where murders happened on the regular.
00:22:46
Speaker
Um, and it closed in 1990 and ever since then. So as far as I've been aware, it's just been this place that has a historic building that has been maintained and known to be extremely haunted. So there are, there's, so there's a haunted house every Halloween, which isn't that impressive. I've gone to, it's called blood prison. It's great, but whenever I'm inside, I'm like, no, I just want to go to the prison part. Don't give me these hauntings. I'm fine. You know, you can.
00:23:15
Speaker
go through and close your eyes. But what's better is being able to stay there overnight, which I've done a few times. So what they do is they basically welcome you into the prison or the reformatory at like 11 p.m. You have free reign until 4 a.m. You can stay. There's some people who like actually sleep overnight if they're helping clean the prison. But it's amazing because there are no lights. You have to do it by flashlight. There's no heat. And you can go basically anywhere.
00:23:44
Speaker
So the last time I went, you know, we went down to the showers, into the basement, into the solitary confinement, daring each other to like, you know, stay in solitary in a cell by yourself. Let's see who gets out first. There's a chapel. You can get up into the attic. So there's, I've been everywhere all over that prison and it is
00:24:07
Speaker
I went with people who brought temperature readers and the EMFs and reporters and things like that. They'll try and talk to ghosts and see what happens. For the most part, nothing does really.
00:24:23
Speaker
I know they've gotten some strange recordings from it. I've never experienced anything personally, but it is just a terrifying experience. So, you know, it's one of those things where I would highly encourage anyone who's the least bit interested to do the overnight. Like it's safe. There's in the guard room, it lights up so you can have pizza and coffee. You can just use the bathroom there, but everywhere else is just up to you. Good luck. Wow.
00:24:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's wonderful. So stepping in there for the first time, what's your overall vibe? Because you're saying you didn't experience any paranormal, but are you picking up on weird energy? It is cold, massive, and terrifying. There's peeling paint. The cell blocks are giant. And you can just get the vibe of it.
00:25:16
Speaker
a place with positive history. And everything was kind of just left as it was. There's just stuff everywhere. Books in the library or one of the libraries I went to, there were just like random books and piles of things that they left over over the years. Like I ran into one room
00:25:34
Speaker
in the showers and there was just like spare toilets, a bunch of them stacked up. I think there's one cell in there that I came across and they had a little inscription on it, but someone shot a music video there and the cell was like painted red and there was like gold everything inside. I'll have to hold on. I was just going to say, who could this possibly be? Do you want to take bets? Oh my gosh, if it's very well known, Nicki Minaj, Eminem,
00:26:04
Speaker
Machine Gun Kelly, Marilyn Manson, maybe. I'm trying to think of maybe like what the vibe would be. Lil Wayne. Oh, wow. Okay. Interesting. Okay. Never would have guessed that. And apparently, God Smack as well. Okay. I mean, that makes more sense. Yeah. To me. Wow. Oh, there's been a lot. Oh, okay. But I think Lil Wayne might have been the
00:26:35
Speaker
Red Room with gold accents? That checks out, I think. You know, that sounds about right. I will say, though, I know that it might not be your jam, but if you ever come to Ohio and you're near Mansfield, you absolutely have to go to the prison, even if it's not an overnight. It's just a fascinating place. Daytime, I could probably do. Just swing into the gift shop, get a shirt, and get out. I don't know. You used to have me at pizza and coffee.
00:27:07
Speaker
It really makes the experience whenever you're freezing, but you're like, Oh, well I got some, you know, when you get the coffee and the big bins, like the big brown bins, that's like, not necessarily anything that tastes like coffee. It's like, here you go. Here's some water that's slightly brown. It's okay. Oh man. I mean, yeah, I would check it out. I probably wouldn't do an overnight just cause, uh, gosh, I already don't sleep well as it is. This would just kind of make things worse, but do they have tours all year round or is it only,
00:27:37
Speaker
They do and they have historical tours and they also have haunted tours. So it's up to you. You could do a daytime tour or just walking around and you learn about the prison and you know, they do touch on.
00:27:49
Speaker
Basically, the creation of the prison, the various wardens, the high profile murders and attacks inside, and what really happened when it started to become this overcrowded max prison, which is just lots of bad.
00:28:08
Speaker
Right now it's being overseen by like a nonprofit and they make their money just by like charging admission as like a tourism place. And especially like during Halloween, I've had friends who go there and volunteer and clean, which I'm not sure I would do because, you know, asbestos and lead paint, but, um, you know, it's, it's helped to keep the, keep the reformatory in its state. So yeah, that's kind of cool that they offer that though. Yeah.
00:28:33
Speaker
I feel a little bit like I'm disappointing this week because it's not, it's not creepy or crazy. It's just real human history. That's terrifying. And that has left marks on society. I mean, sometimes that's the creepiest. Look, we had some really great cryptid content these past couple of episodes that we've done, which I feel like, you know, we're just going to continue to do for the rest of the season. But sometimes it's that real history. I think that can be the creepiest.
00:28:59
Speaker
Because there's evidence, it's factual. There are certain things that... There are tangible places that you can visit. We're talking about certain cryptids that you might not necessarily ever get a chance to be in a place to see, but you can actually go to these places you're talking about, which is great. You can make a whole road trip out of it and do a... I mean, I'm sure only in your state we have a haunted Ohio road trip.
00:29:27
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Drop it in the show notes. Yeah, definitely. Even if it's not a road trip, but just even going between Athens and Mansfield on the southern part of Ohio, that would be that would be enough. It's it's really fascinating.
Ohio's Unique Witch Trial
00:29:41
Speaker
And then what's your your last story? This one, I don't think we've really discussed witches on here yet in kind of a full this story. This was a blast just to read because this this is a
00:29:57
Speaker
We think of witch trials automatically. We think of Salem, 17th century, mass hysteria, people pointing fingers all over the place. This witch trial, which apparently people are saying was the only witch trial ever to occur in Ohio, and it was the early 19th century. It kind of has a happy-ish ending, so that's a good thing. All right, I'm ready.
00:30:25
Speaker
Basically what happened, the town of Bethel, 1805. You know where that is? No. You've heard of it? Maybe, no. I'm thinking of Mount Bethel, but it was very close to where I used to be, so anyway. Okay, so Bethel 1805, there was a family known as the Hilda Brands. They had a couple of daughters, and the daughters started behaving really weirdly throughout town.
00:30:51
Speaker
We say weird, it's not like locking yourself in a room and playing Fortnite all night. They were screaming in town randomly, becoming frantic over things that nobody else could see. It was all this wild stuff, but then lo and behold, somebody quoted a woman named Cindy Johnson, who works for the historical site, that they were unfit for their duties, which I don't know if that means they just started pretending to be crazy so they didn't have to milk a cow or what.
00:31:21
Speaker
So, and they're like, oh, his women got it. Right. And then it gets weirder. So the family, of course, we're like, what's the only answer? Exorcism, naturally.
00:31:33
Speaker
So they wanted to perform these rituals, try and get these evil spirits out of their daughters. The way they chose to go about that was have an exorcism. They had a nearby sack. I don't know if it was a potato sack or what, and it was next to them. The goal was to let the spirits release, trap it in a sack,
00:31:55
Speaker
Put it on the porch and cut it into a thousand pieces. That apparently would destroy the evil spirit. Love this already. Okay. Where are they getting this from? Like, do they? Right. Okay. Who knows? Okay. So, wow, lo and behold, gasp, it didn't work. So apparently they were still possessed, quote unquote. But the Hildebrand girls started pointing fingers at their neighbor, Nancy Evans.
00:32:24
Speaker
So from there, I guess they wanted to take the heat off of them and put it on poor Nancy. They accused her of being a witch. And everybody was focusing their attention now on Nancy. Nancy's a witch. And they're like, we have to do something because she's going to cast spells on us. So Nancy became the target. So back then, Ohio didn't have any laws about witches or witchcraft. I don't know if they do now. That might be worth checking out. This is how they decided to resolve this. I'm worried now.
00:32:54
Speaker
I would love to actually get some, maybe we'll drop it in the show notes. So basically the justice of the piece was like, look, there's only one way we could figure out if Nancy's really a witch. We need to build a giant scale. He gathered the townspeople, told everyone he was going to place on one side of the scale, a massive Bible. On the other side of the scale, Nancy.
00:33:19
Speaker
At least you didn't say a duck. I'm like, if you're going on your Python with this, I don't know what to do. Okay. A Bible makes sense. So he said if the Bible was heavier, then Nancy would be driven out of town and she could never return. However, Nancy was heavier, obviously. The neighbors were relieved at this logic because of course this explains everything.
00:33:43
Speaker
Everyone went back to their lives. Nobody was burned at the stake. But apparently, as history goes and the legend goes, they were saying that the justice of the peace knew that Nancy wasn't a witch. He knew that he had to do something to convince the townspeople. So, yeah, nobody died, but that was the one and only witch trial that occurred.
00:34:08
Speaker
just weighing Bibles. I mean, so how old were these girls? Was it just puberty? Like, I mean, they were older, but not like, yeah. Okay. Well, there you have it. It's official. If you are lighter than a Bible on a massive scale, you may be a witch. I just, the logic throughout that whole story, I was just, it had me at every turn and poor Nancy.
00:34:32
Speaker
No kidding. It's one of those things, once you accuse someone, you can't un-acuse someone, and then it's all about convincing people and the ties will turn. Humanities has always sucked. I think we're just kind of getting to that. Whether it's modern days or back whenever people were trying to get out. Right. Well, I think it's so fascinating that these two girls simply pointed a finger at their neighbor.
00:34:59
Speaker
And we're basically saying like, oh, we're cured, maybe the exorcism works, but now it's in her, you know, which is just, and that's kind of like, we do have a Massachusetts episode scheduled. So I am kind of excited to dive into these witch trials and, because it was as simple as pointing a finger and people would turn on you. That stresses me out. I don't, have you ever watched the, what is it, Salem? I don't know.
00:35:25
Speaker
There's a semi-recent show about that. Gosh, it was great, but it's the entire time I was watching, I'm just stressed out because the witches were just convincing other people. Gaslighting. People suck. Nice. The original OG gaslighting of witch trials, yes. I see that now. Okay, so let's jump back in. I want to hear about some more of yours.
00:35:49
Speaker
Those are the two places I mainly wanted to hit today. I mean, Ohio is great, and there's a lot of weird, strange things to do. Even outside of the haunted, there is a Christmas castle, like a half hour away from me. Year round, all Christmas has the national whatever. I'd never watch those movies. The Christmas movies with like- Oh, National Lampoon? Yes. It has stuff from those movies in it. Ooh, cool.
Ohio's Haunted Universities
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, Ohio is weird. That's really all I have. That's my takeaway, just as many other states are. But I will say that going to Athens University or
00:36:29
Speaker
or Athens or Ohio State University or the Ohio State Reformatory, you're just going to find endless stuff. And there's a lot of buildings on the campus of Ohio University that are allegedly haunted or on burial grounds. And they just have like just a mishmash of stories that are. That's cool. And so I know we mentioned this when we were talking with Heather of Small Town Monsters, but you are going to an event in Ohio.
Monster Fest in Canton
00:36:55
Speaker
Do you want to talk about that a little bit in case people in Ohio want to also go?
00:36:59
Speaker
Absolutely, so it's actually going to be they're going to premiere. It's early June, they're going to premiere a movie at the Canton Palace Theater, which I mentioned earlier, which is that historic also haunted theater, which is great. It's beautiful. They refurbished it. So they're going to release one of their Bigfoot movies. And I think that same week, there's going to be something called Monster Fest in downtown Canton.
00:37:20
Speaker
Basically, they're having all these researchers and people in the community come to celebrate the weird cryptid monsters. You can basically buy a ticket and see all these vendors and people who hunt for Bigfoot or look for UFOs or are illustrators and researchers and book writers. It's just going to be everything focused on monsters.
00:37:44
Speaker
That's actually going to be in early June and I'm going to make sure I attend so that way I can get some footage and photos and just like stories for us, maybe potential guests in the future because I think there's just a lot of really cool people we can talk to who dedicate their lives to just researching this kind of stuff.
00:38:01
Speaker
So, and if you're in the Ohio area, you can absolutely attend as well. Come say hi, you know, find me or maybe Heather if you watched our previous episodes. And yeah, it's just it's gonna be a lot of fun, especially if you like this kind of stuff. It's just, yeah, I'm actually excited to, I think head up maybe to like the
Teasing Future Episodes
00:38:22
Speaker
Northeast. I know we have Maine coming up.
00:38:25
Speaker
So I just feel like in this particular season, it's really those sleeper states for me that don't get a ton of recognition that have the best stories. Yeah. How about this for, for the bonus episode that when we cover Monster Fest, I'll also plan to give some extra stories from Ohio that we didn't have a chance to cover today. Like we're already what, like 40 minutes in, so I don't want to add to it, but I think we can sprinkle in some extra extra stuff.
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah, let's do it. I'm down. If you're up for an audio adventure, we will be exploring local lores and legends in the US on season two of Not Your Average Bucket List, available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. So make sure to like, subscribe, and join us.
00:39:26
Speaker
Only In Your State is an award-winning travel publisher that uncovers hidden gems and local favorites across the U.S. We have a presence in all 50 states with a passionate following of fellow travelers looking to get out and explore. Head on over to onlyinyourstate.com to find the best attractions in your backyard and beyond.