As we collectively mourn the recent passing of Gordon Lightfoot, it calls to mind the connection between the singer-songwriter’s most famous ballad and Wheeling’s most celebrated park. Read More
by Laura Jackson Roberts, Christina Fisanick, and Seán Duffy with research by Erin Rothenbuehler
The Ohio Valley is haunted. That’s an undeniable fact.
Like any place on the planet with a past chock full of human triumph and folly, greed and generosity, good and evil – the Ohio Valley is haunted by the ghosts of its own, by turns, bloody, joyful, corrupt, tragic, and hilarious lived human experience – its rich, much celebrated, sometimes regretted, and often downright scary, history.
“Real” ghosts? Ghouls? Spirits? Specters? Poltergeists? Phantoms? Yeah, those too…
Maybe. Perhaps. Kind of…
So, how about a trilogy of the latter for Halloween fun? Fact or fiction? History or lore? You be the judges. But be warned: these reasonably true tales of terror are not for the faint of heart.
Turn on some lights, and read on…
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As the Industrial Revolution roared across the United States, entire towns were built for the sole purpose of housing mill workers and their families. Like rural coal patch towns, mill towns were company towns, that is, owned lock, stock, and barrel by the mill. Workers lived, labored, played, and prayed in company-owned buildings on company-owned land. And when the mills closed, the buildings were often razed and the land was left fallow or sold to the highest bidder.
The village of Power was a mill town that sat along the Ohio River in Brooke County, West Virginia. It was formed in 1917 to house workers of the Windsor Power Plant, which would eventually provide electricity for the northern panhandle, western Pennsylvania, and as far west as Canton, Ohio. Read More
