by Laura Jackson Roberts, Christina Fisanick, and Seán Duffy with research by Erin Rothenbuehler
Introduction: History is Ghostful
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…
Ghosts of Egypt Valley
Egypt Valley Wildlife Area sits off I-70 just past Morristown, Ohio. The 14,300 acres of reclaimed strip mine land near Piedmont Lake, once gray and barren, is now forested, dotted with stocked ponds and streams. It provides a home for a variety of wildlife and, as public land, offers hunting, fishing, and hiking opportunities. Egypt Valley is also home to Salem Cemetery, a quiet place where the graves of locals gone two centuries slowly crumble away.
One of those graves belongs to Louiza Catherine Fox, who died in 1869 at the age of 13. Louiza lived with her family on a small farm near Sewellsville, Ohio. She worked nearby, as a servant for the family of Alex Hunter, the owner of a local coal mine. Though she was young, Louiza was courted by 22-year-old Thomas Carr, of Sugar Hill, West Virginia. After fighting in the Civil war, Carr got a job in Hunter’s mine and took interest in Louiza, whose parents initially approved of their engagement. However, the young couple’s age difference didn’t sit well, and when Carr’s past history of violence and incarceration came to light, Louiza’s parents and her employer objected, and the wedding was called off.
Carr didn’t take it well. One day shortly thereafter, he approached Louiza and her brother, Willie, as they walked home. He told Willie he wanted to talk to Louiza in private, and when her brother left, Carr kissed her, pulled out a razor, and slashed her throat. As she bled to death, he stabbed her 14 more times. From a distance, Willie witnessed the murder and ran to tell his parents.
Carr hid in a coal bunker where he attempted suicide by slashing his own throat. When that failed, he shot himself, but survived his injuries. The next morning, he was captured by a posse of angry citizens who placed him under arrest. Carr was imprisoned, tried, and found guilty. At the time, he claimed to have murdered 14 others, but this was never substantiated. He was the first man in Belmont County to be legally hanged—on the courthouse steps, in fact—and it was not a quick death.
You’ll find Louiza’s grave in Salem Cemetery, and a memorial plaque on the site of her murder on Starkey Road. A young girl believed to be Louiza’s ghost has been seen crying at her grave and at the sight of her murder. And though he was buried in St. Clairsville, witnesses also claim to have seen Carr’s ghost wandering the roads of Egypt Valley.
Thomas Carr’s bloody reach may have extended into Wheeling. One of his other alleged victims, Aloys Ulrich, supposedly haunts Wheeling’s Tunnel Green at the site where Carr claimed he and Joseph Eisele (alias John Shaffer) hacked Ulrich to death with a hatchet. However, Carr’s participation in the event was never verified, and there remain inconsistencies in his account.
Louiza Fox and Thomas Carr aren’t the only ghostly residents of Egypt Valley. Tales recall the surface mining days, when a truck driver reportedly fell asleep at the wheel on a back road. Some stories say he was killed when his vehicle overturned, others claim he lived, but they all recall that his arm was severed in the crash. The arm is said to crawl around the cemetery on its fingertips, tapping on gravestones.
And if that’s not horrifying enough, a pack of Hell Hounds supposedly roams the hills at night.
Finally, what paranormal report would be complete without a Bigfoot sighting? A witness spotted one in 1984. Her daughter had a similar sighting years later. Both described the creature as 6’2” (rather short for a Squatch) with long, hairy arms. Fortunately for both women, the Egypt Valley Sasquatch was a slow runner and rather clumsy.
Both escaped its hirsute clutches.
The Ghosts of Towngate
Whether it is the energy of the crowd or the incredible imaginations of the actors, theaters across the world are well known sites for hauntings. It seems especially true for Wheeling’s own Towngate Theatre. Located at 2118 Market Street, Towngate (owned and operated by Oglebay Institute since 1970) was originally a German Lutheran church. Built in 1850, the church withstood many major events in its time, including Wheeling’s first publicly displayed Christmas tree in 1856 and the formation of the state of West Virginia in 1863.
On May 21, 1862 a tornado came through the Centre Market area of Wheeling, blowing down the steeple and partially unroofing St. John’s Episcopal Church and demolishing the upper decks of the steamboat Mariner docked at Eoff’s landing, filled with union troops and supplies. Thankfully, no one was injured in those incidents.
Unfortunately, the Zion Lutheran Church was the site of tragedy. That afternoon at 2 pm when the tornado stormed through the area, the school rooms in church were filled with children. Due to its unstable architecture, the roof fell in, the north and south walls were damaged, and the upper floor collapsed into the basement under the weight of heavy timber trusses. Three children died and ten were injured.
The church was rebuilt, and the congregation remained there for more than a hundred years. Based on the stories told by Towngate regulars, it seems that the children might have as well. Tim Thompson, director of performing arts with the Oglebay Institute and Towngate Theatre, recounts a story told by the late playwright and actor, Tom Stobart. One Saturday afternoon in the late 1970s, an acting teacher at Towngate went around the theatre and turned off every single light after her classes ended. She locked up and headed to her car. Just as she was ready to pull out onto to Market Street, “she saw two children looking out of the driveway door window. She stopped her car and went back inside the theatre. No children could be found.”
According to an October 27, 1979 article in The Intelligencer, some ghosts must retain their native languages after death. In an hilarious account that was reported with dead seriousness, two actors were painting the theater one evening when they heard noises coming from the basement. Given that the building was once occupied by a German Lutheran congregation (and that services were given in the German language until the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941), one of the actors “decided to address the ghost in German.” The ghost was reported to have groaned. When the actor asked it what condition it was in, the ghost is said to have replied “decayed” in German. Needless to say, the actors ran out of the theatre and refused to resume their painting until daylight hours.
Of course, many regular Towngate performers can tell you about what Thompson refers to as “THE Towngate ghost.” Peter Whitaker was an actor at Towngate when OI leased the Zion Lutheran Church in 1969 and later purchased it in 1970. Although Thompson never met him, Stobart said that Whitaker was “a genius and incredibly gifted actor. He and founder/artistic director Hal O’Leary got along beautifully. Unfortunately, he had a bad heart from birth, and he passed away in 1971.”
According to Thompson, Stodard told him that “Peter remained at Towngate as the ghost. The story goes that the technical director at the time was in the catwalk focusing the lights that are above the audience—a very tight space. He was trying to get an even wash of light across the entire stage. The only set piece on stage was an ornate chair—Peter’s favorite. The phone started ringing. The technical director went down a ladder to the phone that did not have a view of the stage. When he answered it, there was no one there. He hung up the phone and returned to the lights only to find that all 12 lights were now focused on Peter’s favorite chair.”
Although we often think of ghosts as being malevolent specters that drift through the world scaring the living, Peter Whitaker’s ghost is not of that sort. Thompson reports, “Anyone who has acted or taken classes at the Towngate knows of Peter, the ghost of Towngate. He is friendly, loves the theatre, and to my knowledge, has never scared anyone.”
The Rothermund Ghost
by Seán Duffy
Martins Ferry, Ohio. Thursday, January 23, 1890. 12:03 a.m.
Sarah Ribold screamed.
She threw off her bed sheets and ran to her infant son’s room, scooping up the baby in his bedding, and clutching the bundle tightly to her chest. She howled, steeling herself to dart past the dead man’s room, its heavy door now somehow creaking open despite having been bolted shut from the outside. The hunched black shadow of an old man emerged as she flew by, creeping along the wall behind her, growing impossibly taller as it moved.
Sarah screamed again, nearly falling as she bounded in terror down the well-worn wooden steps, slick as ice to her stocking feet, to the front door of the old brick house. As she fumbled with the lock with her trembling free hand, she glanced repeatedly over her shoulder to see if she’d been followed. A green vapor cascaded down the stairway, pushing a gangrenous stench into Sarah’s flared nostrils just as an earsplitting guttural groan caused her to nearly leap out of her skin.
Finally managing to slide the bolt free, she threw the door open and ran headlong down the front steps in utter panic, tripping over the sidewalk and falling awkwardly on her backside in the middle of Monroe Street. She struggled to her feet, clutched the now wailing infant more tightly to her breast, and sprinted north on Second Street, running as fast as she could through the cold, wet air in her thin night gown toward the home of her friend Pearl Whitlash, who lived a full block away.
Between gasps, Sarah continued to scream maniacally, hoping to awaken the entire town of Martins Ferry to save her son from the icy talons of the dreadful specter she was certain was chasing her down the rain-slick cobblestone street. The shouts of neighbors and barking dogs emboldened her, stirring hope that if she screamed loudly enough, her husband Harry, a stone mason working nights on the Union Bridge, might also somehow hear and rush to her rescue.
Arriving at last at the Whitlash house, Sarah stumbled painfully up the stone steps and pounded on the front door as the baby continued to wail. Her legs and feet throbbing, she slid to the floor, panting and cradling her son, peering back at the poorly lit street, eyes darting, scanning the moonlit midnight fog for the dread, hunched black shadow. After what seemed like an eternity, the door flew open and there stood an exasperated John Whitlash, burly glass worker, an iron skillet in one hand, a lamp in the other. “Who goes there?” he growled menacingly, the lamplight dancing on his confused visage. Seeing her friend in a paroxysm of sobbing on the ground, Pearl Whitlash gasped, scrambled from behind her husband and helped Sarah and her baby into the sanctuary of the warm house.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The story above really happened, at least according to newspaper reports citing numerous eyewitnesses. Mrs. Ribold (who may or may not have been named Sarah), was said to have been “white as a sheet,” unable to speak from fear, her entire body trembling uncontrollably. Dr. W. B. Shuttleworth was called to the scene, diagnosing her condition as “precarious,” and concluding that “this experience would have killed nine women out of ten.”
But what could have so terrified Mrs. Ribold that it nearly killed her? What exactly was the nearly fatal “experience” to which the doctor referred?
It all started in the large, two story brick house owned by German (Prussian) immigrants Augustus Rothermund and Hannah (Spect) Rothermund at the corner of Second and Monroe Streets in Martins Ferry, Ohio. Mrs. Rothermund died, somewhat strangely, in June 1889. A “large, healthy woman” who went to bed seemingly in good health, died of heart failure in her sleep. Her daughter, who was in the bed next to her, heard her mother groaning before her heart stopped (an interesting detail given the experiences of Mrs. Morgan – see below). Hannah’s husband, August (Civil War veteran, successful building contractor, and general store owner), followed her in death just a couple of months later, in August. Indeed, August died of June grief in August. The couple are buried at Riverview Cemetery.
And it was after August’s death that “all sorts of peculiar demonstrations” started happening at the house.
After the death of their parents, two of the Rothermund’s sons (there were six children), Lewis and William, moved into the house, living with their families on the upper and lower floors, respectively. Several weeks after they had settled in, the “haunting” started, as Lewis’s wife saw a water pitcher “dance” in its bowl. Residents saw and heard the ghost, thought to be the frustrated spirit of August Rothermund, walking around the house. These “frequent visitations” got so bad that Lewis Rothermund and family finally moved out, selling the upstairs of the house to one John Morgan, “a sheet-roller at the Ætna mill who was not afraid of all the ghosts in the world.” [Notably, Lewis Rothermund himself dismissed the whole affair as a relic of the days of darkness, ignorance and witchcraft.”]
But the ghost of August Rothermund soon went to work on Morgan’s wife and children, terrifying them at night while John was at work. Night after night, the covers were yanked off of Mrs. Morgan while she slept. She and the children were awakened by “hideous groans” (an interesting detail considering Mrs. Rothermund’s final sounds – see above). The organ would play music even though no one was in the parlor, accompanied by the possessed water pitcher, which continued its ominous “dance.” Window shutters and locked doors flew open seemingly on their own, while disembodied footsteps regularly echoed throughout the house. Like the Lewis Rothermunds before them, the Morgan family beat a hasty, but entirely understandable retreat.
Next up, the Ribolds.
Soon after the stone mason and his young family moved in, the “thrilling experiences” and “spiritual demonstrations” resumed with a vengeance. Mrs. Ribold, seemingly the primary target of the ghost’s antics, was reportedly “half crazed with fright nearly all the time,” such that Pearl Whitlash was brought to live in the house and take care of her. Pearl corroborated Mrs. Ribold’s stories, herself witnessing the ghoul’s “shadow” on the wall. She also believed the ghost tried to speak to her. Even the stone mason was afraid to sleep in the house in darkness, keeping “lights burning every night.” Mr. Ribold apparently had a three-year-old daughter named Ella, a child from another marriage, who chillingly informed her step mother, “Mamma, buggee out ere,” after which she refused to leave the room. It is not clear where the toddler was during Mrs. Ribold’s midnight flight recounted (with some literary embellishments) above, which was triggered when she witnessed the locked door to a room — from which strange noises frequently emanated and where old man August’s effects were stored — inexplicably fly open. The Ribold family did not return to the house after the incident.
The sensational haunted house story caused quite a stir in Martins Ferry, prompting people of “nervous temperament” to hear strange noises in their own homes. Crowds gathered to watch the Rothermund house from afar. One woman claimed to see the slats on a second floor window open so that the ghost could peer out. The Pittsburg Dispatch newspaper picked up the story, claiming Mrs. Ribold was in “critical condition” after her run and that a group of neighborhood men were planning to lie in wait to capture the ghost. Harry Ribold bet one of them five dollars that he would be too afraid to stay in the upstairs of the house for even one night. The result of the wager is lost to time.
It turns out that August Rothermund owed a lot of money to a lot of people at the time of his death. Perhaps that accounts for the restlessness and general grumpiness of his spirit. In any event, the Rothermund property was sold at sheriff’s sale in December, 1892. It was later razed to make way for Route 7. It is not known if any of the thousands of drivers to pass by the site in the ensuing years have ever spotted the hunched apparition of an old man.
Sources
- Caldwell, J.A. (ed.). History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio: And Incidentally Historical Collections pertaining to border warfare and the early settlement of the adjacent portion of the Ohio Valley. Historical Publishing Company, Wheeling, WV. 1880.
- FindaGrave.com
- McKelvey, A.T. (ed.). Centennial History of Belmont County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens. Biographical Publishing Company. Chicago. 1903.
- New York Times, May 22, 1862.
- Pittsburg Dispatch, January 28, 1890.
- Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, January 27, 1890, January 29, 1890.
- Wheeling Intelligencer, various dates.
- Wheeling Register, various dates.
We loved researching and writing this post. Tell us about your supernatural experiences in the Ohio Valley!
everything you hear about egypt valley is true. from the handprints on the cars, to the eyes in the trees. nothing has been right in my life ever since i left that place. never go there. never.
I grow up in sewellsville ohio seen an heard thing walked the nouth road at night heard screaming people talking haven’t been back for 40yrs