Betsy Snow White Bibliophile

Tag: Ghosts

  • Cemetery Ghost Tour with GGG

    Cemetery Ghost Tour with GGG

    Several weeks ago Seth, Myself and the ladies from Ghosts, Girls, Ghouls Jenny and Rebecca jumped in my car and headed off to Greenlawn Cemetery in Columbus to attend the “Night at Greenlawn Cemetery” ghost tour hosted by Bucky of Columbus Ghost Tours. As we arrived we pulled into a queue that then drove slowly through the cemetery stopping on a small lane between grave stones. We left our cars and found ourselves in front of the Lazarus Crypt to begin our night. Bucky came dressed in a coat and tails to set the mood for our walking tour of the Cemetery.

    He shared stories of suicide, death by misfortune, murder, grave robbing and much more as we wandered among the headstones of the 360 acre Cemetery. Some famous names appeared in the tales such as James Thurber the famous humorist writer who detailed his own brush with the paranormal in his story “The Night the Ghost Got In.” I will not spoil any of the amazing stories, but instead say it is an amazing tour and Bucky wonderfully lays out tales of the mystical, maniacal and macabre with humor and the panache of a natural born storyteller. When he reveals he is working on a book regarding some of the topics he covers it makes absolute sense.

    The cemetery itself is a registered arboretum and home to many different kinds of wildlife. Dusk set in we could watch bats swoop overhead to eat the mosquitos that were swarming around us on the humid Ohio summer night. As we wandered the night got darker and darker until every small thing seemed sinister. At one point what I believe was a skunk (I did not investigate) gave me a minor scare as it moved through the black of the night. It is truly disconcerting to hear a stick break behind you in a dark cemetery.

    If you are in the Central Ohio area, or are planning a visit, you cannot go wrong with one of the tours led by Columbus Ghost Tours. They offer a variety of tours as well as this one, including a tour of haunted bars where you get to drink and hear ghost stories which is on my list of things to do as well. You can follow them on Instagram at @boozeboos for more information and details.

  • A Haunting…or not

    This past weekend we went to stay in a cabin in Hocking Hills to celebrate my brother-in-law’s fortieth birthday. From the outside it looked just like a normal two-story house, but inside it had an amazing spiral staircase leading to the upper floor and beautiful wood beams over the kitchen. Outside on the property there was a frog pond, an old smoke house that was blocked off and an old well up close to the road. There was also a family cemetery further back on the property, which we would explore later in the day.

    My nieces, nephew and mother and father-in-law arrived a couple hours after Seth and I. I had already explored a bit and found a cicada shell and a pretty yellow maple leaf, so when the kids arrived I showed them the spots we had explored so far. Spotting the well the girls wanted to investigate so we wandered over and looked in. I jokingly shouted hello into the shaft and a head appeared in the space below as if peaking out to say hello.

    I jumped back so fast. And the girls looked at me with wide eyes. I asked if it looked like someone was in there to them too and they nodded. We sped walked back into the cabin and told everyone that we had absolutely been freaked out by what appeared to be a face in the well.

    My sister-in-law said that we could all go out in a bit and investigate since it had obviously freaked me out. And I was freaked out. Perhaps I have watched too many horror movies and read too many scary stories, but I was legitimately scared of that well.

    Later, Seth, my sister-in-law, nieces, and my father-in-law set out to hike up to the cemetery and before we left they investigated the well. My lovely scientific husband worked out that the well had water so still that the reflections went weird. It was our own faces we had seen in the well. I was the well witch. I am the well witch. 👻

    The rest of the weekend was relaxing, other than the fact that I have been suffering from poison sumac for over a week and it somehow just keeps getting worse. It started as a tiny patch on my right arm, and now it is all over my arm, on my stomach, a little on my left arm and a little on my knee. It is driving me insane and just keeps spreading. I am going to call my doctor tomorrow to see if I should go in to get it checked out. It itches, but it also hurts! The well witch is displeased.

  • I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts…

    The paranormal has always held a fascination for me. I was always the weird girl who would check out books on hauntings, cryptozoology, witches, and anything else a curious seven year old could get her hands on. I already believed in ghosts because I had lived in a haunted house.

    At one point we, my mother and I, lived with my Grandparents in a nice 50s style ranch home in Heath, Ohio. It was a typical three bedroom one bath house with basement rec room. There were a couple of things that happened in that house. Sometimes late at night a man made of static would come out of my closet and walk toward me across the room. I would cover my face with my blanket, but then I could still feel him staring with his face inches from my covered face. That seriously creeped me out, and it should be said that I was afraid of the dark so there was always a nightlight on in my room, so all of this happened by soft light and not in the dark.

    The other thing that happened in that house was that sometimes I would hear an adult (my mother or a grandparent) calling for me, but when I went to them they would say they hadn’t called. Then I knew that my friends were calling me from the basement. The people in the basement were white and they would peek around the corner when someone was coming to see if it was me. They were smaller than the static person, but still had no real features just a basic human form in white. They would play with me in the basement. I remember that, but I cannot remember what I played with them.

    So…by the time seven year old me was checking out all the paranormal books from the school library I was pretty old hat with ghosts.

    Many years later when talking about that house my mom revealed to me that the couple who had lived in the house before us the husband had been killed in an accident at a local factory. The wife went crazy with grief and had painted nearly the entire interior of the house black. So that when grandma and grandpa moved in they had to work super hard to cover it all with white paint. I feel like some of mg experience in that house was just the remnants of the wife’s grief. I wonder if people still experience things there.

    I still believe in ghosts, and I am a witch. I feel like there are still many things in this world that have yet yo be explained and I am open to the possibilities.

    Do you believe in ghosts? Have you ever had a ghost encounter?

  • The Ghost in the Hall (Who may or may not watch you pee)

    I went to a pool party at a friends house yesterday, and it was the first time I had been to her home. A couple of us were standing around laughing and chatting and waiting for everyone to arrive when the woman who’s house it is, Robin, says, “Oh, I don’t know if you are sensistive to it, but this house is haunted.” Robin tells us that they have named the ghost carl, and that he appears to be wearing a trenchcoat and a fedora like Dick Tracy or a noir detective. Her son has seen him, and another friend of hers after using the bathroom came out and told her that it was just polite to warn guests that a ghost might be watching them pee. Robin said she laughed when her friend said this and gave the warning from then on. Her grandson can also see the ghost and will sometimes not want to go into the bathroom because Carl is in there. I peed a couple of times, but did not experience the ghostly peeping tom, possibly because we were drinking quite a bit.

    This brought up the question of whether we believe in ghosts. I am a believer in ghosts in a couple of different ways. One I believe that sometimes what happened in a location was so horrifying that it leaves an imprint of the high emotion that happened there ie: hospitals, asylums, prisons and crime scenes. I also in intelligent haunting, where a ghost has retained some piece of it’s personality and nature that can be communicated to the living. I do not pretend to know how that works, but I have experienced “ghosts” that were able to communicate.

    When I was a little girl we lived in this house in Heath, Ohio. It was a cute little ranch in a nice area, but I always had odd things happen to me. At night if the closet door was left open a “person” who looked like they were made of TV static would walk out of the closet and come to my bed. I would pull my cover over my head, and if I looked out the face would be right above my face just inches away. In this same house there were the white people in the basement who would call my name in the voice of my mom or grandma, and if they were not at home or hadn’t called me then I knew I should go play in the basement. When I would look down the stairs I would see three or four white faces peeking around the corner of the stairs at me.

    Many, many years later my mom would tall me that the previous owner of the house died tragically in an industrial accident. After his death his widow went insane in her grief and painted all of the walls and cabinets in the house black. When my grandparents moved in they had to paint everything back to white, which apparently wasn’t easy. I feel like a lot of the crazy things I experienced there were the manifestation of the widow’s grief and rage.

    I have been listening to a really fun paranormal podcast Ghosted with Roz Drezfalez where Roz, an LA based drag queen, brings on guests to tell their ghost stories and strange run-ins with the paranormal. Stand out episodes are Kyle Ayers, Selene Luna, David Oman, Rain Phoenix and Casandra Peterson (Elvira). Roz has his own fun and interesting tales and honestly the show is just delightful.

    I have not seen or heard a ghost since becoming an adult, but I can sometimes feel them. I honestly wish I had retained some of the sensitivity I had as a child. Can you see, hear, sense, smell or taste (Yep it is a thing) ghosts? Do you believe? Do you have a good ghost story?