Central Ohio Legends & Lore

INTRODUCTION

According to legend…"

Oh, how I love to hear those words! It lets me know I’m getting ready to hear a mix of fact and fiction, rolled up into one amazing tale. But just what is real and what was created specifically to add a little spice to the story? That, gentle readers, is the question that has kept me going for over thirty years.

Most of you know me as Weird Willis or the Ghost Guy—monikers I accept and wear with pride. But at the core of what I do is an insatiable appetite to get to the truth behind the legends.

That obsession started at an early age. During a class trip to Tarrytown, New York, home of the infamous Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow, someone tried to convince me the headless guy really did exist and that his story was true. As evidence, they pointed to various locations mentioned in the book and even the tombstones of some of the characters.

Years later, when I came to the realization that Washington Irving simply borrowed the names and places in Tarrytown for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, I asked myself, OK, that legend isn’t true, but are there any that are? Decades later, I’m living in Ohio…and still asking myself that question.

One of the things I’ve come to love about Ohio and Ohioans in general is that they’re weird and proud of it. Buckeye legends and folklore tend to be a bit out there, too. What’s more, Ohioans seem to take a bit of fiendish glee in wrapping real-life people and locations together in a cloud of mystery, along with, to be honest, some bizarre stuff made up for no other reason than to make the tale a bit more interesting.

What you are often left with is something that is known to make more than a few traditional historians cringe. Ghosts? Monsters? Unidentified flying objects? Those things are not history.

Oh, but they are!

Ask anyone, and they will tell you that at some point in their life they went looking for a ghost, thought they saw a UFO or merely wondered if the legend they heard about a place was true. Guess what? Those people, even without knowing it, were immersing themselves in history. That’s because if you peel back the outer layer of legends and lore, you will find nuggets of real, verifiable and, in some cases, tangible history. They are all there. You just have to dig to find them.

Now, how did I divide up Ohio’s legends and lore in order to determine which ones were considered Central? Simple. I drew two equidistant horizontal lines through the state. Anything above the first line was considered Northern Ohio, and anything below the second line became Southern Ohio. That sweet spot between the two lines? Central Ohio.

But what of the other two areas, Northern and Southern Ohio? Time will tell, but for now, let’s say I have plenty of tales to fill both of those books, too.

OK, enough yakking, let’s dig in. I hope you enjoy pursuing all the strange and spooky tales included within these pages. I certainly enjoyed collecting them for your review. For they are the stuff legends are made of.

PART I

FAMOUS GHOST

STORIES

1

CAMP CHASE CONFEDERATE

CEMETERY

There is a long-standing legend surrounding Columbus’s Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery. Folks say the place is haunted. At first glance, the idea of a cemetery being haunted is nothing new: graveyards around the world are said to be haunted. What makes the ghost stories associated with Camp Chase unique? For starters, while many people have seen the ghost of a woman here, no one knows who she is. But the most intriguing aspect of the legend is the historical facts regarding how so many Confederate soldiers came to be buried in Ohio.

With the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, President Lincoln put out the call for men in Union states to rally and enlist in the army to help defeat the Confederates. Ohioans who enlisted were originally sent to train at Columbus’s Camp Jackson. But the number of Ohio men willing to take up arms was so great that Camp Jackson was quickly overcrowded. The following month, construction quickly began on another training facility near Camp Jackson. Within weeks, 160 houses for the trainees were built. Camp Chase officially opened on June 20, 1861. The facility was named after former Ohio governor Salmon P. Chase, who was also President Lincoln’s treasury secretary.

In addition to the houses and facilities for the Union men, a small area in the southeast corner of the camp was set aside for use as a prison facility. The stockade and buildings inside were designed to hold approximately 450 prisoners. Historians believe the creation of this stockade was a bit of an afterthought and that the primary function of the facility was to train men entering the Union army. That would soon change.

Camp Chase in its heyday, seen in a photograph taken by Manfred Marsden Griswold, allegedly through a hole in the fence. National Archives.

In February 1862, an estimated eight hundred Confederate prisoners were sent to Camp Chase, immediately doubling the number of prisoners the stockade was designed to hold. Thought was given that only enlisted men and noncommissioned officers should remain at Camp Chase and that all Confederate officers be sent to other facilities, including the Confederate Stockade on Lake Erie. This was attempted, but Camp Chase continued to swell as more and more captured Confederates arrived. By the following year, there were close to eight thousand men at Camp Chase. Incredibly, other estimates push that number closer to ten thousand and even as high as twenty-five thousand.

Regardless of the exact figure, it was clear that while Camp Chase may have been created for use as a Union training facility, by the height of the Civil War, it was functioning almost exclusively as a prisoner of war camp.

The overcrowding led to less than ideal living conditions. Aside from issues with clean water and food for all the men, some Confederate soldiers arrived at Camp Chase wounded and in need of medical attention. Many never recovered from their injuries. On top of that, the camp proved the perfect breeding ground for diseases, including smallpox, which swept through the camp in 1864, killing many of the prisoners.

Thus, the Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery was created. Originally, deceased Confederate soldiers were interred at Columbus’s city cemetery. But with so many bodies to transport and bury, it made more sense to simply bury them at Camp Chase. Unfortunately, during times of war, burying the dead is not something to which a lot of time and effort is given. Many of the Confederate soldiers were hastily buried without permanent grave markers. Some were even placed in unmarked graves.

The somewhat foreboding gates at the entrance to Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery. Author photo.

At the end of the Civil War, Camp Chase was abandoned. All of the buildings were dismantled by 1867, leaving only the cemetery. In 1879, the federal government purchased the site but did little to maintain the property or cemetery. It wasn’t until the 1890s that efforts, led by Union veteran William H. Knauss, were undertaken to begin cleaning up the cemetery and identifying those buried within.

How many Confederate soldiers are buried at Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery? It’s hard to say with any certainty, but today there is an official estimate of 2,122 grave sites inside Camp Chase. That number, however, does not account for those who may be buried in unmarked graves, which pushes the estimate of remains up to 2,168. Further confusing things is that neither number matches the inscription on a monument installed in the cemetery in 1897. The inscription reads: 2260 Confederate Soldiers of the war 1861–1865 buried in this enclosure.

The notion that there are unknown dead buried at Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery may be the reason why it is said to be haunted by a mysterious woman known only as the Lady in Gray. According to legend, she made her first appearance in the early 1900s.

The rows of graves at Camp Chase, between which the Lady in Gray is said to walk. Author photo.

This female ghost acquired her name because she is always seen wearing a gray dress that some describe as a Civil War–era traveling suit. Her ghost is usually spotted walking among Camp Chase’s tombstones but has been known to glide right through the closed cemetery gates. Wherever she’s seen, though, she is always sobbing. This led people to surmise that the ghost is mourning a loved one who is interred at the cemetery.

Benjamin Allen’s grave, where the Lady in Gray is often seen, sobbing. Author photo.

A clue as to who that loved one is may lie in the two graves that the woman’s ghost is often seen standing in front of, her head bowed. One of those graves is marked simply Unknown, while the other belongs to Benjamin F. Allen of the Tennessee Fiftieth Regiment. It has yet to be determined if this woman has any actual connection to the men buried in these graves or is merely paying her respects. Either way, she is clearly overcome with grief, as there have been times when she is not seen and yet her mournful cries can still be heard.

Of course, the Lady in Gray may simply be crying due to the fact that so many men who lost their lives here are in danger of being forgotten.

Ironically, her ghost may be doing her part to ensure that never happens. Today, while Camp Chase has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1973, many people show up with the hopes of possibly catching a glimpse of a ghost dressed in gray. While walking among the graves, they pay their respects to the fallen soldiers. So, perhaps the Lady in Gray is helping to keep the memories of these men alive, if only through her ghostly tears.

2

HAUNTED FORT AMANDA

Standing on this grassy bluff overlooking the Auglaize River, it’s hard to imagine that a bustling, crowded fort once stood here, designed to protect the state of Ohio while nourishing and recharging those whose duty it was to defend the Buckeye State. Today, this field may look empty, but it is filled with the echoes of history. According to legend, sometimes late at night, history can be seen rising up from the grave and wandering through this very field!

On June 1, 1812, President James Madison declared war on Great Britain, including its colonies in the Americas as well as Native American tribes that had become allies of the British. Since the British at the time had control of Canada, the Great Lakes area became a focal point of the war, as those bodies of water were all that separated British troops from U.S. troops.

In Ohio, the body of water in question was Lake Erie. U.S. troops in Ohio were being attacked by Native Americans who had sided with the British and were currently encamped throughout the Northwest Territory. Ohio was already nervous about the possibility of being overrun by British and/or Native American warriors. When General William Hull surrendered Fort Detroit to the British on August 16, 1812, most of what was then known as the Michigan Territory came under British control. American leaders felt it was only a matter of time before the British pushed their way into Ohio. Something had to be done, and it had to be done fast.

The decision was made to create a series of forts running up through Ohio toward Lake Erie. These forts could not only possibly protect Ohio from an invasion but also provide supplies for U.S. troops heading up to Lake Erie.

In the fall of 1812, General William Harrison gave the order to construct what would become Fort Amanda. He gave that order to Kentucky troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Pogue. Wasting no time, Pogue and his men constructed a 160-foot-long stockade. At each of the four corners of the stockade, they erected a two-story blockhouse. Once completed, Pogue named it Fort Amanda, after his daughter, Hannah Amanda Pogue. Fellow Kentuckian Captain Thompson Ward and his company of men were the first to be