Moaning Monks and Other Stupid Ghosts

 Looking for ghosts in odd places is one of my favorite pass times. This is even more fun when I am traveling. Before I go anyplace, I do a quick internet search to see what places in the area I am going are haunted. Then I do more research to try to confirm that they are haunted. While travelling to Michigan and Ohio, I noted that according to several internet sites The Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky, Michigan is haunted. This was curious to me. This is what Shadowlands Haunted Places says:



"At night if you are not in your room at midnight someone comes on the loudspeaker and says LOCKDOWN and the doors and the lights turn off and the TVs shutoff and then the elevators come and monastery figures come out and spikes come out of the wall and ceiling and the ceiling caves in and then its all gone in the morning."

I found a carbon copy of this statement about Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky, Michigan on several other paranormal sites, but I didn’t find any real information. Several things bothered me about this story. First the story itself seems more than a little unbelievable to me. Surely if someplace this haunted existed, it would be featured on every paranormal television show in existence. Secondly, after I explored the small town of Sandusky, Michigan I found there was nothing resembling a Great Wolf Lodge there. There is a Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky, Ohio. It was once Bear Lodge before it was bought out by the Great Wolf Lodge chain of resorts. I decided to focus my study on the Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky, Ohio.

I travelled to the Great Wolf Lodge in Cincinnati, Ohio as Sandusky was too far out for me to visit. I asked staff about the haunting in Sandusky. They laughed or gave me that I’m too polite to laugh blank stare that you get when you ask a ridiculous question. I also phoned Sandusky and no one there acknowledged any kind of haunting. After exploring a couple of the resorts in the Great Wolf Lodge chain, I have to say that this is a least likely place to be haunting. They all look pretty much the same so the photos I took in Cincinnati might as well be Sandusky or the resort I visited in Charlotte or Traverse City. They are packed with screaming children until 11pm when the magi quest and arcade close down. After this, the grownups sneak out quietly looking for the bar. I got a mudslide. If anything like described above ever happened at a Great Wolf Lodge, the reports would be everywhere. All this to say, I think that the story above is a bunch of crap. This isn’t the first load of crap internet ghost story I’ve found, but it is the most silly. What is the moral of this story? Just because someone has posted a ghost story on the internet doesn’t make it true. Although I love a good ghost story, some ghost stories are utter nonsense.



 

The Ohio State Reformatory

With Halloween behind me this week,  I'll be going on a unique trip to The Ohio State Reformatory.  I will join a group of people going on The Shawshank Trail and visiting many of the locations from one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption.   For me, The Ohio State Reformatory will be the highlight of my journey.  This century old Gothic structure houses a long history filled with sorrow.  I visited their website and this is the little bit of history I was able to gather from the site.

"The cornerstone laid on November 4, 1886 evolved into this magnificent Chateauesque structure. Cleveland architect Levi T. Scofield designed the Ohio State Reformatory using a combination of three architectural styles; Victorian Gothic, Richardsonian Romanesque and Queen Anne. This was done to encourage inmates back to a "rebirth" of their spiritual lives. The architecture itself inspired them to turn away from their sinful lifestyle, and toward repentance. This grand structure is comprised of more than 250,000 square feet and houses the world's largest free-standing steel cell block.  The Reformatory doors were opened to its first 150 young offenders in September 1896. After housing over 155,000 men in its lifetime, the doors to the prison closed December 31, 1990."

Since the closing of this beautiful building, stories of ghosts and hauntings have proliferated.   The administration wing is believed to be haunted by the ghosts of Helen and Warden Glattke.   Helen was Warden Glattke's wife and it is believed that she accidentally shot herself in the chest  in the administration wing.   Darker stories about her death say that Helen was shot by Glattke and he got away with it.   He died ten years later in the same building.   Regardless of whether or not Helen's death was accidental,  reports of Helen and her husband's ghosts have filled this portion of the prison.  Helen has been seen by visitors in her pink bathrobe and the scent of her perfume is said to linger in the corners and come with a cold breeze.

Other ghosts fill the old reformatory as well.  Helen and Warden Glattke are not alone.  The chapel is said to be one of the most haunted portions of the reformatory.  The chapel is believed to have once been an execution rooms and the ghosts of those who died in this now holy place have built up like dust in an old attic. Visitors have seen many spirits wandering this lonely room and photographs are filled with orbs and specters.  

The entire reformatory is filled with ghost stories.   My hope is, that after I visit the prison,  I will be able to write posts about each section of the prison and the hauntings in these portions.   I hope I can learn more about each area's tragic history and maybe even feel a whisper of the things that haunt the reformatory.  I'll have more to do in Mansfield, Ohio and more to write about, so I'm hoping this will be an eventful week filled with stories and pictures from the The Shawshank Trail.