Cuyahoga River Fire of 1969

CLEVELAND • OHIO

On June 22, 1969, oil-soaked debris floating on Cleveland's Cuyahoga River caught fire beneath railroad bridges in the industrial Flats. The blaze was extinguished quickly and caused comparatively little damage, yet it became one of...

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Donald Harvey Angel of Death Serial Killer and Toledo Prison Murder

CINCINNATI|TOLEDO • OHIO

Donald Harvey was one of the most prolific convicted serial killers in American history. Working primarily as a hospital orderly and nurse’s aide in Kentucky and Ohio, he used access to seriously ill patients to...

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Gore Orphanage / Light of Hope

VERMILION • OHIO

Gore Orphanage is one of northern Ohio's most durable ghost stories: children supposedly died when an orphanage burned, and their voices and apparitions are said to remain along a lonely Lorain County road. Historical research...

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Great Serpent Mound Archaeology, Myth and Mystery

PEEBLES • OHIO

Serpent Mound is a 1,348-foot-long prehistoric effigy mound in Adams County shaped like an enormous serpent with an oval feature at its head. It is one of Ohio's most recognizable ancient earthworks—and one whose date,...

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Johnson’s Island Civil War Prison

MARBLEHEAD • OHIO

Johnson’s Island in Sandusky Bay was the site of a purpose-built Union prisoner-of-war depot that operated from April 1862 to September 1865 and was used primarily for captured Confederate officers. More than 9,000 prisoners passed...

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Mansfield Reformatory Haunting Traditions

MANSFIELD • OHIO

The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield is one of Ohio's most famous paranormal locations. Its reputation includes stories of shadow figures, disembodied voices, footsteps, unexplained touches and apparitions associated with former prisoners, guards and members...

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Matthew Hoffman Mount Vernon Triple Murder, Kidnapping and the Leaf House

MOUNT VERNON | TOLEDO • OHIO

Matthew J. Hoffman is not a serial killer in the usual criminological sense. He is a convicted triple murderer, kidnapper and rapist whose crimes unfolded during one November 2010 attack in Knox County. Three victims...

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Moonville Tunnel

MOONVILLE • OHIO

Moonville Tunnel is the surviving landmark of a vanished southeastern Ohio railroad community and one of the state's best-known railroad ghost locations.

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Ohio Medical Body Snatching and Grave Robbing

STATEWIDE • OHIO

For much of the nineteenth century, Ohio medical training had a problem that could not be solved politely: students needed human bodies to learn anatomy, while the law supplied almost none. The result was a...

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Ohio’s First Serial Killer Return Jonathan Meigs Ward

SYLVANIA • OHIO

Return Jonathan Meigs Ward is frequently called Ohio’s first serial killer, but the evidence supports the more careful description first presumed or suspected serial killer. Ward was convicted of murdering his wife, Olive Davis Ward,...

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Project Blue Book At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB • OHIO

Project Blue Book was the U.S. Air Force's longest-running formal investigation of unidentified flying object reports. Headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, it grew out of earlier Air Force studies known as Project Sign and...

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Shadyside Flash Flood of 1990

SHADYSIDE • OHIO

On the evening of June 14, 1990, extraordinary rainfall sent walls of water through the Pipe Creek and Wegee Creek valleys near Shadyside in Belmont County. Homes, vehicles and people were swept away with little...

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Siege of Fort Meigs and Dudley’s Defeat

PERRYSBURG • OHIO

Fort Meigs was built on the Maumee River in 1813 as a major American base during the War of 1812. That spring, British and Indigenous forces besieged the fort, while a disastrous American counterattack led...

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Silver Bridge Collapse Ohio River, 1967

GALLIPOLIS • OHIO

At approximately 5 p.m. on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge connecting Point Pleasant, West Virginia, with the Gallipolis, Ohio, area suddenly collapsed into the Ohio River during heavy rush-hour traffic. Thirty-one vehicles fell with...

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The Great Black Swamp

NORTHWEST OHIO • OHIO

The Great Black Swamp once covered a vast portion of northwestern Ohio and northeastern Indiana: a seasonally flooded landscape of forests, wetlands, standing water and notoriously difficult travel. It shaped Indigenous travel, military campaigns and...

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The Oliver House

TOLEDO • OHIO

Built in 1859, Toledo's Oliver House is a surviving pre-Civil War hotel building near the Maumee River that now houses Maumee Bay Brewing Company and related hospitality spaces. Its long history has produced an equally...

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The Ridges / Athens Lunatic Asylum

ATHENS • OHIO

The hilltop complex now called The Ridges opened in 1874 as the Athens Lunatic Asylum and later operated under several names, including Athens State Hospital. Designed according to nineteenth-century ideas about moral treatment, the institution...

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Toledo State Hospital

TOLEDO • OHIO

Opened in 1888 as the Toledo Asylum for the Insane, Toledo State Hospital was an ambitious state psychiatric institution built around a detached-cottage plan rather than one enormous asylum block. Its early campus was designed...

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Toledo Yacht Club Ghost Stories

TOLEDO • OHIO

The Toledo Yacht Club has occupied its distinctive clubhouse near the Maumee River and western Lake Erie since the early twentieth century. Alongside its documented maritime and social history is a collection of ghost stories...

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