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Dean's Hollow

Dean's Hollow is a creepy area in Lorain County near Vermilion which is home to several legends. One of them is the Heartbeat Bridge on Deans Road, just off Route 60, where you will hear a heartbeat if you turn your car off. The bridge is also said to be guarded by some sort of evil creature which occasionally massacres people and hangs them from the bridge beams.

This long-neglected cemetery in Lorain County's "Sandstone Region" near Amherst is overgrown with weeds and almost impossible to see from any distance at all. It used to be quite popular with ressurection men--grave robbers from the era before human cadavers could legally be used by medical schools. Some inhabitants of Boot Hill have been disturbed for other reasons; just a few years back, a group of boys from Lorain came to the cemetery to dig up a body as part of a club initiation rite. While they were digging, strange noises began to come from the bushes nearby, and small rocks rained from the sky. This, combined with an overall eerie feeling, was enough to send the kids packing without even breaching the grave cover.

This school, particularly the auditorium, is haunted by loud banging noises and mysterious lights. A janitor by the name of Clark Danbury died a terrible death in the early part of the century and is said to continue to do his job from beyond the grave.

The towpath on either side of the Ohio and Erie Canal in Valley View is said to be haunted by two ghosts. One is a headless Union soldier, while the other is his lost lover. They walk on opposite sides of the canal, but sadly, never meet. This haunting is said to occur most frequently near the canal visitor's center, which is haunted itself, between Pleasant Valley Road and Rockside Road.

The abandoned farmhouse on the old Edmund Gleason farm in Valley View is said by locals to be haunted. The legend says an eccentric woman used to farm the land. She would dress as a man and raise her pigs in the barn. The place has been unoccupied since 1987. Today strange lights are seen in the upstairs windows from time to time. The ghost of the cross-dressing woman? Maybe. The farmhouse, which is located at the intersection of Tinker's Creek Road and Canal Road in Valley View, has a dilapidated barn behind it which was the scene of a very real tragedy in the summer of 2002 when a young man killed himself there. Now the National Parks Service has plans to renovate the house; if you want to check it out you should do it before much longer.

Yet another cry-baby bridge is located on Lorain County's Myrtle Hill Road, just down from the haunted cemetery. (The cemetery on Myrtle Hill Road near Valley City in Medina County contains the Witch's Ball, a large spherical gravestone to which many legends are attached. The name on the stone is Stoskopf, and a ton of rumors about old lady Stoskopf have cropped up over the years to go with her unusual tombstone.) The reason isn't clear, but you're supposed to be able to hear babies crying.

The high cliffs of blue shale which tower over the Huron River are known locally as Blue Banks. Today if you stand on the Blue Banks, along Lammeraux Road north of Monroeville, you might be able to hear the Indian girl's spirit singing a sad song.

The Harrisons were one of the original families in Huron County. Grandfather Harrison immigrated to the United States from Ireland ... Today his ghost travels from the family graveyard to the vineyard via Harrison Road, which is supposed to be off US 20 west of Wakeman. He carries a red lantern, which is often seen bobbing alongside the road as old man Harrison checks on his old homestead.

The intersection of Darrow and Barrows Road near Vermilion (though actually in Erie County) is haunted by the ghostly sound of a deadly car crash which once happened there. A baby's haunting cry can be heard in the silence following the smashing metal and breaking glass.

A screaming ghost named Mimi is supposed to haunt a bridge in rural Seneca County. Park your car on it and flash your headlights and she'll come after you. She is angry, they say, because she was forced by society to kill her out-of-wedlock baby by throwing it over the edge; the grief drove her insane. The bridge itself is located on one of the side roads off County Road 15, near Old Fort.

A train trestle in the little town of Republic passes over a small cemetery. Mysterious lights are seen on the bridge's span at night; it's not known whether this has something to do with the railroad, the cemetery, or both.

Just off Route 42 on the way to Mansfield from Ashland is a tunnel which is supposed to be haunted by a ghost or group of ghosts. They will push your car through the tunnel if you shut the engine off and put it in neutral. If you honk your horn three times you might see the hanging body of a man who killed himself there after his wife died giving birth. Their home was located near the tunnel but was burned to the ground by vandals. To find the tunnel on 42, look for the offices of an exterminating company.

County Road 175 near Lake Fork, in Ashland County, is regularly paced by a ghostly indian who searches the creekbed for wood to make tomahawk handles with.

The western Ashland County burg of Perrysville contains an abandoned house in which no one has been able to live for very long. A couple who bought the house and started to renovate it abandoned the project halfway through and fled. No one has lived there since. To reach the house, enter Perrysville from the south on Route 39, turn left at the first stoplight, and follow the road across a small bridge. When you come to a dead-end area with houses you'll see the abandoned one on the left.

In the town of Peninsula there is a gravestone said to belong to a witch. It's been struck by lightning so many times that it's partially melted away. I'm told it's located next door to a junior high school.