217 haunted destinations cataloged across Ohio, spanning 71 counties. The collection features museum, cemetery, and outdoor — every listing verified with family ratings, accessibility info, and practical visit logistics.
Cleveland, OH
Erie Street Cemetery was established in 1826 at the southern edge of early Cleveland and is the city's oldest surviving cemetery, holding more than 8,800 burials including early settlers, Civil War veterans, and Meskwaki performer Joc-O-Sot. It is enclosed by a 19th-century iron fence and a Gothic stone gateway and is a designated Cleveland landmark.
Cleveland, OH
Hotel Cleveland opened on December 16, 1918 as a 1,000-room Beaux-Arts grand hotel on Cleveland's Public Square, built at a cost of $4.5 million on a site that had hosted continuous lodging since Mowry's Tavern in 1814. The hotel hosted Eliot Ness's 1938 interrogation of Torso Murders suspect Dr. Francis Sweeney. Now operating as Hotel Cleveland, Autograph Collection.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPIronton, OH
Woodland Cemetery was founded in 1871 on a hillside above the Ohio River serving Ironton and neighboring Coal Grove in Lawrence County, Ohio. It contains more than 8,000 graves across roughly 50 acres, including the mausoleum of dancer Antoinette 'Teenie' Peters, who performed with the Imperial Russian Ballet before settling in Ironton. The cemetery is documented by the Lawrence County Historical Society and the Briggs Lawrence County Public Library.
Waterville, OH
The Columbian House was built in 1828 by pioneer John Pray as a trading post, tavern, and stagecoach inn on the Maumee River corridor between Fort Wayne and Detroit. It later served as a jail, ballroom, post office, and restaurant over nearly two centuries. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places and documented by the Library of Congress Historic American Buildings Survey.
Cincinnati, OH
Eden Park is a 186-acre Cincinnati city park established in 1859, occupying hilltop land on the city's east side with views of the Ohio River. On October 6, 1927, Prohibition-era bootlegger George Remus shot his wife Imogene Holmes Remus to death near the park's Spring House Gazebo on the way to their divorce hearing — an incident chronicled in Karen Abbott's 2019 book The Ghosts of Eden Park.
Cleveland, OH
Franklin Castle is a four-story High Victorian Eclectic stone mansion built between 1881 and 1883 for German-born wholesale grocer and banker Hannes Tiedemann, on Franklin Boulevard in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood. The Tiedemann family's tenure included several documented family deaths, none on the property; the building's haunted reputation emerged in the late 1960s. Restored by current ownership and operated as a tour and overnight venue, the property is widely cited as Ohio's most famous haunted house.
Columbus, OH
The Alpha Omicron Pi house is a sorority residence associated with Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. The building has served as housing for the sorority chapter for extended periods, maintaining its institutional role within the university community.
Columbus, OH
Camp Chase was a Union training camp and Confederate prisoner-of-war camp operating in Columbus from May 1861 to 1865. The adjacent national cemetery contains 2,260 graves of Confederate prisoners who died in captivity — primarily from smallpox, dysentery, and pneumonia in overcrowded barracks. The cemetery is now administered by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Columbus, OH
The Central Ohio Fire Museum occupies the former Columbus Fire Department Engine House No. 16, built in 1908 as the last firehouse in Columbus designed for horse-drawn engines before the department switched to motorized equipment in 1909. The station closed in 1982; the city began leasing it to the museum in 1990, and the museum opened to the public in 2002.
Columbus, OH
The building at 1045 South High Street was built in 1889 as a private residence for a Bavarian soap-and-candle maker. From 1924 it housed the Woodyard Funeral Home and later Hughes Funeral Home; from 1952 to the 1970s it was Elks Lodge #37. In 1979 Pat and Fred Altevogt converted the building to an antique mall, the use it retains today. It is included in Columbus's South High preservation conversation.
Columbus, OH
Green Lawn Abbey is a 1927 community mausoleum near (but not affiliated with) Green Lawn Cemetery, designed with niches for roughly 600 interments. After decades of decline it was rescued by the Green Lawn Abbey Preservation Association, incorporated in 2008, which has raised over $750,000 for restoration. Its best-known resident is stage magician Howard Thurston, who is interred here.
Columbus, OH
Green Lawn Cemetery is the second-largest cemetery in Ohio, encompassing 360 acres of rolling rural-style burial ground on the southwest side of Columbus. Established in 1848 and opened on July 7, 1849, it holds more than 160,000 interments including five Ohio governors, five Medal of Honor recipients, author James Thurber, and World War I fighter ace Eddie Rickenbacker.
Columbus, OH
The Harrison House is a three-story Queen Anne Victorian residence built around 1890 in Columbus's Victorian Village neighborhood and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The property sat vacant for much of the 1960s through 1980s before being restored and converted to a bed-and-breakfast in 1990 by innkeeper Lynn Varney.
Columbus, OH
Hayes Hall opened in 1893 and is the oldest existing building on the Ohio State University campus. Named for Rutherford B. Hayes — former U.S. President, Ohio Governor, and an OSU Trustee who died on January 17, 1893, roughly two weeks before the building opened — it was originally a men's dormitory and is now home to the Department of Design.
Columbus, OH
The Kelton House was built in 1852 by dry goods merchant Fernando Cortez Kelton and his wife Sophia, passionate abolitionists who used the property as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Their son Oscar enlisted in the 95th Ohio Volunteer Infantry and was killed in Mississippi in 1864. After housing five generations of Keltons until 1975, the mansion was donated to the Junior League of Columbus and opened as a museum.
Columbus, OH
The Lofts Hotel occupies the 1882 Carr Building, a 19th-century warehouse on East Nationwide Boulevard in what was Columbus's wholesale and transportation district. The building housed the Columbus Transfer Company from 1882 to 1932 and Carr Plumbing Supply from 1936 to 1979 before sitting partly vacant. It was converted to a 44-room boutique hotel in 1998.
Columbus, OH
Mirror Lake at the Ohio State University in Columbus has occupied its current location on the historic oval since the university's early development. The lake underwent a major restoration beginning around 2016, with the Mirror Lake District project redesigning the surrounding landscape including Oxley and Pomerene Halls and Browning Amphitheater. The restored lake reopened with safer, shallower contours and native vegetation.
Columbus, OH
Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio opened in 2000 as the home of the Columbus Blue Jackets NHL team. The arena and its surrounding Arena District occupy the site of the Ohio State Penitentiary, which operated from 1834 until 1984 and was demolished in the mid-1990s. On April 21, 1930, a fire in the penitentiary's West Block killed 322 inmates and hospitalized 230 more — one of the worst prison fires in North American history.
Columbus, OH
The Ohio Statehouse is a Greek Revival capitol whose construction began in 1839 and was not completed until 1861 — a 22-year ordeal that included a fire at the old capitol in 1852, a cholera epidemic that halted work, and foundation labor by Ohio Penitentiary inmates. The building hosted public viewing of Abraham Lincoln's body in April 1865 and remains a working seat of state government.
Columbus, OH
The Ohio Theatre opened on March 17, 1928 as a Loew's movie palace designed by Thomas W. Lamb in the Spanish Baroque style and seating roughly 3,000. After a 1969 closure and demolition threat, community members formed the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts to save the building. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977 and remains CAPA's flagship venue and home to the Columbus Symphony.
Columbus, OH
The Old Governor's Mansion at 1234 East Broad Street in Columbus is a 1904 Colonial Revival residence designed by Ohio architect Frank Packard for industrialist Charles H. Lindenberg. The State of Ohio purchased the property in 1919, and it served as the Governor's Mansion from 1911 to 1957. The building is now headquarters of the Columbus Foundation and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Columbus, OH
Orton Hall opened in 1893 as Ohio State University's geology building and remains home to the OSU School of Earth Sciences and the Orton Geological Museum. Designed by Yost & Packard in the Romanesque style, its exterior is built of forty different Ohio building stones arranged in geologic time order, with fossil carvings on the column capitals. It is named for Edward Orton Sr., the university's first president and Ohio's State Geologist until his death in 1899.
Columbus, OH
The Palace Theatre opened November 8, 1926 as part of the Keith-Albee vaudeville chain. Designed by Thomas W. Lamb in the Adam style, the 2,695-seat house was conceived as a flagship for the LeVeque-Lincoln Tower complex on West Broad Street. CAPA has operated the theater since the 1980s for Broadway tours, Columbus Symphony pops concerts, and touring acts.
Columbus, OH
Schwartz Castle is a castle-style residence built in the late 1870s by Frederick William Schwartz, a pharmacist born in Niagara Falls, New York in 1836 who relocated to Columbus. The four-story turreted house has the highest roofline in the German Village historic district. Schwartz died in 1914 at age 78. The building is currently used as a short-term vacation rental.
Columbus, OH
Studio 35 opened on February 17, 1938 as the 700-seat Indianola Theatre, showing 'Stage Door.' It has operated continuously at 3055 Indianola Avenue in Clintonville. In the early 1970s, under owner Frank Marzetti, it became the first cinema in the United States licensed to sell alcohol — the move that defined its identity as a drafthouse.
Columbus, OH
The William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library opened to the OSU community in January 1913 and is named for OSU's fifth president. It has been renovated three times — in 1951, 1977, and most extensively in 2007-2009 in a $108.7 million project that expanded the building to 306,000 square feet. It is the largest library on OSU's Columbus campus.
Columbus, OH
The William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library is the main library of The Ohio State University on its Columbus campus. The Beaux-Arts building was designed by Allen & Collens of Boston, broken ground on December 23, 1910, and completed December 18, 1912; it opened to the university community on January 6, 1913. The building was officially renamed in 1951 to honor William Oxley Thompson, OSU's fifth president.
Columbus, OH
Thurber House is the 1873 Victorian residence at 77 Jefferson Avenue in Columbus, Ohio that humorist James Thurber occupied as a student at Ohio State University from 1913 through 1917. The house operated as a private rooming property and as the Ohio Penitentiary's adjacent staff housing across the early twentieth century. It opened as a literary museum and writers' center in 1984.
Cincinnati, OH
Arnold's Bar and Grill at 210 E 8th Street is the oldest continuously operating bar in Cincinnati, established in 1861 by Simon Arnold in a building dating to the 1830s. Three generations of the Arnold family ran the business through 1959, including the Prohibition era when Elmer Arnold reportedly distilled bathtub gin upstairs while pivoting to a food menu. Ronda Breeden purchased the bar in 1998; her family operates it today.
Cincinnati, OH
The Cincinnati Art Museum was founded in 1881 and opened to the public in its current Eden Park building on May 17, 1886. It is one of the oldest art museums in the United States and houses an encyclopedic collection spanning 6,000 years of art history. Reuben Springer led the founding fundraising; the building has been expanded repeatedly into the 21st century.
Cincinnati, OH
Cincinnati Music Hall opened in 1878 in the city's Over-the-Rhine district, built atop ground that had served as a pauper's burying field and Asylum cemetery from roughly 1818 to 1865. The Samuel Hannaford Victorian Gothic building is a National Historic Landmark and home to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Pops, Cincinnati Opera, and Cincinnati Ballet.
Cincinnati, OH
The Cincinnati Observatory is the oldest professional observatory in the United States, with its 1843 cornerstone laid by former President John Quincy Adams. The current Mount Lookout buildings (1873 and 1904) were designed by Samuel Hannaford and house the 1845 Merz und Mahler 11-inch refractor and the 1904 Alvan Clark 16-inch refractor. The site is a National Historic Landmark.
Cincinnati, OH
Cincinnati Union Terminal opened in 1933 as a consolidated passenger rail terminal for seven major railroads, designed by Fellheimer & Wagner in the Art Deco style. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977 and converted into the Cincinnati Museum Center in 1990, housing multiple museums and an OMNIMAX theater.
Cincinnati, OH
The Stenton House at Cornell Place in Cincinnati, Ohio is an 1850 Victorian mansion in the city's west side. The building has served multiple functions over its history: private residence, the Ealy School for girls in 1900, and apartment housing. Multiple violent events occurred in the building across different periods of its occupancy.
Cincinnati, OH
Krohn Conservatory is an Art Deco, Gothic-arched botanical glasshouse opened in 1933 in Cincinnati's Eden Park. It replaced an earlier 1894 Eden Park Greenhouse and was renamed in 1937 for Irwin M. Krohn, a Park Commissioner from 1912 to 1948. The conservatory is operated by the Cincinnati Park Board and hosts roughly 200,000 visitors a year.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPCincinnati, OH
On August 24, 1976, fifteen-year-old Linda Dyer was hitchhiking near North Bend Road when two men in a Volkswagen picked her up. Her body was found the following day under a bridge at Crest and Banks Road, near Lick Road. The autopsy confirmed she had been stabbed and strangled; evidence indicated she was killed elsewhere and dumped. Her murderers were never identified.
Cincinnati, OH
Cincinnati Music Hall at 1241 Elm Street opened in 1878, designed in the High Victorian Gothic style. It was built on land that had served as the city's potter's field — a burial ground for the indigent, disease victims, and unidentified dead — used from the 1820s until the cemetery closed around 1857. Bones have been discovered beneath the building in 1927, 1988, and again during the 2016-2017 renovation. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1975.
Cincinnati, OH
Six Acres Bed & Breakfast occupies the Zebulon Strong House, built between 1850 and 1860 by Quaker farmer and abolitionist Zebulon Strong on six acres in what was then Pleasant Hill (now College Hill), Cincinnati. The home served as a documented Underground Railroad station with surviving hiding spaces. In 2004 entrepreneur Kristin Kitchen opened it as a Black-owned heritage inn after a three-and-a-half-year restoration.
Cincinnati, OH
Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum, founded in 1844 in Cincinnati, is the second-largest cemetery in the United States by acreage and a designated National Historic Landmark. The grounds, designed by Adolph Strauch in Gothic Revival style, helped define the American 'rural cemetery' movement of the nineteenth century.
Cincinnati, OH
Built in 1904 to designs by Cornelius M. Foster, the Spring House Gazebo is the oldest enduring structure in Cincinnati's municipal park system and an icon of the Cincinnati Park Board. The Moorish Revival pavilion replaced an earlier spring house that had served park visitors until well contamination forced its sealing in 1912. The gazebo became nationally infamous in 1927 as the scene of Imogene Remus's murder.
Cincinnati, OH
The Taft Museum of Art occupies the Baum-Longworth-Sinton-Taft House, a Federal-style mansion built about 1820 in downtown Cincinnati. After housing four prominent Cincinnati families, including Anna Sinton Taft and Charles Phelps Taft, the home opened to the public as an art museum on November 29, 1932. It is now one of the oldest domestic wooden structures still in use in downtown Cincinnati and a National Historic Landmark.
Cincinnati, OH
Wesleyan Cemetery was established in 1843 by Cincinnati's Methodist Episcopal Church when its earlier downtown burial ground filled. It is the oldest continuously operating cemetery in Hamilton County and was the county's first racially integrated cemetery — interring both Black and white Cincinnatians from its earliest years. In 2014 the National Park Service named it a Network to Freedom site for its role in John Fairfield's 1853 'Escape of the 28' Underground Railroad rescue.
Toledo, OH
Built in 1905 as a Flemish Gothic convent and college for the Ursuline Order of the Sacred Heart, the building served as St. Ursula Academy for decades before becoming the Collingwood Arts Center — a nonprofit arts hub that WTOL has called Toledo's most haunted building.
Toledo, OH
Built in 1927 as Toledo's last grand downtown hotel, the 17-story Commodore Perry was once considered the most luxurious hotel in Ohio. The building has since been converted to residential apartments.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPToledo, OH
The Haunted Rocky Shore is a stretch of Lake Erie shoreline in the Reno Beach area of Point Place, on Toledo's north side. The location is not formally a tourist site. Available documentation is limited to community paranormal posts and local Toledo folklore blogs.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPToledo, OH
Mortuary Manor at 2907 Lagrange Street in north Toledo, Ohio is a Victorian mansion-style funeral home that operated as Urbanski's Funeral Home from 1889 until 2025 — approximately 136 years of continuous operation, one of the longest-serving mortuaries in the region. Thousands of bodies passed through its basement morgue, embalming rooms, and viewing parlors. Nine people died on the property itself. New ownership converted the building into a paranormal investigation venue in 2025.
Toledo, OH
Built in 1859 and designed by architect Isaiah Rogers, the Oliver House was one of Ohio's first luxury hotels. During the Spanish-American War it served as a medical center, with its basement functioning as a morgue.
Toledo, OH
The Pythian Castle was built in 1890 by the Knights of Pythias fraternal order, designed by Toledo architects Bacon and Huber. Its 30,000-square-foot Romanesque structure with a 122-foot turret was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and has been vacant since a 1978 fire.
Toledo, OH
Built as a church in 1906, the building at 16 10th Street was converted to a theater in 1934 and has operated as the Toledo Repertoire Theatre ever since, making it one of the oldest continuously operating community theaters in Ohio.
Toledo, OH
The Valentine Theatre opened December 25, 1895, designed by Toledo architect E.O. Fallis, and was once the largest-stage venue in the United States. It operated through the Prohibition era, fell into decline, and was meticulously restored and reopened in 1999.
Toledo, OH
The West Toledo Branch Library opened in 1930 as part of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library system's expansion into city neighborhoods, and has operated continuously as a community reading room and public resource center for nearly a century.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPToledo, OH
Wolfinger Cemetery, established in 1835 within what is now Secor Metropark, holds the graves of a family whose members died within days of each other — a cluster death event that has never been fully explained and has given the site a lasting local reputation.
Toledo, OH
Founded in 1876, Woodlawn Cemetery was listed as a National Historic Site in 1998. It serves as the final resting place of Toledo's founding industrial and civic families, featuring 42 mausoleums and monuments spanning 150 years of the city's history.
Marietta, OH
Campus Martius Museum is an Ohio History Connection site at 601 Second Street in Marietta, Ohio, built on the location of the 1788 Campus Martius fortification — the first civilian-built defensive structure in the Northwest Territory. The museum preserves the Rufus Putnam House and the Ohio Company Land Office in situ.
Marietta, OH
The Hackett Hotel occupies the upper floors of the 1899 Riley building at 203 Second Street in Marietta, Ohio. The building was constructed by Marietta oil man John H. Riley; the modern five-room boutique hotel opened in 2012 after renovation of the historic upper floors above what is now The Galley restaurant.
Marietta, OH
The Henry Fearing House at 131 Gilman Avenue in Marietta, Ohio, was built in 1847 for prominent local attorney Henry Fearing and later occupied by Civil War General Benjamin D. Fearing. The Washington County Historical Society purchased the home in 1974 and reopened it as a museum in 1982.
Marietta, OH
The Levee House at 127 Ohio Street is the last surviving original riverfront commercial structure in historic Marietta, Ohio. Built in 1826 for merchant Dudley Woodbridge Jr. — the first dry-goods merchant in the Northwest Territory — the building later housed the La Belle Hotel and the Golden Eagle, and currently operates as The Levee House restaurant.
Marietta, OH
The Alpha Xi Delta house at 322 Fifth Street in Marietta, Ohio was built in 1855 for William P. Skinner, a merchant and Washington County's second sheriff. George White, an oilman and Democratic National Committee chairman who served as Ohio's 55th governor from 1931 to 1935, purchased the property in 1908. Marietta College's Alpha Xi Delta chapter has occupied the house since 1955.
Marietta, OH
The building at 229 Putnam Street in Marietta, Ohio originally opened in 1914 as the Putnam Theatre, a vaudeville house. Mid-Ohio Valley Players, an all-volunteer community theater company founded in 1959, purchased the building in 1977 and has staged year-round productions there ever since.
Marietta, OH
The Anchorage, also called Putnam Villa, is an Italianate sandstone mansion completed in 1859 in the Harmar neighborhood of Marietta, Ohio. It was built by industrialist Douglas Putnam for his wife Eliza Putnam, who died there of heart disease in September 1862. Since 1996 it has been owned by the Washington County Historical Society.
Marietta, OH
The Castle is a Gothic Revival house museum at 418 Fourth Street in Marietta, Ohio, completed in 1855. Built for attorney Melvin C. Clarke and designed by John Slocomb, it features an octagonal tower and stone-capped spires that distinguish it from the city's predominantly Greek Revival and Italianate housing stock. The building has operated as a museum since 1994.
Marietta, OH
The Lafayette Hotel in Marietta, Ohio opened in 1918, built on the foundation of the 1892 Bellevue Hotel that had been heavily damaged by fire in 1916. The new structure incorporated surviving portions of the original building and was named for Marquis de Lafayette, who visited Marietta in 1825. Reno Hoag and his son S. Durward Hoag incorporated ownership of the hotel in 1924; Durward ran the property until selling it December 17, 1973.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPAkron, OH
The 1915 Evans Building at 333 S. Main Street occupies the site of Henry Clark's Tavern, the downtown gathering place where Akron elected its first mayor, Seth Iredell, on June 14, 1836.
Akron, OH
Hower House at 60 Fir Hill in Akron, Ohio was completed in 1871 for John Henry Hower, a prominent Akron industrialist active in milling, reaping, and cereal production. The 28-room mansion features a distinctive Second Empire mansard roof and soaring corner tower. The Hower family occupied the house for a century before Grace Hower, the last family matriarch, bequeathed it to the University of Akron in 1973. A separate servant quarters building dating to 1889, later used by the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, stands nearby on the same campus.
Akron, OH
Perfect Pour at 376 S. Main Street sits in a downtown Akron building with ties to Prohibition-era underground commerce; the current bar opened as a veteran-owned bourbon and cocktail establishment.
Akron, OH
Simon Perkins Jr. — son of General Simon Perkins, one of the founders of Akron — built this Greek Revival stone mansion in 1837 on a bluff overlooking the city. The Summit County Historical Society has owned and operated it as a house museum since 1945.
Akron, OH
Stan Hywet Hall was built between 1912 and 1915 for Franklin A. Seiberling, co-founder of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, and his wife Gertrude. The 65-room Tudor Revival mansion is one of the largest private homes in America and was donated to a nonprofit foundation in 1957.
Akron, OH
The Akron Civic Theatre opened in 1929 as Loew's Theatre, an atmospheric movie palace designed by John Eberson with a Moorish courtyard interior and a ceiling painted to mimic the night sky. It is one of only sixteen surviving Eberson atmospherics in the country.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPCleveland, OH
The building at 736 Lakeview Avenue in the Glenville area of Cleveland, Ohio, originally functioned as a nursing home facility. The structure was vacant for approximately ten years before being repurposed as Virtual Schoolhouse, an alternative educational institution serving at-risk students in grades K-12.
Cleveland, OH
Grays Armory is a Romanesque Revival sandstone fortress completed in 1893 to house the Cleveland Grays, a private volunteer militia founded August 28, 1837 as the Cleveland City Guards. Designed by Fenimore C. Bate, the building has hosted civic milestones from Metropolitan Opera performances to the Cleveland Orchestra's 1917 debut. Today it operates as a museum of military and Cleveland history.
Cleveland, OH
The House of Wills is a 42-room building on East 55th Street in Cleveland's Central neighborhood, built circa 1899-1900 as a German singing society hall and later used as a Hungarian immigrant hospital, the Cleveland Hebrew Institute school, and a Masonic hall. In 1941 Cleveland businessman J. Walter Wills Sr. converted the building into a funeral home that became one of the largest African American-owned funeral businesses in Ohio. It closed in 2005 and was purchased by Eric Freeman in 2010.
Cleveland, OH
Lake View Cemetery was established in 1869 in Cleveland's East Side hills as a 285-acre rural garden cemetery, modeled on Boston's Mount Auburn and other rural-cemetery movement burial grounds. It is the final resting place of more than 100,000 people, including President James A. Garfield (whose 1890 memorial dominates the cemetery), oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, lawman Eliot Ness, and Mayor Carl Stokes.
Cleveland, OH
The Cuyahoga County Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument is a Civil War memorial dedicated on July 4, 1894, on the southeast quadrant of Cleveland's Public Square. Architect and Civil War veteran Levi T. Scofield designed both the structure and its sculpture program. It honors more than 9,000 individuals from Cuyahoga County who served the Union during the war.
Cleveland, OH
Terminal Tower is a 52-story, 708-foot Beaux-Arts skyscraper on the southwest quadrant of Public Square in downtown Cleveland. Designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White and developed by the Van Sweringen brothers as the anchor of the Cleveland Union Terminal complex, construction ran from 1923 to its 1928 opening; it was the second-tallest building in the world at completion.
Dayton, OH
The National Museum of the United States Air Force, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base six miles northeast of Dayton, Ohio, is the oldest and largest military aviation museum in the world. Established to preserve and display American aviation heritage, the museum houses over 360 aircraft, helicopters, and missiles spanning from the Wright Brothers era through modern military operations.
Dayton, OH
The Southern Ohio Lunatic Asylum opened in 1855 on 300 acres in Dayton as a Kirkbride-plan institution. It operated for over a century before being vacated in 1978. A fire in 1983 damaged part of the complex. The surviving main building was renovated and reopened in 1986 as 10 Wilmington Place senior apartments; it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The Hospice of Dayton now occupies part of the original grounds.
Dayton, OH
Built in 1816 by Colonel Robert Patterson, a Revolutionary War veteran who co-founded Dayton, the Patterson Homestead is one of Dayton's oldest surviving structures. Operated by Dayton History as a house museum, it preserves the story of the family whose name is synonymous with Dayton's founding.
Dayton, OH
On the night of August 27, 1896, Albert Frantz shot 23-year-old Bessie Little—who was several months pregnant—twice in the head on Ridge Avenue and pushed her body into the Stillwater River near this bridge. Frantz was convicted of first-degree murder and executed by electric chair at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus on April 9, 1897, becoming the fourth person Ohio put to death by electrocution.
Dayton, OH
Opened in 1866 as the Turner Opera House, the Victoria Theatre is one of Dayton's oldest surviving entertainment venues and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Renamed the Victoria in the early 20th century, it has hosted performers and events continuously for more than 150 years.
Dayton, OH
Founded in 1841 on 200 acres, Woodland Cemetery is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and serves as the final resting place of Orville and Wilbur Wright, among many figures central to Dayton's history. The cemetery's most distinctive grave belongs to five-year-old Johnny Morehouse, who drowned in the Miami and Erie Canal in 1860.
Marion, OH
The Harding Home at 380 Mount Vernon Ave in Marion, Ohio is where Warren G. Harding lived from 1891 until his death in office in 1923. The house is a National Historic Landmark, preserved as a museum by the Ohio History Connection, and is notable as the site of Harding's 1920 Front Porch Campaign.
Marion, OH
The Harding Memorial in Marion, Ohio is the burial site of Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States, and his wife Florence. Construction of the circular white marble structure began in 1923 following Harding's death in office, and President Herbert Hoover formally dedicated it on June 16, 1931.
Marion, OH
The Merchant Ball is a funerary monument at Marion Cemetery in Marion, Ohio, commissioned by the Merchant family in 1886. The polished black granite sphere, measuring roughly three feet in diameter and weighing 5,200 pounds, sits atop a pedestal above the family burial plot. Within two years of installation, observers noticed the ball had begun to rotate on its base — a motion that has continued uninterrupted since.
Marion, OH
Marion Country Club was established in 1920 at 2415 Crissinger Road in Marion, Ohio, and has operated continuously as a private golf and dining club. In 1981, a 19-year-old club secretary named Annette Huddle was raped and murdered; her body was found in the Olentangy River. The primary suspect, a club cook named Paul Steven Mack, evaded conviction for decades before confessing from a California prison cell in 2018, shortly before his death.
Marion, OH
The Sawyer Sanatorium was built in 1895 on S Main St in Marion, Ohio, designed by architect Frank Packard for Dr. Charles E. Sawyer. Dr. Sawyer later became the personal physician to President Warren G. Harding — a role that placed him at the center of historical speculation about Harding's 1923 death in office. The building operated as a 100-patient sanatorium before conversion to residential apartments.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMarion, OH
St. Mary's Cemetery in Marion, Ohio holds the grave of Ann Judge, a Romani woman known as Gypsy Queen Cleo, who died in childbirth on March 20, 1905 while her traveling troupe passed through the city. She was buried in the non-Catholic section of the cemetery, and her grave became a local landmark.
Bowling Green, OH
The Chi Omega sorority house at Bowling Green State University is connected to a legend about a pledge known only as Amanda, who is said to have died during a hazing initiation in the 1940s or 1950s. According to the story as documented in BGSU student publications and regional paranormal records, Amanda was killed near railroad tracks during an initiation ritual. The exact circumstances and identity have not been verified in public historical records.
Bowling Green, OH
The Brown Theater and adjacent Eva Marie Saint Theatre are the primary performance spaces for Bowling Green State University's Department of Theatre and Film, named in part for BGSU alumna and Academy Award-winning actress Eva Marie Saint. The theaters have hosted student and professional productions for decades and carry a persistent ghost tradition surrounding a former student actress called Alice.
Bowling Green, OH
Sam B's Restaurant occupies a multi-story building in downtown Bowling Green whose upper level once functioned as a theater. According to the Ohio Exploration Society, the third floor was the site of a murder, and two employees have died under unexplained circumstances on the premises over the years.
Bowling Green, OH
The Wood County Infirmary and Poor Farm opened in 1869 to house the county's indigent, disabled, and mentally ill. A separate Lunatic House for violent patients was added in 1885. The complex housed 70 to 140 residents at a time and operated nearly self-sufficiently until 1971, when it was converted to the Wood County Historical Center and Museum. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
Bowling Green, OH
The Wood County Infirmary opened in 1869 as the county's poorhouse, housing those dependent on public assistance. A separate Lunatic House was added in 1885. The facility operated until 1971, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, and reopened as the Wood County Historical Museum in 1975.
Chillicothe, OH
Adena Mansion was completed in 1807 for Thomas Worthington, Ohio's sixth governor and one of the state's first two U.S. senators. Architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe—who had also worked on the U.S. Capitol—designed the Federal-period house. The property is now a National Historic Landmark operated by the Ohio History Connection.
Chillicothe, OH
Crosskeys Tavern occupies an early-20th-century commercial building at 19 East Main Street in downtown Chillicothe, Ohio. The current Irish-style tavern opened in the early 1970s, and the building has previously housed the Chillicothe Baking Co., the Wissler Electric Co., and Stones Grill Restaurant. Local lore connects the site to a network of underground tunnels beneath downtown.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPChillicothe, OH
Grandview Cemetery is a historic burial ground spanning roughly 90 acres on the southwest side of Chillicothe, the first capital of Ohio and seat of Ross County. The cemetery has served the city across multiple centuries and contains graves from the early 19th century through the present.
Chillicothe, OH
The Majestic Theatre opened in 1853 on the site of Chillicothe's first bank and claims the title of America's oldest continuously operating theater. In autumn 1918, it was requisitioned as a morgue and autopsy facility when the Spanish influenza killed more than 1,700 soldiers at nearby Camp Sherman in a matter of weeks, overwhelming local funeral infrastructure.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPChillicothe, OH
Schrader Road Tunnel is a railroad underpass in Ross County near Chillicothe that accumulated a 'crybaby' haunting legend common to a number of Ohio tunnels and bridges. The site is documented by Ohio Exploration Society's Ross County paranormal survey and appears on the annual Chillicothe ghost walk route.
Hamilton, OH
Built in 1862 in Hamilton, Ohio, the Benninghofen House is a fully furnished Italianate Victorian mansion on the National Register of Historic Places. It is operated by the Butler County Historical Society and serves as both a museum of 19th-century domestic life and a documented haunted attraction.
Hamilton, OH
The Butler County Fairgrounds in Hamilton, Ohio have hosted agricultural exhibitions since 1851, when the Butler County Agricultural Society officially organized the annual fair. Located on 54 acres, the venue was moved to its current Fairgrove Avenue location in 1856 and features a historic grandstand rebuilt in 1913 after a fire destroyed its predecessor.
Hamilton, OH
Constructed 1885–1889 by architect David W. Gibbs in the Second Empire style, the Butler County Courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981. In March 1913, when the Great Miami River overflowed its banks and killed more than 200 Butler County residents, the building served as a temporary morgue for ten days.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPHamilton, OH
Millville Cemetery in Millville, Butler County, Ohio was established in 1822 and came under the management of Hanover Township Trustees in the early 1900s. The cemetery occupies a prominent position along Millville Avenue (State Route 129) and remains an active burial ground.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPHamilton, OH
Rossville was formally platted in 1804 on the west bank of the Great Miami River, and its First Ward cemetery occupied the block now known as Sutherland Park. In 1878, the city leveled the graves to create recreational space; remains were transferred—or in some cases left behind—when Greenwood Cemetery was established to consolidate Hamilton's pioneer dead.
Sandusky, OH
Cedar Point opened in 1870 on a Lake Erie peninsula in Sandusky, Ohio, and is one of the oldest continuously operating amusement parks in the United States. The 1912 Midway Carousel, built by carver Daniel Muller and moved to Cedar Point in 1946, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and remains the oldest operating ride in the park.
Sandusky, OH
Hotel Breakers opened on June 12, 1905, inside Cedar Point amusement park near Sandusky, Ohio, designed by the Knox and Elliott architectural firm in the French chateau style. The original 600-room hotel offered running water in every room, with one hundred rooms having private baths — an amenity remarkable for its era. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and held National Historic Landmark status before delisting in 2001 due to alterations. Now owned by Six Flags Entertainment Corporation, the hotel has 669 rooms.
Sandusky, OH
Cholera Cemetery on Harrison Street is Sandusky's earliest burial ground and the site of a mass grave from the 1849 cholera epidemic, when roughly 400 of the city's 4,000-6,000 residents died. Records indicate 357 burials occurred over just 68 days between July and September 1849, with about 60 of those interred in the mass grave. The cemetery was closed shortly after when Oakland Cemetery opened in Perkins Township, and was restored in 1924 with a central bronze monument; the Ohio Historical Society marker was placed in 1965.
Sandusky, OH
The Merry-Go-Round Museum occupies the historic 1925-1927 Sandusky Post Office at 301 Jackson Street, a building on the National Register of Historic Places. The Postal Service moved out in 1986 to a new facility on Caldwell Street; the building sat vacant until the museum opened on July 14, 1990, inspired by the 1988 USPS issuance of carousel-themed stamps. The museum has operated as a regional carousel-history attraction ever since.
Sandusky, OH
The Sleep Inn Sandusky operates as a Choice Hotels-branded property at 5509 Milan Road in Sandusky, Ohio, near Cedar Point and the Lake Erie shoreline. It is a contemporary chain hotel rather than a historic structure; its haunted reputation comes from staff accounts logged on Ohio paranormal aggregators rather than from documented prior use of the building.
Kent, OH
The Marvin Kent mansion was built between 1880 and 1884 by Franklin T. Marvin Kent, the son of the city's founder and namesake Marvin Kent. The 20-room Victorian home sat at the center of Kent's social and civic life before the local Masonic lodge acquired it in 1923, converting the ballroom and formal rooms for lodge use.
Kent, OH
The Kent Stage opened in 1927 as a venue for silent films and vaudeville acts. After decades as a cinema and entertainment space, it was renovated and returned to life as a live music venue, now hosting touring artists in its original historic theater interior.
Kent, OH
The Kent Train Depot was built in 1875 as a passenger station for the Erie Railroad. Passenger service ended in 1970, and the red brick building was converted to the Pufferbelly Restaurant, which has operated there for several decades. The depot retains much of its original station architecture.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPKent, OH
Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, is a public research university whose campus history is inseparable from May 4, 1970, when Ohio National Guard troops shot and killed four students and wounded nine others during an antiwar protest. Stuart Hall is a dormitory on the Kent State campus that was closed and fell into disuse, becoming a focus of campus paranormal lore.
Springfield, OH
Construction on Clark County's current courthouse began in 1918 and was completed in 1924 at a cost of $115,000, designed by architect William K. Schilling in the Romanesque style. The building stands at the northwest corner of North Limestone and East Columbia Streets in downtown Springfield and has served continuously as the county's primary judicial facility.
Springfield, OH
Daniel Hertzler built his Pennsylvania-style bank house on this Clark County property around 1854. On October 10, 1867, robbers who suspected Hertzler was hiding a large cash reserve broke into the farmhouse and shot him dead. Two suspects were arrested and then escaped jail; neither was ever recaptured. The unsolved murder left the property in legal limbo until it was eventually acquired as part of what is now George Rogers Clark Park.
Springfield, OH
George Rogers Clark Park preserves the site of the August 8, 1780 Battle of Piqua, in which 1,000 Kentucky militia under George Rogers Clark defeated a Shawnee force in the largest battle of the American Revolution in Ohio. The 282-acre Clark County park also contains the 1854 Daniel Hertzler House, restored as a house museum.
Springfield, OH
Myers Hall at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio is the oldest building on campus, with the east wing opening in 1846. The structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. During the Civil War, the building served as a hospital for Union soldiers — a well-documented use that provides the historical basis for the horse legend. Myers Hall is currently offline as a dormitory.
Warren, OH
Built in 1832 by General Simon Perkins for his daughter Olive and her husband John Kinsman, the Greek Revival mansion in Warren, Ohio is one of the region's finest examples of early American architecture. The house witnessed profound grief: Olive Kinsman lost three infants in quick succession before dying herself at age 27.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPWarren, OH
The Pioneer Cemetery at 661 Mahoning Avenue in Warren, Ohio is the city's oldest burial ground, with graves dating to 1804. The cemetery sits along the edge of the Mahoning River, behind what is now the Red Cross Central Office for the Warren area. Approximately thirty markers remain, weathered and difficult to read — a small remnant of Warren's earliest settlement period.
Warren, OH
The Mahoning River in downtown Warren, Ohio sits above a sealed Underground Railroad tunnel approximately the length of a football field. Built to shelter and transport escaping enslaved people, the tunnel collapsed at some point during the antebellum period, blocking a group inside. It has been fortified closed since due to structural danger.
Warren, OH
Henry Bishop Perkins Sr. built this Second Empire mansion in 1871 near the center of Warren, Ohio, at the height of his influence as a civic leader and businessman; the building's association with multiple Perkins family deaths in the 1880s preceded its long career as Warren City Hall.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPAlliance, OH
This rural bridge near Alliance's Jewish Cemetery is one of Ohio's documented crybaby bridge sites, with a local legend of infant cries heard from below at night. The Ohio Exploration Society documented the location along with a related report of mysterious blue lights from a shed in the adjacent Jewish Cemetery, which was removed in 2011.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPAlliance, OH
Built in 1874, the Fairmount Children's Home was a three-story Alliance orphanage with an extensive basement tunnel system. The building gained a reputation as a severe institution before it was destroyed by fire in 2002.
Alliance, OH
Col. William Henry Morgan commissioned Glamorgan Castle in 1904, naming it after Glamorganshire in Wales — his father Thomas Rees's birthplace. Architect Willard Hirsh traveled to Europe to study castle design before drafting plans. The 40-room, 28,000-square-foot structure on 50 acres took until 1909 to complete. Morgan died in 1928 and the family sold the property in the late 1930s. Today it serves as the administrative offices of Alliance City Schools.
Canton, OH
The Canton Palace Theatre opened in November 1926, designed by architect John Eberson in the Churrigueresque style with a garden-themed auditorium and a starlit ceiling. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, it has operated continuously as a performing arts venue.
Canton, OH
The rear section of the Saxton-McKinley House was built in 1841 by George Dewalt; his daughter Katherine and her husband John Saxton inherited it, and John expanded it forward in 1870. Ida Saxton McKinley and President William McKinley lived here from approximately 1878 to 1891.
Canton, OH
West Lawn Cemetery was incorporated in 1861 — the first burial was January 1, 1861 — and served as the original resting place of President William McKinley after his assassination in 1901, before his permanent interment at the McKinley National Memorial.
Fremont, OH
Sandusky County's jail history spans two buildings: an 1840s limestone dungeon excavated beneath the courthouse after prisoners escaped the original above-ground facility, and an 1892 jail with documented ties to President Rutherford B. Hayes, who laid the cornerstone as president of the National Prison Reform Association. The Gallows Exhibition Hall preserves the actual gallows from the county's last legal hanging.
Fremont, OH
Spiegel Grove is the 25-acre estate of Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th President of the United States, in Fremont, Ohio. The 31-room Victorian mansion was the Hayes family home from 1873 until Hayes's death in 1893. The estate opened as a public museum and library in 1916 — the first presidential library in the country — and remains operated by the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center.
Fremont, OH
Tindle Bridge in the Fremont area of Sandusky County is associated with at least two murders reported by the Ohio Exploration Society — a victim from the 1950s and a second body discovered in a nearby field in a later decade. The site has developed a local reputation built on these two violent crimes.
Lima, OH
On October 12, 1933, members of John Dillinger's gang arrived at the Allen County Jail in Lima, Ohio, identified themselves as law enforcement officers, and demanded Dillinger's release. When Sheriff Jess Sarber refused and reached for his keys, he was shot and killed. The gang then broke Dillinger out of custody, an event that prompted J. Edgar Hoover to place Dillinger on the FBI's first Most Wanted list.
Lima, OH
The facility at 3700 W Elm St in Lima opened in 1915 as the Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, a facility for individuals deemed mentally unfit to stand trial or serve prison sentences. It was converted to a conventional correctional institution in 1982 and closed by Governor Bob Taft in 2004.
Lima, OH
The Lima Tuberculosis Hospital opened in 1911 as the first state-supported TB facility in Ohio, grew from 24 to 158 beds, and operated through 1973, accumulating hundreds of patient deaths during the height of Ohio's tuberculosis epidemic.
Middletown, OH
Poasttown Elementary School opened September 7, 1937, in Poasttown, Ohio — a community established in 1818 by Peter Post near Middletown. The school was built near the railroad tracks on land that served as an emergency triage area for the July 4, 1910 Big Four railway collision, one of Ohio's worst rail disasters, which killed 36 people. The school operated as a public elementary until 2000 and has since been used exclusively for paranormal investigation events.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMiddletown, OH
The railroad overpass on Maud Hughes Road in Liberty Township, Butler County, has accumulated a documented history of violent death since at least the early twentieth century. On October 24, 1909, a steam locomotive boiler exploded beneath the bridge on the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railway, scalding two engineers to death and injuring three others. Subsequent decades brought at least 36 additional deaths from accidents and suicides at or near the structure.
Middletown, OH
Paul J. Sorg, Middletown's first multi-millionaire and a dominant figure in American tobacco manufacturing, commissioned the opera house in 1891 as a gift to the city. Architect Samuel Hannaford—who also designed Cincinnati Music Hall—created a 1,200-seat hall that opened September 12, 1891. Sorg served two terms in Congress and died in 1902; the building survived as a movie theater until falling into disrepair before the Sorg Opera Revitalization Group began restoration in 2012.
Oxford, OH
Peabody Hall at Miami University stands at the center of the Western Female Seminary National Historic District in Oxford, Ohio. The original building opened in 1855; it survived two fires and was renamed in 1905 to honor Helen Peabody, the institution's founding principal from 1855 to 1888.
Oxford, OH
Miami University was founded in 1809 in Oxford, Ohio, and is one of the oldest public universities in the United States. Peabody Hall, built in 1855 as the Western Female Seminary, is the campus's primary site of documented haunting tradition, connected to founding principal Helen Peabody.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPOxford, OH
The Oxford Light is an enduring paranormal legend associated with Oxford-Milford Road in rural Butler County, Ohio, reported consistently since at least the 1940s. The story involves a doomed romance, a fatal motorcycle accident, and a young woman's death in a barn that still stands at the road's end.
Centerville, OH
Normandy United Methodist Church in Centerville, Ohio is housed in a mansion originally constructed in the 1920s as the private residence of a prominent Dayton-area figure. The building was later converted to a church through the addition of a chapel and music room onto the original structure. The church continues as an active congregation at 450 W Alex Bell Road.
Centerville, OH
Built 1908 as Washington Township Hall for town meetings, graduations, and Grange activities; served as Washington Township government offices until 1985. Converted to a performing-arts center beginning in 1989 and now home to the Town Hall Theatre children's company.
Fairport Harbor, OH
The Fairport Harbor Light, also known as the Grand River Light, was first built in 1825 on Lake Erie and rebuilt in 1871 at the same location. Decommissioned in 1925, the lighthouse and keeper's quarters were converted in 1945 into the first Great Lakes Lighthouse Marine Museum in the United States.
Fairport Harbor, OH
The Fairport Harbor Lighthouse on Lake Erie was originally built in 1825 and rebuilt in 1871. The tower was retired from active service in 1925 when its light was transferred to a new station on the west breakwater. The keeper's dwelling opened as the Fairport Harbor Marine Museum in 1945, the first lighthouse-museum of its kind in the United States.
Lucas, OH
The Ceely Rose case is one of central Ohio's best-documented 19th-century family tragedies. In the spring of 1896, 23-year-old Celia 'Ceely' Rose poisoned her father and brother in Pleasant Valley, Ohio. A subsequent dose killed her mother Rebecca. Ceely confessed near the Pleasant Valley Lutheran Church, was tried, and found not guilty by reason of insanity. She lived in state hospital care until her death at age 61. The Rose family house survives on the grounds of what later became Malabar Farm, the estate of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis Bromfield, now an Ohio state park.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPLucas, OH
Mount Olive Cemetery, known locally as Lucas Cemetery, sits on rural land outside the village of Lucas in Richland County, Ohio. It is the burial place of Mary Jane Hendrickson, born 1825 in Holmes County and died at age 72 in 1898. The grave has been the focus of regional folklore for more than a century, documented in Jannette Quackenbush's Haunted Ohio research series.
Mansfield, OH
The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield was built between 1886 and 1910 on 40 acres, designed by architect Levi T. Scofield in a blend of Victorian Gothic, Richardsonian Romanesque, and Queen Anne styles intended to encourage spiritual reform in young offenders. The facility opened September 15, 1896, and operated until 1990 when a federal court ordered its closure due to overcrowding and inhumane conditions. Over 200 people died during its operation. The Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society has operated it as a museum since 1995.
Mansfield, OH
The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield was begun in 1886 and built in stages until 1910, designed by Cleveland architect Levi T. Scofield in a mix of Victorian Gothic, Richardsonian Romanesque, and Queen Anne styles. It closed in 1990 and is now operated by the Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society as a museum and filming location, including for The Shawshank Redemption.
Mason, OH
Kings Island opened on April 29, 1972 in Mason, Ohio, about 24 miles northeast of Cincinnati. The land previously hosted operations connected to the Peters Cartridge Company. A small private cemetery in the guest parking lot dates to the nineteenth century and predates the park.
Mason, OH
Kings Island opened in April 1972 after Paramount Parks relocated from flood-prone Coney Island on the Ohio River. Construction of the 364-acre site in Mason, Warren County, required working around a pre-existing pioneer burial ground — Dogstreet Cemetery, dating to at least 1803 — which remains at the north end of the parking lot to this day.
Massillon, OH
The Massillon Public Library's current building opened in 1937, funded by WPA construction money during the New Deal era. The structure incorporated and expanded the earlier Duncan/Baldwin home that had occupied the site, and the library has been a community anchor in downtown Massillon for nearly ninety years.
Massillon, OH
The Eastern Ohio Insane Asylum opened in Massillon in 1898, built during Governor William McKinley's final year in office, and grew into one of the largest psychiatric facilities in the state. By 1950 the hospital held over 3,100 patients; it later became known as Massillon State Hospital before transitioning to the Heartland Behavioral Health campus.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMoonville, OH
Moonville, Ohio was a railroad town established around 1856 in Vinton County, built around coal and clay mining operations. The community of roughly 100 residents included a school, post office, store, depot, and cemetery. The area's mining output contributed materials to the Civil War effort. As natural resources were depleted, Moonville declined, with the last family leaving by 1947.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMoonville, OH
The Civil War graveyard at Moonville, Ohio served the residents of a small railroad and mining community established around 1856 in Vinton County. The town of Moonville — roughly 100 residents at its peak — produced coal and clay that contributed to Civil War industrial supply. The community gradually emptied as resources were depleted, with the last family departing by 1947.
Painesville, OH
Lake Erie College traces its origins to the 1845 Willoughby Female Seminary, the only women's college in the Western Reserve before it burned down in 1854. The institution reopened in Painesville in 1859 as Lake Erie Female Seminary; College Hall, where the first classes met, was built that year in Italianate style and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
Painesville, OH
Rider's Inn was built in 1812 by Joseph Rider on the route that would become US Route 20 in Painesville, Ohio. It served as a stagecoach stop along the early national road network and later as a stop on the Underground Railroad. The inn has operated continuously and is today a restaurant and bed-and-breakfast.
Youngstown, OH
Established in 1891, Mill Creek Park is one of the oldest and largest municipal parks in Ohio, covering more than 2,600 acres along the Mahoning River gorge in Youngstown. The park was designed by landscape architect William Le Baron Jenney, who also designed Chicago's first steel-frame skyscraper.
Youngstown, OH
The Youngstown Players formed on February 16, 1924. After operating from a renovated barn, the organization raised funds in 1940 to convert a vacant movie house. The current two-theatre building on Glenwood Avenue opened in 1959 and at its peak was the largest community theatre in the United States.
Ashtabula, OH
Chestnut Grove Cemetery is a 19th-century municipal cemetery in Ashtabula, Ohio. It is best known as the burial site for victims of the Ashtabula Bridge Disaster of December 29, 1876, when the Pacific Express plunged into the Ashtabula River after the bridge failed during a blizzard. A granite obelisk in the cemetery marks the common grave of unidentified victims.
Athens, OH
The Athens Lunatic Asylum opened on January 9, 1874, on more than 1,000 acres above the Hocking River in southeastern Ohio. Designed by Levi T. Scofield following the Kirkbride plan, the facility expanded from an original capacity of 200 patients to a peak population of approximately 2,000 by the early 20th century before closing in 1993. Most of the campus is now owned by Ohio University.
Bellefontaine, OH
YMCA Camp Willson in Bellefontaine, Ohio was established in 1918 and sits on 500 acres in Logan County. The property's lake was formerly an amusement park destination served by electric interurban rail. A dining hall fire in 1982 is one of the more recent recorded events at the site.
Berea, OH
Kohler Hall stood on Baldwin Wallace University's south campus in Berea, Ohio, in a building that existed by 1858. Before Baldwin Wallace acquired the property in 1913, it served variously as a Methodist children's home and as a hospital and morgue during the Civil War. It was a student dormitory until it was retired from service in 2018 and slated for demolition.
Bexley, OH
The Jeffrey Mansion is a 1905 Jacobethan Revival mansion designed by Columbus architect Frank Packard for Robert Hutchins Jeffrey, who in 1903 had become Columbus's youngest mayor at age 29. Jeffrey donated the mansion to the City of Bexley in 1941. Bexley is a separately incorporated municipality fully surrounded by Columbus. The mansion is now a public event venue, surrounded by the 34-acre Jeffrey Park.
Boston, OH
Boston, Ohio, is a small village in Summit County first settled in 1806 and developed as a transportation node after the Ohio & Erie Canal opened through the Cuyahoga Valley in the 1820s. In 1974 federal legislation authorized creation of the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area (now Cuyahoga Valley National Park); over the following years the National Park Service acquired most residential property in Boston and adjacent villages. Many structures stood vacant for decades before demolition in 2016. Internet-era folklore renamed the depopulated area 'Helltown.'
Brecksville, OH
Cuyahoga Valley National Park was designated as a National Recreation Area in 1974 and elevated to National Park status in 2000. The 32,572-acre park preserves the Cuyahoga River corridor between Cleveland and Akron, including the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail, the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad, and the Everett Covered Bridge.
Cambridge, OH
The Colonel Taylor Inn occupies the 1878 Victorian mansion built by Joseph D. Taylor, a Civil War veteran, U.S. Congressman, attorney, and Cambridge newspaper owner. The 9,000 square foot residence on Upland Road is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and operates today as a four-room bed and breakfast.
Canal Fulton, OH
Built 1906 by Charles O. Finefrock along the banks of the historic Ohio and Erie Canal in Canal Fulton. Original operation included furniture warehousing on the first two floors, a basement funeral parlor operating from roughly 1916 to the 1930s, and tombstone storage on the third floor. Now an event venue.
Circleville, OH
The Roundtown Players company performs in Memorial Hall in Circleville, an 1890s building constructed as a Civil War memorial that has also served as a public library and an armory. The Roundtown Players grew out of 1960s fundraising efforts for Berger Hospital and produced their first show, William Inge's Picnic, in 1967.
College Corner, OH
Hueston Woods State Park in Preble County, Ohio takes its name from Matthew Hueston, who received the land as compensation for military service under General Anthony Wayne in the 1790s. The Hueston family preserved more than 200 acres of old-growth forest, which the state acquired in 1947. The park's 625-acre Acton Lake was impounded in 1957 following completion of a dam across Four Mile Creek. The site has Adena Indian ceremonial mounds dating to 500 B.C.
Cuyahoga Falls, OH
Opened in 1915 as Summit County's tuberculosis sanitarium, Edwin Shaw Hospital housed approximately 200 TB patients at capacity across its decades of operation. A children's wing called Sunshine Village was added in 1922. The facility maintained an on-site cemetery where 246 patients who died of tuberculosis were buried. The hospital was demolished in 2017.
Delaware, OH
Blue Limestone Park in Delaware, Ohio, is a former limestone quarry that operated until the 1930s, then filled with water to become a swimming hole. The site features two connected limestone quarries separated by a historic tunnel through which the Delaware Run river flows. The park now functions as a public recreational and historical site approximately 26 miles north of Columbus.
Dublin, OH
Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio was designed by Jack Nicklaus and opened in 1976, when the inaugural Memorial Tournament was also held. The course sits near the documented 1810 execution site of Chief Leatherlips, a Wyandot leader killed by members of his own tribe near the banks of the Scioto River. The Memorial Tournament has experienced weather disruptions in a majority of its years, a pattern Dublin residents and golfers have attributed to the 'Curse of Chief Leatherlips.'
East Liverpool, OH
Beaver Creek State Park was established by the Ohio legislature in 1945 and now covers more than 3,050 acres along Little Beaver Creek in Columbiana County. The park preserves what remains of Sprucevale, a small village founded in 1837 by the Hambleton Brothers, and significant ruins of the 73-mile Sandy and Beaver Canal, which operated in the 1830s through 1853 as a spur off the Erie Canal system.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPFindlay, OH
The ghost light at Weidler's Passing has been described in Hancock County oral tradition since approximately 1890. The legend names the source as Jimmy Welsh, a freight train conductor said to have been thrown from a moving train and decapitated at the crossing on Township Road 236. Welsh's lantern is said to still move along the tracks as he searches for flagging trains that no longer stop.
Gallipolis, OH
Our House was established in 1819 by Henry Cushing as a tavern and inn for travelers arriving by Ohio River steamboat at Gallipolis. The Marquis de Lafayette stayed in 1825 and left behind a jacket still held by the museum, and Jenny Lind performed in the second-floor ballroom during her 1850s American tour.
Granville, OH
The Buxton Inn in Granville, Ohio was built in 1812 by Orrin Granger and operated as a tavern and post office for early westward travelers. Major Horton Buxton purchased it in 1865 and operated it until his death in 1934. Opera singer Ethel 'Bonnie' Bounell ran the inn from 1934 until her death in Room 9 in 1960. Preservationists Orville and Audrey Orr rescued the building in 1972 and expanded it. The inn was sold in March 2026 to New England Development Company and continues operating as a hotel.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPGreenfield, OH
Greenfield is a small city in Highland County, Ohio. Its crybaby-bridge legend is attached to a bridge on Ghormley Road just outside town. The story is recorded by regional folklore collections but is not connected to any documented historical event.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPGreenville, OH
McMecham Road in Greenville, Ohio is said to run through land that once served as burial grounds before the surrounding neighborhood was developed. Local accounts claim that houses built in the area have experienced unexplained activity consistent with disturbance of burial sites.
Ironton, OH
The Vesuvius iron furnace at Lake Vesuvius was built in 1833, one of 46 charcoal iron furnaces in the Hanging Rock region of southeastern Ohio. Under manager William Firmstone, the operation pioneered a hot-blast technique that increased production to 8-12 tons of iron daily. The furnace closed around 1906 as local ore seams depleted; the Civilian Conservation Corps built the dam on Storms Creek between 1937 and 1941, creating the 143-acre lake that bears the furnace's name.
Kelleys Island, OH
Kelleys Island 4-H Camp has served Ohio youth since 1945, operating on Ward Road on one of Lake Erie's most significant islands. The camp provides residential and day-use programming for thousands of children, teens, and adults, serving as a major 4-H education facility for nearly eighty years.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPKettering, OH
Built in 1941 as a stone observation tower in Hills and Dales MetroPark, the structure gained the nicknames Witch's Tower and Frankenstein's Castle from local legend. On a summer night in 1967, 16-year-old Peggy Harmeson sought shelter inside the tower during a storm and was struck and killed by lightning. The doors have been permanently sealed since.
Lakeside Marblehead, OH
Johnson's Island, a 300-acre island in Sandusky Bay on Lake Erie, served as a Union prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate officers from April 1862 through September 1865. More than 10,000 men passed through the facility; 206 died and were buried in what is now a federally maintained Confederate cemetery managed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Lancaster, OH
Founded in 1828, the Fairfield County Infirmary housed the county's poor, mentally ill, elderly, and orphaned for 157 years until it closed in 1985. An 1851 newspaper documented a superintendent who beat residents in the fields; over 1,200 bodies are believed buried in the on-site cemetery. The building was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places in 2020 and was sold that same year to a new owner who reopened it for ticketed ghost hunts.
Lebanon, OH
The Golden Lamb in Lebanon, Ohio has operated continuously since 1803, making it Ohio's oldest business. Founded by Jonas Seaman as a stagecoach stop, the inn grew through the 19th century into a four-story landmark that hosted twelve U.S. presidents, Charles Dickens, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In 2026, the property celebrates 100 years of family ownership.
Lisbon, OH
Little Beaver Creek in Columbiana County, Ohio was designated the state's first wild river on January 15, 1974. The Sandy and Beaver Canal, completed in 1848 with 30 dams, 90 locks, and 2 tunnels, once linked the Ohio River with the Ohio-Erie Canal along this corridor. All five of Columbiana County's covered bridges have been restored, including the Church Hill Road Bridge built in 1870.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPLorain, OH
G Street Park is a neighborhood green space in Lorain, Ohio — a Lake Erie industrial city whose late-19th-century growth was driven by steel mills, shipyards, and rail traffic. The park sits in a residential neighborhood whose development paralleled the rise of Lorain's heavy industry. The Ohio Exploration Society documents the park among Lorain County's hauntings and legends, alongside more famous sites such as the Gore Orphanage ruins.
Loveland, OH
Loveland Castle, also called Chateau Laroche, is a one-acre stone castle on the Little Miami River, hand-built by World War I veteran and Boy Scout leader Harry D. Andrews beginning in 1927. Andrews worked on the structure for over fifty years, and bequeathed it on his death in 1981 to his Boy Scout troop, the Knights of the Golden Trail, who continue to operate it as a museum.
Manchester, OH
Manchester is a historic village on the Ohio River in Adams County, Ohio, one of the oldest settlements in the region. Its Presbyterian church carries a local legend about a single longtime bell-ringer whose ghost is said to linger in the steeple. The lore is recorded by regional collections but is not tied to a documented, named individual.
Marysville, OH
The 1884 Victorian residence in downtown Marysville, Ohio, has operated under several names including The Castle Bed and Breakfast, Doc Henderson's Restaurant, and Hinkley's. The building reopened in 2019 as House of Spirits, a Prohibition-era themed cocktail bar with the same multi-story Victorian footprint and rounded front porch.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMiamisburg, OH
Hillgrove Union Cemetery was established in 1863 on 30 acres of rolling land along East Central Avenue in Miamisburg, Ohio. In 1884, the cemetery received the relocated remains from the town's original burial ground — Village Cemetery, now Library Park — following an extraordinary series of apparition sightings at that site that drew hundreds of witnesses.
Milan, OH
Milan Cemetery is located in Milan Township, Erie County, Ohio, a small community known as the birthplace of Thomas Edison. The cemetery serves the broader Milan community and contains graves dating to the 19th century.
Milford, OH
The Stonelick (Perintown) Covered Bridge was built in 1878 as a 140-foot Howe through-truss span carrying Stonelick-Williams Corner Road over Stonelick Creek in Clermont County, Ohio, near Milford and Owensville. It is the county's last surviving covered bridge and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 10, 1974. It remains an active single-lane bridge after a 2014 collapse-and-rebuild.
Millersburg, OH
Terrace View in Millersburg, Ohio is a former nursing home and mental health facility, built in 1958 and expanded in 1981, that served thousands of patients over five decades before closing in 2005. The 60,000-square-foot building in Ohio's Holmes County Amish Country sat abandoned for over two decades before restoration began. Post-closure renovation crews discovered ritual symbols and animal remains in the basement.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMonroeville, OH
The Bluebridge area near Monroeville, Ohio in Huron County was settled beginning in 1812 by Seth Brown of Massachusetts and shaped by frontier conflict during the War of 1812. Seymour Creek is named for a militia scout killed on a nearby bluff.
Nelsonville, OH
Mount St. Mary's Hospital opened in 1950 in Nelsonville, Ohio, founded and staffed by the Sisters of St. Francis under Mother Lidwina Jacobs. The Franciscan sisters operated the hospital from 1949 to 1979, after which it became Doctors Hospital of Nelsonville. OhioHealth donated the building to Integrated Services for Behavioral Health in 2017, and it now operates as the Mary Hill Center.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPNew Carlisle, OH
Blacks Cemetery is a historic burial ground located approximately 4 miles outside of New Carlisle, Ohio, in Clark County. The cemetery contains graves dating from multiple periods, representing the burial traditions and community history of the New Carlisle area.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPNew Washington, OH
New Washington is a small village in Crawford County, Ohio, located off Route 602 between Cleveland and Columbus, approximately 45 minutes from Mansfield. Union Cemetery near New Washington contains Victorian-era grave markers typical of central Ohio rural cemeteries. The Shadowlands account incorrectly named the town's founder as George Washington Carver; the actual history of New Washington's founding has not been confirmed in the sources surveyed.
Newark, OH
Designed in 1889 by Ohio architect J.W. Yost in Richardsonian Romanesque style and built of pink Millersburg sandstone, the Licking County Jail closed in 1987 after a century of operation. At least 22 people died within its walls. The most historically significant death was not inside the building: on November 8, 1910, a crowd of approximately 500 dragged 17-year-old Anti-Saloon League detective Carl Etherington from the jail and hanged him from a telephone pole outside — an event that drew national press coverage.
Newbury Township, OH
Punderson Manor is a 43-room English Tudor mansion built in 1929 within what is now Punderson State Park in Newbury Township, Ohio. The property's history begins with Lemuel Punderson, who settled the land around 1806 and died in 1822. The Tudor structure was commissioned by Karl Long in 1925 and completed in 1929; Ohio acquired it as a state park lodge managed by Xanterra Parks & Resorts.
Newton Falls, OH
Sam Giuliano opened Sam's Pizza Shop in 1958 after immigrating from Gioiosa Marea, Sicily in 1948. He established the restaurant with his wife Katie and raised six children in the business. The building at 2228 S Canal Street predates the pizza shop, previously housing a bar and gambling operation run by Italian immigrant relatives of the Giuliano family.
North Olmsted, OH
The hotel at 24741 Country Club Boulevard in North Olmsted, Ohio originally operated as a Candlewood Suites in the early 2000s. It now operates as a Sonesta Simply Suites Cleveland North Olmsted Airport extended-stay property serving Cleveland Hopkins International Airport traffic.
Norton, OH
The Loyal Oak Tavern occupies a building in Norton, Ohio (Summit County) that was constructed in the 1840s and once operated as an inn, having earlier served as a cabinet shop. The original bar was located in the basement, which is now used as a wine cellar. The venue has more recently operated under the name Wolf Creek Tavern.
Paulding, OH
The Old Paulding County Jail in Paulding, Ohio was contracted in 1874 and completed in 1876 at a cost of $25,000. The basement is limestone with two upper stories of brick and stone trimmings. The jail combined cells with a sheriff's residence, and Paulding County sheriffs and their families lived in the building until 1977. The jail operated until 2006 and was used as county storage from 2006 to 2013.
Peebles, OH
The Wickerham Inn is Adams County, Ohio's oldest brick home, built in 1800-1801 by Revolutionary War veteran Peter Wickerham as a tavern and stagecoach stop on Zane's Trace. The home served as a documented stop on the Underground Railroad and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. It remains a private residence owned by Wickerham descendants.
Perrysburg, OH
Fort Meigs was built in early 1813 under General William Henry Harrison along the Maumee River in northwest Ohio. It withstood two British sieges, but on May 5, 1813, a relief column of Kentucky troops under Lieutenant Colonel William Dudley was ambushed and destroyed — more than 700 men killed, wounded, or captured — in what became known as Dudley's Massacre. The fort closed in 1815 and was reconstructed in the 1970s; it is now the largest reconstructed wooden fort in North America.
Piqua, OH
Fort Piqua Plaza, originally the Fort Piqua Hotel, was built in 1891 in downtown Piqua, Ohio. Columbus architect Joseph W. Yost designed the five-story Richardsonian Romanesque building with a 115-foot corner tower, 100 guest rooms, and a grand two-story fourth-floor dining room. After decades of varied use the building was extensively restored and reopened in 2008 to house the Piqua Public Library, the Piqua Historical Museum, and a banquet center.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPRandolph, OH
St. Joseph Catholic Church was established in 1831, making it one of the earliest Catholic parishes in the Western Reserve. The cemetery beside the church has served the parish since founding; the earliest dated tombstone records the deaths of the children of Joseph and Odelia Gieb in 1839. A new church was built in 1866 and the cemetery was expanded.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPSalem, OH
The bridge on West Pine Lake Road near Salem, Ohio was an iron truss structure whose exact construction date is undocumented but traces to at least 1977. The Columbiana County Engineer decommissioned the road and abandoned the bridge in 1985 at the request of property owner Richard Johnson. The structure has sat unused since, now hidden in overgrown woodland.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPScottown, OH
Lawrence Chapel Cemetery was established in 1865 in Windsor Township, Lawrence County, Ohio. It occupies approximately one acre in the NE quarter of Section 26 on County Road 63, and contains fewer than 30 surviving tombstones according to county records. The adjacent chapel has fallen into ruin.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPSmith Township, OH
Lexington Road in Smith Township, Mahoning County, Ohio — known locally as Jewish Cemetery Road — was the site of a fatal traffic accident involving an elderly cemetery caretaker named Zeke, who was struck and killed while walking to lock up the adjacent Jewish cemetery. His dog was later killed in a similar accident on the same road.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPTrenton, OH
Hickory Flat Cemetery is a small rural burial ground located at the junction of Wehr and Morganthaler Roads in the Overpeck area near Trenton, in Butler County, southwestern Ohio. While modest in size, it has become regionally known less for its interments than as the setting of a long-running local urban legend, the 'Trenton Hatchet Man.'
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPValley City, OH
Myrtle Hill Cemetery in Valley City, Medina County, Ohio contains 14.45 acres of burials in Liverpool Township. The cemetery is known primarily for a large granite sphere grave marker that local tradition connects to witchcraft. The marker's actual history has not been definitively established in publicly available sources, but the legend was likely amplified by the proximity of the real Martha Wise case: in the 1920s, Wise poisoned her family approximately one mile from the cemetery, killing three relatives. She died in 1971 at the Marysville Reformatory.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPValley View, OH
Tinker's Creek Cemetery dates to 1811 and holds more than 66 early settlers of Cuyahoga County's Tinker's Creek valley. The site is also known as Pilgerruh (Pilgrim's Rest) after a brief Moravian missionary presence in 1786, and is thought to contain unmarked graves of Ohio & Erie Canal workers who died on the job.
Van Wert, OH
The Van Rue Building is the former Van Wert County Hospital in northwest Ohio. The current OhioHealth Van Wert Hospital, the successor institution, operates at 1250 S. Washington Street and completed a major 84,000-square-foot expansion in October 2020.
Vermilion, OH
Deans Hollow Bridge crosses a creek valley off Morse Road near Gore Orphanage Road, in the Vermilion area of Lorain County, Ohio. It sits within the wider Gore Orphanage folklore landscape, one of Ohio's most famous haunted areas, and carries its own hanging legend. The specific suicide story is not historically documented.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPWest Chester, OH
The Maud Hughes Road overpass in Liberty Township, Butler County has spanned railway tracks continuously since the 1870s under successive railroad operators — the Short Line, Big Four, New York Central, Penn Central, Conrail, and currently Norfolk Southern. Two engineers died when a steam locomotive boiler exploded on October 24, 1909. In June 1976, a Penn Central employee was killed when rails protruding from a southbound work train penetrated the cab of a northbound locomotive at the Princeton Road overpass nearby.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPWest Milton, OH
Horseshoe Bend Road is a rural roadway with a river bridge in the West Milton and Troy area of Miami County, Ohio. It carries no special documented history; its reputation comes entirely from a local ghost legend that has made it one of the better-known 'haunted road' destinations in the Miami Valley.
Willoughby Hills, OH
Squire's Castle is the shell of a gatekeeper's lodge built around 1895-1897 by Standard Oil executive Feargus B. Squire, who purchased 525 acres near Willoughby Hills to develop as an English country estate. The manor house was never built; Squire rarely visited after 1908 and sold in 1922. Cleveland Metroparks acquired the land in 1925 and named it North Chagrin Reservation.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPWilmington, OH
Haws Chapel Cemetery is a small rural burial ground on Haws Chapel Road outside Wilmington, Ohio, in Clinton County. The cemetery is documented in Clinton County genealogical records and appears in regional cemetery mapping databases. No specific historical events associated with the cemetery's paranormal reputation have been documented through web research.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPWinchester, OH
Winchester Cemetery (also known as Winchester Union Cemetery) has been the primary burial ground for Winchester Township, Adams County since the 1820s. It holds approximately 200 military graves spanning six conflicts and underwent a dedicated restoration effort beginning in 2015 during Winchester's Bicentennial.
Wooster, OH
The Olde Jaol Steakhouse and Tavern in Wooster, Ohio occupies the Third Jail of Wayne County, constructed in 1865 and modeled after Cincinnati's finest prison of that era. The building functioned as the Wayne County Sheriff's Office and jail until 1977. Preservationists led by Mayor Robert Anderson saved it from demolition in 1979; it became the Olde Jaol restaurant in 1995. It was the site of Wayne County's only execution: John Callahan, hanged December 3, 1880.