One of the haunted sites I visited during my recent trip to Ohio was at the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers in Columbus. The cache was called ‘British Island’ (GC2K8AX) by user Sweetfyre, and the area is supposedly haunted by the ghosts of prisoners who tried to escape from the penitentiary located nearby. After a little digging I found there are a number of possible stories to account for the ghostly screams heard in the area.
According to the Columbus Ohio Ghost Hunter Guide by Jannette Quackenbush (link), one possible ghost was that of an Indian mother, a member of the Mingo tribe (not to be confused with the oldest active geocache with the same name). On a beautiful Fall day in 1774, Colonial William Crawford led a column of British troops to remove an Indian settlement along the banks of the Scioto river, just south of the confluence. Chaos ensued as the shooting started, and one mother frantically searched for her young child. Grabbing him in her arms, she tried to flee but was struck down in a hail of musket balls. As she lay dying, she looked into the terrified eyes of her child for the last time and told him to hide. He obeyed, hiding inside the hollows of a dead tree for two days before he was finally found. Some claim the cries are from the boy’s mother, searching for him still even in death.
This was one of those caches where the search was almost as creepy as the story. GZ is located some distance away from the nice view, and there had been recent reports of people camping in the area. After waiting out a few cars and getting an odd look from a jogger (I’m sure she suspected we were either muggers or geocachers), we hopped over the guardrail and into the brush. There was a lot of trash and suspicious material back there, but we didn’t encounter any two-, four-, or eight-legged threats. The cache was hidden in a familiar spot, so fortunately we didn’t have to hang around too long.
Another creepy spot in Columbus is the Schwartz Castle, located on 3rd street in German Village. Admittedly, we originally came to this area for the (excellent!) deli across the street, but I couldn’t help but check this place out after we ate. The story here starts like so many other tragedies. Guy moves all the way to America from Germany in the mid-1800’s, builds a huge house for his fiancé, then gets a letter from his soon-to-be-ex fiancé who tells him she is staying in Germany and marrying some other guy. Ouch. Well, Fred Schwartz did what many of us guys are tempted to do in this situation – he went bat shit crazy. Personal hygiene went out the window, he became vegan, and he drank nothing but rainwater long before these were trendy things to do.
He also did a LOT of nude sunbathing on the top of the building and it is said that his ghost haunts that area. (The spirit of a nude septuagenarian sunbather… yikes!) There have also been reports of bodies buried in the basement, murders, and who knows what happened after the place was condemned in the 1970’s, but the place is a lot less creepy now. The geocache that brought me here (GC321HG) also by user Sweetfyre, is a sneaky little nano hide but a great placement for the all the muggles in the area (living or otherwise). I loved using these geocaches to explore the dark and creepy parts of Columbus!