From whispers and flickering lights to apparitions and bumps in the night, central Ohio has plenty of places with at least one ghost story to tell. In Westerville alone, there are several locations included in an uptown ghost tour, such as the Otterbein Cemetery, the Stoner House and the Old Bag of Nails.
However, many students have not visited a haunted location or had a paranormal experience.
“I just watch movies pretty much. I’m not brave enough to go into [haunted places],” said Rachel Jaynes, a sophomore nursing major. Jaynes mentioned plans to go to her first haunted attraction, though she is uncertain that she’d want to go to a haunted location.
“I don’t know if I’d willingly do that to myself,” Jaynes said.
Delaney Schuck, a first-year political science and Spanish major, expressed a similar sentiment.
“I’d be afraid I’d be haunted, like the devil would get me,” Schuck said. She says that she’d rather stick with movies, like “The Conjuring.”
But for students looking for something other than horror movies and haunted attractions, here are six historical and (possibly) haunted locations in and around Westerville that are open to the public.
Stoner House – 133 S. State St. (Westerville)
The Stoner House was built in 1852 by George Stoner, and it has served as an inn, tavern, spa and a station on the Underground Railroad.
The Stoner House was once part of the Underground Railroad, though it now houses local businesses.
While Stoner maintained a stagecoach line that connected Columbus and Westerville, he also provided transport and shelter for runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad, who he hid in the basement of the building.
Some visitors have reported seeing shadowy figures, while others have heard mysterious bells ringing in the basement. Various phenomena like voices and “ghost lights” have been caught on recordings.
The Stoner House currently is the home to a few businesses, but students can still visit the historical home as it stands on the outskirts of campus.
Old Bag of Nails – 24 N. State St. (Westerville)
The Old Bag of Nails, as it stands in uptown Westerville, is known for its pub-style atmosphere. However, on the third floor, there are stories of some paranormal occurrences, and the location is just one of many stops in Westerville’s uptown ghost tour.
Long before the Old Bag of Nails was in business, the building’s third floor was an opera house. But one night, during a performance of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1886, an accidental fire resulted in the death of three people, one of whom was a woman who couldn’t be identified due to the burns.
Nowadays, with reports of people seeing a lady in a white dress on the third floor, one can only wonder if this is the ghost of the same unknown woman.
Worthington Inn - 649 High St. (Worthington)
The Worthington Inn was originally a home before it was transformed into an inn during the mid-1800s.
From the apparition of a gentleman who greets patrons to a ghostly manager who’s still in the habit of lighting a cigar, the Worthington Inn appears to have many ghost stories.
While the oldest portion of the building was constructed in 1831 as a home for the family of Rensselaer Cowles, the building was later enlarged as new owners transformed the home into a traveler’s inn and hotel. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the building assumed the name of the Old Worthington Inn.
Nowadays, the Worthington Inn serves as a restaurant and bar, though with a range of odd experiences reported by some servers and patrons, it’s unclear just how many figures from the inn’s past have chosen to stay.
Old Governor’s Mansion – 1234 E. Broad St. (Columbus)
The Old Governor’s Mansion in the East Broad Street Historic District it was built in the early 1900s and was a family home before being sold to the state of Ohio in 1919, where it would serve as the residence for 10 governors up until 1957.
Today, the mansion is occupied by the Columbus Foundation, however, it seems something else is also dwelling in the mansion, per stories of the Blue Lady—an African American woman, who wears a blue dress and is said to wander the mansion, inspecting it. She is said to move objects around, and it is believed that she may have died in a fire at the mansion. This is coupled with reports of visitors detecting the smell of burnt hair and skin.
Thurber House – 77 Jefferson Ave. (Columbus)
The Thurber House, named for cartoonist James Thurber, who lived in the residence from 1913-1917 as a student at The Ohio State University, was built in 1873. More specifically, this brick Victorian-style home was built on land that used to hold the Ohio Lunatic Asylum, which burned down in 1868, causing the death of six patients.
The house is thought to be haunted due to Thurber's own spooky experience, which inspired his short story "The Night the Ghost Got In." The story describes a time when he and his brother heard footsteps from the kitchen and stairs in the middle of the night—yet they never saw anyone. One theory offers it may have been the ghost of a man who accidentally shot himself.
Nowadays, the Thurber House is open to the public as a James Thurber museum and a nonprofit literary arts center. However, it’s unknown exactly which spirits may be haunting the house and the rest of the block.
Perkins Observatory – 3199 Columbus Pike (Delaware)
Tucked away off of Route 23, just south of the city of Delaware is the Perkins Observatory. Named for Hiram Perkins, a professor of math and astronomy at Ohio Wesleyan University who used his fortune to fund the observatory’s construction, the observatory was the third largest observatory in the world when it was completed in 1931.
The Perkins Observatory is open to the public during OWU's programs, but is otherwise isolated atop a hill.
However, the old observatory may hold more than just its 32-inch telescope. In the silent, dark isolation of the dome, Perkins’s spirit has been said to roam around, unable to rest having never been able to use his observatory.
Haunted or not, the observatory is maintained by OWU and attracts thousands of visitors every year with its routine public programs that include activities like a tour of the observatory, planetarium shows and stargazing.
Westerville and central Ohio are full of landmarks and historical sites, some of which are said to be haunted. But regardless of whether any of these locations host paranormal entities, each one can be appreciated as a testament to historical preservation.
