Rich in history and steeped in blue-collar values, Marion, Ohio, is much like any midwestern city, aside from its abundance of ghouls and unexplained phenomena. From well-known landmarks like the mysterious Merchant Ball to largely forgotten locales like the Quarry Street Cemetery, Joshua Simpkins of Spookymarion.com takes readers on a delightful journey through Marions bizarre history and hauntings. Was President Hardings death forecast by the First Ladys squawking finchits feathered form now stuffed and encased in the Harding Homeon the eve of the presidents ill fated trip to Alaska? Dare to visit the Mongoloid House or see what goes bump at the empty downtown YMCA. Revisit Marions urban legends and discover little-known ghouls that deserve to be heard.

In 1919, the first trans-Atlantic flight in world history occurred, the Volstead Act was passed (later on repealed), the Treaty of Versailles was signed, and Babe Ruth set a record for most consecutive scoreless innings pitched in a world series, a record that lasted until 1961. In Marion, Ohio, Mrs. Rose Belle Scranton was found dead at a coal pile, west of the Erie roundhouse on January 29, 1919. Up to this day, the murder case is still unsolved despite the wealth of evidence and information gathered and presented. Phil Reid extricates the 1919 Marion murder case almost a century later in The Mystifying Murder in Marion, Ohio. Reid comes up with an amplified and detailed work in The Mystifying Murder in Marion, Ohio, spanning a brief history of a little town to newspaper articles covering the Scranton murder. Several angles were look into based on the clues gathered and recorded witness accounts, including robbery and domestic trouble. The series of events following the murder, like a portent of worst things to come, heated things up in Marion: racial discord, exodus of the colored laborers out of town, and multiple arrests, including that of Mrs. Scranton’s husband. Authorities are baffled-- just when they are about to decipher the mystery behind the crime, a witness or evidence pops out contrary to the supposedly solved case.

A collection of Ohio ghost stories and ghostlore from Native American tales to contemporary haunted houses.

At a casual glance, Hamilton is a typical midwestern town, but a closer look reveals strange and inexplicable events of possibly supernatural origin. A mischievous poltergeist plays its tricks in a High Street tavern. More than a century ago, a young boy narrowly escaped death in a fall that left him gravely ill, and some say his cries still echo in his family home. A vaporous woman appears on the stairs of a Hamilton home once owned by one of the county's richest men. Could this be his daughter who died from suicide? Hamilton native and contributor to the Dayton Lane Ghost Walk Shi O'Neill mines the history of the town's many spectral occurrences.

Tales of ghosts and haunted houses from around Ohio.

The brutal lynching of two young black men in Marion, Indiana, on August 7, 1930, cast a shadow over the town that still lingers. It is only one event in the long and complicated history of race relations in Marion, a history much ignored and considered by many to be best forgotten. But the lynching cannot be forgotten. It is too much a part of the fabric of Marion, too much ingrained even now in the minds of those who live there. In Our Town journalist Cynthia Carr explores the issues of race, loyalty, and memory in America through the lens of a specific hate crime that occurred in Marion but could have happened anywhere. Marion is our town, America’s town, and its legacy is our legacy. Like everyone in Marion, Carr knew the basic details of the lynching even as a child: three black men were arrested for attempted murder and rape, and two of them were hanged in the courthouse square, a fate the third miraculously escaped. Meeting James Cameron–the man who’d survived–led her to examine how the quiet Midwestern town she loved could harbor such dark secrets. Spurred by the realization that, like her, millions of white Americans are intimately connected to this hidden history, Carr began an investigation into the events of that night, racism in Marion, the presence of the Ku Klux Klan–past and present–in Indiana, and her own grandfather’s involvement. She uncovered a pattern of white guilt and indifference, of black anger and fear that are the hallmark of race relations across the country. In a sweeping narrative that takes her from the angry energy of a white supremacist rally to the peaceful fields of Weaver–once an all-black settlement neighboring Marion–in search of the good and the bad in the story of race in America, Carr returns to her roots to seek out the fascinating people and places that have shaped the town. Her intensely compelling account of the Marion lynching and of her own family’s secrets offers a fresh examination of the complex legacy of whiteness in America. Part mystery, part history, part true crime saga, Our Town is a riveting read that lays bare a raw and little-chronicled facet of our national memory and provides a starting point toward reconciliation with the past. On August 7, 1930, three black teenagers were dragged from their jail cells in Marion, Indiana, and beaten before a howling mob. Two of them were hanged; by fate the third escaped. A photo taken that night shows the bodies hanging from the tree but focuses on the faces in the crowd—some enraged, some laughing, and some subdued, perhaps already feeling the first pangs of regret. Sixty-three years later, journalist Cynthia Carr began searching the photo for her grandfather’s face.

" West Virginia boasts an unusually rich heritage of ghost tales. Originally West Virginians told these hundred stories not for idle amusement but to report supernatural experiences that defied ordinary human explanation. From jealous rivals and ghostly children to murdered kinsmen and omens of death, these tales reflect the inner lives—the hopes, beliefs, and fears—of a people. Like all folklore, these tales reveal much of the history of the region: its isolation and violence, the passions and bloodshed of the Civil War era, the hardships of miners and railroad laborers, and the lingering vitality of Old World traditions.