Everyone knows that Kenyon is haunted. There are, supposedly, ghosts roaming the halls of nearly every dorm and academic building on campus. There’s the one who died in the elevator shaft in Caples and now torments girls who live on the 7th floor, the DKE pledge who died during a hazing ritual in the 1800s and now stalks the Old Kenyon Bullseye, and don’t forget the mysterious entity that stirs up trouble in the theaters at night! Gambier might as well be Sunnydale – we even have a sort of Hellmouth in the Gates of Hell and the (alleged) entrance to the underworld beneath the Church of the Sacred Heart.
With October in full swing and Halloween just weeks away, Kenyon’s supernatural history is even more fun to talk about than usual. However, we’ve heard these ghost stories before; why not try some new ones beyond the Kenyon bubble? Here are a few of the most famous creepy stories and urban legends from around central Ohio.
The Matthew Hoffman Killings
One of the most grotesque, bizarre, and ultimately tragic murders in Ohio history happened in Mount Vernon in 2010. Matthew Hoffman, then 30, was a bit of a drifter who had been in trouble with the law previously and came back to Mount Vernon to live with his parents. Obsessed with trees and leaves, he held a job as a tree trimmer until he was fired for creeping out his boss. He would climb trees to peek at neighbors through the leaves. He was regarded as strange, but ultimately harmless – at least until October of that year.
In what he termed a robbery gone wrong, Hoffman killed Tina Herrmann, her 11-year-old son, Kody Maynard, and family friend Stephanie Sprang as well as Herrmann’s dog. He also kidnapped Herrmann’s young daughter, saying that he could not bring himself to do any harm to her. He disposed of the bodies in a hollowed tree in the Kokosing Lake Wildlife Area, where the Mount Vernon police eventually found them. When the police entered Hoffman’s home, they found rooms were lined floor to ceiling with trash bags filled with leaves, and his living room floor was covered with leaves an inch thick.
Hoffman is now serving a life sentence for murder, kidnapping, and rape.
The Ohio State Reformatory
Potentially the most well-known haunted building in all of Ohio, this historic prison has also had its share of film fame: The Shawshank Redemption, Air Force One, Harry and Walter Go to New York, and other films have all used the penitentiary as a set. Now abandoned and no longer used to house prisoners, a historical society offers tours on Halloween to tourists interested in encountering one of the many entities said to stalk its cells. The most common reports include touching of some kind, voices, and apparitions of previous prisoners.
Mohican State Park
Some Kenyon students may have enjoyed an evening canoeing or roaming through Mohican’s beautiful trails – but they may not have been aware of the danger contained within its wooded paths. A ghost of the “ugliest man who ever lived” is said to walk among the trees – and apparently he’s out for blood. Killed by a stagecoach and dumped into Killbuck Swamp, you may see him wandering with his axe, enraged by the way he was treated in life.
Kenyon is full of spooky places, and so is Ohio as a whole. This Halloween, you may think it’s safer to wander off campus for the night – but be careful! You never know who, or what, you might find.
Image sources: Wikipedia.org, Forgottenoh.com, Mikiemetric.net, Screengeek.co.uk