From Cincinnati Post 3 May 1886, Image extracted from microfilm by Greg Hand
As the Eve of All Hallows looms, let us ponder an assortment of Cincinnati’s classic haunted houses of yore. This list could easily be doubled or tripled in length.
Steele Subdivision
Poor Fred Limke met a dreadful end in 1916. A plasterer by trade, Mr. Limke lived on Witler Street in Cumminsville. He had been employed by a contractor working in the Steele Subdivision of Springfield Township on the border of College Hill. Mr. Limke’s body was found in the “vault” or privy pit, half-buried in “debris.” (Let’s stick to euphemisms, shall we?) He had not been seen for some time and the delay in locating his earthy and earthly remains was the result of this “vault” being located on the grounds of a haunted house. Vacant by then for many years, the house in question, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer [11 November 1916] had formerly been occupied by a restaurant and poolroom. Neighbors for some years had reported unnatural sights and sounds in the vicinity of the house.
“So firm are they in their belief the house is inhabited by a spirit that police could not persuade them to approach the vault in which the body was found.”
Perhaps. Perhaps it was the emanations from that debris which kept them away.
From Illustrated Police News 30 December 1876 Volume 21, Issue 531, Digitized by University of Minnesota Libraries
Dublin Street
Down near the bottom of Eggleston Avenue, where the bloody Deer Creek once vomited into the Ohio River, there once was a quite destitute Irish neighborhood named Dublin Street. In 1903, the denizens of Dublin Street cowered in their houses after dark, afraid to venture forth because “Ginger” Ryan had returned. Ginger had been a giant of a man with a decidedly short temper. He drove an express wagon, drank whiskey by the quart and battered any poor soul who looked at him sideways. When Ginger died, there was great relief in Dublin Street and now, here he was, back again, his temper intact. The Enquirer [20 October 1903] reported that the ghost rose up one night from a manhole located near the spot where his old livery stable stood, bathed in a “ghastly glow” and fully recognizable by those who knew Ginger all too well.
“The spirit, they claim, wandered around the open mouth of the manhole. It went through the actions of ‘Ginger’ when he hitched up his horse and wagon when alive. It was in view five minutes and then disappeared into the manhole. The story spread with great rapidity that the ghost has appeared at a certain hour every night since. Many declare they have seen it, and all swear there is no fake about it. The ghost is the real thing, but nobody up there cares to shake the shade of ‘Ginger’ by the hand and bid it welcome.”
East End
It’s all demolished now, but there once was a small riverfront community a stone’s throw upriver from Dublin Street, where a long-gone byway named Collord Street intersected Front Street. A Mrs. McDonald kept a small house there and rented an even smaller house behind it to a Mrs. Loescher. One night this tenant was awakened by a shower of stones and wooden paving blocks plopping onto her roof and porch. So loud were the impacts of these projectiles that a small crowd gathered to watch and determine the source of the onslaught.
Rumors spread that it was the ghost of a Mrs. Ormston who was behind it all. Older residents claimed the McDonald family had cheated Mrs. Ormston out of $500 and that she had gone to her grave cursing that family. Others pointed to a spiritualist who had held seances in his house on the neighboring Kittall Alley, while another group hypothesized that it was all the doing of a Mrs. Walsh who lived on the nearby slopes of Mount Adams. After her death some years back, residents of Collord Street said they saw Mrs. Walsh floating through the air clad in white or appearing at their windows. Whatever the cause, Mrs. Loescher’s yard and porch were soon littered with bricks, branches and debris of all sorts. The police suggested that a gang of teenage girls were the real culprits, but they were never charged.
From Illustrated Police News 6 April 1889, Image extracted from microfilm by Greg Hand
West End
The rather tony neighborhood that once graced the far western reaches of Eighth Street, out between Cutter and Linn, disappeared under the interstate highway ages ago. The Cincinnati Tribune [31 August 1895] described the agitation of the occupants of a high-class boarding house on that block. Not only the residents, but the landlady herself, were awakened night after night by mysterious rapping sounds apparently emanating from the headboards of their beds. First in one room, then another, on this floor then that floor, the rhythmic knocking awakened all the sleepers in the house.
In addition to the violent rat-tat-tat, residents noticed that a door at the end of a long first-floor hallway would not stay shut. No matter how often they closed the door and ensured that it snapped shut, it would inevitably be found ajar just minutes later. That door led into the cellar, utterly unused for years. The floor of the cellar was clay and was covered by a layer of sand about a foot and a half deep. As it happened, some workmen were engaged in repairing a brick wall along the rear of the property and were using this sand in their mortar. As one of the masons jabbed his shovel into the cellar floor, he struck something that was neither clay nor sand. It was a human skeleton.
Investigation revealed that the building, now divided into multiple rooms, had once been the residence and office of Doctor Thaddeus A. Reamy, a distinguished professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Although the Tribune suggested that Doctor Reamy may have had something to do with the skeleton in the cellar, he was never questioned about the situation and the peculiar manifestations continued unabated.
Newport
The Cincinnati Tribune [9 March 1894] carried the news of an unruly mob gathered in front of a house on Lindsey Street in Newport. The house had gained a terrible reputation a few years earlier when a little girl residing there died from choking on a toy balloon. The evening gathering had witnessed an apparition that seemed to have nothing to do with the tragic toddler. More than one hundred people crowded onto Lindsey Street to witness a ghastly sight in the front windows. It was a spectral hand, holding a flaming torch, passing from window to window, occasionally stopping to wave the torch in a threatening manner. Some observers claimed that the fingers of the ghostly extremity were covered in diamonds. A couple local men (it was not clear whether or not they had been visiting the nearby saloon) volunteered to investigate and barged into the house. They emerged to report they had seen nothing unusual. The crowd, incredulous, hung around for the next appearance.
Evanston
The Cincinnati Post [28 July 1897] announced that a vacant house on Gilpin Avenue in Evanston was undoubtedly haunted by the ghosts of a poor peddler who, along with his infant child, were murdered some years before at that address. Each evening, the ghost of the peddler, carrying his baby’s ghost, wandered through the decrepit old building, accompanied by the requisite moaning and shrieking. The very next day, the Post published, well, not a retraction, actually – more of an explanation. The ghost story had been dreamed up by neighborhood parents, concerned about their children playing in the run-down dump. The stratagem worked. The children stayed away from the house and ran past it in fright.
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