Читать книгу Cincinnati Haunted Handbook - Jeff Morris - Страница 23

directions

Take I-75 north to exit 19, Union Center Boulevard. Turn left onto Union Center Boulevard, away from the movie theater and toward the restaurants. Follow this road for about three miles until you reach Princeton/Glendale Road. Turn right and follow this road for about six miles. Turn right onto Wright Brothers Memorial Hwy/Hamilton Middletown Road/OH-4 N. Follow this road for about six miles. Turn right onto Fourteenth Avenue/Martin Luther King Jr. Way. The cemetery is on your right.

history

The ghostly history of Woodside Cemetery dates back to the 1850s, about forty years before the land became a cemetery. Five men had robbed a bank in Indiana and had fled to Middletown. When the residents of Middletown learned that the bank robbers were hiding there, they formed a posse and cornered the men in the area that is today the cemetery. They lynched the five men, hanging them to death from a tree that sat in the center of where the cemetery is today.

By 1891, ghost stories had begun to circulate about the area, but officials wanted to build Woodside Cemetery at that location. They didn’t want the cemetery to garner a reputation for being haunted by these men, so they decided that the best way to kill the ghostly rumors was to cut down the tree that the five men were hung from. They cut down the tree and built the cemetery there in 1891. The ghost stories didn’t stop.

ghost story

Many people still see the hanging tree in Woodside Cemetery despite the fact that the tree was taken down more than a hundred years ago. It remains the only ghost tree in southwestern Ohio.

Not only will people see the non-existent tree, but people will see the entire lynching scene replay itself within the bounds of the cemetery. At night, the dark grounds will come alive with movement. Five figures will hang limply from the ghostly tree. Other times, people will see the whole posse surrounding the tree and will hear voices and commotion coming from within the cemetery itself.

It seems like the cemetery’s plan to remove the tree in order to stop the ghost stories failed. The remnants of the lynching that occurred here in the mid 1800s still haunt this location to this day.

visiting

No one is quite certain anymore exactly where the hanging tree stood. Most of the sightings of the tree occur after dark near the Fourteenth Avenue entrance. Since the cemetery is closed after dark, it makes sense that most of the sightings occur near an entrance. The best way to witness this ghostly reenactment is to stand near the Fourteenth Avenue entrance long after dark and look into the cemetery for movement.