Читать книгу Ghosthunting Ohio: On the Road Again - John B. Kachuba - Страница 9

I COULDN’T BELIEVE MY EYES. There, on a grassy sward beside the river, two knights in armor and colorful livery were engaged in furious combat, slashing away at each other with swords that looked as if they were made of rattan, while a bevy of ladies in long gowns and wimples stood beneath the trees watching them in fear and admiration. To the right, a mighty Norman castle rose up on the hillside overlooking the river, flags flying from its crenellated towers: the redoubtable Chateau Laroche. I felt as though I had wandered into a chapter from Ivanhoe, but in fact I was in Loveland, Ohio, only a few minutes away from downtown Cincinnati.

I lived in Loveland for several years and had the occasion many times to visit Chateau Laroche—nicknamed the Loveland Castle—with my children, friends, and out-of-town visitors. While medieval reenactors were not always on hand, you could depend upon someone from the Knights of the Golden Trail, the present owners and curators of the castle, to show you around and to answer questions about this incredible architectural wonder, the dream-child and life’s work of one man, “Sir” Harry Andrews.

You could also rely on the Knights to tell you about the several ghosts that sought refuge in the castle’s musty stone walls. The ghosts are an integral and romantic part of the history of the castle that all began in 1929 when Sir Harry bought the property on the banks of the Little Miami River and single-handedly began to construct his one-quarter-scale Norman castle.

What would prompt a man to devote himself to such an arduous task?

Harry Andrews was a fascinating man. Born in 1890, he was a graduate of Colgate University, reportedly spoke seven languages, and had an amazing IQ of 189. He enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War I, serving as a medic, even though he was a conscientious objector. He did not object to warfare itself, but to the weapons of modern warfare that could indiscriminately kill large numbers of people from a distance; Harry preferred the old chivalric way of killing a man in eye-to-eye, hand-to-hand combat. During the war, he contracted spinal meningitis and was declared dead. By the time he was declared “undead” six months later, his fiancée back home had married another man.

Rather than return to the United States immediately, Harry roamed throughout Europe studying castles. He also swore off women and over the rest of his life would turn down more than fifty—by his count—marriage proposals from, in his words, “widows and old maids who wanted to live in a castle.”

Harry eventually returned to Ohio, where he worked at a local newspaper and conducted Sunday school for boys. He founded the Knights of the Golden Trail for boys and regularly hosted them on his riverside property where they camped, fished, swam, and boated. Deciding that his boys needed a castle, he began hauling rocks up from the river and Chateau Laroche was begun. At first, he worked on the construction whenever he could find the time, but after retiring from the newspaper at the age of sixty-five, he moved into the castle and dedicated all of his time to its completion.

I was fortunate enough to have visited the castle while Sir Harry was still alive and can remember seeing the wiry, white-haired, bespectacled man high up on the castle roof laying bricks. He was still actively working on the castle in 1981, at the age of ninety-one, when his pants accidentally caught fire from some work he was doing on the roof. He was severely burned and died sixteen days later from gangrene.

With the exception of some menial odd jobs performed by the young Knights, Sir Harry single-handedly built the castle, laying every brick himself. In addition to river rock, he also made cement bricks, using wax milk cartons as forms. He was a meticulous record-keeper; here is his tally of his labors over the fifty-two years he worked on the castle:

2,600 sacks of concrete

32,000 one-quart milk cartons for brick forms

54,000 five-gallon buckets of dirt

56,000 pails-full of stone

The eccentric lord of the castle received much publicity, and well over one million people have toured the castle. Many of them have seen the ghosts.

Sir Harry began seeing ghosts on the property early on. In his writings, he talked about a ghost he named Casper Poltergeist who he said spent the day resting on a daybed in the castle, getting up at midnight to wander around the castle and play tricks on visitors, such as pounding on the door and ringing the doorbell. Harry wrote, “He will not harm anybody unless you get him angry. Then he will touch you and give you an electric shock, sometimes a hard one.”

In addition to the poltergeist, Harry recalled a ghost that looked like “a big Viking dressed in a long, dark cloak, wearing a spiked helmet, and carrying a short, wide sword across his chest.” Thankfully, the berserker ghost made his appearance known only a few times before disappearing for good.

Harry also saw a girl in a long dress walking on the water across the river and making herself comfortable on the seats on top of the garage.

But the ghost that was most familiar to Harry lived with him at the castle for sixteen years. According to Harry, the ghost was “shaped like an egg outline, with two big eyes near the smaller end. He was transparent like plastic and grass and weeds could be seen right through him.” Harry said that the ghost lived near a willow tree on the property and that he could talk to it, although if anyone else tried to speak to the ghost, it would disappear and Harry would have to coax it to return, something like a skittish pup. Harry wrote that “thousands” of people saw the ghost and that some women would scream and faint when they saw it. The willow tree eventually died, and the ghost must have died with it; he was never seen again.

It’s easy to imagine ghosts at the castle, even in broad daylight. The cold brick walls deaden sound, creating an interior that is eerily silent. I could feel my ears ringing in the silence. The replica pieces of armor that stand sentinel in the halls and rooms seemed as though they were watching me, and I could not help but wonder if they harbored the spirits of long-gone knights. The narrow, twisting tower staircase to the upper level was designed deliberately in that manner as a defensive measure; an attacking archer could not shoot up the stairs at defenders, and the narrow passage effectively blocked invaders from advancing in groups. But for me, visiting the castle alone, there was the foreboding sense of not knowing what might be standing on the next step to greet me as I ascended.

The little bedroom off the ballroom on the second floor in which Sir Harry lived is much as he left it, with a small bed and cookstove. Standing in the doorway, peering into the tiny room, I could almost see Harry once again. To complete the shadowy tour, below the castle is a delightful little dungeon, complete with a grinning skeleton behind a barred door.

“Sir” Joe has been a fixture at Chateau Laroche for a long time. As a boy, he was one of Harry’s Knights, and he continues to safeguard Harry’s legacy to this day. I had spoken with him on a few visits to the castle and had once interviewed him at length for a newspaper article I wrote about the castle. Thin and sinewy, with a voice that reminded me of King of the Hill’s Dale Gribble, Sir Joe loved to tell stories about the castle, especially ghost stories.

He told me that Boy Scouts on overnight visits to the castle often encountered ghostly activity.

“Such as?” I asked.

“They take their shoes off to go to sleep and when they wake up in the morning they may find their shoes all tied together,” Joe said.

“Wow.”

“Or the chessmen on this chessboard might be moved in different positions from where they were left the night before.”

I noted the chessboard and playing pieces set up on a small table; they seemed ordinary enough.

As Sir Joe told me these stories, his expression was more bemused than mystified and I wondered if, just perhaps, the ghostly pranks played upon the Scouts might not have some human agency behind them.

But Joe had some stories of his own to relate. One day, Joe and another Knight, “Sir” Tim, were relaxing in the castle after a long day of work there. Suddenly, the door of the bathroom off the ballroom upstairs slammed shut. The men knew that they were alone at the castle, so they raced upstairs to see who had broken into the building. There was no one there. They went back downstairs, but two more times the door slammed shut by itself.

Sir Joe thought that someone—maybe Sir Harry?—was trying to send them a message, but Sir Tim was skeptical. The next morning, Joe checked the bathroom once more and, finding nothing amiss, went outside to check the plumbing. He found that the lines running to the septic tank were about to overflow, which would have created quite a mess in the castle gardens. Thanks to the warning message from the friendly ghost the night before, the Knights were able to correct the problem in time to avert a disaster.

Despite Sir Harry’s aversion to women, the present-day Knights of the Golden Trail have included Ladies among their membership. One such Lady, Donna Jean, experienced a ghost encounter during a Boy Scout overnight. Donna Jean was supervising the event one night in 1989 and, while the Scouts were sitting around a campfire by the river, she made a perimeter check of the grounds. After finding everything secure, she sat down outside to enjoy the warm May night.

She noticed a figure on the road coming up toward the gardens. She described it as “transparent, whitish in color, and very flowing, like a woman with shoulder-length hair and a long billowy gown.” The figure approached the garden near where Lady Donna Jean was sitting and then simply disappeared.

She recalled a story that Harry had told the Knights that might explain the ghostly woman. According to Harry, a man and his wife had built a cabin, attached to a cave downriver from the castle, where they made moonshine. One day, while Harry and some young Knights were working at the castle, they heard a loud explosion and ran down to the cabin. It had been destroyed completely in the blast, and in the wreckage they found the dead body of the woman beneath a whiskey barrel.

Since Lady Donna first saw the ghost, she has been seen many times by both Knights and visitors to the castle.

Lady Christie tells of sitting in the castle one night, facing toward Sir Harry’s bedroom and the spiral staircase. A Knight was also there, but was taking a shower; they were the only people in the castle. Lady Christie noticed some movement near the staircase. A huge shadow the size of a human was slowly coming up the stairs. She was frightened and called out to Sir Ron, the Knight in the shower. The shadow continued toward the top of the staircase. Lady Christie screamed and ran to the bathroom, pounding on the door to get the wet Knight’s attention. By this time, the shadow had reached the top of the stairs and was standing in the archway of the room. Sir Ron emerged from the bathroom and also felt the presence of something paranormal, although the shadow had suddenly disappeared. The Knight and the Lady quickly retreated from the castle.

Chateau Laroche remains a work in progress as the Knights of the Golden Trail maintain not only the physical grounds but the spirit of Sir Harry Andrews as well. Make a trip to this enchanting castle and see if you can find some spirits of your own.