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Ashtabula County District Library

ASHTABULA

COULD THERE BE A BETTER PLACE FOR A NEW GHOST TO LEARN HOW TO BEHAVE as a ghost than a library? Think of all the books on ghosts and the supernatural just waiting there for the inquisitive spirit’s perusal. And their books are never overdue, checked out for eternity.

The Ashtabula County District Library is built in the grand architectural style typical of libraries built in the early 1900s. Tall Corinthian columns support a pointed pediment roof. Long windows flank the columns. The structure sits well back from the street, separated from it by a neatly trimmed lawn. It is clear that when the library was built in 1903 it was designed to provide a quiet place of study, set apart from the hustle and bustle of downtown Ashtabula.

Ashtabula today is a city down at the heels. Not much hustle, even less bustle. The economic downturn that swept through the Midwest’s rustbelt did not spare Ashtabula. Still, the library remains in all its grandeur, a symbol of what the past was and, perhaps, of what the future could yet become.

It would please the ghost of Ethel McDowell to know that the library is well maintained and popular. Ethel was the library’s first librarian, appointed in 1903. She served in that capacity for sixty-five years, finally retiring in 1968. Ethel retired and passed away, but some say that she never left the building.

In the reference section of the library there is a small room named for McDowell that houses information about Ohio, including a file of newspaper clippings. I thought that it would be a good place to start my research. I was focused on my work as I sat at the desk in the cramped room, looking through files filled with clippings about local cemeteries and historical spots. It was only when I took a break and stretched that I noticed the portrait of Ethel McDowell hanging on the wall behind me. (Note: A ghosthunter really should pay more attention to his surroundings.) Ethel looked like everyone’s grandmother (or maybe Barbara Bush)—a chunky woman in a light blue dress, silver horn-rimmed glasses, white hair coiffed in gentle waves. Her mouth was set in an interesting way, almost as if she wanted to smile, but since she was in a library, refusing to do so, favoring instead the stern expression reserved for those young boys who gawked at bare-breasted tribal women in National Geographic.

I had the distinct impression that Ethel ran the library with an iron hand.

“Some of the older employees say she is still around,” said Diane*, “but I’ve never seen her.” We were standing at the counter in the children’s section, located in the basement. Diane told me she had been working there for five years. “I’ve heard of books falling off the shelves by themselves, and that may not sound like much of anything, but I mean books like these.”

She walked over to a shelf that held magazines placed in cardboard holders. “These magazines can’t just fall off the shelf,” she said. “They actually have to be lifted up out of the holders first, then dropped on the floor. That’s what people would find—magazines on the floor, the holders still on the shelf. And there would be no one around.”

Although Diane has never claimed to see Ethel’s ghost, or any other ghost for that matter, she admits that sometimes she has gotten the feeling that someone has walked by when there was no one there.

As we were talking, Cheryl* came in and stashed a bag she was carrying behind the counter. She overheard our conversation and added that she had heard unexplainable footsteps and other unidentifiable sounds when she was alone, although she thought they could have simply been the typical sounds of a one-hundred-year-old building.

Diane also said that there were stories from before she worked at the library of books being thrown around in the children’s section. Of course, the children were immediately reprimanded for such behavior, but they always swore that they had nothing to do with the flying books.

Some of the stories told about the library say that Ethel will toss out the books that she thinks should not be in the library’s holdings. Sometimes they will be missing for a while or they will be found scattered on the floor. This seemed to happen more often in the reference section—in fact, in the very room where I had been reviewing the newspaper files.

I went back upstairs to the reference desk and asked Terri*, who had helped me with the files, what she knew about the ghost. She had heard all the stories, as had the other workers, but she did not have any personal experiences to relate. Most of the people who had encountered anything unusual were long gone, she said, which made me wonder if perhaps Ethel herself had finally moved on. After all, wasn’t the Celestial Library in need of a steely-eyed librarian to keep things in order?

Although I never did find any true ghost stories in the files, I did find some information about the Ashtabula train disaster of 1876. On the evening of December 29, during a blinding snowstorm, a passenger train carrying 165 passengers plunged into the Ashtabula River gorge when the supports of the bridge spanning the gorge gave way. The train burst into flames when it crashed, fueled by the oil lamps and coal-fired stoves on board. Only sixty people survived.

The San Francisco Sunday Chronicle for December 31, 1876, describes the hellish scene: “The charred bodies lay on thick ice or imbedded in the shallow water of the stream. The fires smoldered in great heaps where many hapless victims had all been consumed … of the 165 persons on the train, less than sixty are known to have been saved. The lost are so totally destroyed by fire that it is impossible to identify them. But a few burnt stumps of limbs remain. It is thought that when the creek is dragged a number of bodies will be found.”

The unidentified dead were buried in a mass grave in Chestnut Grove Cemetery. There is no trace of the bridge today, but some modern-day ghosthunters have heard unexplainable cries and shouts in the gorge where the train met with disaster.