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Collingwood Arts Center

TOLEDO

IN HIS ROLE AS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR of the Collingwood Arts Center, Tom Brooks is used to working long hours and to having unexpected visitors drop by. People are curious about the arts center and the fortunate painters, potters, and musicians who reside in the huge Romanesque brick mansion. It was first used by the Roman Catholic Ursuline sisters as a school in 1905, served later as Mary Manse College, and was finally used as the nuns’ convalescent and retirement center.

Tom remembers a day in August 2003 when three elderly visitors, a man and two women, showed up at his office just as he was about to leave for the day.

“The women were retired nuns who had lived here back in the early fifties,” Tom said. “They were reminiscing about the building, remembering the layout from those days and how much it had changed. We were chatting about the art center’s former life when one of the nuns suddenly asked me if the shadow was still in the basement.”

The nun was referring to a dark, shadowy figure that some people have seen stalking the basement tunnels and the staircases leading up to the first floor. Current residents of the arts center call the thing Shadow Man, although the nun believed the being was a woman, the ghost of Sister Angelique, who had hung herself in the basement many years ago.

“She said that the nuns would never go down into the basement alone,” Tom said. “It was creepy listening to her. She was talking about 1952, 1953—and here it is 2003, and people are still seeing the thing.”

Tom has seen flashes of light from the corner of his eye, a phenomenon shared by other residents of Collingwood, although he has never seen Shadow Man.

But Mike Hooper has seen it. Several times.

“The most recent time was when I was standing on the steps to the basement with my friend and we felt a person walk past us,” Mike said. “It came right up the stairs and felt like a cold breeze going through us. I got tingly all through my body. There was no one there. It was a perfect silhouette of a person, a dark silhouette, but you could definitely see movement within it.”

Mike, who is a resident photographer at Collingwood, has also taken photographs inside the building that reveal orbs of light when developed or downloaded into a computer. Tom, who is also a photographer, has captured the orbs on film as well. Many people believe that such orbs, invisible to the naked eye when the picture is taken, are some form of energy that indicates the presence of spirits.

The day my wife, Mary, and I visited the Collingwood Arts Center did not seem conducive to seeing spirits. Bright sunshine, not a single cloud in the deep blue sky. Rising several stories above the trees on Collingwood Boulevard, the gray brick mansion is an imposing landmark in Toledo’s old east side and was easy to find. We were early for our appointment with Tom so we had time to take in the details of the beautiful old building: elaborate brickwork in herringbone and dovetail designs, a large Romanesque arch over the entryway, row upon row of windows ascending toward the tile roof (which was under repair at the time, covered with tarps and surrounded by scaffolding). The long rectangular building is set sideways on the lot so that one of the short ends faces the street.

Between the arts center and the street is an intricately designed high Victorian house, known as the Gerber House. Built by wealthy merchant Christian Gerber in 1872, the house is now physically connected to the arts center and is used as artists’ residences and for public receptions. Another Victorian house, gutted and in disrepair, stands nearby. Called the Tea House, it also is owned by the arts center.

We tried the door to the arts center but it was locked. One of the men working on the roof was exiting the building and let us in. It was cool and quiet inside, a relief from the bright sunshine and heat outside. There was no one around. We were in a vestibule, a long hallway opening through double doors on either side. We walked through one of the halls, noting its row of arched windows that overlooked a small courtyard. On the other side of the hall, tall wooden doors with transom windows of snowflake-patterned glass opened into artists’ studios, formerly classrooms.

We walked back the way we had come, crossed the vestibule, and entered the opposite hall. Old classrooms, now used as offices by various community groups, lined the hall. Artwork hung on the walls, a variety of styles and subjects, painted by resident artists. I snapped a picture in the hall.

With its towering doors and dark woodwork, the hall reminded me of a parochial school I had attended as a youth. I could almost see the dour nuns in their black habits keeping a stern watch over their students as they entered the classrooms. Tom’s office was located in that hall but it was locked, so Mary and I waited without speaking, as if we were afraid to disturb the stillness around us.

After a few minutes Tom showed up and unlocked his office. Before we toured the building, he said, he had something he wanted to show us. He turned on the computer and brought up some photos he had taken inside Collingwood. There were the orbs. They had been taken in various locations throughout the building—in his office, the halls, the theater, and, of course, the basement. Solid white spheres, like cue balls, bluish-green ones, an orange one sitting in an easy chair.

“I’m something of a skeptic when it comes to spirits,” Tom said, “but I can’t explain these orbs. I’ve been a photographer for some time, and I can’t find any reasonable explanation for them. Dust, water, reflections, nothing makes sense.”

Tom turned off the computer. Mike Hooper joined us just as we were about to start off on our tour. As we walked up to the second floor I asked Mike what had sparked his interest in exploring the paranormal at Collingwood.

“Things began happening to me almost as soon as I moved in several months ago,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like waking up in the middle of the night to see my deodorant spinning around crazily on my dresser. Hearing a voice say, ‘Good night,’ when there was no one there. Doors slamming in my face, that kind of thing.”

Any one of which, had I experienced it, would have had me packing my bags.

But even stranger things have happened to Mike. One night he and some friends at Collingwood were playing around with a Ouija board—a practice, by the way, considered dangerous by many paranormal investigators because of the bad spirits that can come through.

“We asked it, ‘Why are you here?’” Mike said, “and the answer came back immediately, not on the board, but in a clear voice right over our heads. ‘To help you find the answer,’ it said.”

We walked up the stairs.

“These are the doors I was talking about,” Mike said as our group arrived at the second floor.

A pair of French doors stood open at the entrance to the hall.

“One time as I was walking towards them they started to swing closed and suddenly slammed shut,” Mike said. “I grabbed the knob, but I couldn’t turn it. I twisted it hard. It wouldn’t budge. It was like something was holding it from the other side. I stepped back, and then tried it again. The door opened easily. It really freaked me out.”

We walked through the doorway and down the hall. I kept waiting to hear the doors bang closed behind us.

We entered a dimly lit narrow passage that connected to the Gerber House. In the passage was a beautifully turned walnut staircase leading to the upper floors. I looked up through the stairwell and was startled to see a human leg protruding into the air two floors up. It took me a moment to realize that the leg was not human at all, but part of a mannequin. I could see that the walls on some of the upper floors were in deteriorating condition, some of them revealed down to the lathing.

Sunlight flooded the front rooms of the Gerber House, streaming in through the tall windows, shining on the Eastlake fireplace and mirror surround, intricately carved in burl walnut. A children’s art show had recently been presented in the airy parlor of the house and the artwork was still taped helter-skelter to the walls. Superheroes. Animals. Families. The usual subject matter of juvenile artists. The exhibit may have been quite fitting for the Gerber House, since some say the spirits of children can be seen running in and out of the closets there. Although the resident artists can only speculate about the origin of the young spirits, no doubt they would appreciate such pictures.

We retraced our steps from the Gerber House and came back into the main building. The hall curved and we found ourselves standing behind the balcony section of the theater. Thin shafts of light slanted through the archway to our left, leading to an exit. On our right, the gloomy darkness of the theater lay below us. Despite the stained-glass dome that rises above the theater, it was dark. In the dim light, I could pick out the two baroque canopies over miniature stages that were once box seats.

“The spirit of a nun is said to be in here,” Tom said.

“Third row, balcony, stage left,” Mike said. “That’s where she always sits. Performers will sometimes say they see her watching when no one else is in the theater.”

I had been taking pictures throughout our tour and took one looking down into the theater, even though I didn’t think there was enough light to make a good photo.

From the theater we headed back to Tom’s office, coming unexpectedly upon the disturbing life-sized statue of Saint Angela Merici, founder of the Ursuline order, oddly placed on the stairway landing between the second and first floors. The glass block window set in the landing behind the statue provided only pale light.

“Visitors are always startled when they come upon her,” Mike said.

The face of the statue had a weird waxy look to it that seemed somehow alive. The eyes looked right through me.

“I’ve seen her turn her head,” Mike said.

Looking into her eyes, it seemed entirely possible.

Mike had other business and left us when we reached Tom’s office.

“What about the basement?” I asked. “Can we see that?”

Tom seemed surprised by our request, but he complied. Snatching up some keys from his desk, he led the way into the vestibule where Mary and I had first entered the building. He unlocked an unmarked door below the staircase and flicked on a light switch.

We stood looking down into the basement, upon the stairs where Mike had seen the Shadow Man. A walnut handrail was bolted to the wall on the right side of the stairs. Below the left-side handrail was an ornate open filigree design of metal work that resembled the staircase of some elegant old hotel ballroom. Tom said the rail was valued at several thousand dollars, but it was out of place with the torn up, littered floor at the bottom and the naked light bulb hanging at the foot of the stairs. The bulb created a cone of yellow light, but all was darkness around it. I paused and took a picture looking down the stairs as Mary and Tom descended into the basement.

The basement was entirely what one would expect of a large institution that had seen better times. Dark and dirty. Musty. Workrooms and storage rooms filled with dusty machinery and tools, artists’ supplies, old stage sets, cobwebbed old cupboards containing who knew what. One room held nothing but glass globes that were the building’s original light fixtures. Another contained the original telephone system, a complicated network of wires, switches, and relays that took up an entire wall; the new system occupied an area only a few square feet. Tom turned on lights as we went through the labyrinth of basement tunnels. Here was the laundry, the kitchen, the bakery with its huge baking ovens, more storage rooms, one room sealed off behind a wall that no one has yet been able to enter.

We came to a large open space the resident artists use as a lounge. A beat-up old sofa and a round table with half a dozen mismatched chairs were the only furnishings in the inhospitable place. Someone had painted several red skull-like images on the support posts and the floor. No one knows who painted them or why, but some speculate that it could have been the work of an occult group who may have used the building during the several years it stood derelict, between the closing of the nuns’ retirement home and the opening of the arts center. No artist relaxed in the poorly lit lounge when we were there. I couldn’t imagine anyone ever relaxing there.

We headed back to the stairs we had descended. Just before we got there we passed through a dark section of tunnel. Mary and Tom were only a few feet ahead of me in the darkness, although I could not see them. Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming sense of anxiety, tension I had not felt before. It seemed that my heart was racing, my skin felt prickly, as if someone were nearby. I had the urge to look behind me but did not. I forced myself to keep walking. As suddenly as those feelings came over me, they disappeared. It was as though I had walked through a cloud of negative energy. Neither Tom nor Mary felt anything in the basement.

We left Collingwood and, later that night, I downloaded my photos into the computer. I was stunned. Orbs appeared in several photos. One large greenish-blue orb at the precise location in the theater said to be haunted by the nun, one in the front parlor window of the Gerber House, and one at the foot of the basement stairs, just where I had experienced those strange sensations. Just like Tom and Mike, I am at a loss to explain their presence.

Orbs in the theater at Collingwood Arts Center.

The Collingwood Arts Center is an active and vibrant arts community, bringing both visual and performing arts to the public, and encouraging and supporting local talents in their growth as artists. There is a strong energy there, the energy of many creative people working together. Could it be that some of that energy may be generated by the spirits of Collingwood as they try to help the artists “find the answer” to their own artistic questions?