Stories from Our Friends Beyond (the Internet Cloud)

The Wademan House, Navarre, Ohio

One of the most pivotal, and interesting times of my childhood came when my family moved into a huge old Victorian house on Center Street in Navarre, Ohio.  It was built in 1850.  The foundation was made from 4 feet thick slabs of limestone, and the structure itself  was put up with huge oak timbers.  In the basement was a narrow and frightening tunnel that was once part of the infamous Underground Railroad.  Although an impressive, and certainly historic home, through out the town it was known simply as the Wademan House.

 For many years, a very old, and somewhat eccentric lady lived there by herself.  She had always wanted to restore the home to it's former glory, but never had the money to do so.  When my parents purchased the home, it was directly from Mrs. Wademan's daughter.
    
My Mother has always been an antique nut, and she just went haywire making plans.  The large house had 14 rooms in it, and represented quite an undertaking, but by the time my family completed the painstaking restorations, the results garnered the opportunity to have our home included in Ohio's Tours of Historic Homes.  

The trouble began, however,  when we first started the restorations. The house had been quite pleasant and peaceful initially, but once we started tearing things apart, many strange, inexplicable, and unsettling  happenings started to occur.  

For example, there was a cold spot in the music room that was absolutely freezing and never seemed to go away, no matter what time of year it happened to be.  There were many, many instances were things would turn up missing, or would be moved around to some other location in the house.  Rocking chairs would frequently be observed rocking all by themselves.  It was pretty much the usual freaky fare, that you'd read about in haunted house stories.  Of course skeptics could argue that it was the result of a drafty old house or common forgetfulness.

But some things just couldn't be explained away at all, like a picture that we had tried to hang with a large nail, that kept immediately falling to the floor each time we turned away.  With each attempt , we could say with conviction, that nail wasn't bent, it wasn't lose, it was in fact, securely in the wall and the hanger on the back picture wasn't damaged, bent, or ripped in any way.  We finally decided not to hang the picture.  We heard footsteps at all hours of the day or night walking through the downstairs hallway, and of course, no one was ever there.  We once babysat my Grandmother's dog for a week, and she went crazy most of that week barking, hackles raised, and ready to lunge when ever she heard the phantom steps.

There were many, many beautiful antiques in the home that we had acquired to decorate the house, unfortunately there were quite a few that were knocked or thrown onto the floor and broken.   Apparently, there was someone present who just didn't like those particular pieces?  Hanging in the kitchen, we had a large old chandelier that probably weighed about 60 pounds, and came from a castle estate in England.  On many mornings we would get up for breakfast, only to see all of the light bulbs removed from it, and laying scattered on the floor or on the counter top.  

We sort of got used to all these occurrences, and learned not to be afraid.  But none of our friends would dare spend the night there after they either heard the footsteps, or witnessed the other strange events.  To us, most of the occurrences didn't seem so severe, just eerie.  Like a cool breeze on your cheek when you'd be watching TV, or you'd find your clean clothes dumped  on the floor after putting them away.

These strange occurrences continued in the house for 5 years, the total time of our restoration project.  My Mother had developed a theory that it was the departed Mrs. Wademan, who, when she saw her dream starting to come true, just had to "check it out".   When the restoration work was finally finished, so were the freaky events. 

Things just suddenly ended with a snap the day we were finished with the house.  I guess it seemed even weirder to me, not to have these little tidbits going on all the time.  I mean, don't all folks want to live in a haunted house?

A true account from our friend . . . Dragon

North America
Canada
Banff Springs Hotel

Chicagoland:
The Water Tower
Bachelor's Grove
White Cemetery
Stickney Mansion

Columbus, Ohio:
Camp Chase

Dayton, Ohio:
Victoria Theater
Memorial Hall
Woodland Cemetery

New Orleans, LA:
Cities of the Dead
Voodoo Priestess

Tennessee
Old Electric Chair

Denver, Colorado
Central City
The Haunted Mine

Haunted Campus
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Zukozone
Mysterious Planet Features


Exotic n' Mysterious

Awesome n' Majestic




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The Old Electric Chair of Tennessee

This remarkable photograph was sent to us by Mr. Fred Leuchter, an "Execution Technologist" who  has worked as a consultant for the Tennessee Department of Corrections.   

In his letter to us, he states that several years ago he had been retained as a consultant to direct the removal and replacement of  "the chair" and the supporting electrocution systems for the State of Tennessee.  

To maintain a State tradition, the new electric chair was to contain a piece of wood from the old  chair.  It seems that the wood used in the construction of the earlier electric chair had actually been salvaged from the State's original gallows, sometime near the turn of the century.   As part of "standard operating practice," documentation photos were taken of the old chair just prior to removing any of the original wood.  To the amazement of many of the prison officials, and the team working on the project, the photograph contained some very strange, inexplicable images.  Within the images there are five identified entities.  

The puzzled officials, had the photograph analyzed and authenticated by Eastman Kodak (who did not identify what was photographed) but determined that the images were indeed real and part of the photo negative.   While the original exposure was reportedly made under some unique circumstances, when the Execution Technologist tried to duplicate the photographic results even by recreating the exposure conditions, he was never able to reproduce these eerie results.  

For your review we present the photograph:  Look closely, the faces of the condemned peer back at you . . . .