Ghosts, skeletons, and zombies. Haunted halloween characters are revived and reanimated leading up to Oct. 31 in many UA yards. Scary stories frequent communities and lore is passed down for generations from word of mouth. Many people can think of at least one haunted story that still sends a shiver down their spine. Is it the legend of Old Man Smith? The frighteningly zombie-ridden house South of Lane? Or is it the Lady of the Lake or the Ohio State Reformatory that really makes your heart beat quicken?
THE GOLDEN BEAR SCARE
In the middle of October, Smith Nature Park turns into a haunted forest for people to walk through. The legend of Old Man Smith says that his land was taken over by Ben and King Thompson when they founded Upper Arlington, and Smith has been haunting those who walk through his forest ever since.
For the past ten years, kids pack tightly together in the forest for the annual Golden Bear Scare put on by the Upper Arlington Civic Association.
The haunted Bear Scare tradition began in 1977 in the Reed Road Shelter House. It was planned as an alternative to trick-or-treating and had a small resemblance to the Golden Bear Scare many think of today. High school students dressed up as witches and goblins to scare kids and walk them through the “Haunted House”.
In the mid-1990s, the event was moved to Thompson park and became “The Haunted Castle.”. In 2008, due to a lack of funding, the event was shut down and was not revived until 2012, when it was moved to Smith Nature Park, a former cemetery from one of the first jail houses in Ohio, and finally became “The Golden Bear Scare” with Old Man Smith, Mongo, Cemetery, and Zombies.
A free of charge event, prep for the week starts in the middle of the summer by filing permits, working with city officials, and planning out logistics.
Director of the event, Stacie Caruso, describes the need to have “very very strong organizational skills” to ensure that the event is safe and enjoyable.
Caruso is in her second year of heading the event. Her first year, she was an understudy learning how each night operates. Now as a second year, she is one of four directors and plays a crucial role in the production.
“We’re trying to get close to 6,000 people through a forest in three hours in three nights,” said Caruso.
The event is geared towards younger children aged six to13 years old. It also includes different levels of scariness. From 6 to roughly 7:30 p.m., the woods are more family friendly, with zombies and prisoners waving and fistbumping kids as they pass by. From 7:30 p.m. onward, however, the true scaring begins.
The Upper Arlington Civic Association asks for volunteers to dress in scary costumes for the event, including many high school students. Volunteers will earn many service hours for participating in the event.
“As volunteers, we had to get there at five, then be in place with our costumes on at six,” sophomore Zoe Kourlas said. “It was fun getting to scare kids.”
To ensure that all families can enjoy the tradition, they have offered in the past to turn off all the strobe lights at the end of the night for a family who the flashing lights would endanger.
The Bear Scare and its previous names have been a part of Upper Arlington tradition for over 46 years, and it isn’t the only haunted place in Upper Arlington.
HALLOWEEN HOUSE
Barry Wear has been decorating his house on Guilford road for over 30 years. Known for its incredible glamor and traffic-stopping display of lights, talking characters, and intricate props, many Upper Arlington families make a trip to drive by Wear’s house every year.
“It’s a hobby,” Wear said. “I love the time of the year. I love the smiles on people’s faces. If people come here and smile, then my decorations are a big success.”
Wear has lived in the house all of his life. The decorations began when he was inspired by the whimsy that holidays provide.
“I remember that I was sitting in a barbershop,” Wear said. “And I was reading a kid’s coloring book. And there were different pictures in there of Halloween characters and I thought, ‘I’m a handy guy. I’m an artist of a type guy. I’m going to build some of those.’ So, I built twelve Halloween decorations out of plywood and put them up. And people liked them so much I went to the stores and bought some other ones that talked. And it just kind of mushroomed after that.”
Most of Wear’s decorations, he has collected throughout the years, having since lost count. After Halloween ends, Wear quickly begins preparations for the next holiday.
“As soon as I get [building] completed and Halloween ends, I begin Christmas. And the whole yard becomes Santa Claus. And I’m getting Santa Claus ready inside now and all the little different elves that he has. And I leave that up probably until Valentine’s day or Easter. Then, I take it down. All the ball lights in the bushes and the flashing type of trees for Christmas, I leave those up year round.”
With so many moving parts and contraptions, storage is a constant rotation for Wear.
“I have a big garage,” Wear said. “The basement’s full. All of the rooms have a little in it because Christmas is still in there. And I’ve got to put all the Halloween stuff back in pretty soon.”
Between Halloween or Christmas, Wear prefers Christmas.
“My wife loved Christmas,” Wear said. “She just passed away, which is sad and I’m really very sad about it… But she liked Christmas the best. She was the original Christmas good fairy. We’re looking forward to Christmas, but, without her this year, it’s going to be tough.”
For 30 years, Wear has brought holiday joy to Upper Arlington in the form of talking skeletons and ice skating elves. He’s been featured in The Columbus Dispatch and ABC News, known as the “Halloween House.”
“I just enjoy doing it,” Wear said. “I just like talking to people. It’s enjoyable, it’s humorous, it’s fun, and it’s kind, and I like that life. I like looking out every night and thinking to myself: ‘I don’t have a worry in the world. I can go out there and stand by one of those ghosts and nobody would even pay any attention to me.’ It’s just the fantasy part of life we never get to see. We’re always in such a big hurry to go here, go there, get out a list of things to do, find people to go see, but if you stay here, you meet the finest people in the world. It’s true.”
Wear hopes that not only does his bring people together, but helps people see the world in a different way.
“We all have hard days,” Wear said. “Come out here at night and we don’t have a care in the world and the silly little ghosts they smile, laugh, joke, and yell at you. And it’s just like living in a fantasy world.”
MIRROR LAKE
Outside of a popular lake at The Ohio State University, a plaque reads “Mirror Lake — a place of inspiration.” But with a dark past.
In 2016, an OSU student passed away after participating in the popular “Mirror Lake Jump”, a superstitious tradition, where students jump into Mirror Lake leading up to the Michigan and Ohio State football game. According to The Columbus Dispatch, speculation says that he must have jumped into the shallow end of the lake. The tradition was quickly banned by university administration. However, some students still partake in the jump in secret.
“Honestly, I don’t know much,” fifth year OSU Student Jaeryn Fischer said. “All I know is that there used to be a ‘Mirror Lake Jump’ until a kid broke his neck.”
While many students may know this story, what many forget is that this isn’t the first time something tragic has happened at Mirror Lake. Another student drowned in 2013 and one student was paralyzed in 1985, according to The Lantern, both of which were not associated with the “Mirror Lake Jump” tradition.
Ghost stories frequent the campus surrounding Mirror Lake, especially closer to Halloween time.
“I heard that a freshman used to wear a hat around campus and if they walked on the long walk path they got thrown in the lake,” third year OSU student Erin Davis said. Supposedly, the same thing could happen to any student that wears a hat and walks the same path, if the rumors are true.
“The ghost of Mirror Lake” haunts the lake at night, searching for potential hat-wearing victims.
“Some people say that a girl died at Mirror Lake and she still haunts it. They call her ‘Lady of the Lake,’ too,” Davis said.
Now, the lake is rumored to be haunted and invites bad luck. Every year before the Ohio State and Michigan game, the lake is drained in the hopes of preventing students from partaking in the “Mirror Lake Jump” tradition and to possibly get rid of any malicious spirits.
THE OHIO STATE REFORMATORY
The Ohio State Reformatory, located in Mansfield, Ohio, is widely considered one of the most haunted places in Ohio, according to Forbes and the Ohio government itself. Not only did Morgan Freeman walk the halls during the filming of the movie “Shawshank Redemption” but 150,000 inmates throughout its time as a functioning prison as well.
The Reformatory opened in 1896 and began with a goal to reform the inmates, but in the 1960s was transformed into a maximum security prison. According to the Ohio State Reformatory website, the prison was ordered to close by a United States Federal Court after conditions in the prison got so bad that inmates sued the state of Ohio and won.
Now, the prison is run by the non-profit The Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society and welcomes 120,000 visitors every year.
Sophomore Elena Miller visited the prison with the goal of “family bonding”.
“My family decided it would be a fun activity to do one day,” Miller said. “It was very, very well done. It was very dark and all the rooms and stuff. They had a lot of people around. It was kind of like you walk from room to room and different areas and they had where the cells were for the original prison. They had the big hallway filled up with things and it was really cool.”
The Reformatory does tours during the daytime and paranormal tours at night. Ghost Walks are available for those aged 13 and up, where visitors get led through the reformatory while guides tell them “stories of hauntings and horror”.
They also offer Private Paranormal Investigation and Public Ghost Hunts. These require participants to be 18 years of age or older and includes 250,000 square feet of The Reformatory to investigate.
“I didn’t personally get super scared. But my mom did,” Miller said. “And my brother went another night because he went later in the night and he said it was a lot scarier. So, I think it just depends on when you go and like the night that you go, the more scary.”
Every year, there is the “Escape from Blood Prison” event which ended on Oct. 29 this year. The Reformatory is transformed into a “harrowing” and “unsettling” Halloween inspired haunted prison. Participants must be aged 10 or older.
According to some sources, the prison was built on a training ground for Civil War soldiers whose voices still haunt the halls. In the late 1930s, there was a riot in the East Cell Block that resulted in harsh punishments and solitary confinement that sparked the outrage and the closing of the prison in 1990. Tour guides and visitors tell stories of hearing the voices of the mistreated prisoners whose voices have seemingly not been silenced. Local legend claims that the road leading up to the prison itself is haunted by a ghost named Phoebe Wise, and outside the prison lies at least 200 graves.
TRI-C GHOST HUNTERS
Tri-C Ghost Hunters is the largest paranormal investigation team in Ohio, with locations in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus. They have been providing insight and assistance to clients who have experienced possible paranormal activity since 2013. With clients running from the Ohio State Reformatory to neighborhood homes, Tri-C helps commercial and residential clients alike.
“We’re not in it for the fame or the money or anything like that. We don’t do it for entertainment, we do it to actually help clients,” lead investigator Jason Gornichec said.
Gronichech has been a part of the Columbus team since 2020. He has been passionate about paranormal activity since he has grown up, so when faced with his own spiritual troubles, he was intrigued to learn more.
When Gornichec lived alone in an old farmhouse built in the late 1800s, he started to notice unusual activity around his house.
“I watched my kitchen faucet turn on by itself from across the room, and nobody was there. I actually wasn’t scared of it. I just thought it was cool because I was into it,” he said.
After random bouts of unexplainable activity, Gornichec decided to take matters into his own hands. He conducted most of his research on his own, but ultimately wanted to seek more help. While searching for possible paranormal teams in Ohio, he stumbled upon Tri-C and applied to be a part of the Columbus team. Now, three years later, he is an experienced case manager and lead investigator for their Columbus team.
Typically, an investigation starts when a client feels there is paranormal activity around them. A team from Tri-C will make sure the client is facing true paranormal activity, and then start a pre-investigation to get a baseline. The team will then do a full investigation with all of their equipment. These are conducted at night around 8:30 p.m.. Depending on the size and activity of the location, full investigations can take the whole night to complete. Investigators will determine the next steps by examining the evidence that was captured following the investigation. They will watch videos, look at still photos, and listen to audio collected.
Mediums on the Tri-C staff have heightened senses and abilities to communicate with spirits that the average person does not have. After examining the evidence, a medium will return to the location on a later day and start the cleansing process.
“A cleansing is where we can go through the house with sage or sweet grass, and any kind of things that manipulate energy,” Gornichec said. “Sometimes there’s prayer involved, it really depends on the client’s religious beliefs. If they’re not a believer in God, we’re not going to do a religious type of cleansing, we will do more of a spiritual one.”
Last year, the Columbus team investigated the old Delaware County jail after speculations of a haunting.
“We did determine that there is activity going on at that jail,” Gornichec said.
Some believe that the spirits could be inmates who used to be in the county jail, while others think that it is a hoax. The Delaware Historical Society opened the jail to the public so that people can conduct their own investigations.
Tri-C Ghost Hunters do not charge money for any investigation. Each member on their team purchases their own equipment, and pays for any travel that could be required.
“We help clients try to either coexist with the spirit in their home or try to get rid of it and help the spirit pass on. We’re actually in this to help the spirits just as much as we are to help our clients,” Gornichec said.
UAHS
However, there are people who do not believe in the ghosts and the paranormal that the Tri-C Ghost Hunters hunt.
“I do not believe that ghosts truly exist because there isn’t actual scientific evidence of them that has been confirmed by any source whatsoever,” Ethan Chung, a sophomore at UAHS, said.
Ghosts are entities that have been believed to exist for many centuries, with many different cultures having their own takes on the spirits.
“The first one I think off the head is from Korean folklore about the little goblin known as the Dokkaebi,” Chung said. “It is essentially like the ghost of Korea and would do a bunch of stuff that can cause mayhem.”
Although he knows some cultures of ghosts, Chung does not believe in them himself. Despite Chung’s disbeliefs, he has had a few paranormal experiences of his own.
“One time I was at home and I thought I heard my mother’s voice. But my mother was just not there,” said Chung. “Like I don’t know if it was like an actual voice in my head or like I’m like tripping but I heard her voice so I responded. And I left the room to question why she didn’t respond back but she wasn’t even home.”
Incidents where a person hears something that doesn’t exist are called auditory hallucinations. Auditory hallucinations can occur in 5% to 28% of the US population, according to the National Institutes of Health.
A commonly held belief among those who believe in ghosts is that ghosts may be doing certain acts to get the attention of people they have known in the past. This can also be correlated with family members that have been lost.
“I do not believe in ghosts or the paranormal, although I wish that I did,” Angela Bower, a teacher at UAHS said. “It would be comforting to be able to engage with or hear the voice of family members that have passed away. As humans, I believe, our brain likes to have answers, reasons, and rationale, for unusual events that take place.
The human brain is a very complex system, with many different delicate parts working together in order to create thoughts. However, when a person is longing for something, the brain can actively try to correlate different “clues” with what they wish for according to the National Library of Medicine.
“We naturally want to look for signs, coincidences, or opportunities to connect us with people and relationships that we can no longer experience” Bower Said.
Although many ghosts may not act out of malicious intent, there could be a chance that certain actions are done purely to scare people. However, this sentiment is not without its flaws.
“I don’t really see the logic in, you know, some long dead creature sticking around to scare people but all they can do is open a door or make a glass fall,” Junior and Fear Columbus employee Freddy Zuckerman said. “I’m saying if ghosts are real, why is the most they can do is take this chair next to me and move it four inches?”
As a worker at Fear Columbus, a haunted house in Northland Plaza that aims to give the thrill of being scared to those who dare to go inside, Zuckerman is used to scaring others.
“It’s a long process,” Zuckerman said. “I have to get there at about five o’clock. You make sure everything fits. Typically you’re wearing a mask. You then have to put on makeup. You kind of sit around for a while you do your stretches until around seven. [Then,] you go and you’re working for three to five hours. You can be at a different station every single day and it’s a lot of fun.”
The culture of Upper Arlington during the fall is very vibrant, with Halloween and The Bear Scare as some of the main attractions during the season. However, other countries also have their own takes on events involving ghosts and the paranormal.
“I really enjoy the Dia de los Muertos, the way it’s celebrated in Mexico with the sugar skulls and honoring the past family members,” chemistry teacher Stephen Stern said. “That’s kind of why I really enjoy that time of year growing up in Southern California. Things like Dia de los Muertos was an important part of the culture there and I found that really cool.”
However, at the end of the day, scary business has become a part of everyday life. From haunted locations to ghost hunters and spooky events and cultures, scares are a good way to bring people together.
“Have I ever seen proof of [the paranormal]? No. And I’m a science person. Doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be stuff out there. Why not? Let’s have fun with the universe” Stern said.
