From I-75, take the I-74 West exit. From I-74, take the Colerain Avenue exit. At the end of the exit ramp, turn right onto Colerain Avenue. Wesleyan Cemetery will be on your right. The entrance is off Colerain.
history
In September of 1900, there was a fire at the Salvation Army orphanage on Front Street in downtown Cincinnati which was not only used to house orphans but was used as a kind of daycare center for the children of working parents in the area who could not afford any other kind of daycare. Some sort of gas leak caused an explosion that ignited the first floor of the orphanage. The children and workers were trapped on the third floor without any kind of fire escape or way out. Some people from the surrounding area were able to rescue a handful of the children from the burning building, but both workers, a man who tried to rush in to rescue his son and daughter, and six children died in the fire.
The children were buried in Wesleyan Cemetery underneath a Salvation Army flag and a small white marble headstone. In recent years, the cemetery has decayed into a rather terrible state. Headstones were piled up haphazardly near trees. Some trees completely swallowed headstones into their trunks. Mausoleums were broken open. In the past couple of years, though, attempts have been made to restore the cemetery.
ghost story
A caretaker at the cemetery is convinced that several ghost children haunt the grounds. Even though the gates are closed at six p.m., the caretaker will sometimes hear children playing in the cemetery late into the night. He will look for these children and watch them run behind tombstones and then mysteriously disappear. He will hear laughter and children’s voices, but he is never able to find anyone in the cemetery.
Sometimes the caretaker or passersby will hear children screaming from inside the cemetery, or they will see dark shadowy figures walking through the grounds at night. No one is ever found.
visiting
The cemetery is open to the public all day, and it is rarely busy. At six p.m., however, the gates close, and there is no way to access the cemetery. The house of the caretaker stands inside the gates. Even if you just wanted to stand outside the fence and look for shadowy figures at night, you could be in some danger. The neighborhood is not the safest in town, so you probably don’t want to be standing out on the street at night, especially with expensive equipment.
WOODSIDE CEMETERY
1401 South Woodside Boulevard, Middletown, OH 45044
directions
Take I-75 north to exit 19, Union Center Boulevard. Turn left onto Union Center Boulevard, away from the movie theater and toward the restaurants. Follow this road for about three miles until you reach Princeton/Glendale Road. Turn right and follow this road for about six miles. Turn right onto Wright Brothers Memorial Hwy/Hamilton Middletown Road/OH-4 N. Follow this road for about six miles. Turn right onto Fourteenth Avenue/Martin Luther King Jr. Way. The cemetery is on your right.
history
The ghostly history of Woodside Cemetery dates back to the 1850s, about forty years before the land became a cemetery. Five men had robbed a bank in Indiana and had fled to Middletown. When the residents of Middletown learned that the bank robbers were hiding there, they formed a posse and cornered the men in the area that is today the cemetery. They lynched the five men, hanging them to death from a tree that sat in the center of where the cemetery is today.
By 1891, ghost stories had begun to circulate about the area, but officials wanted to build Woodside Cemetery at that location. They didn’t want the cemetery to garner a reputation for being haunted by these men, so they decided that the best way to kill the ghostly rumors was to cut down the tree that the five men were hung from. They cut down the tree and built the cemetery there in 1891. The ghost stories didn’t stop.
ghost story
Many people still see the hanging tree in Woodside Cemetery despite the fact that the tree was taken down more than a hundred years ago. It remains the only ghost tree in southwestern Ohio.
Not only will people see the non-existent tree, but people will see the entire lynching scene replay itself within the bounds of the cemetery. At night, the dark grounds will come alive with movement. Five figures will hang limply from the ghostly tree. Other times, people will see the whole posse surrounding the tree and will hear voices and commotion coming from within the cemetery itself.
It seems like the cemetery’s plan to remove the tree in order to stop the ghost stories failed. The remnants of the lynching that occurred here in the mid 1800s still haunt this location to this day.
visiting
No one is quite certain anymore exactly where the hanging tree stood. Most of the sightings of the tree occur after dark near the Fourteenth Avenue entrance. Since the cemetery is closed after dark, it makes sense that most of the sightings occur near an entrance. The best way to witness this ghostly reenactment is to stand near the Fourteenth Avenue entrance long after dark and look into the cemetery for movement.
SECTION II
roads and bridges
Haunted roads and bridges are some of the most popular places to search for ghosts because these areas are so accessible. Roads don’t close at night. Roads aren’t located on private property. But while you are able to go to these roads and bridges at any time of the night without fear of legal problems, a different type of fear tends to take over.
Blome Road Bridge
Miamitown Bridge
Peaceful Valley
The Screaming Bridge
Spook Hollow Bridge
Buell Road
Buffalo Ridge Road
Clermont County’s Dead Man’s Curve
Harrison Avenue’s Dead Man’s Curve
East Miami River Road
Hamilton New London Road
Highway to Heaven
Lick Road
Loveland Madeira Road
Mount Healthy
Narrows Road
Oxford Milford Road
Pond Run Road
Princeton Road
Spooky Hollow Road
BLOME ROAD BRIDGE
Blome
