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Promont House Museum
MILFORD
BUILT BETWEEN 1865 AND 1867, this beautiful Italianate-style mansion was nicknamed “McGrue’s Folly” because the owner, William G. McGrue, spent a mind-boggling $48,000 for its construction and located it in the middle of nowhere, also known as Milford, Ohio. Originally situated on fifty acres, the house—now a historical museum and the home of the Greater Milford Area Historical Society—sits on five acres of beautiful mature trees and gardens. The house is distinguished by its imposing five-story tower that leads from the basement up to an observation room at the summit.
When John M. Pattison bought the house in 1879, his wife, Aletheia, named it Promont. She and Pattison had four children, but Aletheia died in the house only a few years after moving into it. In 1893, Pattison married Anna Williams, his first wife’s sister. Pattison led a distinguished career in Ohio business and politics and in 1906 was elected as Ohio’s forty-third governor. Unfortunately, the trials of the campaign had weakened his constitution, and after giving his inaugural speech in January 1906 during a snowstorm, he fell ill with pneumonia. Unable to attend legislative sessions in the state house, he conducted the affairs of state from his home. But his health continued to decline; on June 18 of that year, Governor Pattison died at Promont.
The mansion eventually passed into the hands of millionaire tobacco farmer Henry Hodges. The Hodges occupied the home for forty years, and both Henry and his wife died at Promont.
When Promont was built, it was a technological marvel. The mansion featured gas lighting, central heat from a coal-fired furnace, call bells, and a gravity flow running water system. Today, the elegant home has been restored to how it looked during Governor Pattison’s residency, and it is filled with Victorian furniture and artifacts.
I visited Promont in October. It was a beautiful, warm Indian summer day, and the trees on the grounds blazed in autumn colors of scarlet and gold. Parking my car in the visitors’ lot I stood there for a moment, admiring the house and its magnificent tower shining in the sunlight. It was obvious why the locals called it a “folly”—it would have been much more at home on a hillside overlooking vineyards in Tuscany than it was in Milford, a mere stone’s throw from the semis roaring down I-275.
I went around to the entrance, walked up the stone steps of the porch, and pushed open one of the massive but elegant wooden doors, each set with a large window. When I entered the center hall foyer, a docent named Bill (real name withheld by request) invited me to join him and another visitor on a guided tour of the house, which I did.
It is always difficult to describe the grand old homes I visit, so full are they of intricate architectural details, fine furnishings, and artwork. Promont was no exception. High-ceilinged rooms ornamented with plaster crown molding and lamp medallions in the form of garlands, wreaths, and fruit, all of them handcrafted and painted; stately pocket doors at least eight feet tall, maybe taller; ornate crystal chandeliers; a glowing “Tree of Life” stained glass window at the top of the first floor landing; and, of course, the architectural centerpiece of the house, the gracefully winding staircase that led from the basement up to the small glass-enclosed observation room five stories above the ground. What always amazes me in houses like Promont is the artistic craftsmanship that went into creating all these wonderful details. They seem to be lost arts today or, if available at all, tagged with an exorbitant cost affordable only be sheikhs from Dubai.
In addition to the period furniture that graced the rooms of Promont there were historical exhibits on display. Photos, letters, and other memorabilia displayed in the center hall related the history of local residents who fought in the Civil War. Upstairs, just a few steps below the observation room, was a large room filled with antique clothing, tools, and appliances, a smorgasbord of historical artifacts. The stairwell was also lined with photos and maps of historical interest.
Viewing all those photos and artifacts, walking through the heart of a house that was almost 150 years old, it was easy to step back in time, to feel what it would have been like to have been a Pattison family member living there in that beautiful and serene home. Since ghosts often remain at the places at which they were the happiest, it would seem to me that Promont would be a perfect candidate for such a spiritual haven
Promont House Tree of Life stained glass window
So, it should come as no surprise to find out that, according to a number of people, Promont is haunted.
The tower staircase seems to be one area in which paranormal activity occurs. People who work at Promont have reported hearing footsteps walking up the stairs from the bottom all the way to the top, or in the opposite direction, with each deliberate step resounding loudly.
One story says that a librarian working in the historical society’s library upstairs heard someone coming up the steps from the ground floor. The librarian called down to tell the person that the house was closed, but the footsteps continued coming up the stairs. She ran out to the top of the stairs, but there was no one to be seen and the footsteps stopped when she arrived. The frightened librarian then made a hasty exit out the back door.
Another woman working at the house once felt someone or something grab her ankle. She asked her coworker why she had done that, but the other woman denied having touched her.
Other people have reported cabinets, shutters, and doors at the house opening and closing on their own.
Richard Crawford is a Clermont County historian who has studied many local strange and haunted locations. One of the places he talks about on his DVD, True Ghost Stories from Ohio, is Promont. Crawford says that a nurse who worked for the man who last owned the house would not go down to the basement because of strange sounds coming from there, the sounds of something moving around. He also says that other visitors to Promont, such as plumbers, electricians, etc., refuse to go down to the basement or will not go there alone because of the unsettling sounds. These tradesmen, no doubt, often work in old houses and must be accustomed to the sounds that naturally occur in such homes—creaking floors, popping sounds from expanding and contracting wood, radiator noises, hissing steam pipes, knocking sounds in heating and cooling ductwork, wind moaning through drafty walls and windows among them—but they don’t refuse to work in those houses, so what is it about the sounds in the basement at Promont that has them so spooked? Could it be that on some visceral level they recognize those sounds as paranormal, or out of the ordinary? Ghostly?
Who is the ghost that is haunting Promont? Many people think it is Gov. John Pattison who still roams the halls of his beloved Promont, checking things out, making sure everything is running smoothly at his former home. In addition to the grand staircase, much of the paranormal activity in the house seems to center on the master bedroom on the second floor. It is believed that Pattison drew his last breath in this room, so such activity might be expected there.
Whether the ghost is that of Governor Pattison or someone else remains a mystery. The evidence suggests that someone is haunting the beautiful Promont house. Perhaps you might be the first to uncover the true identity of the ghost.
Spotlight On: The Ghosts of Utopia
In 1844 a man named Charles Fourier bought property in Clermont County along the Ohio River. Fourier was a member of a religious sect that believed the world was entering a 35,000-year period of peace. In his futuristic vision all of the world’s peoples would be collected into “phalanxes,” communes of a sort. Fourier also believed the oceans would turn into lemonade—no joke.
