Legends & Lore of Pa 2
The legends and lore found on this page were compliments of:
Pennsylvania Haunts & History
Home of the legends, lore and ghost tales of the Keystone State
http://hauntsandhistory.googlepages.com/pennslvaniahaunts%26histroy
FEED MILL BABE (Williamsburg, Blair County) The owners of a Williamsburg house kept hearing the sounds of a crying baby coming from their basement, but when they went in the cellar to check, they couldn't find any source for the noise. They sold the home, and it was converted into a feed mill. When renovating the sewer lines downstairs, the new owner found a burlap bag in the pipes - with the remains of an infant. PA Researchers
FLIGHT 93 (Shanksville, Somerset County) Much paranormal activity has been associated with the site of this famous 9/11 air crash. There have been reports of voices. One man, as reported by Johnstown TV station WJAC, heard a voice ask “So what now?” The guards said that they could hear someone knocking on the trailer door and then heard muffled voices outside of the trailer. Their theory is that the ghostly passengers were trying herd the terrorists into the trailer as a sort of prison, to protect those living beings by the trailer. One guard reported that while he was getting into his car the trunk went down, as if someone were sitting on it, and moments later sprang back up, as if the person jumped off. The guard also said that he saw a girl dressed in a blue baseball jersey and jeans by the park gate. She had light brown hair and glasses, and disappeared as he approached her. He saw her again in a photograph of the passengers. These phenomena were all reported by guard Robert Wagstaff in an interview with Patty Wilson. Photographs of orbs by the Memorial have also been taken. The site is a national park, and open to visitors. Tilted Forum Project
FOXBURG INN (St. Benedict, Cambria County) Allegedly the first booth on the right in the dining room is bewitched. The tablecloth flies off when it's empty, dumping everything on the table onto the floor after a tug by the Foxburg poltergeist. The Inn, located on Theatre Road, hosts live bands now. Could it be that their cranked-up amps are set up by the haunted table? The Shadowlands
GRANDVIEW CEMETERY (Yoder Hill, Cambria County) Built in 1885, this cemetery's claim to fame is that it's the final resting place of many of the Johnstown Flood's victims. Located at the former site of the Cambria Iron Company, Grandview Cemetery is also home of the “Unknown Plot”, where 777 unidentified bodies recovered from the disaster are interred. There's a memorial there in their honor, but that doesn't seem to give them peace. Their spirits allegedly haunt the grounds, and their voices can be heard crying for help.
GRAVITY HILL (New Paris, Bedford County) The good folks of Bedford were kind enough to spray paint a “GH” on the spot where your car will roll uphill, just off Bethel Hollow Road. It's an optical illusion, of course, but still a popular spot to prove Sir Isaac Newton wrong. Bedford's Gravity Hill
HANGING TREE (Bedford, Bedford County) There's a spot in Bedford where back in the day justice would be meted out at the end of a noose. That old hanging tree still exists, and it's said that you can still hear the cries of the restless spirits that were executed there. To find out more, head to Bedford during the Halloween season and take its famous Ghost Tour.
Breezedale Hall: Breezedale Hall was built in the 1860's by James Sutton and sold to John Elkin. The Victorian mansion is now IUP's Alumni Hall. According to school legend, a man in a beige suit can be seen at the back stairwell before he disappears. There have also been reports of strange sounds and lights going on and off. James Sutton's brother-in-law, William Bell Marshall, lived in the mansion and committed suicide there. (The Penn “Cleaning Up Campus Myths,” November 5, 2005)
Keith Hall: Keith Hall today is the place where students study the social sciences, but it had a humbler start. Jimmy Stewart attended the Keith School back when it was a campus grade school, built in 1939, and Indiana was still a Normal School. The Hall is one of the favorite spook spots of the Ghost Researchers in Pennsylvania, who use it as a training grounds for would-be investigators. There's Bill, the "lounge lizard" in Room 233, who will only make contact with the group when they sing. GRIP has orb pictures of him. They have EVP's of a British spirit, too. All in all, it's considered the hot spot of eerieness at IUP. (The Penn "Ghost Researchers Provide More Than Stories," October 30, 2007)
JEAN BONNET TAVERN (Bedford, Bedford County) Built in 1762 and opened as a public house by Jean Bonnet in 1780, this building is now part of the National Register of Historic Sites. One of the earliest spooks to haunt the house was a Frenchman that was hung in the 1700's, suspected of being a spy. His body was buried under the floor. He's been seen many times, sitting at the bar and sometimes in the area where he was hung. In fact, a skeleton was discovered under the floorboards in 1957 during renovations. It's thought to be his. A customer at the bar once noticed a group of ghosts dressed in frontier clothes looking through the door, intently watching the piano player. There have been encounters with a wailing baby, reportedly deserted at the Tavern's steps. A "monster" was spotted at the top of the stairs by a child. The mistress of Robert Callender, the original owner, is still haunting the tavern. The swoosh of her crinoline skirts and her footsteps can be heard as she rushes to the window to watch for his return. There's also the usual collection of unlocked doors, objects being moved, unexplained sounds, footsteps descending from the stairs, and eerie touchings, presences & sightings. A lone figure has been seen sitting alone at a table in the dining room, disappearing when you approach him. Another spirit, dressed in colonial garb, quietly sits at a bar table and sips an ale there. A young boy toting a coal bucket has been seen in the basement. One last legend. A horse thief, pursued by Shawnees, pulled into the tavern for protection from the Indians. Wanting to keep the peace, and their scalps, the customers held a kangaroo court, found him guilty, and strung him up from the second floor staircase. Then they dangled his body outside so that the Shawnee's could see frontier justice had been served. It worked. It's claimed you can hear his footsteps and feel a cold breeze on the second floor stairway. The Ghost Research Foundation has a terrific accounting of the Tavern's fascinating history and its' many permanent guests. Jean Bonnet Folklore Jean Bonnet Tavern - Mountains of Attractions
LADY IN THE RED SHAWL (Old Bedford Village, Bedford County) People have seen the hunched over figure of an old lady dressed in a red shawl or cloak in Old Bedford. She carries a bag and a pitchfork with her. People have spoken to her, but she never replies - she's the ghost of a long ago murder victim. Mountains of Attractions
LINCOLN HIGHWAY ANTIQUE SHOP (Schellsburg, Bedford County) This shop is housed in a Revolutionary War era building, and was reportedly haunted by a female spirit. The owner believed the ghost to be a woman who had been taken away to a home against her will. The Allegheny Mountain Ghosthunters came to investigate. After some phenomena was exhibited, the group believes that the ghost is that a Quaker girl, wearing a full-length dress with an apron and a bonnet. She seems associated with a bedboard in a room located on the second floor of the home that had a lot of energy attached to it. As an experiment, they moved the headboard to an opposite wall, and one member had the impression of a voice telling him “Put it back.” They returned it to the original place, and the voice said “Thank you.” One team member collapsed as he tried to make contact with the spirit. She apologized, like a good Quaker. Upbringing shows, even in the afterlife. Allegheny Mountain Ghost Hunters
LINCOLN HOUSE (Mann's Choice, Bedford County) The Tull family first built a home at the spot in 1777, and in fact the area is still known as Tull's Hill. Now it's an antique shop. But in between, the building was the Hotel Lincoln, called “the best little whorehouse in Pennsylvania.” The hotel had a bar on the first floor and ladies of the evening working the second and third floors. Legend has it that one of the ladies was having an affair on the second floor. Her angry husband burst into the room – not so much enraged at the cheating as at the fact that she was giving away the night's profits – and shot his wife's lover. She scampered into another room and hid in the closet. Bad choice. He found her, stabbed her to death, and hung her body on the closet door. To this day, customers are uneasy on the second floor of the shop, and the girl's reflection is supposed to be seen on an antique mirror, peeking out of the closet. Another story has a man in his 40s suddenly appearing and telling tales of the old hotel to the antique shop owner. He said he was a cook there in the 1930s, and then disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared. The owner realized that the man should have been quite elderly if he had really worked there then, not middle aged. She suspects he was an old spirit wanting to share some tales of the good old days with her. There may be some other spooks in the building, too. Perhaps some of the Tulls are still floating around. They lost 11 family members, the parents and 9 daughters, in a massacre at their home back when the area was frontier territory. There's also an old cupboard that emits weird noises. In the backyard of the shop sits Old Engine #49, also known as the ghost train. The steam whistles blows & the bell rings many nights at 8 PM, despite the fact there's no engineer, or for that matter, any steam. After the engine was restored in the late 1940s, the railroaders refused to work on it. They claimed they could smell burning flesh whenever they fired up the coal steamer. It had been repaired after an accident that had scalded the engineer to death. The haunts are so famous that the BBC and Italian television have run specials on it. Haunted Brothel - Mountains of Attractions
MORLEYS DOG (Johnstown, Cambria County) Cast in iron in 1886, the statue of Morley's Dog has stood guard over his master James Morley's mansion, got washed away by the 1889 flood, returned to guard duty, been beaten by vandals and stuffed with concrete. Morley's Dog even got a cameo in Paul Newman's movie, Slapshot. There's a local brew, Morley's Red, named after him, too. He's a swell legend and a Johnstown icon, but Lassie he's not. The legend is that his statue is of the dog that saved three people during the Great Flood. But that dog was Romney, not Morley's mutt. Romney was a Great Dane that was the family pooch of the Kress family, and this humble house hound is the one that rescued the people from the floodwaters. So get your doggies right – Morley's Dog is the legendary statue, but Romney's the hero, even if he didn't rate a memorial. (Pittsburgh Post Gazette “Here: In Johnstown,” November 16, 2003)
OLD FARM HOUSE (Cramer, Indiana County) The Allegheny Mountain Ghosthunters investigated this farmhouse, built in 1850. It's exact location is undisclosed to protect the privacy of the owners. They found the spirit of an elderly lady, and a bedroom with a foul odor that gave them a sense of extreme dizziness & disorientation. They're believers. Allegheny Mountain Ghost Hunters
OLD LOG CHURCH (Schellsburg, Bedford County) The Old Log Church was built in 1807, and used until 1852 when the congregation moved on to bigger digs. It is an actual log cabin edifice, measuring 25'x30'. It's kept by a preservation society, and is the main feature for the cemetery that received its' first body in 1806, a little girl named Whetstone. It still gets a couple of dozen internments every year. A ghost was found outside the church by a member of the Ghost Research Foundation, when an icy hand gripped his arm and took a stroll around the grounds with him. With all that history, we wouldn't be surprised to find a few more spooks lurking about the area of the Old Log Church and Cemetery. Ghost Research Foundation
OLD SOMERSET COUNTY JAIL (Somerset, Somerset County ) The old jailhouse was built in 1856 by John Mung, and was in use until 1981, when it was converted into county offices. A unique feature of the jail that remains to this day is the double gallows. Like many old jails, hangings were done in the building, and in Somerset, they could have a two-for-one if they pleased. Seven convicts were hung in all, and the double hanging was used for the Nicely brothers, executed for murder in 1891. There were many escape tries from the jail. It's alleged to be haunted, maybe by the not-so-Nicely boys. (Tribune-Democrat "Somerset Visitors Take Haunted Friday The 13th Hike," October 13, 2006)
Soccer Fields: Native American spirits are reported in the area. Yep, you guessed it – the rumor is more Indian burial mounds were graded to lay out the fields. The Shadowlands Pitt - Johnstown Virual Campus Tour
THE REAPPEARING HOUSE (Ganister, Blair County) A mountainside house that was demolished long ago keeps popping back up, at least in image, much to the surprise of passer-bys. Hey, if a person can come back and haunt a place, why can't a house? PA Researchers
SELDOM SEEN MINE (Patton, Cambria County) In the early 1900s, according to the story, three men robbed an elderly widow. They stashed their loot in a closed section of the Miller Run Mine (to become the Chest Creek Coal Mine in 1942 and now known as Seldom Seen Mine ). They got drunk, bragged about their deed, and were arrested. But without any evidence, they were set free. They returned to the mine, and while digging to uncover the hidden swagger, they started a mine flood. (Or a cave-in, take your pick.) They drowned or suffocated, and the money was never recovered. It's said you can still hear digging in the shaft and then voices screaming for help. There's no record of a flood or cave-in for the mines that we can find, but if it was in an unused or closed shaft, there would be no need to record it for posterity. Seldom Seen Mine is tapped out, and now it's a tourist site. The Shadowlands
STONE BRIDGE (Johnstown, Cambria County) This span across the Conemaugh was the site of complete horror when the South Fork Dam let loose in 1889. A thirty foot high pile of debris stretching over 30 acres collected behind the Stone Bridge, with an estimated 3,000 people trapped in it. A surging mass of trees, rubble from houses, and even railroad engines were intertwined with barbed wire, mixed in when the river overran a factory that manufactured the stuff. If that wasn't bad enough, the oil saturated material then caught on fire. People worked feverishly to rescue those poor souls, but up to 300 of them perished in the flames and many more disappeared, their bodies never found. Supposedly, the area is haunted by their spirits, and their cries for help can still be heard
THE U.S. HOTEL (Hollidaysburg, Blair County) The U. S. Hotel was built by John Dougherty in 1835 to serve the thriving Pennsylvania Canal traffic. Destroyed by a fire in 1871, it was rebuilt by German immigrant Englebert Gromiller in 1886, who added a brewery next door. The building changed hands several times, and began deteriorating. The brewery was razed. But the hotel has been restored, and the ghosts there are now enjoying the comfort to which they were formerly accustomed. It's said that there are quite a handful of them to deal with. There's a girl with chestnut hair, laying in a hotel bed, writhing in pain and holding her head. She disappears before anyone can help her. Then there's the man that runs around carrying an ax. There's a woman that hovers by the doorway of a guest's room. A contractor saw a footless woman in a white gown floating above the floor. A ghostly boy has been spotted sitting on the front staircase. The Allegheny Mountain Ghost Hunters checked out the Hotel, and found a mean-spirited (and smelly!) ghost they called Spiro on the upper floors. Another investigator, Patty Wilson, said she also met an apparition that was grumpy and kept telling her to get out, likely the same surly spirit. A friendly woman ghost who stays on the first floor that the staff calls Sarah was found by the AMG to actually be the spirit of a girl named Mary. The owner has said he's heard people talking and clanging dishes upstairs when he was closing shop alone. (The hotel manager has also heard people celebrating upstairs, even when he was the only one in the building). As he left, he realized he had forgotten his keys. When he went back in the hotel, the ghostly party had moved downstairs. Discretion being the better part of valor, he left the building by the back door. The ghosts partied on. Haunted Hotel - Mountains of Attractions
JAMES WOLFE SCULPTURE TRAIL/JOHNSTOWN INCLINED PLANE HIKING TRAIL (Johnstown, Cambria County) On July 10, 1902, 112 miners lost their lives in an explosion in the Cambria Iron Company's nearby Rolling Mills mine. There have been sightings of a lone miner on the trail who disappears as you approach him, and of a pair of miners holding their lunch buckets at the base of the Johnstown Inclined Plane, still waiting for their ride home. The spook of a young boy has been reported from there, too. The sightings date back even further. It's alleged that there was an Indian burial ground near the top of the Plane, and floating lights have been seen dancing around the native's final resting place. This popular hiking trail winds past the Incline and along the Stony Brook River. Haunted PA - Visit PA Real Haunts
