Hello Friends,
I hope everyone is staying safe during this outbreak. I'm an essential worker in Behavioral Health, so I'm about a month and half late making this post. My birthday was a week before this all started hitting hard in our country. I'm thankful to have gotten to have one last adventure before quarantine began.
If you know me, you know that my favorite time of year is Halloween and that my favorite genre of movies is horror. After doing a tour of Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania four years ago, I've been looking at traveling to other cities to do haunted tours. It's not so much the paranormal I'm interested in, it's the history and stories behind the locations. Basically every big city has a haunted tour, so I thought I should start where I live. The Haunted Columbus tours take a break during the January and February months since the weather can be so cold and unpredictable, but thankfully my birthday weekend in March was the first round of tours starting up again. They have a variety of tours like graveyards, walking tours, and bus tours. You can check them all out on their website here: https://columbusghosttours.com/.
The walking tour was the one available my birthday weekend. It only costs $20 a person and lasts about two hours. My friend Autumn also enjoys creepy things, so she agreed to come with me. We paid online and received an email a few days before the tour of the location where we would be meeting. I am going to disappoint you ahead of time by saying I won't tell you the stories of the locations we visited, but I'll give some clues. It's far better to hear the stories on tour at night when you're actually there. I will also add that I have had previous paranormal experiences in my life, but I don't go into these tours expecting anything.
We met up at an old bar downtown called Ringside. It's an old dive-style bar that was built in 1897 down a back alleyway and you would never know it's there. We walk in and are greeted by one of our tour guides. He instructs us to go downstairs into the basement to wait for the rest of our group of ten people. We walk downstairs and into the basement where we are greeted by his wife. She is a former elementary school principal, and Autumn shares a few teaching stories with her where kids have talked about some creepy things. I'm only half paying attention because I am completely thrown off by the energy in that basement. I fully understand why in paranormal investigation shows they have a difficult time explaining what they're feeling. It's hard to describe. The second I walked into the room, the air felt thick and the energy was weird. Not negative, but just...off. I watched as the rest of our group showed up to see if anyone else had a reaction, but no one seemed to notice.
Our tour guide states that the bar is our first stop on our tour. She proceeds to tell us the long history of the bar and the paranormal experiences that employees and customers have witnessed. I'm having a difficult time focusing. I'm uncomfortable in the room, and then I keep noticing movement out of the corner of my eye. There is a small bar in the room (behind me in the picture below) where I am seeing a reflection in the bar stools as if someone is sitting there. Naturally, your mind tries to think of every logical thing it could be. I'm looking around the room at people's jewelry, beer bottles, movements, and if any of the Christmas lights around the room are flickering. Nothing is matching up to what I'm seeing. I am relieved after 45 minutes when we get to start walking outside.
The next stop is the Capitol building. At first I'm surprised that it is haunted, but then as I hear the stories it completely makes sense. The clue here is the underground tunnels that ran from the prison to the Capitol. Also, don't mess with anything that belonged to Native Americans. General rule. This also had one of my favorite stories of the night regarding President Lincoln, an affair, and a crazy mistress that may or may not have had something to do with his assassination down the line. Like I said, you need hear it for yourself.
Right across the street is the Ohio Theatre. I'm just going to assume that all old theaters are haunted at this point. They all have a Woman in Black, and they all have a Woman in White. This location made me a bit sad because it was the only location that involved the death of a child.
We walk through the Columbus Commons, discuss some shady doctors who like to hide the bodies of patients, and end up at the Westin Hotel. It's the last of the Grande hotels in the Columbus area. We walk inside and it is stunning. Absolutely gorgeous. Floor to ceiling is marble. Pillars, piano music, gold trim, the works. It's a hidden gem. We hear stories about murders in the hotel rooms in the mid-1900s, but since renovating they claim to not know which rooms they are. The staff knows because apparently they don't want to clean those rooms alone, but won't tell the guests. All we know is there's one on the 3rd floor, and one on the 6th floor. We also hear about a tragic love story where a woman jumped from the 3rd floor balcony to the marble floor of the lobby and died. It's in my bio how fascinated I am by tragic love stories, so naturally I had to go stand in that spot. Don't get excited, nothing happened and I didn't feel anything.
The tour ended here in this hotel. Our group parts ways and our tour guides leave. We are welcome to eat and drink in the bar off the lobby called the Great Southern Whiskey Bar. Hello, my name is Carrie and whiskey is my alcohol of choice. Autumn and I get some appetizers, drink some magic whiskey, and discuss our tour that we thoroughly enjoyed.
I bet you thought the night was over, but you are wrong. We were wrong. I told Autumn I was so caught up in the stories that I didn't get pictures of the locations. We had to walk past them all to get back to her boyfriend's condo so we could just pause at each of them along the way. We stop to take a picture in front of the theater. There is no one inside. The security guard from earlier had left and shut everything off. Remember the Woman in White? She hangs out on the 3rd floor which is all storage. I hold up my phone to take a picture and mention to Autumn that the theater is so dark, when the light on the first window of the 3rd floor suddenly turns on. I pause and say, "Autumn, why did that light turn on?" She looks up as that light turns off in the first window, then another one turns on a few windows down. No movement. No person walking across the windows. We start to panic and walk away. We glance back, and the theater is completely dark again.
That night was definitely an adventure. If you don't believe in the paranormal, it's worth it just for the dark history of the city. This tour has me hooked on wanting to do other haunted tours around the country. The great thing about Haunted Columbus is that no two tours are the same. We could sign up for another walking tour, and it would be different than the one we did. I'm definitely interested in trying some of the other tours they offer, but currently I have Haunted Cleveland on the brain when this pandemic is over.
I hope everyone is staying safe during this outbreak. I'm an essential worker in Behavioral Health, so I'm about a month and half late making this post. My birthday was a week before this all started hitting hard in our country. I'm thankful to have gotten to have one last adventure before quarantine began.
If you know me, you know that my favorite time of year is Halloween and that my favorite genre of movies is horror. After doing a tour of Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania four years ago, I've been looking at traveling to other cities to do haunted tours. It's not so much the paranormal I'm interested in, it's the history and stories behind the locations. Basically every big city has a haunted tour, so I thought I should start where I live. The Haunted Columbus tours take a break during the January and February months since the weather can be so cold and unpredictable, but thankfully my birthday weekend in March was the first round of tours starting up again. They have a variety of tours like graveyards, walking tours, and bus tours. You can check them all out on their website here: https://columbusghosttours.com/.
The walking tour was the one available my birthday weekend. It only costs $20 a person and lasts about two hours. My friend Autumn also enjoys creepy things, so she agreed to come with me. We paid online and received an email a few days before the tour of the location where we would be meeting. I am going to disappoint you ahead of time by saying I won't tell you the stories of the locations we visited, but I'll give some clues. It's far better to hear the stories on tour at night when you're actually there. I will also add that I have had previous paranormal experiences in my life, but I don't go into these tours expecting anything.
We met up at an old bar downtown called Ringside. It's an old dive-style bar that was built in 1897 down a back alleyway and you would never know it's there. We walk in and are greeted by one of our tour guides. He instructs us to go downstairs into the basement to wait for the rest of our group of ten people. We walk downstairs and into the basement where we are greeted by his wife. She is a former elementary school principal, and Autumn shares a few teaching stories with her where kids have talked about some creepy things. I'm only half paying attention because I am completely thrown off by the energy in that basement. I fully understand why in paranormal investigation shows they have a difficult time explaining what they're feeling. It's hard to describe. The second I walked into the room, the air felt thick and the energy was weird. Not negative, but just...off. I watched as the rest of our group showed up to see if anyone else had a reaction, but no one seemed to notice.
Our tour guide states that the bar is our first stop on our tour. She proceeds to tell us the long history of the bar and the paranormal experiences that employees and customers have witnessed. I'm having a difficult time focusing. I'm uncomfortable in the room, and then I keep noticing movement out of the corner of my eye. There is a small bar in the room (behind me in the picture below) where I am seeing a reflection in the bar stools as if someone is sitting there. Naturally, your mind tries to think of every logical thing it could be. I'm looking around the room at people's jewelry, beer bottles, movements, and if any of the Christmas lights around the room are flickering. Nothing is matching up to what I'm seeing. I am relieved after 45 minutes when we get to start walking outside.
The next stop is the Capitol building. At first I'm surprised that it is haunted, but then as I hear the stories it completely makes sense. The clue here is the underground tunnels that ran from the prison to the Capitol. Also, don't mess with anything that belonged to Native Americans. General rule. This also had one of my favorite stories of the night regarding President Lincoln, an affair, and a crazy mistress that may or may not have had something to do with his assassination down the line. Like I said, you need hear it for yourself.
Right across the street is the Ohio Theatre. I'm just going to assume that all old theaters are haunted at this point. They all have a Woman in Black, and they all have a Woman in White. This location made me a bit sad because it was the only location that involved the death of a child.
We walk through the Columbus Commons, discuss some shady doctors who like to hide the bodies of patients, and end up at the Westin Hotel. It's the last of the Grande hotels in the Columbus area. We walk inside and it is stunning. Absolutely gorgeous. Floor to ceiling is marble. Pillars, piano music, gold trim, the works. It's a hidden gem. We hear stories about murders in the hotel rooms in the mid-1900s, but since renovating they claim to not know which rooms they are. The staff knows because apparently they don't want to clean those rooms alone, but won't tell the guests. All we know is there's one on the 3rd floor, and one on the 6th floor. We also hear about a tragic love story where a woman jumped from the 3rd floor balcony to the marble floor of the lobby and died. It's in my bio how fascinated I am by tragic love stories, so naturally I had to go stand in that spot. Don't get excited, nothing happened and I didn't feel anything.
The tour ended here in this hotel. Our group parts ways and our tour guides leave. We are welcome to eat and drink in the bar off the lobby called the Great Southern Whiskey Bar. Hello, my name is Carrie and whiskey is my alcohol of choice. Autumn and I get some appetizers, drink some magic whiskey, and discuss our tour that we thoroughly enjoyed.
I bet you thought the night was over, but you are wrong. We were wrong. I told Autumn I was so caught up in the stories that I didn't get pictures of the locations. We had to walk past them all to get back to her boyfriend's condo so we could just pause at each of them along the way. We stop to take a picture in front of the theater. There is no one inside. The security guard from earlier had left and shut everything off. Remember the Woman in White? She hangs out on the 3rd floor which is all storage. I hold up my phone to take a picture and mention to Autumn that the theater is so dark, when the light on the first window of the 3rd floor suddenly turns on. I pause and say, "Autumn, why did that light turn on?" She looks up as that light turns off in the first window, then another one turns on a few windows down. No movement. No person walking across the windows. We start to panic and walk away. We glance back, and the theater is completely dark again.
That night was definitely an adventure. If you don't believe in the paranormal, it's worth it just for the dark history of the city. This tour has me hooked on wanting to do other haunted tours around the country. The great thing about Haunted Columbus is that no two tours are the same. We could sign up for another walking tour, and it would be different than the one we did. I'm definitely interested in trying some of the other tours they offer, but currently I have Haunted Cleveland on the brain when this pandemic is over.
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