Cleveland Ghost Walk

 Happy Halloween, Everyone! 

    This is my favorite time of year and it didn't feel complete without doing something spooky. We wanted to do a Cleveland Ghost Tour, but because of COVID they had been cancelled. We decided to pick a couple stops off their usual tour and do our own walk. We picked the Collinwood Memorial Garden-site of the Collinwood School Fire that incredibly impacted the future of schools in the U.S., and Lake View Cemetery with its rich history and beautiful landscape. 

    The Collinwood School Fire happened on March 4, 1908 at Lake View Elementary. An overheated steam pipe underneath the wooden staircase caught on fire. The building was three stories high, had two narrow staircases, and only two exits. The exit doors closed inward and became tightly packed with panicked children before the doors could be opened and they all were trapped against it. The fire escape on one of the floors didn't reach the ground. The building itself was highly flammable with a wooden interior and brick exterior. The makeshift chimney caused the fire to collapse the building in less than an hour, with the majority of the damage done in the first 30 minutes. The fire department consisted of all volunteers who were inexperienced in this level of fire. They were also ill-equipped with ladders that didn't reach three stories high, and the water pressure wasn't strong enough to do much but a small stream to the 2nd floor. 172 children, 2 teachers, and 1 volunteer died in the fire that day. The Collinwood Memorial Garden is located on the site of the fire. There are 175 tiles with names of those perished. People have said that when they visit the memorial they smell a smoky odor that sometimes turns putrid and becomes so strong they have to leave. 

    I knew the Collinwood Memorial Garden was going to be the most difficult location before we even arrived. I had dug deeply into the history and individual accounts from families that it already impacted me; and I knew it was going to be a solemn location.  Our first reactions were sadness and frustration when we saw the state of the memorial. The garden above the tiles was unkempt and full of trash. Litter was scattered around the ground. Those who oversaw the memorial and rededicated it have their names on a large granite plaque. The people who donated to the memorial had larger tiles than those who are being commemorated.  The children, teachers, and volunteer's tiles are fading to the point where you can't read their names, growing ivy over them in some spots, and are becoming dislodged. This angered me and feels so disrespectful. The memorial is not about the donators nor the committee who oversaw it and their names shouldn't be a larger part. Especially when they rededicated it in 2003 and haven't seemed to do a thing about its appearance afterward. As we walked around the memorial, I felt compelled to touch the names of those who mattered. They were in groups of four tiles and as I touched each one, I started to smell an unpleasant odor that came and went with the wind. After the 3rd time the odor came back, I asked my friend if she smelled anything. She said she smelled almost like a grill smoke in the beginning, but now keeps getting a strong and uncomfortable smell that comes and goes. I went to touch another group of four, when the smell returned the most pungent it had been with a strong energy that I immediately backed up and had to walk a few feet away. My friend immediately asked me what happened. We both agreed that the smell was unpleasant, discomforting, and left us very uneasy. To be completely transparent with you all, I couldn't sleep that night. The lingering impact of that smell combined with the anger I felt at the disrespect for the dead with the disarray of the memorial, left me with a truly haunted feeling that I haven't fully recovered from. 

    Lake View Cemetery was a location I was incredibly curious about. Through all my research, I learned a lot of Cleveland's history that I hadn't known. I was anxious about finding all the gravesites because the cemetery is one of the largest in state; established in 1869, it has 285 acres with  more than 100,000 graves. I will start off by saying we didn't experience anything at the cemetery. Part of that I think is because some of the places on our list were closed off for the day, or we didn't get a chance to find them before it closed. Cemeteries are just creepy to begin with, but there were a lot of groups doing the same "self-tour" that we were, and the landscaping and architecture is just so fascinating and beautiful that you forget to be creeped out. 

    Our first stop was the President James A. Garfield Memorial. President Garfield was reportedly fascinated by the supernatural and is said to have predicted his own death as well as who was responsible during seances before it happened. After being shot, he didn't pass away for 2 1/2 months afterward, and some say it's because his spirit was already wandering. Unfortunately, we assumed the tower containing his casket would be open as long as the cemetery was, but upon arrival we saw it was only open 10:30-2:30 so we were unable to go inside. 

    Next up was one of my favorites, Alan Freed. He was a Cleveland native credited with creating the term "Rock and Roll," as a disc jockey in the 1950s. Visitors pay their respects to him by leaving guitar picks and mementos. His gravestone is shaped like a jukebox and much larger than I had anticipated. It was easy to spot from the road. The front is detailed like a jukebox, and the back has his picture and his story. It overlooks a beautiful pond with swans and a walkway. 

    The next gravesite took a while for us to find-Elliot Ness. He was credited with helping bring down Al Capone in Chicago before coming to work on the police force in Cleveland. He was in charge of the Torso Murders investigation. These murders occurred between 1935-1938. 12 bodies (some say 13) were found decapitated and without limbs or other body parts. It was one of the earliest serial killer cases in America. The murderer was never found. The people of Cleveland blamed Elliot for it never being solved because he ordered the Shantytown near where the victims were discovered to be burned down after police searched it for clues. His gravesite is tucked back by some trees and bushes that surround Wade Lake. He isn't buried there, but his ashes were spread in the lake behind it that runs into the Cuyahoga River where the victims were found. 

    The only statue on our list was the Haserot Angel, or "Angel of Death Victorious." She is said to be the creepiest statue in the cemetery. She guards the graves of Francis Haserot and his family, who were a well-known and wealthy family in the city. Her torch is upside-down, representing extinguished life and she looks as if she's crying black tears. Some say they hear faint weeping noises around the area. I was nervous about this one because just looking at pictures made my heart race. She actually wasn't as large as I was expecting. Up close you can tell the black tears are actually aged bronze because the same thing is happening to her wings. Our engineer friend thought she was beautiful, but her presence was definitely a bit nerve-wracking. 

    One of our fun stops was the Lake View Cemetery Dam. It was the location of filming for Captain America: Winter Soldier in 2012. I read that the actors had all autographed the dam, but it was closed off so we couldn't go try to find them. However, the view from the hill that overlooks the dam is one of the most beautiful views of the cemetery with downtown Cleveland in the distance. I believe this was also the spot where we began to smell garlic bread from Little Italy down the street. 😂

    This ghost walk was probably the most unsettling and nerve-wracking one we've done so far. I'm sure it'll be awhile before I feel ready to do another since I'm still bothered by the memorial garden. Just rewriting about it is making my heart race and I'm jumpy. I don't even want to look at the photos. We didn't get to stop at all the locations I had on the list within Lakeview Cemetery because it was supposed to close at dusk, but they closed it over an hour early and that was frustrating. I would suggest going earlier in the day since it takes some time to find everything and some things like the Garfield Memorial are only open for limited times. 

    Have you been to either of these locations? Any experiences or thoughts? Let me know in the comments!