Spooky tales by lantern light: Spiegel Grove hosts special Halloween-season tours

FREMONT – The Spirit Stories at Spiegel Grove helped get the Halloween season underway with spooky tales and lantern tours throughout the dark grounds of President Rutherford B. Hayes’ historic home.

The tour, held Oct. 27, started at the Hayes house where speakers told the story of the Elmore rider, a tale about a headless motorcyclist. As legend has it, if you go to the bridge in Elmore on March 21 you can see the glowing ball of his headlamp.

According to the story, the rider returned home from World War I and rode his motorcycle across the bridge planning to surprise his girlfriend, only to discover she had become engaged to another man.

In anger, the rider sped away on his new motorcycle around a sharp curve, lost control as he crossed Mud Creek bridge, and crashed into a barbed-wire fence, decapitating himself.

Legend has it that if you go to the bridge on March 21 and flash your headlights three times, the soldier’s ghost will appear and reenact his fateful drive.

Then it’s on to another room for the Spirit Stories tour, and another ghostly tale.

“This is the first time we’ve done this walk and my sister had looked it up and we decided to do it. It was a bonding time, it was really fun,” said Tina Searight, who attended the event. “We really liked it; it was original and at the different spots we stopped everyone was very knowledgeable about the story they told.

One of the stops along the trail of the Spirit Stories at Spiegel Grove tour.

In the Hayes house, two ghost stories were told before visitors stepped outside and walked down a dark path with nothing but a lantern to guide them.

Along the path, people stopped to hear the story of the Ghost dog of the Great Lakes who haunts traveling ships.

Each stop offered a different spine-chilling tale of ghosts, legends, and haunted phenomena from across Ohio, with a different person telling each of the tales.

“This was very informative,” Tracy Weis said. “It told different versions of some of the tales that I’ve heard before. So that was nice, and some new tales.”

The last story was the tale of the first vampire, Mercy Brown. Her body was frozen when she died and when she was exhumed, many thought she was a vampire.

Ken Moore, curator of artifacts at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums, tells the tale of Elmore’s headless motorcyclist during the Spirit Stories of Spiegel Grove tour.

Spiegel Grove has been doing this event for 6 years and this year’s lantern tour was sold out, with groups of about 16 people going on a tour every 10 minutes. A total of 288 people attended the event.

Many of the group’s comments after their tours expressed how much they enjoyed it, with one calling it “a very refreshing new and well-guided tour.”

At the end of the Spirit Stories tour, there was popcorn, apple cider, and hot chocolate to enjoy while guests could warm up by a campfire.

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Elmore’s headless motorcyclist among scary tales told in Spiegel Grove