Haunted Oberlin

Oberlin College is on a land blessed. It was founded nearly 200 years ago by a group of Christian expats from the Northeast. This flat piece of land was meant to serve a utopia of Christianity. A practical one. It was to be a realm for both learning and labor. Still, as many Oberlin students and community members know, Utopia doesn't exist. Not here at least. There is a memorial arch that resides in Tappan Square at the heart of the town. It was made to honor the loss of Oberlin missionaries killed in China during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. An engraving features a quote by Chinese poet, Du Fu. It reads “I am grieved by the war and have not slept. Who has the strength to right heaven and earth?”

This iconic arch is a monument to the dead. A symbol of grief. Grief is physically at the heart of Oberlin. The same could go for its history. This college, among the first to admit women and people of color, also holds stories of darkness. Ghosts and shadows inhabit these century-old buildings. Stick around for this episode of the Tappan Square Dispatch as I tell you all about the ghosts that, supposedly, haunt Oberlin. I want to provide some content warnings for scary, intense, and disturbing sequences, including death and suicide, sometimes involving young people.

Whirring white noise of basement, recorded on microphone

I am sampling the ambiance of the basement of Noah Hall, a dormitory built in the 1930s. Originally intended as a men’s dorm, it currently hosts various themed houses on campus, including the Quiet, Substance-free, and the science fiction halls. A space like this should be bursting with activity. The basement tells you otherwise. 

This whirring filters through the night as you walk to the laundry room. It makes cleaning some underwear feel like a descent into hell. One of my friends described this environment as a liminal space. It does not lie in one clear zone or another. It is a zone between two areas. It’s too big. Too empty. You get the feeling that something has happened here. Someone is in the room with you even if you can see every corner.

Tank Hall: Maybe capture some further ambiance surrounding home, charting the walk

Tank Hall has a similar ominous feel. Playing host to a student housing co-op, it lies on the outskirts of campus. It is a massive two story home. It ticks all the gothic checkmarks. Stained glass windows are on the stairwell. A leering wrap-around porch. A small observing tower. It feels massive. Passageways that lead into a tunnel that you’d typically call a basement. You could fit a lot of people in it. You usually don’t notice the spookiness. Students come together to eat meals in the dining hall and throw parties on the lawn. In one corner you can find SWAP, Oberlin’s used book co-op. The main gossip about the home is the frequent water leaks. However, it was not always a home for young adults. It was a home for children. Young children.

Tank was first built in 1897. Its title was the “Clara Tank Home for Missionary Children.” For 25 years it played host to the children of Oberlin’s missionaries. If you went to practice Christianity in far-off countries, you could leave your children to be cared for in Tank. It was considered a safe space.

The home was named for Clara Tank, part of the wealthy Tank family who lived in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Green Bay Tanks were internationally renowned, frequently mingling with royalty and the global elite. They even purchased hundreds of acres of land to start a new community for Norwegian immigrants in the 1850s. They were wealthy, but charitable. Clara, or C.L.A, as she is referred to in specific correspondence, was devoted to missionary work. She ultimately passed away in 1891. One of her last living deeds was providing funding to create a home in Oberlin for missionary children. Already, the space carries a special meaning. This wealthy woman near the end of her life created a home. This big yet humble spot marks one of the last acts of her life. Correspondence about the home describes C.L.A. Tank as an “artistic, cultivated, Christian woman whose name has been given to the home and who will long be held in grateful memory.” Tank Hall, in many ways, is a memorial. Fitting, considering the rumors it draws.

Tank Hall plays host to one of Oberlin’s most chilling urban legends. All colleges draw this sort of folklore. These rampant communities of naive young people are ripe for untrue things to spread and eventually become true. Stories that sound simple can shift into something more unusual. Tank Hall’s story goes like this. The missionary children were starting to become orphans, as missionaries were killed in China. These are the tragedies that the arch in Tappan Square pays tribute to. The house grew overpopulated, and much like the pipe leaks of today, the fragile materials of Tank were vulnerable to disaster. One night, supposedly, a fire broke out in the home. The flames spread throughout the building, trapping the orphans in a room. None of them survived. So it is said.

The ghosts of those orphans haunt Tank to this day. In the early 2000s, in an interview with local newspaper the Oberlin Review, an area coordinator and his wife reported something truly unsettling. They woke in the middle of the night. They reported two or three figures in their doorway. They were small enough to be children. They weren’t students. They were talking to each other and pointing in their direction. They kept repeating a single phrase. “They’re here.” “They’re here.” This nightly visitation was commonly cited by students. You can also hear the sounds of quick footsteps outside of rooms. Some have seen apparitions on the third floor. They are said to look too young to be college students

The stories surrounding Tank are likely just hearsay. This idea of orphaned children dying in a fire is very similar to the tale of Gore Orphanage, a classic supernatural legend in Ohio. It is set in Vermilion, a city only 20 minutes away from Oberlin. It centers upon real life ruins located on the outskirts of the community, rumored to be remnants of an orphanage that burned down with the residents still inside. Again, this legend is considered a classic. Mysterious burnings. Dark happenings deep in the woods. Ghost children. It has all the ingredients compelling enough to spawn a few spinoffs, including one right in Oberlin.

Before I move on I will deliver one last note about Tank. Archival documents reveal that Tank, prior to her death, donated some of her personal furniture to the new home. It included her piano, a writing desk, a table, and more fine goods. This furniture were the last pieces of herself, meant to populate the home. This furniture has since vanished from the home. Many collectors over the years have written to Oberlin trying to locate these objects. But those pieces of CLA Tank, like the children who lived here, remain lost to time. One quote from a missionary says, “I doubt if you realize the good which has been wrought. I do not see how you can know it unless you can see into the hearts of the parents who would not know what to do were it not for Tank Home. Tank Home and its splendid management have lifted from our minds a very heavy and anxious burden”

Interlude: More spooky music. May put together a montage of quick interviews asking students if they believe Oberlin is haunted and where

172 Elm Street:

The next stop on our tour is a simple home located a few steps off Oberlin’s South Campus. 172 Elm Street. Otherwise known as the Evans House. The home was first built in 1871 by William Evans, a wealthy mason with some cash to spare. As architectural historian and Oberlin Professor Geoffrey Blodgett described it, “the home’s solid unpretentious lines reflect a man less concerned with canons of architectural taste than with substance, function, and comfort.” It may not be comfortable the more time you spend in the home. 

You can hear faint cries in the house, coming in from the back rooms. Mysterious sobs that come from an unknown source. The crying has long been speculated to come from the ghost of a small child. A ghost considered legendary among neighborhood residents, to the point that it was even reported on by Blodgett in his book, saying that “Elm street acquired a ghost around the turn of the century,” as if a poltergeist is no different from an everyday pest. The home that enjoyed crying even when no one was home. The story goes that there was a maid servant who lived in the home. In her madness, she became pregnant and ended both her and her unborn child’s life. 

This act of terror still lingers in the home. Some say that it is the small baby crying. Others say that it’s the ghost of the servant. Trying to drive the owners insane. For over 20 years, the house was home to Creative Writing Professor Diane Vruels. Even she reported these cries. She described the sound to the Oberlin review, finding “The sound was disturbing. Very realistic.” However, there is a little twist in this account. According to Vruels, the sound eventually disappeared from the home. Not because they called in the Ghostbusters or an exorcist. But rather a mechanic. One of the house’s rooms was eventually renovated, causing the removal of an old stove pipe. The screaming would stop after that. The ghostly screech turned out to just be a leak in a vent.

Ghosts may just be a figment of our imaginations. Perhaps Professor Vruels knew about the dark folktales surrounding the home, and the weird noises in its rooms were just confirmation bias. Perhaps the ghosts of 172 Elm exist because the plumbing is consistently crappy, not unlike the poor infrastructure that really haunts Tank. These hauntings are incidents that follow-up on real problems. That fill in gaps of uncertainty within our minds. For our third and final stop, I will take us to a spot haunted to its core. A space for both uncertainty and tragedy.

More creepy transition music. Include more clips from students talking about hauntings

Johnson House:

Sociologist and hauntings expert Dennis Waskul divides haunting into various types. One of these types is residual hauntings. It is a ghostly presence “that does not interact with its environment or living occupants.” These aren’t necessarily visible ghosts or poltergeists, but rather general remnants of a building’s past. Residue of dark chapters in its history. Such residues lingers at the southernmost edge of Oberlin’s campus. Isolated from any dorm or academic building stands? a towering three-story Victorian mansion, situated upon a hill. It is painted in extravagant greens, reds, and yellows. It stands out so much that it’s as if the landscape orbits around it. Housing approximately 30 students, there is a sense of foreboding as you enter the home, especially at night when everyone’s off to bed. There are winding staircases that seem to lead to strange locations. Individual rooms isolated in their own corners. It is easy to get lost as you move up and down. You may be lost, but you may not be alone. Students say it “creaks, moans, and sighs” in the middle of the night. Like a person in grief, perhaps. As decades of reports show, this building is marked by tragedy and may be Oberlin’s most haunted. 

The home was built in 1885 by Albert Johnson. Johnson was a wealthy businessman and railroad baron born in Elyria, Ohio in 1836. He came from a family of influential entrepreneurs, starting his business career working as a cashier at his uncle’s dry goods store. He built up his resume from there, becoming president of the Arkansas Railroad Company and Oberlin Gas and Electric. He was highly connected to Oberlin College, donating money to help fund what are now the Politics and History departments. He decided to move into the town, constructing a home nicely suited to his wealthy image. He did have the money to spend. However, he also had a woman in his life to cater to.

Albert’s wife, Rebecca, graduated from Oberlin in 1865, marrying Albert the following year. The love between Rebecca and Albert seemed strong. The legend goes that Johnson House was commissioned by Albert as a tribute to his wife. The home was built in her image, complete with a carriage house in the back for Rebecca to use as a studio. It’s a gothic idea. A love so intense that it’s worth building a mansion for. That type of love is often sure to end in tragedy

A horrible trainwreck occurred on December 4th 1899. The incident occurred 217 miles west of Denver by the Arkansas River. Onboard this train was Albert Johnson, ironic considering his status as a railroad magnate. Johnson’s train had stopped to deal with an animal caught in a trestle, it was an obstacle that had to be moved. The train was struck in its back end by yet another high-speed machine. 7 people were killed in this incident. Albert Johnson was among those 7.

What follows is very much legend. In this legend, Rebecca was devastated by her husband’s death. In her grief, she went out to the stables behind her home. She then struck down seven horses and buried them in the space between Johnson house and the stable. It’s a classic gothic story. A woman gone mad. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a woman confined to a solitary apartment finds the shapes of figures in her walls and spirals into insanity. A woman is driven to the extremities of herself due to unfortunate circumstances. Such stories are based on classic myths about female hysteria. Unstable emotions. Oftentimes our common myths, even in a forward-thinking place like Oberlin, come from backwards places.

In actual history, Rebecca Johnson was not a slaughterer of horses. She was a casual feminist, interested in women’s suffrage. A Quaker by birth, her obituary described her as “a broadminded woman of many interests, whose sense of justice was unusually keen.” She had some interest in racial justice and was a women’s suffragist. There is a history that the urban legends seem to ignore, stuffing this “broadminded” woman into a little hysterical box.

What the legends don’t ignore are the continued stories that linger in the Johnson home. In 1911, a dozen years after Albert’s death, Charles Martin Hall bought the house and sold it to Oberlin College, where it eventually became a dorm housing members of the college’s “Hebrew Heritage House.” In 1987, the hall’s residents returned home from Spring Break. A student went back into their room. The doors were closed and the windows were locked. By this shut window, was a dead black bird. This is one of several occasions where, despite the windows being closed, students stumble upon the same type of small black bird dead in their room. Who put them there? The hysterical spirit of Rebecca? Some cruel prankster? Who could know for sure? Other students have claimed to have seen the ghost of Rebecca, alongside doors opening by themselves, though details on these accounts are limited.

I want to quickly go back to the story of Rebecca. It is believed that after she killed the horses, she ended her own life. This is, frankly, bullshit. She lived for another 16 years after her husband’s death in 1915. She died of “cancer of the stomach,” not the melodramatic fate that you would expect. She moved out of Johnson House after Albert’s death, moving to a smaller home at 190 Elm Street, ironically right down the street from the Evans House. You wonder how a story so inaccurate could be widespread. Why does this story hang around like residue that haunts the home? Perhaps it's because of the story’s gothic potential. Also, in my research, I noticed one major historical detail that could add the slightest bit of truth to the unhistorical legend of the Johnsons, the murdered horses, and their home on South Professor. As I mentioned earlier, the train Albert was on crashed because there was an obstacle on the railroad. This obstacle was not your usual stopped vehicle or tree. It was an animal caught in the tracks. Specifically. A horse. 

Conclusion:

That marks the end of this journey through the hauntings of Oberlin. I hope it was spookily educational. Oberlin, in its nearly two centuries of history, likely has attracted plenty of legends. Shadows of past events continue to linger in the campus’ buildings. I want to give some quick thanks to Oberlin student Catherine Horowitz for supplying me with some of their research materials on Oberlin’s haunted materials. Horowitz has developed a ghost tour touring both the buildings covered here as well as many of the spooky sites in Oberlin. I also want to thank the Oberlin College Archives who lended me access to the historical documents that I’ve referenced in this episode. Don't forget to tune in next time for more on the fascinating, hopefully lighter stories that matter to the Oberlin community. If you have any suggestions for future episodes, feel free to reach out to us on Instagram @TSD. As always, thank you for tuning in and we’ll see you next time. Pray no ghosts interfere!