S3 Ep58: Haunted Prospect Place

are locked down and we just saw a tornado. We saw a tunnel cloud right over here. It's all over. But the sirens went off as we were setting up.

We're all up down. There's hell hitting me in the face right now. Yeah. One of the worst killings for history of this day is scum.

Sometimes you know if it was spirits of anybody that stupid remains, I have the device in my hand. If you would like to talk to me please come forward telling your story. Maybe I should have killed four 500 people and I was better than I felt like I really offered society something. You are listening to Serial Spirits, the podcast.

All right everybody welcome back to another episode of Serial Spirits. With me is my partner in crime. Anyway, how's it going Shai-Bai? It's still weird to be sitting back here behind the mics after all this time.

I honestly thought about it earlier that we should have like the M&M theme as we know. Guess who's back? Back again. But should we?

No but I mean it just it keeps popping in my head every time we get behind these mics now. It's good. It feels good to be back. It feels good to be sharing stories with people again.

I think we all needed a little reprieve, right? It's hard to do this. It's hard to find the time every week to write your stories to get back here, to record for you to do the editing. Life is just crazy right now but this has become our release again.

And so this week's episode, so last week you talked about one of your favorite haunted locations. This week you kind of challenged me to do the same. I picked a place that we've both been so I can kind of get your feedback about it and I'm excited to share our experiences and some of my favorite all-time EVPs with you guys this week. Heck yeah.

I've been to this place a couple times and it's a really cool. I mean it's well known. I mean it's been on TV quite a few times but it really is a great, great location. So this week we are going to introduce you guys to the spirits of Prospect Place Mansion.

Prospect Place Mansion is a 29-room Greek Revival-style mansion built on 150 acres in the town of Trenway, Ohio by businessman and abolitionist George Willison Adams. Adams, who was born in Virginia, moved to Ohio after the Revolutionary War with the aim of creating a place that would help bring slaves to freedom. He found success building and running two flower mills in nearby Dresden, Ohio. Between 1856 and 1857, construction of Prospect Place was completed but that finished construction didn't come without its share of hardship.

The Prospect Place that still stands today is actually the second construction of the building. The first structure was burned down before it could even be completed. Although local lore stated that a curse brought about by an angry member of the local Shawnee Native American tribe was to blame for the burning, it's actually thought that a local criminal named George Blackburn was responsible for the arson. In its heyday it was believed the Prospect Place became a meeting place for the local well-known abolitionist, even playing host to President Abraham Lincoln.

Slaves from the south often stowed away on boats owned by Adams, making their way to freedom in the north. The structure of Prospect Place supported housing these slaves with a huge compartmentalized basement and a 360 degree cupola lookout area on the top floor. After the death of George Adams in 1879, ownership of Prospect Place was passed down to his daughter Anna and her husband William Cox. William, who had a taste for the lavish lifestyle, spent large amounts of money on upgrades and repairs of the mansion, and also throwing parties and dances in the grand ballroom of Prospect Place, inviting all the most important socialites in the area.

Soon the money was gone and so was William. Around the year 1900 William left Prospect Place on business and never returned. It was rumored that he headed for the west coast and lived in San Francisco until the Great Earthquake of 1906. After William's departure with the family's fortune gone, Prospect Place began to decay and by the mid-1900s sat abandoned.

In the 1970s a local business attempted to open Prospect Place for public tours, but the extensive damage to the building over the years made it too dangerous. In the 1980s local businessman Dave Longerberger, the founder of the Longerberger Basket Company, decided to take on the project of saving and restoring Prospect Place. Longerberger had been born and raised in Dresden, Ohio and was a descendant of the Adams family. His love of history and preserving the mansion fueled nearly two decades of reconstruction at Prospect Place.

Numerous structural projects were accomplished that saved the foundation of Prospect Place prior to Longerberger's death in 1999. In 2001, George J. Adams, the great-great-grandson of George Willison Adams, purchased the mansion and lived there while continuing repairs. The GW Adams Educational Center was founded in 2006, a 501c3 organization that allowed protection and restoration of Prospect Place to continue.

George J. Adams left Prospect Place in 2017, but the board of the GW Adams Educational Center continues to monitor the safety and restoration of the mansion for the public and ghost hunters to enjoy. That's one of the best part about being a paranormal investigator. We talked about it last week a little bit.

I think the most important part of it is understanding the history of these locations. Because without the history, you don't really feel the intimacy. There's people that come and go all the time and investigate all these places and they've been there once, maybe twice, and they just don't really pay attention to the history. It's really, really important to understand where these places come from and what they have to say.

In a place like Prospect Place, you have to understand the history behind it to be able to understand the activity that still goes on there today. If not, you're kind of lost without it. You're kind of ignorant to the amount of energy, both bad and good, that came through this place. It was burned to the ground before they could even finish it.

The tragedy of William leaving his family, leaving them behind broke with the two daughters, Anna and Sophia, living in there. It was just terrible. It is important to know that history to be able to go in there and get down on the level of what you're trying to talk with in their terms to be able to get any type of response from them. Just the lore behind some of these other stories that even the history that you didn't even get into, some of the lore behind it that's led to what could possibly be the hauntings and some of these buildings.

We're going to talk about that. It's pretty incredible. I mean, it's a pretty awesome place. We're going to talk about all that.

I first investigated Prospect Place in 2015. I got to ask you, before I go into my very first impression of Prospect Place, have you ever been on an investigation where you felt that something that you were going to encounter there actually reached out to you before you went? I hesitate to call it a premonition, but it was almost as such. That happened to me with Prospect Place.

That recently just happened with me with something that we're looking into at the moment. Sometimes it's meant to be. It was about a week before we went to Prospect Place. I was in bed one night watching TV and was in and out of sleep just drifting.

I hesitate to call it a dream because it was almost like that area between awake and asleep where you're still kind of cognizant of everything around you. Almost like lucid dreaming. Almost. I had this very, very intense vision of this woman.

This woman has long brown, wavy hair with bangs. She's wearing a high-collared blue Victorian dress. Did you like her bangs? Yes, Napoleon.

I like her bangs. As she's standing next to me, next to my bed, she reaches up and she starts almost clawing at her own throat. You could tell she was in despair. She was hurt or she was sick, but she's almost clawing at her throat with this high collar over top of it.

Then she was gone. I kind of wake up from whatever's going on. I remember texting one of my friends and I said, I feel like whoever this woman was was trying to tell us something about Prospect Place. We walk into Prospect Place and there is this picture hanging on the wall.

If you look on their website now, gwacenter.org, the woman who was in my dream is in one of these pictures. Unfortunately, on the website, and even in asking the tour guide, I asked who the woman was and nobody knows who she was. They don't believe she was part of the family. You said she was wearing a blue Victorian dress, right?

Yes. What's weird is years ago, I had started a band called Ghost in Paper Hearts. It was based on a premonition of a woman that I had over and over again in a blue Victorian dress, almost exactly what you described. Whenever I tried to describe it to people who knew who were familiar with the paranormal field, I would describe almost like she was walking in the fields around Prospect Place.

The thing about it was she was in a blue Victorian dress, always in my dreams. She would be standing by a tree and the tree would have instead of leaves, paper hearts. That's where the Ghost in Paper Hearts came from. That's kind of odd that you almost had a premonition like that.

I never knew that story. I'm going to pull up a picture of her because I had actually forgotten about that happening until I was going back through their website again and found this same picture they've done a lot of revamping with their website. This did not exist before we went there. So I'll get your impression of her.

Actually, just look at the picture and tell me if anybody stands out. Is it her? Yes. She's got like a what do you call that a flower?

What do they call that? A corsage. Of course, that's what it looks like right there in that picture, right? Yeah, kind of a little bit.

Actually, what stood out to me most was her face was very round and this woman has like a perfectly oval shaped face. And so we walked in there and I saw that picture and I was like, well, we're in the right place. So was that picture? It was this picture?

Yes, it was this picture hanging in the house. That's pretty, pretty incredible because nobody knows who she is. And she was just in a group portrait. The picture just described the picture a little bit.

So it says a family photograph taken from the 1890s, taken at the library of Prospect Place. So it shows multiple members of the family, William Cox, who was the man who disappeared, Anna's husband, George, their son, Anna Adams Cox, who was George, George's daughter, and then it also shows Anna Cox, Mary Robinson, Adams, and then standing next to her is this unknown woman and they actually say unknown woman in the description of the picture. So she could have been like a housekeeper or something like that. I mean, but she's wearing a corsage.

So it's some special occasion. Could have been. Yeah. So that was my very first impression of Prospect Place was having this dream of this woman who came to me and told me that, you know, basically she was from there.

So our first investigation of Prospect Place was March 29th, 2015. We were saying there the night of my birthday, March 30th. We had no more set up our equipment than the weather had been crazy that day. A lot of wind just very warm for March.

It was about nine o'clock. And as we are getting ready to separate through the house, we hear the tornado sirens from the town. And so we all kind of stop what we're doing and we run outside and about a mile from us in this big open field, we saw a funnel cloud touchdown. And so we actually ran inside George Adams was still living in the property at the time.

I knocked on the door. He lived in a certain part of the house to let him know what was going on. And we all went down and spent the next hour in the basement, perfection of Prospect Place waiting for this tornado to pass. I actually have a video.

I'll play this where you now and you can hear the audio. You can hear the wind whipping around, but it's me and another investigator named Kelly just basically being like, holy crap, we just saw a tornado. We lost my place. Our lockdown.

And we just saw a tornado. We saw a funnel cloud coming from, you can't see it. It's all over. But the sirens went off as we were setting up.

We're all up down. There's hell hitting me in the face right now. Yeah. In the face.

Yeah, that was definitely a tornado. That's what comes with a tornado. And now there's hell coming from. Yeah, that's hell.

So, so maybe it was the tornado that ramped up the activity, but we had an absolutely insane night there at Prospect Place. What we remember the most, I remember the most from Prospect Place is the number of disembodied voices that we actually heard with our own ears at the time and captured on EVP. The voice that we heard the most was of a woman, very sing-songy, pleasant, yelling hello at us. We heard humming.

We heard singing. We heard what sounded like a piano kind of playing tinkling. And it was like, if we would be on the first floor, we would hear it on the second floor. We would go up to the second floor.

You'd hear it on the third floor. So, it was this cat and mouse game of whatever we were making contact with. So, at one point, we're standing on the second floor and Lonnie, one of the investigators, yells out hello and we get a very clear response that I'll play for you. Yeah, that's pretty clear.

I mean, it's obviously 100% a woman. I can honestly say when I was there, we heard more male voices than female voices. But as I recall, I think one of the investigators did recall hearing a female or caught a few EVPs of a female. And I'll have to go through and see if maybe we can compare them to see if it's the same voice or not.

For us, it was the same voice over and over again. Even the second time we went back to Prospect Place, it's the same woman's voice. And whoever it is, she seems very pleasant. She's very accommodating.

Lonnie, who was one of our male investigators with us, felt very connected to her. And so, I remember the second morning being there, he went up to the second floor by himself and sat alone for a long time, just talking to see if he got any responses. And she provided a very comforting feeling. But the woman was definitely not the only spirit who was reaching out to us there.

You talked about the male figure that you guys heard there multiple times, right? And was seen. You saw him? I didn't.

Eric Glosser actually was sitting in a room. And one of the rooms, I think, on the second floor, I don't recall if when you rent that place, if you were allowed to spend the night there, I think it was back in the day you could rent it and stay the night there. We went in 2009 or 2010. And he hadn't been doing the ghost hunts for a very long time.

So, I think it was a new thing that he was letting people stay there. But it was one of the rooms where everybody's stuff was in already and Eric was sitting there investigating. And he actually turned to his right and seen a figure walking through the door. And he said his butt puckered and he was like, oh my goodness, was that literally, and you know, we had walkies and he got on the walkie radio and was like, ah, everybody get up here.

I just saw somebody. So, yeah, it's pretty, it was pretty incredible. That was like a full-on full-body apparition that he saw. So, I'm going to play three separate EVPs for you.

I feel like it's, the male voice sounds very familiar all the way through whether it was the same man that we were talking to the entire time. I'm not sure, but I didn't get a good feeling from him like I did the woman. He was a little more ominous. The EVPs, we did not hear his disembodied voice, but the EVPs were a little more dark with him.

But the very first one, you can hear one of the investigators say something about going up to the next floor. I'm going to, I'm not going to tell you what I think he says. I'm going to play this EVP for you and see if you think you catch what we did. I think I got to the 340.

Yeah. I think I got to the 340. Yeah. I think I got to the 340.

Yeah. I'd like to give him his mattress. Okay. So, when I say to Sam, one of our other investigators, we're going to go up to the third floor.

You hear a man whisper, I'll meet you up there. Hmm. We'll hear it again. I think I got to the 340.

Yeah. I'd like to give him his mattress. Oh, yeah. That is, that's pretty clear.

That's pretty good one. I'll meet you up there. So, almost, you know, a response to what we're saying at that point, an intelligent haunt that recognizes where the hair is like, okay, I'll meet you up on the third floor, which is the ballroom, which was a calm and meeting place for the house. It was the most used place of the house in a today.

And it's a, it's a very beautiful room. You know, it's sad that you see a lot of these places sit abandoned for such a long, long time. That was one of the things that Eric did talk about about how he had a connection to this place because it was one of the places that was abandoned when he was a kid. So, they would go there and hang out and, you know, every, every place has a haunted abandoned house and everybody goes and hangs out and drinks beer and does whatever.

And but this was closed down for such a long time that kids did that. So, it was in ruins for a long time and they were able to preserve and say that, which is great. But it's a pretty creepy ballroom. It is.

There's really, there's nothing else up there. It's just an open room. And it was where they had their parties and, of course, all their like ice cream socials. So, that man says, I'll meet you up there.

We get another male voice that was a little more ominous, I guess, in our opinion. And he responded to us in some different ways. So, I will play those for you now. So, a lot of these EVPs we captured as we were just going about our business.

We're not even actually investigating a lot of them were static recorders. And that's, that's pretty, pretty much common. I mean, I think if you take into consideration, sometimes you're walking, right? And this is the weird science behind EVPs not to interrupt you, but you could be walking on a wooden floor and also in the creaking of the floor.

Well, it's creating that energy and that sound that almost is amplifying whatever energy they need to manifest in that way. So, sometimes I mean, I've caught a lot of EVPs where you're just kind of shuffling along and you hear a voice come through. And it necessarily, I mean, why do they have to, why do you have to be directly asking them a question for them to respond sometimes? You don't.

And I'll play this EVP again, but it just very clearly sounds like a man saying hello to us. Pretty, pretty good. A very breathy hello. In this next clip that I'm going to play, I was asking Sam a direct question.

And somebody makes this kind of whistling noise almost like they were recreating something that they had heard, basically asking us if we heard a similar noise. And you'll hear what I feel like is the same man giving us another very direct answer to our question. Sounds like he's saying hello again or no. No.

And so, like I said, we were asking the other investigators to hear this almost whistling sound, which we found out later was probably birds that were in kind of nested in the loft of the house, but it was that man saying no. I think that was one of the problems we had too, was up there, was we had a bunch of birds that were in the, and you kept hearing them, kept screwing with you, especially when you were on the second floor, just by the koopa there. We didn't know what it was, and you think you're hearing this whistling sound, which at the time, you know, later we were able to debunk, but that guy kind of debunked it for us, asking, did you hear that? You know, what was that?

And he's just saying, no, you're just hearing the birds. So you don't need one of them specialized $50,000 recorders that is super staticky in the background, you know, like they use on TV to pick up these voices. You can use it on any recorder. I mean, it's just, you know, I've caught some incredible EVPs on a $10 recorder or on my phone or on your phone.

I mean, people think that you have to have these specialized recorders that were defunct back in the 80s or 90s or whatever, and they call them whatever names they have for them nowadays, but you don't need those. You can use anything. I mean, anything picks up. You got some pretty incredible EVPs there.

My digital recorder is and will always be my favorite piece of equipment. I could go to a place with nothing more than my digital recorder and be totally happy with it. Yeah, 90% of the evidence you walk away as audio, you know, and I love EVPs. This is the whole idea that there's a voice in the darkness that you don't know is there and it's responding to you.

I mean, that's just incredible, incredible science. Shay, when you guys investigated there, did you spend much time in the barn? I think we spent a little time in the barn because of just the stories that were told from there. And I'm assuming you're going to get into some of the stuff that you caught there.

But yeah, there's a pretty crazy story about the barn on the property itself. One of the things I remember most though about that whole property investigating was seeing that Fierro that was outside that and Zach Bagan said made a huge deal about it on ghost adventures when he was on this abandoned Fierro was out there and he was like, oh, I'm a Fierro out there. I don't remember that as a car. Yeah.

I'll have no idea what that is. But if you ever see the episode, he makes a huge deal about it. I don't remember the car being there. But either way, the barn at Prospect Place does hold probably one of the most gruesome stories that led into this legend of a haunting there.

So back in the 1850s, there was a story of a bounty hunter who came to Prospect Place. Not over that. I don't know what that means either. From Star Wars.

There was a legend of the bounty hunter that came there in the 1850s and confronted George Adams and says, I know that you're housing the free former slaves here and you need to turn them over or you'll be taking the jail. And George Adams apparently told him he didn't know what he was talking about. And so the bounty hunter leaves, but he returns later in the evening. And when he returns, some of the former now freed slaves confront him.

And the legend is that they drag him to the barn on Prospect Place property and they hang him from the rafters. So we had kind of actually, we knew the story, but we were having such crazy activity in the house that night that we almost didn't want to leave because we feared that if we left and we came back, we wouldn't get the same response. You've been there before, right? You leave, you come back and things just aren't the same.

It changes the energy. But by about two AM, we were getting tired, we were wrapping up, and we thought, just to do our due diligence, we have to go out to the barn and see what that was all about. So we head out there with our digital recorders, a spirit box and an ovelace. And if you're not familiar with what the ovelace is, you can't ask questions and it actually gives you a verbal response.

Sounds like Stephen Hawking. Yes, that's correct. It just gives you a very monotone recorded just words. And it basically has a bank of words that it comes from.

So we go out there and I can honestly tell you that it is the only place that I have ever investigated that I actually had a sense of anger at whatever I had approached out there or whatever approached us. So we go out to the barn and we start asking questions. And it's quiet at the beginning. And just as we are about to leave, I ask the question, well, what did you house out here?

And you know, you're going to barn you expect to hear horses or animals or something. And it actually gave a word that in the context could very much have been used as a racial slur. And I won't say it on here. But when that came out, we all kind of looked at each other and thought, why would it say that?

And then I immediately remembered the question that I asked and I thought, you son of a gun, you really went there, didn't you? And in that moment, it flipped a switch in me. And I was furious. And so I left the barn and I actually came back and I still get chills talking about it because I was that angry at whatever had approached me out there.

And I got two really good EVPs. The first one that I will play for you, I think is just kind of self explanatory. So here you go. And I'm pretty sure that after I said that, are you kidding me?

That was when I realized what the word on the obelisk really meant in context. And so I think at that moment, it's that man giving me a warning. It's time for you to get out. And I did.

But I came back later and basically confronted what this is and said, you know what? I said, slavery doesn't exist anymore. And what you did was vile and it was criminal. And you would hopefully be in prison for that today if that same type of activity occurred.

After I had this conversation with whatever it was that was out there, I got probably one of the most frightening EVPs that I've ever captured. And I will play that for you now. Shay, I'll let you kind of explain what you heard there, what you think you heard there. I it almost sounds like clapping of a horse, but it could also be laughter, almost like a, you know, sarcastic like, yeah, whatever, you hear you're mistaken.

I've heard both reactions. My immediate reaction was the laughter. And I took that again based on context of what the conversation and the energy had been out there. I just thought, you know, if you were here and that was you, you got what you deserved.

So who's laughing now? You may think whatever plane you're on, you're still laughing about your conduct during that life. But we're here now. And I hope you understand that that type of conduct is not okay and wouldn't be tolerated.

And so I walked away from Prospect Place after that investigation with a really deep understanding of how beautiful the energy could be there, but also how vile some of it could be. And in the opening, I talked a little bit about what they thought may have been the curse that was on Prospect Place. Apparently there was, or according to lore, there was a woman from the Shawnee Native American tribe that said that Prospect Place was built on an old burial mound. I don't know that there's any fact to that.

But we've been other places where we have been approached by Native American and elemental type energy. And you know, there's a different feel. So that night, part of our group didn't stay the whole night. They actually left at about three AM.

And we got a call a couple hours later. And they had been in a really bad car accident on the way home. And when you were still living in Columbus, I used to drive that road right there before you get to route two. It's on route seven.

And there's an old red painted house that sits on the side of the road. And that's where they went over the road. And so we left immediately and went to meet them. And fortunately, everybody was okay.

There were a couple that did have to go to the hospital for evaluation. But what a way to wrap up that super intense investigation and be like, holy crap, you know, did something from Prospect Place follow us back? Or was that just really, really bad luck? Or was that history repeating itself?

Because they say that's one of the stories of why that place could be haunted is because there was a terrible locomotive accident. And they took a lot of the people there because it was the closest place to bring people. I think it was in the early 1900s. And people were burned very badly, hurt very badly from this train derailing.

And maybe it was kind of a sign that was part of the curse too, because that was a story that I know we had heard when we were there. And that could that could lead to some of the haunting that's there. Yeah, you're right. I believe that they said that some of the bodies that they had taken there to wait for, I guess, family to get them or to try to save some of their lives, some of them were in the basement.

And so it is a terrible tragic story. And I guess it, you know, we weren't so afraid of Prospect Place that we didn't go back because we did go back again and had another incredibly active night. Not quite as memorable as this one, but Prospect Place for those reasons is a place that will forever live in my heart and in my memory. And I would actually love to go back again and experience it now and see how they've continued to revamp this place because it's been a lot of years since we've been.

Yeah, they've gotten a lot of funding over the years and the places really come along pretty good. One of the things that I remember the most about Prospect Place was it was one of the first places ever that I did like an isolation session by myself in the basement. That's brave. And it was it was freaky, but in the basement they say, you know, it was housed a lot of the slaves who were on their way to freedom, you know, it was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

And there was also a story of a young girl who tumbled out the window and they had no way to bury her because the ground was frozen. So they kept her down there where they stored all the food because it was so cold. And there's actually this well down there where they say that she was. And I actually sat in that well for a half hour in the pitch black and it was it was pretty crazy.

But I did for a whole half hour and pretty proud of myself after that. Well, that's a big deal. Yeah, pat on your back for that. But no, it was it was absolutely incredible.

And so for anybody out there, if you're interested in booking a public investigation at Prospect Place, they still do this. You can visit their website. It's gwacenter.org. There is a place on there that explains how they do their investigations.

There's actually a calendar on there that you can look at and pick certain dates. And it also gives you more historical information and any other ways that you'd like to contribute to the saving of Prospect Place. Awesome. And it's always important to preserve history for the right reasons, you know, and and without history, we're lost.

We got to remember it. So to any weebs, you got anything else you'd like to add before we say goodbye this week? So I'm not sure if you guys have seen this on Facebook if you're on Facebook or other social media. But we announced a couple of months ago that we are going to be doing a super exciting live event in August with our very good friends, Jerry and Tracy Polly from Hillbilly Horror Stories.

Jerry and Tracy love to do these live podcasting events. And guys, they put on a show. This is going to be their sixth anniversary event. And they asked you and I, Shay, to be a part of it, to come tell a story.

And not only is it a live podcasting event, we are going to be at the incredibly haunted old hospital on College Hill in Williamson, West Virginia that we had the opportunity to investigate last summer. Guys, it's going to be awesome. Don't don't take my word for it. Just you'll come just for that, even if it's not for the podcasting event.

And this place is really on top of the hill surrounded by the Appalachian Mountains in the Tug Valley. It's an awesome location and awesome host Jerry and Tracy are some of the greatest people I know. So we are looking forward to this. So you'll get to hear stories from us.

You'll get to hear stories from Jerry and Tracy. We're basically going to sit down and tell you a story just like we do on a podcast. And then the owners of the old hospital on College Hill are going to give us a tour, a guided tour of the hospital. If you guys are interested in this, you can go to our Facebook page or Hillbilly Horror Stories Facebook page.

There is an event right link on there. If you would like to get tickets to that, guys, it's not very expensive. We don't do this for the money. We do it because we love to get out and meet people and go to these locations and just have a blast.

Be with it. It's going to be fun times. I can't wait. I thought we had fun last time because we were with the only in them.

But it's going to be just as fun this time. So guys, until next time, be aware and be safe. Bye bye.