Ghosts of Music Hall's Past

 

Happy Full Moon! Today has been a very relaxing, crisp, and sunny day, and the best part? Today is the last day of Daylight Savings Time!!! It's also the first full moon on Halloween since 1944, can you believe that? P.S. & BTW, if you want to catch the blue moon tonight, it will be visible at around ten minutes until 11pm. It is also All Saints' Day (November 1), and in Mexico, El Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) (November 2).

What better way to celebrate Halloween and to satiate my curiousity than to take a Guided Ghost Tour of Cincinnati Music Hall, given in partnership with with the Cincinnati Research and Paranormal Studies Team. Typically, these after hours tours are offered in person (and sell out within a day or two!), but due to the COVID-19 pandemic this year, in person tours are not taking place, but I'm going to still tell you about the otherworldly side of one of Cincinnati's most iconic attractions.

Opened in 1878, Music Hall was built over a pauper's cemetery (potter's field), and in 2014, Travel Channel listed it as one of the most haunted places in America. During its construction in 1877, human remains were discovered in that pauper's cemetery on the property, and visitors and employees alike have reported paranormal activity on the property. Though the majority of the activity occurs in the basement, there have been reports of singing in various empty parts of the building, the freight elevator moving without being called, and period attired figures spotted in the Springer Auditorium. Then, due to the growing cholera epidemic in Cincinnati proper at the time, the city transferred the remains north to Spring Grove Cemetery, the second largest cemetery in the United States.

The Potter's Field was not only used by the hospital, but served the city in connection with other tragic events. In 1838 when the steamer Moselle exploded her boilers above the site of the present waterworks, it reportedly blew the scones and limbs and blackened trunks of her passengers all over the city, so that falling bodies fell through the roofs of houses. The remains of these victims were buried in various pauper cemeteries throughout the city.

So, who was buried in the former potter's field? Obviously, the poor, but the 2011-2012 renovation of Washington Park left some headstones of some prominent movers and shakers of the 1800s.

James F Conover was the publisher of the Cincinnati Whig (later the Cincinnati Daily Whig ) and commercial intelligencer in 1835.  Henry Clay (1777-1852), 7th U.S. House Speaker and 9th Secretary of State, wrote letters to Conover on Conover's own proposal to establish a newspaper in Cincinnati, 1829-1841. The manuscript is currently held at the University of Virginia Library.

Headstone of Harriet Key, infant daughter of James F. and Julia Ann Conover

We hope that this time next year that in person tours will take place, but until then, here are some spine tingling scenes to make you shudder (I mean, enjoy)!

Ghost Tour Music Hall Foyer

Corbett Tower Washington Park lights on 

Ghost in Springer Auditorium