OWENSVILLE, Ohio – The town of Owensville is home to roughly 800 people.
- In the small town of Owensville in southwest Ohio, the haunts are year-round
- There are stories of people hearing voices and a maintenance worker alone in the courtroom, being tapped on the shoulder
- Paranormal experts visit regularly in search of finding the undead
Living people, that is.
You see, in the middle of town is the village hall. It occupies a 160-year-old building that used to be a Methodist Church. Before that, no one really knows.
“They say it's haunted,” said Owensville Police Chief Mike Freeman. “Most of my employees think it's haunted.”
Freeman has heard the stories.
A maintenance man in the second-floor courtroom, working alone, when someone taps him on the shoulder.
An employee thinking she saw a person walk by so she followed to the kitchen, only to find nobody around.
Another employee standing near the front door and hearing conversations.
“I honestly don't know if I believe in it or not. I've never seen or heard anything. I've had some eerie feelings in here in the middle of the night but I've never heard anything or actually seen anything,” said Freeman.
Freeman, the town's police chief for more than a decade, has lived around Owensville since the mid-1980s. He described a story involving officers at the local elementary school.
“One of the guys found a door propped open with a brick. So, he starts in the door and as he gets in the hallway he hears a lady hollering for help. So, at that point he stops, backs out, tells dispatch to send a backup unit. So, they get a back-up unit there and they go in and check the entire building. They find nothing,” said Freeman.
Freeman said 911 dispatchers also received calls from a cellphone and could hear a woman yelling for help. Freeman said the dispatchers “pinged the phone,” where cellphone providers can pinpoint a location – and it was coming from the village hall parking lot, which also serves as the police station.
Again, officers found nothing.
Further investigation of the school's security cameras found nothing suspicious on tape. Freeman said the only thing on any of the cameras where the officers walking around.
Freeman said as far as the haunts at the village hall, he's not sure if its police officers pulling a prank, or the undead having fun.
“There's been a few mornings I've come in to where the kitchen cabinets are standing open and the drawers are open. Is that one of the guys playing pranks or messing around? I'm not sure.”
Freeman said various paranormal investigation groups have visited the village hall.
Historians and those around Owensville aren't sure of the originations of the sprits.
Freeman said history tells that Morgan's Raiders traveled through town and dragged a man from the church steeple (now the village hall). The unidentified man is alleged to have shot at several members of the Confederate cavalry but was spotted and dragged to Williamsburg, about seven miles away.
Paranormal aside, there is a lot of history in Owensville. Originally called Boston, the name was changed in the 1830s after the first postmaster in town.
The land for which Owensville sits originally belonged to Dr. Richard Allison. He was awarded a military land grant after his time in the Revolutionary War. Allison is most famously known as the first Surgeon General of the United States.
“Owensville is a fabulous little town,” Freeman said.
Yeah. If you like ghosts.