The Ghosts That Haunt Indiana

Hannah House is located on Madison Avenue in Indianapolis, IN. It is a privately owned house. This 24-room red brick mansion was built for Indiana State Legislator Alexander Hannah. It has two floors, an attic and a basement. Built in 1858 it is a pre-civil war era “Italianate-style” of architecture.

Before the Civil War, the mansion was part of the underground railroad that ran through Indiana. Runaway slaves were hidden by Hannah in the mansion’s basement. One night, when a lantern was accidentally knocked over, and a fire broke out. Many of the slaves hiding there were killed. The dead were put into simple coffins and buried right there in the basement.

Mrs. Hannah gave birth to a stillborn child in a second-floor bedroom. Elizabeth and Alexander Hamilton are buried at Crown Hill Cemetery where a small, unmarked, infant-sized gravestone may also be found.

From 1899 – 1962 members of the Oehler/Elder families lived in the mansion and from 1968 – 1978 Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien moved into the mansion and opened an antique store in one part of the house.

David Elder was the first to suspect that there were unseen residents in the mansion. While working about the house and doing various upkeep chores he heard a terrific crash of breaking glass coming from the basement. Rushing downstairs he found nothing to be disturbed but noticed that the fruit jars which were kept there for storage were located in the area where the slaves killed in the long- ago fire were buried.

The 2nd-floor bedroom where Mrs. Hannah gave birth to a stillborn baby is usually locked up and used for storage. From here a horrid smell of rotting flesh emanates making the living gag. There is also the sweet aroma of roses and the door freely swings open even when the room is locked. When the door would open the living would hear strange noises, footsteps, mumbling voices, feel cold drafts and other doors and windows would open and close by themselves.

A painter hired to tidy up the place saw doors swing open and pictures slide from their moorings and finally fled when a spoon that Mrs. O’Brien had put on a tray flew across the room.

Early one evening while the antique shop was still open for business Mrs. O’Brien looked up toward the second floor and caught a glimpse of a man in a black suit walking across the upstairs hallway. She headed upstairs thinking it might be a customer who had wandered onto the second floor by mistake. When she reached the top of the stairs the man had vanished into thin air.

Mrs. O’Brien’s son volunteered to finish the unfinished painting job. On the first night, he felt as though he were being closely watched, and it made him feel uncomfortable. On the 2nd night, he brought along his wife and two little daughters to keep him company. While the three of them worked in one room the youngest little girl played on the stairs. Then they heard her talking to someone and went to have a look. Showing no fear she was talking to a grandfatherly type of man who she could see but her family could not. The family stood watching and listening mesmerized. When the little girl said that “Dad” was climbing back up the stairs the family feeling spooked left promptly.

Mr. O’Brien saw a transparent apparition who was standing in an archway. The entity was wearing an old-fashioned, black suit and had mutton-chop whiskers. He faded away before Mr. O’Brien could reach him. The staircase itself was carpeted but the sounds of footsteps of varying loudness, along with rustling clothes could be heard. Mr. O’Brien witnessed the handle of the attic door turning by itself and the door swinging open.

One night as he was watching TV in one of the upstairs bedrooms he heard loud groans coming from somewhere down the 2nd floor hallway. He yelled down the hall for the entity to leave them alone. By 1972 the ghostly activity had stopped.

From 1980 – 1982 Hannah House was used as the annual haunted house project of the Indianapolis Jaycees who would take kids on tour of the spooky old mansion with special scary effects added for entertainment.

While taking a break from the project, the coordinator and fellow workers were sitting in the summer kitchen which was located right next to the staircase once used by servants to go up to the 2nd floor. Suddenly they heard loud scratching sounds coming from inside the staircase landing wall. However, the source of the noise was never located. Then one evening while listening to spooky recorded sounds the coordinator and a friend were surprised when the sounds suddenly stopped. Being alone in the mansion they investigated and found that the off/on switch had been pushed to the off position. They turned the unit on again and after a while, it was again turned off. It appeared that someone didn’t like the recorded sounds.

In October of 1981, a TV crew went to Hannah House to film a segment on the Jaycee’s Halloween House. A cameraman standing in the dining room doorway commented that the shot would be more effective if the chandelier would start swinging. So the chandelier started to swing in a six-inch arc and there was no reasonable explanation for this.

A psychic Allene Cunningham was brought to the mansion and she felt cold spots and a presence in the house. At the end of the filming while the cameraman was filming the host standing in front of a propped-up coffin a picture hanging on the wall above the coffin suddenly fell down with a crash. After seeing that the nail was still in the wall and the string wasn’t broken it was deducted that someone had deliberately knocked the picture off the wall. And so it goes – the apparition of Alexander Hannah and that of an unidentified woman have both been spotted on the second floor. Various apparitions of slaves have been seen still hiding in the basement and moving objects and unaccountable sounds still occur in front of the living. So now it’s Halloween every day…

The Willard Library is located on First Avenue in Evansville, IN. It is described as the oldest working library in Indiana. Mr. Willard Carpenter donated the land for the library and financed its construction. On the outside the library is trimmed in stone, showcases Italian Gothic architecture, and has a standard Victorian corner tower. Inside the ceilings are high and the windows are large because before electricity was invented kerosene lamps were hung in the windows to provide light.

There is one entity that haunts this library. Since the early 1930s, she is described as a lady dressed in gray, early 1800s-style clothing. A long gray dress, high-topped shoes, a gray hat and veil, or just a shawl. When seen by the psychic Mrs. Warren the entity was wearing a shawl and she got a good look at the ghost’s hairstyle, parted down the middle. and braided down the back which was confirmed by Librarian Margaret Maier who had seen her many times. Many have smelled the overpowering perfume surrounding her and have experienced the turning on and off of faucets and lights, opening and closing doors when no one else was around.

The Lady in Gray was first seen in 1930 in the basement children’s library by a janitor who was stoking the furnace late at night. Being afraid he soon quit. The second janitor had direct contact with her. He bumped into her in the basement and she disappeared. After repeated encounters, he too quit. Before the remodeling, Joan the Special Collections Librarian was alone in the bathroom downstairs. She heard the bathroom faucet turn on and it was still running when she came out of the stall. At a children’s party in the basement, a 3-year-old boy ignoring his mother wandered all around the library. He suddenly became very upset and his eyes grew huge. Very frightened he climbed into his mother’s lap and refused to budge saying he had seen the Lady in Gray.

The Lady in Gray took to liking two long-time librarians of fifty years, Margaret Maier and Helen Kam (who are both deceased now in 2000 but were originally alive when this story was reported in the 1980s). When they first started to see the Gray Lady in the children’s library in the basement the apparition appeared as a blurry gray mass. But when major reconstruction began in the basement the Gray Lady decided to go home with Margaret. This unexpected guest began to appear clearly in front of Margaret and her family. Margaret and her sister Ruth first caught the aroma of the Gray Lady’s strong perfume and then the clothes dryer turned on by itself while Margaret and Ruth were watching TV. The Gray Lady made a partial appearance in front of Margaret’s nephew. As the young man was sitting at the dining room table he saw a fuzzy, gray form going up the stairs wearing clearly seen high button shoes that thumped up the stairs.

After the above-mentioned incidents, Margaret saw her first clear sighting of the Gray Lady after coming into the house from the backyard. She was dressed in a long flowing gray dress and button shoes and was floating down the hallway where she vanished. The gentle entity stayed for 4 months while the construction of the library basement was finished. Then returned to the library and started to appear and give signs of her presence on the other floors as well.

On the top floor of the library during a women’s meeting held there, the door opened and shut by itself. While women from a local church were using the microfilm resourced on the 3rd floor they came down worried they smelled the pungent perfume of the Gray Lady and thought something might be leaking. For a book sale, the plastics company across the street gave the library some space and employees reported seeing the Gray Lady hovering around the books.

Frank Chandler reported that the Gray Lady had turned on all the lights in the library one night. Another head librarian while alone in the closed library heard the upstairs water faucets turn on and off by themselves. Special Collections Librarian Joan was reading a book while waking from the upstairs staff room where she had just had lunch and was on her way back to the basement. While going by some book stacks she instinctively felt that she was about to run into someone. When she looked up from her book she was surprised to see the Gray Lady standing clearly in front of her. Joan shut her eyes and when she looked again the Gray Lady had vanished.

So who is the Gray Lady? One theory is that she is the daughter of Willard Carpenter, Louise who sued the library in the 1890s over money that had been given to the library as she felt the money belonged to her. When she lost the case she was very angry and bitter.

Two reasons why this theory probably isn’t true- The Gray Lady is shy, gentle, harmless, and confused. Louise would have been angry and vindictive toward the living and the Research Librarian, Don had identified the time period of the Gray Lady’s clothes as being from a much earlier era than the 1890s.

So if not Louise Carpenter who is she? In 1985 a well-known parapsychologist Mrs. Lucille Warren paid a visit to the library to see if she could find out more about the Gray Lady. She saw her in the children’s library and identified her clothes and hairstyle as those of the early 19th century. Mrs. Warren sensed and saw that the Gray lady wasn’t haunting the library at all, but the field on which the library was built. She saw the entity staring into a pool of water. From this information, Mrs. Warren had the feeling that the Gray Lady had drowned in the water canal, which is still located near the library, a possible suicide. She also felt that the Gray Lady didn’t quite understand that a building was built around the spot she was haunting and that’s why she seems to be confused.

The Gray Lady wasn’t seen for 3 or 4 years during the late 1980s then in 1992, a child saw the ghost of Margaret Maier sitting in a peacock chair in the children’s library with the ghost of the Gray Lady standing behind her. More recent sightings happened between 2000 – 2004. Video cams have picked up the image of the Gray Lady as she goes about her business her favorite place being the children’s room.

Read any good books lately?