Ghost Hunting for Ellen Crawford
It is 10 p.m. at night, raining and the temperature is dropping: a perfect night
for ghost hunting. I am here with five ghost hunting enthusiasts at Pilgrim,
one of the oldest churches in this area (the church in the Tallmadge Circle is
the oldest but is now owned by the Tallmadge Historical Society). Pilgrim was
established in 1834, and the building was dedicated in 1847, the same year
that the Bronte sisters published Withering Heights and Jane Eyre.
Clearly, Pilgrim has a history. And so does ghost hunting: Pliny the Younger
recorded what has been regarded as the first story of a ghost hunt in 100
AD. The story concerns a haunted house in ancient Athens being
investigated by a philosopher named Athenodoros Cananites and was
already a century old when Pliny told it.
One of tonight’s ghost hunters is my son. He has always loved to be
frightened by stories of ghosts and the supernatural. I can count on his full
attention when I talk about some of the experiences I have had with “things
that go bump in the night”. He works at night as a deputy sheriff and this
crew is made up of deputies who share his fervor for creepy stuff. One of
the experiences I shared with him happened shortly after I began working for
Pilgrim. I had occasion to finish up a project on a Saturday and as no one
would be here I brought my dog, Max, with me. I finished up the bulletins for
Sunday and calling to Max, began to walk from the portion of the building
built in 1958 that houses the offices, toward the sanctuary. Max trotted along
beside me, glancing into the rooms along the way until we stepped over the
threshold into the social hall. This large room, built in 1929, was originally
a gymnasium and has wooden floors and a stage.
This Saturday wasn’t dark or spooky; there were no smoky shapes or
creepy sounds. But Max made it about 4 steps into the social hall, stopped
dead, then backed up until he was back in the entry. I called and begged but
he would not move; he just stood there whining. I left him while I went to
finish my bulletin delivery but as I got closer to the sanctuary the oldest part
of the church- Max’s whining became a howl, which continued until I returned
to him and we went back to the office.
I shared this story with my friend, Marty—I shared this story with anyone who
would listen, actually—and Marty tried it with her dog. She and her son
brought Mitchell, a giant, good natured dog her daughter had rescued when
Mitchell was a pup. They brought him by the church and he bounded into
the office wing, but when they tried to enter the sanctuary Mitchell put the
breaks on. He refused to go to the old part of the building. Then recently the
custodian stopped by on his way to the dog groomer with his 180 pound
dog, Elvis. We couldn’t coax Elvis into the building at all. So that is why I am
sitting in my church as it approaches midnight, with a small group of people
loaded down with tape recorders, flash cameras, and video cameras: To
hunt for spirits that scare dogs.
Actually, there is a recorded death in the building, but she was a dog lover.
Her name was Ellen Knight Crawford. Her claim to fame was not that she
died in our church but that she won an election before women were able to
vote.
Ellen Knight was born in 1840 in North Ridgeville, OH. In 1862, a year after
the Civil War started, she moved to East Cleveland to teach. There she met
Matthew Crawford, a horticulturist, and in 1865 they married and moved to
Cuyahoga Falls where they opened a flowering bulb and berry plant
company that became nationally known. Being Congregationalists, the
Crawfords joined the Congregational Church (now called Pilgrim United
Church of Christ) and Mrs. Crawford took over teaching a girls’ Sunday
school class, which for years afterward was still known as Mrs. Crawford’s
class. When her two sons grew up she took up teaching in the local public
schools until 1903, when she retired. She was tremendously respected
and in 1909 an elementary school building, Crawford School, was named in
her honor. Because of the high opinion people had for her she was
encouraged to run for public office and in 1912 Mrs. Crawford was the first
lady to ever have her name on an official election ballot in Cuyahoga
Falls, when she ran for a seat on the local school board. No women could
vote but she was elected and took her seat January 1, 1914.
She was plodding though a big snow storm on her way to a school board
meeting in the parlor of this Congregational Church on the evening of March
2, 1916 when she was struck down by a Second Street streetcar. She was
carried into the parlor of the church, her home church for 51 years, and
there she died.
Ellen Crawford always owned a dog and read the book Dog Caruso to every
class she ever had. See? A dog lover; which is probably why the ghost
hunters stationed around this building tonight are picking up the sounds of a
disembodied man’s voice on their recorders and not that of a lady. The voice
picked up by the recorder sounds far away. We can’t make out the words
but it seems to be part of a speech or . . . a sermon.
We started this evening with a tour of the building with the lights on. The
original structure is Greek Revival style of neo-classical shape, adorned with
a tall spire, originally plain windows, flat floor with straight rows of pews, and
a balcony at the rear of the sanctuary which were all typical of contemporary
New England Congregational churches of the period. The structure
had a hand-dug foundation but no basement.
A closet under the stairway to the bell tower is where we believe slaves were
dropped into the dirt space under the floor to hide. Before memory, the floor
boards had been cut out, the joists removed, and the backfill dirt had been
pushed away to make a space that would hide four or five people. Although
little is written down we know people here were active in moving slaves to
freedom during the underground railroad of the Civil War era. The founders
and leaders of this church were known to be members of the American Anti-
slavery Society and abolitionist movement. Cuyahoga Falls first mayor and
church founder, Henry Newberry’s 17 room mansion overlooking Cuyahoga
Falls above Newberry Street was rumored to have a tunnel running to the
nearby river, and that it was used to smuggle slaves into Canada during the
Underground Railroad period. In fact, wreaking crews found a tunnel under
the house, but it had been filled in and closed when the house was
demolished in 1956. Elisha Sill was Newberry’s son-in-law as well as the first
trustee of this city and a member of the Ohio State Senate who worked
tirelessly to have the county seat located in Cuyahoga Falls. His name
appears on attendance rosters of anti-slavery conferences along with other
church leaders and several preachers here published anti-slavery tracts.
Can you imagine the intense feelings of fear, gratitude, and horror of slaves
running in terror for their very lives? The triumphant joy of others who
successfully rescued slaves? The panic of the helpers who might get caught
in the rescue attempts and suffer hugely due to the Fugitive Recovery Bill of
1850? Would these intense emotions cause the spirits of these people to
linger in this building as orbs, the circles of light we see in the pictures taken
this rainy night?
Orbs are believed (by many) to be ghosts in the form of balls of light. They
are life forms that travel in groups and are believed to be the human soul or
life force of those that once inhabited a physical body here on earth.
Psychics claim to talk to them on a regular basis, and ghost hunters
encounter them quite frequently. It is said that they are those spirits that
have willingly stayed behind because they feel bound to their previous life or
previous location for whatever reason. Then, there is the other side of the
coin: According to Wikipedia the technical photographic term for the
occurrence of orbs, especially pronounced in modern ultra-compact
cameras, is backscatter, or near-camera reflection caused by dust or
reflection.
Our photos show globes of different intensity light and color floating in the
social hall. Some of the photos are a sequence of shots facing the same
direction. The orbs show up in different places and different sizes, leading
us to believe they are not reflecting off of anything but moving freely. They
do not seem to follow a pattern, as if they were floating bits of dust, but
appear randomly in some photos and not in others of the sequence.
We can not prove that these balls of light are the spirits of people who loved
this church, or who loved freedom so much they risked everything to give it
to others, or suffered so to achieve it for themselves and their families. But it
does seem possible that the people who were a part of our chain of life here
at Pilgrim UCC and worked so hard to achieve their goals of starting a city, a
church, of fighting for justice and freedom would leave a bit of themselves
behind after they died.
Written by Mary Ann Winget
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