Ghosts of Ohio
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Lore & Legends

Upper Sandusky Hollow

Recently, The Ghosts of Ohio received an e-mail alerting us to a message posted on a paranormal bulletin board. When we visited the board, we found a rather detailed story that someone had written in response to a person’s inquiry regarding haunted places in Wyandot County. To summarize, the story, which was presented as being factual, went as follows:

There was a young woman named Elizabeth who lived with her father in a hollow near Upper Sandusky. Despite her father’s disapproval, Elizabeth decided to alope with a young man with whom she had fallen madly in love with. But as Elizabeth was attempting to sneak out her window one night, her father caught her. As a result, Elizabeth fell from the window and onto an ax, which decapitated her. Upon hearing the boyfriend in the woods calling Elizabeth’s name, the father grabbed the ax and murdered the boyfriend with it.

According to the person who posted the story, the boyfriend now haunts the hollow, as does Elizabeth... or rather, her head haunts the hollow. The story stated that people report hearing the boyfriend calling out "Elizabeth" and that some have seen Elizabeth’s head, on fire, floating through the woods. The person who submitted the story stated that while they had not seen the fiery head, they had heard the boyfriend’s cries on several occasions.

Intrigued both by the story and the fact that the writer appeared to have first-hand information pertaining to the legend, The Ghosts of Ohio began attempting to gather background materials. Our first (and thankfully, only) step was to contact the person who posted the original message. Our Director, James A. Willis, sent an e-mail to this person, explaining our organization and asking for any additional information they might have. James also gave our web site address in case the writer wished to find out more about our organization.

About a day later, a rather strange e-mail appeared in The Ghosts of Ohio’s mailbox. It was a message from the person who had posted the original message on the bulletin board. Upon reading the message, it became clear that while the sender had intended to forward Willis’ message to a friend, he had in fact, either by mistake or out of ignorance, simply responded to Willis’ message. Aside from deleting the names and addresses of the guilty, what follows is an exact copy of the message we received:

Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 12:32:38 EDT
Subject: Re: ? RE: ghosts in wyandot county
To: ghosts_of_oh@yahoo.com

XXXXX (name removed),
I should have known you'd want to help perpetrate this... otherworldly prank. Destroy this e-mail as soon as you've read it. We must leave no evidence that this is a deception. www.geocities.com/ghosts_of_oh/ will get you there. (I don't know how to include links in e-mail yet.) I claimed to have heard the "eliiiiiiizabeth" moan, but never seen the flaming head. This is gonna be fun. Of course we need to be vague about the location. Don't want XXXXXXX (name removed) getting out his hose to wash away the curious from his front yard. Or do we?.......

Sadly, this type of thing is something that happens all too frequently with regard to paranormal research. But the saddest aspect of all this is that the story of Elizabeth and her flaming head was posted in response to someone who was looking for ghost stories for a school report. So hopefully, by reading this, we all realize there are two lessons to be learned here:

First, if you are going to investigate paranormal activity, don’t accept everything as truth and do your own research. But perhaps even more importantly, if you are going to try and perpetrate a hoax over the Internet, it might be a good idea to make sure you understand how your e-mail program works first.



© The Ghosts of Ohio