A look at Athens’ haunted history

THE PAST

What once served as a towering multilevel balcony entrance to the Athens Insane Asylum is now the front of the Kennedy Museum of Art in Athens, Ohio, on March 2, 2021. From ghost stories to actual sightings, it seems like the campus still has hints of the paranormal engraved in its bricks.

BY CAROLINE GILLEN | PHOTOS BY DYLAN BENEDICT | DESIGN BY DREW FOLLMER

The students whisper among themselves while pointing at the large insane asylum on top of the hill overlooking Ohio University’s campus. The boarded up windows keep curious students away from the stain that still lingers on the floor, but these characteristics call attention to the building’s history. The stories from The Ridges are passed along through generations, each story taking a life of its own.

Despite the eerie nature of the building’s presence, OU students still form connections through hearing about the rumors of the past.

Mya Smith, a sophomore at OU studying pre-law, has heard her fair share of paranormal stories when she was growing up in the Athens area.

“I’ve heard about how Athens has five cemeteries that are shaped like a pentagram and in the middle, there is a dorm where a student had passed away in,” Smith says.

Hannah Beckman, an OU sophomore studying communication science and disorder, heard a similar story.

“Someone told me that there is a boarded-off dorm room in Wilson Hall because a couple of really strange things have happened there,” Beckman says.

Both Smith and Beckman are strong believers in the paranormal.

“I personally do believe ghosts exist,” Smith says. “Whether it is because of unfulfilled souls who haven’t moved onto whatever comes next, or the souls of those were wronged and want revenge.”

Beckman’s belief comes from a paranormal experience she had as a child.

“I live in a house out in the country and when I was about four years old, I started seeing this figure at the end of my bed. I couldn’t make anything out besides the white of its eyes and the white of its teeth,” Beckman says. “Every time this happened, I would sprint to my parents’ room.”

Beckman never thought too much about what happened with the glowing figure until her parents got spooked by something. To this day, they never told her what it was.

“My mom called a family friend who was a medium to come and talk to me. She said she got in contact with a little boy’s spirit and afterwards she cleansed the house,” Beckman says. “I never saw the boy again after that. I think he just wanted to play but I hadn’t understood that at the time.”

Of the many ghost stories that travel around the campus, stories about The Ridges are the most popular.

“In high school, I watched a documentary on The Ridges and why it’s haunted,” Smith says. “Supposedly, there is a woman who haunts one of the wings in particular and there is a blood stain left on the floor that they can’t get rid of.”

Beckman also heard stories about the asylum and the deaths that took place there.

“I heard that a bunch of people died there through unethical procedures,” Beckman says. “But honestly, I believe a place like Athens that has so much history is certainly bound to have some active spiritual areas.”

According to Ghosthunting Ohio, a book written by John B. Kachuba, an OU alumnus and professor, modern psychic researchers believe that Athens is a portal between our world and the spirit world. The portal allows spirits to easily travel between worlds.

One night, Athens resident John Koons supposedly crossed paths with a spirit who informed him all eight of his children would be gifted mediums. Koons embraced this concept and built a small room on top of Mount Neb, the highest peak in the region. There, in the small room, the Koons family would perform seances.

The Koons Family Spirit Room is considered to be a big reason why the paranormal seems to attach itself to Athens.

The Director of Development and Outreach at the Southeast Ohio History Center, Tom O’Grady, has

a different viewpoint on Athens’ paranormal activity.

“Back when I was a grad student in the early 1980s, I lived as a volunteer on the third floor of the asylum,” O’Grady says. “I’ve been through all the buildings, the basements and the attics. I didn’t hear the place was haunted until the early 2000s. I never saw a ghost but maybe I just wasn’t looking hard enough.”

O’Grady believes the hauntings to be a social phenomenon and recreational attraction relegated to the 21st century.

“The stories of the hauntings all started up about 20 years ago but none of them have any basis in fact,” O’Grady says. “The hauntings appear to be a marketing strategy and is growing each year. People seem to love it.”

O’Grady says that people today look back at procedures like hydrotherapy, straitjackets and lobotomies as dark ages of mental health treatment, but at the time they were considered state of the art. So, what seem like horrible and torturous methods of healing today were not seen as a horrifying issue at the time. It does not necessarily make sense to assume the hauntings have anything to do with the procedures of the time period.

However, any disbelief does not stop the paranormal rumors from spreading around campus and throughout the community. One of the most wellknown stories from the asylum is that of the woman and the stain, as previously mentioned by Smith. Margaret Schilling disappeared in December 1978 and her body was not discovered in the asylum until mid-January 1979, according to The Preservation Works website.

“Margaret Schilling died under unusual circumstances at the asylum,”

O’Grady says. “The room she died in was normally not accessible. She apparently got into that room because there were construction workers in there. She must have snuck in at some point and hid in there until they left. When she didn’t show up for dinner employees searched the building and grounds for her. It was a typical protocol.”

O’Grady shares that the staff contacted law enforcement right when she didn’t turn up. After a failed intensive search, they eventually had to give up.

“It was thought she may have left the grounds. She wouldn’t be the first person to ever leave the facility. They probably assumed she would show up eventually, or they might find her at home,” O’Grady says. “Workers went back to their lives and then two to three months later some people started to notice a foul odor. They eventually tracked her down. She was laying naked on the concrete floor with her arms crossed over her chest.”

According to the reports, at some point Schilling must have removed all her clothing and folded it up on the windowsill and then lied down on the concrete floor. Later on, it is said that she must have gotten hypothermia and died from heart failure.

“It appears that Margaret could have, at any point, decided she was done with this business and being hungry or wanting to sleep in a bed [and] could have gotten help,” O’Grady says, “There were a lot of things in the room which she could have used to break a window. There were always people wandering around outside the building so she could have called out and someone would have heard her. It doesn’t appear that she never sought any attention. It may have been her decision.”

The most haunting part is that most people don’t even know her name; Schilling has been dwindled down to nothing but a scary story about a disconcerting stain.

O’Grady shares that the stain was most likely caused by a combination of the sun passing by the south-facing window every day and the organic fluids from the decomposition of the body. Those around town who know anything about The Ridges seem to know two things: it is haunted and there is a stain. O’Grady believes there is a more important lesson to be taken from Schilling’s story.

“Margaret’s death is an example of the dark depths that the human mind can take a person and it’s tragic to me that, as a university and a community, we have done nothing to restore Margaret’s humanity to her. She is known across the country as a stain,” O’Grady says.

Oftentimes rumors are far from the truth, leading stories to take lives of their own. It’s still a debate between the residents of Athens if ghosts really do roam the streets of the historical town. Some people say the spirits of patients are stuck in a limbo roaming the halls of The Ridges and others say the ghosts are nothing but stories.

“I think about the nurses who work up there and the doctors and thenclients who lived there — the builders of that amazing asylum, and the groundskeepers and kitchen workers and those that worked the farm,” O’Grady says. “If you close your eyes, you can see them, right? Those are the real ghosts of the Athens Asylum.” b

“I believe a place like Athens that has so much history is certainly bound to have some active spiritual areas.”