Mud Manor
Every good leader has a good “where it all began” story. Mine is not a good story, but, maybe someday I will write it up for everyone to hear. Until I am ready to revival all my secrets I can start with a little back story and where the hunting bug began. I feel in love with the spooky when I was younger like most budding adventurous, but I fell in love with legends because of the Mud House in Lancaster Ohio.
My husband and I were telling each other spooky stories about haunted things we knew about growing up. Panda mentioned the Mud House and my interest was peeked.
According to Panda and local lore, the Mud House Manor was built pre-Civil War when Ohio still supported Slavery ( I know just keep reading). The house was owned by cruel slave owners that even after the emancipation still kept slaves, One night the mistreated slaves turned on the owners and killed them all, including children. The Slaves were then caught and hung on the property. Fast forward to the 1920’s and a family lived in the Mud House for one summer. During this summer the family was haunted by the ghost of the dead slaves from the outside, scratching on windows, blowing open exterior doors, according to the legend the family was terrified to go outside of their own house at night, Unfortunately, they should have feared who was inside. The young teenage daughter of the family complained of hearing voices. Dark voices that told the young girl to do unthinkable things. One night late in the summer they young daughter killed her parents and hung herself in front of a large window visible from a neighboring property. It was days before anyone checked in on the family because it looked like the young girl was waving at from the window. It was really her corpse swaying back and fourth. According to the legend the house was then sold to the Mast family, who never liked the house and allowed it to fall into disrepair
Over the years the house fell into despair, many people trespassed in the manor, leading to more legends about a woman who screams at you from the second story windows, and being beaten by an unknown force when you walk the exterior property at night.
Panda took me to the manor, to see the scariest place in Licking County. To feel the real terror of a haunted house. We experienced nothing. The house sat on a beautiful property off Mud Road in Lancaster, no neighbors, just a quite road we visited on a warm late summer day, This got me thinking. How many other “spooky” places are in Ohio. Were there more legends like Mud House – maybe even something TRUE? So I started looking for things in Ohio that go bump in the night. The haunted houses, caves, hospitals, bridges. I started looking for witches and goals and found like minded people to join me.
The truth about Mud House…
The house was built sometime after 1864, there were never slaves held at the house ( I mean this is Ohio), an there was no massacre in the night. The family that bought the house in the 1920 did face heartache and death. It was however when the patriarch of the family died unexpectedly cause the house to then be sold to its final owners the Masts. The house was left to rot because the family was only fond of the property no the house that sat on it. Mud House was tore down for the public’s safety in 2015. You can read the article in the Lancaster Gazette.
It might not have been a real haunting, but that hasn’t stopped me from looking for what goes bump in the night.