Society explores paranormal past
A tunnel runs under the entire length of the main building at Greene County Historical Museum, which was a poor house in the 1800s. Society members said they have not explored the area, but want to do an archaelogical dig.
A room in the dungeon of the former Greene County poor house is covered with mold. Alcoholics were kept in the dungeon, which had stone walls and dirt floors.
This article is part of a five-part series, “Ghost Stories,” printing Fridays in October.
Life for the poor in Civil War-era Greene County was often short and tortured.
The current site of Greene County Historical Society and Museum in Waynesburg is filled with artifacts. But the history of the site is even more captivating.
The buildings on 918 Rolling Meadows Road once made up the county poor farm or almshouse. Society President Mark Fischer said the farm was a catch-all for wards of the state. These included young widows with children, the mentally insane, unwed mothers, debtors, alcoholics and the mentally disabled.
“They were packed in together like sardines,” he said. “You might have a crazy man in a room with a widow and her kids.”
When someone misbehaved, they were shackled in a dank dungeon. Some were kept in small cells in the basement. Food was scarce, and vermin were prevalent.
Atlantic Monthly published an article in 1886 calling the poor farm one of the worst in the country.
”This place was home to a lot of people, and for many, it was their last home,” he said.
He said he had two distinct experiences on the farm as a child he could not explain. He spent time there with his great uncle, Dr. Robert Yoder, who was the first curator of the museum and president of the society.
”I was his picker because I was small enough to crawl around in the barns,” he said.
On one picking trip, he was sitting outside while Yoder was inside.
”There was a blood curdling scream,” he said. “It sounded like someone in real agony, and it scared the heck out of me.”
He said his great uncle did not hear the noise, and no one else was in the building.
A second time, he was looking for Yoder at night when a storm was rolling in.
He walked inside calling for his great uncle and stepped into a room with three mannequins dressed in period clothing.
”Lightning lit the room, and it wasn’t just the mannequins there,” he said. “There were other people in this room.”
He stumbled out, startled. When lightning flashed again, all he saw was the three mannequins.
When he found his uncle, he told him what he saw. He said he just chuckled at him and said “They were people once, too.”
Fischer said he does not know what he saw, or what others experienced when they reported their own strange occurrences.
”What I do know is this building, with its history so painful for so many people, that it would almost have to imprint their history on it,” he said.
Another member, George “Bly” Blytsone, said he once saw a young boy in a frilly nightgown and cap in the poor farm’s barn. He said the boy was all white, but with long, red curly hair. He said the figure glanced at him and walked away.
Blystone said he has occasionally felt a hand on his shoulder in the building. Fischer said often motion detectors go off in one wing of the building when nothing is there. Others told society members about feeling something touch them in the building, or hearing footsteps and other noises of unknown origins.
”There’s nothing mean,” said member Linda Rush.
”No, you just bump into things,” said Blystone. “It’s just the way it is.”
Vice president Candace Tustin said a bed upstairs is often disturbed, like someone was sleeping in it.
Fischer said it is just part of his daily routine to go through the museum and pick up things that were inexplicably moved.
The society is hosting a Flashlight Fright Night on Halloween and will have paranormal investigators from Western Pennsylvania Paranormal Hunters help raffle winners conduct an investigation the next day.
Fischer said while some society members were at first reluctant to delve into the paranormal, the plethora of reports combined with the building’s history of suffering led them to respectfully explore the past through the paranormal.
”The legitimate suffering that went on here and the imprint that may have left is something we need to take seriously,” he said. “The horrifying things that happened here are a part of the legacy. It’s just a different kind of history.”