A Halloween search for ghost towns
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
A double tunnel on Grinnage Run Road near Holbrook that almost looks like it has two eyes and a nose
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Jennifer Turco and her dog Kyah stand outside their home in Stringtown near Carmichaels
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
A leaning building along Golden Oaks Road near West Greene School District
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Gates, at the intersection of Stringtown Road and Jacobs Ferry Road in Cumberland Township, that could be considered spooky to anyone searching for a ghost town
As a sunny day turned dark and ominous, did a double tunnel with side-by-side circular openings resemble the eye sockets of a skull? Or did the hillside look like a wide-eyed owl, with a sliver of converging guardrails forming a beak?
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
A tree covered in mushrooms on a piece of property in Holbrook off of Golden Oaks Road
Welcome to Holbrook, a town in western Greene County where the empty buildings on the main road outnumber those that are occupied.
A tornado had swept through nearby Graysville just a few weeks before, and with a gray sky to match the mood, Holbrook’s empty houses had a haggardness appropriate for Halloween.
While no one is claiming the abandoned houses are haunted, Holbrook has the look of a ghost town.
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
An abandoned building on a piece of property in Holbrook off of Golden Oaks Road
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
A “No Trespassing” sign in a window of an abandoned building in Holbrook at the intersection of Bristoria Road and Golden Oaks Road
Terry Cole, who lives in Kuhntown, Wayne Township, about seven miles from Route 221, said, “Half of western Greene County has a Holbrook address,” so it’s not fair to brand an entire swath as uninhabited.
But Holbrook village proper has the look of a place that has left its better days behind.
“At one time it had a couple stores and everything else, a gas station. Most of them were built at the turn of the century or the 1920s when the first oil boom was in here,” Cole said.
On a recent visit, traffic along Golden Oaks Road was moderate, but the post office, a hub of activity in many communities, was quiet.
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
One of many abandoned homes in Holbrook, this one was along Golden Oaks Road
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
A broken window on an abandoned home in Holbrook
Eugene Walters, Waynesburg postmaster, wrote in response to an email inquiry that the Holbrook post office has a total of 104 post office boxes available, but just 13 are rented. The building has business hours only in the morning.
The statistics for the vicinity show more signs of life. The rural carrier route for Holbrook, zip code 15341, has 382 street addresses, and only 61 of them are vacant. The hired carrier’s route has 71 total addresses, with vacancies of just over 26 percent.
A clue about the emptying of Holbrook is evident on a sign posted several years ago by a previous owner along that main road.
It refers to Foundation Mine No. 1 shaft and portal, Foundation Mining LLC, and gives a Waynesburg address.
A state publication, The Pennsylvania Bulletin, noted more than two years ago that Foundation Mine proposed building on 25.4 surface acres and conducting longwall mining under 9,438 acres in Center, Jackson and Richhill townships.
There appears, however, to be no construction activity.
“My brother bought all the houses there for the mine,” Cole said. “The only thing they don’t own is the post office and the church. The mine generally pledges money, and they’ll take down one or two every year.”
Cole had some predictions about two other places.
“Oak Forest is going to be a ghost town,” he opined. “They bought all the houses but one.
“Pine Bank once had a blacksmith shop – barbershop, Knights of Pythias hall, a big store. They even had a Model T Ford dealership back in the 1900s.”
Pine Bank – at the intersection of the scary-sounding Bloody Run and Toms Run roads – lost its covered bridge in the early 1960s when the state Department of Transportation planned to replace it with a concrete and steel span.
An online blog by David Scofield credits Jefferson Township’s late resident and historian Albert Miller with preserving the more-than-145-year-old covered bridge at Camp Meadowcroft, forerunner of Meadowcroft Village and Rockshelter.
Stringtown’s activity belies label
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
No ghosts were spotted in Stringtown but a silhouette of Bigfoot was, maybe it is keeping the ghosts away?
The online encyclopedia known as Wikipedia, in its list of ghost towns in Pennsylvania, identifies just one community in the southwesternmost corner of the state: Stringtown.
Follow the link, and it further identifies Stringtown as an unincorporated community in Greene County.
This surprised residents of Stringtown, who, on a glorious summerlike day in October, were out and about in their very vibrant hamlet.
During this recent visit, there were only a few occurrences that might be described as ever-so-slightly ghastly.
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
A black cat spotted in the weeds along Stringtown Road in Cumberland Township
A black cat was lurking in the weeds along Stringtown Road, but, hey, there are dusky-colored felines inhabiting lots of places.
A life-sized wooden silhouette of Bigfoot loomed large on the east side of a porch, but seeing the outline of a large biped wasn’t quite as menacing as an encounter with a living, breathing beast.
And one gentlemanly farmer, who had started his tractor engine a-chugging, stopped what he was doing along Schoolhouse Lane to give directions to the home of a neighbor. He was startled when, without warning, the tractor’s radio started playing.
“Scared the poop out of me!” he exclaimed.
Goblins, hob or otherwise, weren’t haunting while Joyce Krcelich, on a prettily appointed Pratt Road patio, was cutting the hair of a friend as canines Angel and Honey circled two strangers.
“Honey got the wrong name,” said Tim Fine, who lives there. “Should’ve been She-devil.”
The surroundings were anything but Hades-like. Pink Mandevilla flowers climbed a corner and the place was a fine one to sit a spell and sun oneself, not cast spells.
“You ever seen a house built on a rock?” Fine asked. “This house was built on a rock over 100 years ago.”
The beautician reflected on a former resident of Stringtown.
“My mom just passed away,” Krcelich said. “Annabelle Pratt. She was the ‘mayor of Stringtown.’ She was the matriarch here.
“She was 92. She said it got its name, my mom said, because the houses are all strung out. Our physical address is Carmichaels.”
They speculated that there are at least 100 residents of greater Stringtown.
A slender black and white dog, named Kyah, easily slipped in and out between Fine’s fenceposts.
“Oh, she knows everybody around here,” said Joan Turco, a transplant from New Jersey. “They’re all her friends.”
Her daughter-in-law, Jennifer Turco, 43, grew up in Stringtown and Carmichaels, and she now owns the Pratt Road home of her great-grandmother, Lucy Deems, who died in 1999 at the age of 90.
Rather than ghostly, she considers life in Stringtown to be heavenly.
“I like that I can sit out at night and make out all the stars,” she said as a bird serenaded. Turco described her neighborhood as “calm, quiet, peaceful.”
“Everybody knows everybody. Everybody’s friendly with everybody. There are no strangers in Stringtown. I love it because it’s quiet. We get the occasional dirt biker, four-wheeler that goes past, but other than that, there’s very little traffic.”
Turco confirmed Krcelich’s account of the “strings of little farms” of which Annabelle Pratt had spoken, and recalled Pratt as a distant relative and legendary baker of dozens of pies for the annual King Coal Show.
Bob “Tuna” Tennant organizes a trick-or-treat hayride each Halloween for neighborhood kids, rolling past the “Watch Children” sign that attests to the fact that there’s robust life in small but thriving Stringtown.