A Saturday Morning Visit with a Ghost
(or ghosts) at Brownella Cottage
By Mike Hocker
Galion's ghosts don't always make themselves known under the cloak of night!
It was a cold crisp and sunlit morning in March and I was getting things around for the Galion Historical Society's first ever PhotoDay a few years ago. And with only an hour to spare, I needed to find the person who ran off with the tape.
There were only a few people there, and when I asked my wife where the tape was, she reported that someone took it into the cottage house. In fact, I had seen two friends go through the glass lined causeway earlier, so I left the Bishop's study and retraced their path to the West porch of Bishop William Brown's home.
Already I could hear talking coming from the servants' quarters upstairs. Upon entering to the downstairs servants' hallway, I yelled for my friends. And then the voices stopped, as if they were trying to conceal the fact that they were upstairs. I yelled again. Now I heard footsteps going away from the servant's stairs (and away from me) along the upstairs hallway. The footsteps soon quieted, as if my friends had entered the front upstairs foyer.
After standing and listening for about 10 seconds, I decided they simply didn't hear me, even though I couldn't imagine that, since I yelled pretty loud, so rather than to chase them down through the front of the house, I decided to go back and see if Charlie, the only other worker there, had found any tape.
As I re-entered the glass causeway, I paused to look outside toward the carriage house at the back of the grounds. THERE stood my friends in front of the carriage house entrance exchanging casual conversation. I stopped, turned my voice back to the living quarters, and yelled. "Good morning Bishop," and went on my way.
From The Galion Inquirer, (October 31, 2002)