The existence of spirits in the world of the living — disembodied apparitions who appear as shadowy figures as they wander among us — has long been a source of controversy.
Locations that have their own stories to tell about a sighting, weird happenings, or a ghost story, are often connected to the ghost and what happened to them when they were a living person. It might be the place they lived, or the place they died. Or both.
Northwest Ohio has no shortage of folklore about spirits who still inhabit our world. Here, we chronicle the lives of three individuals who spirits may still be among us, ghost hunters say.
Olive Ward
The story of Olive Ward is the story of an embattled spouse trying to do the right thing for her family, but ending up dead instead.
When she tried to leave her second husband, Return Ward, in 1856, he killed her, dismembered her body, and burned the body parts in the wood-burning stove in their home along what is now Main Street, and where now sits the Reve Salon, Wildwood Anglers, and the local hardware store.
Haunted Toledo traced Olive’s roots back to Coldwater, Mich., where she grew up Olive Bickford, in a working-class family and first married a man named George Davis. The couple had two children, but soon divorced, said Christopher Tillman, founder of Haunted Toledo.
In the fall of 1856, she met her soon-to-be second husband, Return Ward, and within days, they were married, Tillman said. But Return Ward didn’t like children — he really just didn’t like people — and he gave his wife an ultimatum: The 9-year-old boy and 3-year-old girl must live elsewhere.
Olive fled, but Return lured her back. When he found out she only returned to gather her belongings, he killed her, cut up her body, and burned it in the stove, according to the book, Murder In Sylvania, Ohio, As Told in 1857, written by local historian Gaye E. Gindy.
In an attempt to hide his crime, Ward scattered her remains along the main business district, and threw some of the larger bones in the creek behind where the Wingate Hotel sits today, Tillman said.
And today, many believe that Olive Ward still haunts the local business district, including at the Wingate Hotel, where Tillman said staff have reported guests seeing a shadowy woman standing at the end of their bed.
“They have had people staying there who have asked to have their room changed, or who just packed up and left in the middle of the night,” Tillman said. “This is probably one of the coolest ghost stories I’ve come across in the entire state, where you have an entire block haunted by the same spirit.”
Return Ward, who was eventually named the first serial killer in Ohio after confessing to two other murders before his wife, was eventually tried and hanged for the crime on June 12, 1857, in the gallows at the Lucas County Courthouse, according to the Daily Toledo Blade. The newspaper reported that during his last speech before he died, Mr. Ward denied all of the other killings to which he had previously confessed. “I killed my wife — that was bad enough. Yes, that was awful, yes it was awful. That’s all the person I’ve ever killed.”
Orville Cooper
Research shows that Orville Cooper was a loner, keeping to himself when he lived in the middle apartment above what is now Georgjz419 bar on Adams Street in the 1970s.
But as a spirit who paranormal investigators say is playing pranks on the bar staff, he is embraced.
“We love Coop,” said George Thompson, owner of the bar. “He’s a friendly guy, we like having him here. He’s not doing anything destructive; he just wants to play.”
It was Thompson and his staff who first noticed the lights flickering on and off, one at time even though they were all on the same circuit. Staff members reported seeing a human figure in the steamy kitchen. Glasses rattled; remodeling materials moved across the room, Thompson said. They connected with Haunted Toledo investigators, who say they made contact with Cooper.
“I think all of us at the bar have witnessed Cooper,” Thompson said. “If I wouldn’t have witnessed it, I never would have believed it.”
According to research done by Haunted Toledo, Cooper was a World War II veteran who at a young age, was separated, along with another brother, from his family and placed into Wood County juvenile care. He dropped out of high school and enlisted two different times in the U.S. Army Air Corps, Tillman said.
He was never married, and never had any children, and when he died in his apartment on Dec. 16, 1978, it went unnoticed, Tillman said. His short obit in The Blade archives states that he was a self-employed maintenance man, and lists three sisters and a brother as survivors.
“There’s a lot of speculation … but being in the military and then dying alone, it sounds like this guy spent most of his life alone,” he said.
When paranormal investigators probed, they claim to have heard Cooper say his name when asked, and tell them that he’s just there to have fun, Tillman said.
“It sounds like a lot of times, Cooper wants people to know he’s there, or he’s just coming down to say hello,” Tillman said. “It sounds like Cooper enjoys where he’s at, we call him Toledo’s friendliest ghost.”
Thompson said they hope to refurbish the upstairs apartments into a second bar area, possibly calling it Cooper Sullivan’s, after both men who died in the apartment at different times.
The Elmore Rider
The story of the Elmore Rider is one of the more popular legends in northwest Ohio, despite its shaky historical records.
The story, dating back to the end of World War I, has all the foreshadowing elements of a good haunt — a war fought, a true love lost, and the tragedy of a life ended for the star-crossed lover.
“The commonly accepted legend is that he was returning home from World War I, and that the one thing he held onto to survive that war, was the knowledge that when he got home he was going to marry the woman he loved. ... He goes to her house to surprise her that he’s home, and when he pulls into the drive, he can see through the windows that she is in the arms of another man,” Tillman said. “He turns the bike around and heads off down the road. He's angry, he's upset, he’s probably going high speed, he’s probably crying, the tears are affecting his vision, maybe the road is slick a little bit ...
“One of more popular legends is he comes around a bend in the road, gets to the middle of a bridge, wipes out and goes over the side. The guardrails sever his head from his body, and the motorcycle headlamp is never found, and from that day on, on March 21, you can summon the rider as often as you like.”
Legend has it if you go out near a small bridge that crosses Mud Creek, in Elmore, honk your horn and flash your lights three times, you will see the haunted man’s headlight following you until it disappears in the middle of the bridge.
But evidence to back up the story is spotty. Tillman located an undated newspaper clipping on the original story, which was far different. He located clippings about three motorcycle fatalities — in 1913, 1916 and 1923 — but none involved a single motorcycle rider, or reported a decapitation.
“In the original legend they don't even mention a motorcycle, or a man, or an accident. It was just a weird ball of light that appeared in the middle of the bridge and then kind of floated out into the woods on its own,” Tillman said. “It's like the telephone game. Everyone adding their own own little stories and pieces of information to make it sound good.”
Still, it’s one of the most popular ghost stories on the Haunted Toledo site.
“It's just one of those fun legends that people love to go out and try, they love to play around with and talk about, I just don’t think it’s ever going to be proven,” he said.
First Published October 27, 2018, 1:00 p.m.
