Sixth Street Cemetery
The Sixth Street Cemetery, now called Veterans Park, served as Newark’s first cemetery from its founding in 1802 until it closed in 1850 with the opening of Cedar Hill cemetery. Local families with loved ones buried at Sixth Street were encouraged to have them exhumed and transferred to Cedar Hill through 1875, but the relocation of the dead was not done with any completeness. Human remains still linger under the ground upon which you walk. Over the years, tombstones have been found through erosion and one, re-erected, is still visible today. In 1976, the Daughters of the American Revolution honored six revolutionary war veterans believed to still lie buried at this defunct cemetery. At Veterans Park, a cultural center with several museums and memorials, there remains a layered quality to the supernatural: the land, the structures, and the history, all lend weight to the belief that it is a strong candidate for restless spirits. Image 1: Detail of the Sixth Street Cemetery, called the Old Graveyard, from a 1853 map of Newark.Image 2: Photograph of the entrance to Veterans Park with the list of the cultural instutitons that are currently sited there.Image 3: Photograph of a burial monument that has been re-erected at the site which sits atop a Native American mound.Image 4: Memorial for the veterans of the Revolutionary War that may remain buried at Veterans Park.
Buckingham Meeting House
The Buckingham House adds a layer to the story of Veterans Park. This was not the first location for this Greek Revival house. Constructed in 1840, the house originally stood at Third and Locust Streets, but was moved in 1954 in an effort to preserve the structure. In fact, all the buildings in Veterans Park share that experience of relocation in order to preserve the past. Now the home to the Licking County Historical Society, Buckingham House is a venue for events and named after its most famous resident—Judge Jerome Buckingham. Judge Buckingham was one of Newark’s most prominent citizens in the nineteenth century, serving as a common pleas judge and president of First National Bank. In 1902, at the lofty age of 82, Judge Buckingham passed away in the house in which he had lived for decades. Many believe he still inhabits the house today. When the construction crews set about moving the house in 1954, the project suffered a number of mechanical setbacks. Some joked that these accidents were caused by the spirit of Buckingham resisting the relocation. Speculation about hauntings, and rumors of strange happenings, grew at the new location: small items moving on their own, the sound of feet on steps when no one was there. But the most notable account was that of a bride preparing for her wedding at Buckingham House. She saw a man in old-fashioned formal wear standing at the top of the stairs. He made no response to her, but as she passed by a painting of Judge Buckingham, she realized that the figure on the steps and the man in the painting appeared to be one and the same. Though not a victim of a tragic death, it is easy to understand why many believe that Buckingham, a former leading figure of the city, continues to watch over his house, making this a location with consistent reports of hauntings. Image 1: Contemporary view of Buckingham Meeting House.Image 2: Photograph of Buckingham Meeting House as the structure was being moved in 1954.Image 3: Portrait of Judge Jerome Buckingham displayed by the Licking County Historical Society in Buckingham Meeting House.
Criss Brothers Funeral Home
Built in 1921 in a classical revival style, the original function of this building was as a funeral home for Criss Brother Funeral Service. Licking County Players, a local theater company, now operates at the site. It is easy to understand why there is an association between hauntings and a place where many people came immediately after their death, though there is no record of a death occurring on the premises. Nevertheless, long after the building ceased to be a transient space for the deceased, the people who worked at 131 West Main Street reported strange occurrences, particularly in the room that had once been used to embalm the dead. Image 1: Exterior of the Licking County Players building. At the top of the front facade, the stone inscription "CRISS BRO'S Funeral Home" is still visible to those passing by.Image 2: Photograph of a Criss Brothers Funeral Car.
Avalon Building
If one is looking for a more violent association with death, then it is the Avalon Building at 104 West Main Street that holds greater claim. This late-Victorian apartment building was the site of a horrific death in 1908 when a young woman named Eugenia Yontz committed suicide. Suspecting her husband of infidelity, Eugenia drank carbolic acid and died a painful death in front of her father, husband and a local doctor who was unable to save her. Not only did Eugenia die in the building, but her funeral was held in the Avalon as well, making the Avalon’s ties to tragedy strong and traumatic. Image 1: Photograph of the Avalon Building with Old Newark High School in the Background. Date unknown.Image 2:The Avalon building in 1938 as the Northwest Territories Parade passed through Newark.Image 3: News headline of the death of Eugenia Yontz at the Avalon building in 1908.
Hudson Avenue B-25 Bomber Crash Site
An unexpected tragedy struck the US military in the midst of World War II right here in Newark, Ohio!. On September 8, 1942, a B-25 Bomber crashed on historic Hudson Avenue. The Bomber, piloted by Colonel Douglass Kilpatrick, experienced structure failure of its left wing as it flew over Newark around noon on a day obscured by clouds and heavy rain. The plane, carrying passengers from Dayton to New York State, began to come apart, losing pieces as it flew. It narrowly missed colliding with the Old County Jail as it turned north to pass over the square. The pilot and copilot ejected just before it crashed at the corner of Hudson and Wyoming Streets. Wreckage from the fiery crash spilled along both streets. The four passengers aboard died instantly. The pilot and co-pilot fared no better, and perhaps worse than their comrades. Colonel Kilpatrick fell through the roof of an office building at the corner of Clinton and Locust Streets, and his co-pilot, second lieutenant A. C. Lauver, died on the impact on the loading platform of the freight office of the B&O Railroad. Two local women also died in the crash: Dollie Campbell, who happened to be walking nearby, and Jane Weston, who owned the building struck by the airplane. Eight people, six from the plane and two from Newark, died in what remains Licking County’s worst aviation disaster. Over the years, people who live on Hudson Street have reported hauntings. The owner of a building damaged in the crash claimed that her home remained haunted by the spirits of the deceased, with wall hangings tilting and moving unexpectedly, lightbulbs suddenly burning out. Her son reported seeing the ghost of Colonel Kilpatrick in a mirror. If hauntings are tied to location, then the bomber crash presents a unique scenario; the death and destruction that spread out from the corner of Hudson and Wyoming Streets, with two deaths occurring blocks away and no extant structure on which to focus, leaves open the possibility of untethered spirits that are free to roam the neighborhood in which they died. Image 1: A photograph of a B-25 bomber in flight.Image 2: Map showing the location of the airplane crash at Wyoming and Hudson Streets, with marks indicating the places where its pilot and co-pilot landed.Image 3: Declassified military report of the bomber crash.Image 4: Declassified military report of the bomber crash.
Hotel Warden
Nothing remains of the luxurious Hotel Warden, once a staple of life in Downtown Newark. A modern restaurant now sits in its place, but this lost building witnessed several tragic incidents. The hotel underwent major reconstruction in the 1880s as the Warden family sought to turn the old hotel into a more modern structure for the coming century. A major component of the renovation was the addition of a fourth floor. Local legend maintains that during this construction, a mason fell off the scaffolding to his death on the street below. The other masons then placed the dead man’s trowel on the exterior of the fourth floor to honor their fellow, pointing downward to the spot where he fell. Even though the building is now gone, the trowel survives as part of the collection at the Licking County Historical Society. A tragic death yet this is not the only gruesome event to befall the Warden. On November 26, 1886, Newark Police Office Thomas Roach was shot in the chest by William Gorman while resisting arrest. The two men had a history of prior disagreements which led to the incident on the public street near the Warden. Shot and bleeding, Roach was able to stumble into the Hotel Warden before succumbing to his wound. He died in the hotel lobby. The violent death of Roach gives us another possible specter haunting this corner of Newark, but the deaths linked to the Warden are not quite finished. In 1939, Mary Warden, wife of the hotel owner and a resident at the hotel, died in the building at the age of 78. Even though the Warden closed in1959 and demolished in 1966, its history remains with us.Image 1: Postcard image of the Hotel Warden circa 1915.Image 2: Photograph of the Hotel Warden where an external feature, possibly the mason's trowel, appears visible.Image 3: The corner of Second and Main Streets as it appears today.
Carl Etherington’s lynching site
Every street corner in this venerable downtown has a story and many of them are tragic. Several hundred feet from the Hotel Warden and the Licking County Courthouse is the site of the most infamous event to have occurred in Newark’s history—the lynching of Carl Etherington. In December 1908, nearly a full decade before a national prohibition on alcohol, Licking County voted to become a dry county by a very slim margin, thereby prohibiting the sale of alcohol. Many rural areas of the county embraced the temperance movement and fully supported the measure, but Newark, with its growing industry and an expanding working-class population, voted against the proposal. They chose to ignore the law by letting its numerous taverns stay open in 1909 and 1910, even though it was illegal. The mayor and the police didn’t just look away but embraced the city’s refusal to adhere to the new rules. This tension would boil over on July 8, 1910 when a private security group, including seventeen-year-old Carl Etherington, were deputized to close Newark’s illegal taverns. Chaos and tragedy would be the result. Etherington and his fellow security agents were met with open hostility in their attempt and accomplished nothing. Violent scuffles ensued and after one failed attempt to close a bar, Etherington was assaulted by William Howard, a tavern owner, and former police officer. Etherington shot Howard in an attempt to defend himself, a gunshot that would prove fatal a few hours later. The authorities locked up Etherington in the Old County Jail, but its walls and bars would not be enough to save him; a mob of several thousand gathered before the Jail. At the news of Howard’s death, they stormed the building.The mayor and other elected officials, who were sympathetic to the tavern owners and against the alcohol ban, proved ineffective in dispersing the crowd. The sheriff offered no resistance as the mob used a railroad tie to batter down the jail door, pull Etherington out of his cell, place a rope around his neck and drag him to a telegraph pole at the corner of Second and south Park Streets. There they lynched him from the pole, in full view of the courthouse whose justice they had replaced with the justice of the mob. The governor relieved the mayor and sheriff of their duties following Etherington's death. Fifteen members of the mob were charged with crimes, but only eleven received sentences, and none served more than four years in jail. Newark would abandon its local prohibition by 1912, but the chaos, violence and tragedy of July 8, 1910 would remain buried in the psyche of the city. Etherington's death is a reminder that the streets we walk down and the corners we stand on can have an unexpected and awful past.Image 1: Photograph of young Carl Etherington from Cosmopolitan magazine's article on the incident.Image 2: Corner of Park and Second Streets on the south side of the square and the pole on which the mob lynched Etherington.Image 3: Former police officer William Howard in his police uniform.Image 4: Barred door of the Old Licking County Jail after it was stormed by the mob.Image 5: Photograph of the lynching site at Second and Park Streets in 2020.
The Captain's Ghost
The Ohio and Erie Canal flourished in the mid-nineteenth century and brought commerce and travelers through Licking County. Canal boats not only brought passengers and goods, but they brought their captains and crew as well. These men worked from town to town with little permanency and the southern side of Newark’s square developed two industries to cater to them: boarding houses and taverns. Legend claims that one boat captain who came to the area south of Newark’s square—which was called Gingerbread Row after a popular snack—never departed, and his ghost haunts the Row to this day. After a night out at the taverns, the Captain returned to his rented room, only to be murdered in the night. Some claim his unsettled spirit still haunts the contemporary buildings more than 150 years later. If the Captain's ghost lacks details such as dates and a name, do not let that dissuade you from the belief that life along the canal did not come without risk. In 1835, a German immigrant passing through Newark was accused of drowning his wife in the manmade waterway. A local jury allegedly acquitted him in a peculiar form of trial by ordeal—his innocence proven to the jury when he touched his wife’s corpse with no effect. Railroaders and factory workers replaced canal men in the taverns and bars. Fights, brawls, murders and even a lynching would occur in what remained a notorious section of town. Though the days of the canal would end around the turn of the twentieth century, the canal’s stories, and perhaps its ghosts, live on.Image 1: View of the canal at south Third Street.Image 2: Depiction of the canal and "Gingerbread Row" neighborhood from 1853 map of Newark.Image 3: View of the canal in Newark near Second Street.Image 4: Interior of John Koos' billiard parlor in 1875. Providing an example of an upscale establishment that a canal boat captain might have visited.Image 5: The canal and canal boat near Fifth and Walnut Streets from 1895. Biederman's saloon stands in the background on Walnut Street.
Old Licking County Jail
The final stop on this tour is the Old Licking County Jail, perhaps the most haunted place in Newark. The site has even been featured in paranormal television programs!Completed in 1889 and in service until 1987, the Old Licking County Jail is a lovely edifice in an imposing, Romanesque style. Unlike the medieval fortresses that inspired its architectural design, the jail proved to be rather ineffective in its goals of protecting the people of Newark. In 1910, a mob stormed the building to lynch Carl Etherington. Jailbreaks were common occurences and twelve people died within its walls in less than a hundred years, including four Licking County sherrifs. Inmates died in a variety of ways, but most took their own lives. A female inmate, Mae Varner, died in 1953 after setting herself on fire, her second, and ultimately successful, attempt at suicide. Many of these deaths can be attributed to the poor management of the facility, but also to the improper care for inmates who suffered from mental illnesses. If prisoners perished in a variety of gruesome ways, the deaths of the four sheriffs occurred in an eerily similar pattern. Four men—Ross Embrey in 1934, Albert Roe in 1947, William McElroy in 1962, and Bernard Howarth in 1971—each died in a virtually identical manner. The sheriff lived in the jail with a residence set aside for their use. When Sheriff Embrey retired to the residence on the night of September 13, 1934, he suffered a heart attack and died. The same affliction struck Albert Roe in the same section of the jail in 1947, Sherriff McElroy in 1962, and Bernard Howarth in 1971. Howarth made it to the hospital before he passed away, but the others died at the jail in which they lived and worked. Some people believe that the sheriffs fell victim to the spirits of the prisoners that sought retribution upon the figure charged with the care of the facility. The Old Licking County Jail is a beautiful structure and a remarkable monument to Newark’s past, yet also a reminder of the tragic events that haunt the city. Image 1: Image from 1895 of the jail with the canal, moat-like before it.Image 2: View of the jail over the canal.Image 3: Image of the jail from the 1911 book, Greater Newark.Image 4: A contemporary view of the Old Licking County Jail
