Inside the Legend: Hell House

 

HELL HOUSE AT THE TOP O' THE WORLD

Top Of the World… Cuyahoga County, Ohio

Your journey to the Top O’ the World starts alongside a dark, winding road. As you park your car and begin the walk up the darkened dirt path, you find yourself double-checking every few feet to make sure nothing’s following you. Then you start to rewind in your head one of the legends associated with the area: A young family man falls from a horse and receives a massive head injury. Perhaps due in part to his injuries, the man goes insane one night and kills his entire family with an ax while they sleep. He then goes out to the barn and kills all his horses, including the one that had injured him. When he was done, the man hanged himself inside the barn. Is it any wonder this whole area is said to be filled with ghosts?

At the top of the hill, in the Summit County Metro Park, you catch your first glimpse of the barn. You listen intently for the sound of ghostly horses or screams from a man in anguish. Nothing. Scanning the woods, you search for movement. But nothing is stirring- at least not yet.

You’ve heard the stories, so you know exactly where to position yourself in order to see the ghost of the ax-wielding father begin his nightly journey from the house to the barn. About fifteen minutes into your nocturnal surveillance, you nervously light a cigarette. Forty-five minutes and three cigarettes later, you decide to call it quits. Tonight, nothing supernatural is happening.

Back at your car, you wonder whatever made you think you were really going to see anything tonight; you’re getting too old to be chasing ghosts. And then you hear it: a long, drawn-out neigh from a horse… coming from somewhere behind you. You spin around just in time to hear the sound dissipate over the top of the hill that blocks the old barn from you view. The sound gone, several seconds pass before you realize that you’re still holding your breath. You let it out with a loud hissing sound and immediately begin rationalizing. What you just heard must have a natural explanation. But you can’t think of one. Stepping into your car, you’re reminded of just how wonderful the sound of a car engine turning over can sound. Within seconds, your tires are spraying gravel as you make your way back to civilization… with nary a look back in the rearview mirror.

There is a popular legend in Cuyahoga County, a variation on the man-thrown-from-a-horse story, that says there was a very rich farmer who lived in the area with his wife and their seven children. The man so well off that he was able to erect seven barns, one in honor of each of his children, throughout Cuyahoga Valley. Of course, this is much too romantic a tale to make a good ghost story, so one night the husband went insane and slaughtered his wife and seven children with an axe. He then proceeded to bury their bodies in the first six barns. When he was finished burying the last body, he went out to the seventh barn, the one at Top O’ the World, and committed suicide by hanging himself from the rafters. It is the tortured spirit of this farmer that is sometimes spotted as a darkened shape moving through the woods surrounding the barn and sometimes even inside the barn itself.

Weird Ohio, by James A. Willis, Andrew Henderson, and Loren Coleman

OTHER HELL HOUSES

The following are a collection of similar Hell House stories that I have gathered due to the help of posters on supernatural.tv.

Mystery Manor… Omaha, Nebraska

The Manor was built in 1887 and was the home of William and Greta Hall. On October 23, 1929 when the stock market crashed, William Hall went insane. In a blind of rage he took his ax from its place in the shed and attacked his dear Greta, chopping her body into pieces until his frenzy had abated. The next morning, realizing with horror what he had done, he carefully placed his wife’s remains in a shallow grave in the front yard of the Manor. One Week later, Greta’s brother, John Martin, avenged his sister’s brutal murder by hacking up his former brother-in-law with the same ax. The next night at midnight, John Martin’s body was found at the grave sight with the ax imbedded in his skull. Some believe that the ghost of William Hall killed John Martin. The murder of John Martin remains a mystery- thus the name “Mystery Manor.”

Mystery Manor is the oldest and most popular “haunted house” business in Omaha, Nebraska, and it packs in the crowds during the Halloween season every year. It has been a house of terror for 17 years and is located on 719 North 18th Street.

Curtis Mansion… Miami Springs, Florida

The mansion belong to the son of the founder of the city, he and his wife would adopt children from around the country and the world. The wife has a miscarriage or an abortion, and Curtis is driven by insanity. He kills her, the children, the maids, and then himself. Sets fire to the place. On the outside, this mansion may seem ordinary… but, police have been called from people who have seen strange fires coming from within the house. There are reports of lights going on and off, doors opening, and sightings of ghosts, of visitors, children, and a man.

Curtis Mansion EVP's

Mooney’s Mansion... City of Columbus, Walhalla Dr.

A Dr. Mooney lived with his wife and children in one of the homes high atop Walhalla sometime in the 1950s. When his slow descent into madness passed its boiling point, he chopped every member of his family up with an axe. Whether he killed himself, was caught, or made an escape is not known, but the murderous act is supposed to be reenacted nightly, bathed in a cold blue glow and visible through the windows of Mooney's Mansion.

Another popular variant has Mooney losing everything in the 1929 stock market crash and killing his wife and kids in their beds, then hanging their bodies from the bridge over Walhalla before shooting himself in the attic of his house.

One take on the story has Mooney kicking his wife's severed head down the hill to Walhalla Road--an act which you can see repeated with a phantom head if you climb the right back staircase and knock on the door of the now-abandoned (or so they say) Mooney place.

No one knows where the mansion is. One confident, says that Mooney's Mansion is the house located at 259 Walhalla Road, closer to Indianola than High. The real Mooney's Mansion may stand on Calumet just south of the bridge; possibly it may also be the big white house with a sculpted lion's head out back that will bleed on All Hallow's Eve.

Special Thanks to… for informing me about these hell houses:
Mummyluvr- Mystery Manor
LoisLaneKent- Curtis Mansion
Raychel- Mooney’s Mansion

TULPAS

Remember that X-Files episode about the gated community and the monster that the crazy suburbanites were afraid of going against? Well, that monster was a Tulpa. Many authors and artists have used Tulpas in their works. Clive Barker envisioned the famous “Candy Man” killer to be nothing more than a myth gone terribly awry in his original story.

Tulpas, Tibetan Spirit Sigils, are beings who are materialized thoughts that take on a physical form through sheer willpower of its creator alone. For Tulpas to take on a physical reality, the creator must go through intense concentration and visualization to make his or her imagination a reality. Tulpas can be found in Tibetan mysticism.

Once the Tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker’s control. Sometimes the Phantom become a rebellious “son” and kills their master. Every Tulpa, no matter if originally a benevolent entity, becomes a monster of it’s own freedom. Most Tulpas die upon their master’s death, while other Tulpas are created with the intent of outliving its master.

HELL HOUSE

Note: I am aware that this isn’t the type of Hell House presented in the episode. But, it’s just as creepy as any horror story and is referred to as Hell Houses- so I figured, what the hell.

"We're going to scare the hell out of people and, at the end, show them there's a way out--Jesus Christ,” states Church Pastor Mike Duckworth.

A Hell House consists of a group of horrific scenes within a type of haunted house. The customer walks through a sequence of tableaus designed to create terror and revulsion. The last scene is different; it is typically a portrayal of heaven. The visitors are then asked to accept salvation by repenting of their sins and trusting Jesus as Lord and Savior.

Hell House focuses on what the Pentecostal Church considers to be sins. Judgment Houses, also known as Hell Houses, are typically run by fundamentalist Christian churches or parachurch groups. These attractions are in operation in the days preceding Halloween. Some hell houses are disguised to resemble conventional secular haunted houses.

It is a relatively new evangelistic technique with intent of proselytizing the unsaved public and to promote certain conservative Christian beliefs. The Hell House idea is now used by more than 500 churches in 14 countries. One out of five people who go to a Hell House leave a converted Catholic. According to George Ratliff, a documentary film maker, “the people at this church (Trinity Church in Cedar Hill) needed this church, and they needed this community. If they were in New York, they would need therapy. But they don’t have therapy.” Many people within the Christian community criticize these Hell House priests as being too focused on the number of conversions rather than long lasting commitments to Christianity.

What do these Hell Houses depict?

+ A realistic reenactment of the murder of Cassie Bernall, a teenager victim at the Columbine High School in 1999-APR. She was allegedly asked whether she believed in God, answered yes, and was murdered on the spot.
+ A person being sacrificed during a Satanic ritual.
+ Women undergoing very bloody late-term abortions, complete with screaming, lots of blood, and particularly insensitive, uncaring health providers.
+ Gays and lesbians being tortured in hell for all eternity because of their behavior while they were alive on earth.
+ The dangers of "dabbling" in the occult and becoming demon possessed.
+ Personal tragedies arising from pre-marital sex.
+ Disastrous tragedies and loss of life resulting from drunk driving.
+ A man has an argument with his wife and is later seduced by his secretary.
+ Witches pressuring a depressed teen to murder his fellow students. + A 9/11 ground zero scene.
+ Pieces of meat placed in a glass bowl to look like pieces of a baby
+ A Florida house features a "demon" who dances around the coffin of an AIDS victim, overjoyed that the dead man is now suffering in hell. He declares "I tricked him into believing he was born gay! Have you ever heard something so silly?"
+ A girl getting raped and then committing suicide
+ A boy committing suicide in a classroom

Following each event is an elaborately staged scene, Satan taunts the sinner, and then drags him or her off to hell.

SATANIC LOOKING SYMBOLS

SIGIL OF SULFUR

A less commonly used symbol of Satanism that popped during the 60s in San Francisco.