COLUMBUS - On a dark, chilly Fall night, lanterns help guide a group of curious minds through the streets of downtown Columbus. Their intrigue has to do with the past that sometimes reappears in present-day.
The Columbus Landmarks Foundation gives tours that provide people a glimpse into the supernatural stories that haunt Columbus.
One of the stops is the Columbus Public Health building. In the past, it was the building served as the Ohio State School for the Blind.
"They hung garlic in the rafters and you want to ask yourself, you know those movies, there aren't reasons you hang garlic in a building unless there's something else you're concerned with," explains Doreen Uhas Sauer, a volunteer tour guide.
Also on the tour, people get a look inside the haunted Kelton House.
The mansion, built by wealthy merchants in 1852, continues to spook employees, guests, and neighbors who report seeing residents who have long been gone.
"Some of the neighbors have reported that they've seen a woman dressed all in black in Victorian mourning clothes and it could be Sophia," explains Keith Shannon, the docent at the Kelton House.
In Topiary Park lies another ghost tale. Among the human-like figures, as legend has it, is a man who died nearby. Some say he likes to visit the park and hang with friends who might be a little less scared of him.
Inside the Victorian Thurber House on Jefferson Avenue, the book titled "The Night the Ghost Got In" documents one specific paranormal incident.
"It was an incident Thurber and his brother witnessed. They were so frightened and they didn't see anything that they ran up the back stairs and locked themselves in the bathroom at the top of the stairs until the noise subsided. They never figured out what happened. Thurber until his dying day did not see it as a comical moment. He believes that there was something in the house that was happening," Uhas Sauer explains.
Since then residents, authors, and employees have also witnessed unusual activity that they blame on the ghosts.