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‘Most Haunted’ includes area’s ghosts
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
Linesville, Pa., is best known for the spillway on Pymatuning Reservoir, where carp by the thousands beg for food and ducks walk right across their backs.
But there is some even stranger phenomena going on at the Knickerbocker Hotel in the tiny town.
The Knickerbocker is one of two places highlighted in “America’s Most Haunted” (Berkley Trade Paperback, 340 pages with photos; $16; published Sept. 30) that are barely an hour’s drive from Youngstown. Willoughby Coal in Willoughby is the other.
The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, which closed in 1990, also gets a chapter.
“America’s Most Haunted,” by Eric Olsen and Theresa Argie, goes inside a total of 10 of the country’s most haunted locations, ranging from the old Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia to the Queen Mary in California.
The authors both live in the Cleveland area, which demystifies why there are so many regional haunts in their book.
They start each investigation with a historical overview that explains why the place came to be a paranormal hot spot.
Then the authors give “tours” of the structures, as well as reports on personal experiences during ghost-hunting visits. Each chapter is then summarized with final thoughts and info for visitors.
The personal experiences are the parts that can send chills up your spine. The entities make their presence known to humans who seek them and have the extrasensory ability to communicate with them.
Olsen is an entrepreneur who founded the online magazine Blogcritics in 2002. Now fully immersed in the paranormal world, he is the founder of the America’s Most Haunted brand. Olsen, who lives in Aurora, is also the guitarist/singer for Cleveland cover band the Props.
Argie, a.k.a. “The Haunted Housewife,” is a paranormal historian, researcher and ghost hunter whose travels have taken her across the country.