The Kelton House.
My time spent hanging with ghosts.
In honor of Halloween and all things spooky and strange, I thought it would be the perfect time to share my personal experience with the supernatural. Spooooooky.
While I was in college, a good friend got me a job at a place called the Kelton House Museum and Garden, in Columbus Ohio. The home was originally built in 1852 by Fernando and Sophia Kelton and they raised their seven children there. Two more generations of Keltons followed in the house until the last of them all, Grace, died on Christmas in 1975. She entrusted the property to the Junior League of Columbus Ohio to be preserved and used for educational purposes.
On the one hand, the Kelton House was an exquisite Victorian property. 80% of the current furnishings are originals from the family, circa 1760- 1975. From the velour sofas that were custom designed to accommodate the huge hoop skirts that were en vogue at the time, to the lace curtains that doubled as mosquito netting and shielding from road dust. Walking through the rooms felt surreal, like time travel.
On the other hand, the very history within those beautiful rooms was also the very thing that filled the house with such potency: layers and layers of memory, experience, tragedy. So many lives. So many stories. And the walls marinated in it.
The Keltons were stalwart abolitionists and the house was a stop on the underground railroad. Scared, traumatized and bone-tired fugitives holed up in the rooms of the basement to rest up for next leg of their journey north. One young girl who’d escaped slavery, Martha, was too ill to keep running so the Keltons took her in and raised her as their own.
I was hired to oversee the main floor of the Kelton House on Sundays from 12-4pm, when they offered tours and an open house for visitors to explore the grounds. There was usually a docent present, a specifically trained woman from the Junior League, to officially lead the tours while wearing traditional Victorian dress. I was in charge of money and to generally keep track of things while the docent was off with the guests. It was an incredibly relaxed job. I noticed feeling tiny while sitting by myself set next to the competing wallpaper and carpet patterns, and up against the floor-to-ceiling windows. This was not an unpleasant feeling. On the days where there was no docent for whatever reason, there’d be hours where I’d sit alone in this very tall, old house.
Well, not entirely alone.
Before Kelton House, I hadn’t given ghosts a whole lot of thought. A fun bit of personal trivia is that the house two doors down from my childhood home was featured in the Time Life Books, the edition that focused on poltergeists. I’d heard the ghost stories from my street a dozen times, but never once actually considered what it would have felt like for that neighborhood babysitter when the telephone ruptured from the wall and flew across the room as she said it did.
Taking the job at Kelton House had nothing to do with ghost-hunting. I thought of it as simply a gorgeous place, a place where I’d get paid to have downtime to read. It wasn’t until I was already working there that I learned it was a stop on the “Haunted Mansion Tour.” But one usually associates ghosts with, darkness, right? Nighttime?
My primary shift was mid-day. Even with overcast skies, the interior was throughly stocked with electricity. Not to mention that there was often the hustle and bustle of loud, traveling groups in the distance. Maybe a Sunday party or a wedding. But even with a handful of visitors, I found the job to be very low-key. This was before phones so I likely spent my down time with my nose in a book (made of actual ink and paper) or simply wandering the rooms.
Then I started noticing the dog.
Grace Kelton had a tiny gray lap dog that I wish I knew the name of. Regardless, he was beloved by her, especially as she grew older. Shortly into my Kelton House career, I became keenly aware of a furry animal that made a habit of scurrying across the hall in my periphery. Always in my periphery. The moment I turned to look his direction, he was gone. The feeling he brought was silliness, hyperness. He was absolutely never a threatening presence. I can’t remember a day where the dog-spirit was not in attendance. He became a character of the house.
Then, one especially quiet afternoon, I was meandering around the front parlor, likely handling the framed photos and then buffing out the fingerprints before returning them to their rightful place. I walked to the enormous mirror that was propped onto the mantle in order to check my nose for a booger. I was up so close that my nose nearly touched the glass, and I was hyper-focused on what was happening inside my nostrils. Then my eyes re-focused to the periphery and, clear as day, in the reflection many steps behind me, stood a young man wearing full civil war regalia! To this day, I see him there. I knew about Fernando and Sophia’s son, Oscar Kelton, who’d tragically died at 21 in the civil war. I’d heard he sometimes made appearances in the house. But mid-afternoon?
He gazed straight ahead, didn’t seem to register my presence. By the time I let out a gasp and swung around, he was gone—the whole thing lasted one to two seconds at most. Though he clearly had no intention of harm, I remember feeling at once lightheaded and heavy as stone. My heart wanted to break free through my chest cavity. I have zero recollection of what my twenty-two-year-old self did in that moment but I’m sure I finished my shift and didn’t run for the hills.
The best part of working at a haunted place was that you got to compare notes with the others who worked there. Occasionally there’d be an event that required more staff and we’d have the chance to talk about who and what visited during our shifts. There was no convincing; we all saw stuff and we loved to talk about it. I often heard stories of Oscar visiting while out in the garden, smoking a cigarette. Most of my coworkers also reported seeing the little dog run the hallways, though some described him more as a cat. The details of small, grey, fluffy and always-peripheral were consistent.
More than a few of us agreed to the following: often, the temperature would abruptly shift and it would feel like you were walking through an arctic cloud in the hallway with a definitive beginning and end. Also, often while walking up the stairs, a strong whiff of lavender—Grace’s preferred scent—would fill the air, even if you were the only one in the house. Doors that were left open one night were commonly closed the next morning and vice-versa. The antique magazines on the counter that were left in a stack would be fanned out the next morning, though nobody had been there. Lights would be switched on when we arrived for our shift even if the person who closed up the night before had certainly turned them off.
My time at the Kelton House was a collection of tiny spirit-glimpses. Light touches. Nothing personal, nothing jarring. The unhoused actual-human fellow who set up camp in the stairwell felt more menacing.
Until.
A wedding prompted one of the unusual times when I worked at Kelton House at night. The place was fully staffed, plus caterers and eventually the wedding guests— the house was buzzing with energy. I ran downstairs to grab some extra cutlery from the storage closet. As I mentioned, the basement had been a stop on the underground railroad, but it was refinished as a library-type room, or non-smoking cigar room: dark wood paneling, leather chairs in caramel hues, a massive oak table. I zipped past all that to the storage room, propelled by the speed of work. I swung open the door.
There, in the dark and before I had a chance to switch on the light,
were two eyes.
I wish I could guarantee my memory of this moment, but I can’t, as no one can guarantee any memory. But what I saw about an arm’s length in front of me were the two large eyes of a beast, illuminated as if glowing in the dark. The eyes were filled with the fierceness of a cornered animal, with strong undercurrents of fear. As if to say, I know you will kill me, but I will not go down without a fight. And also, I am so fucking scared.
The image is not perfectly immortalized but the feeling was implanted in me somewhere permanent. The feeling was complex and universal and as old as time. I could feel it in the deepest part of myself that existed before I took my first breath and would be there long after I am no longer part of this earth. Did these feelings belong to the slaves who’d passed through on their journeys north? Could generations-old emotion be trapped in a room?
Self-preservation propelled me out the door and up the stairs before my next thought clicked into place. My coworker, John, was at the top of the stairs.
“Holy shit, you’re pale,” he said.
Breathless, I tried to describe what I saw. The joyous ruckus of the wedding party was an incongruent backdrop.
We both headed back downstairs, around the weighty leather chairs and to the storage closet. John took the lead and paused in the open doorway. There were no more eyes in the dark. He switched on the light. The air in the closet was visibly thick, like gelatin. I think I even reached a hand out to comb through the haze.
We both saw the thick air, like steam with no heat, no moisture. We both felt it. One of us uttered “fuuuck” and I shivered, though the basement wasn’t drafty. We exchanged a wide eyed glance and made our way back up to the wedding party, back up to work. My heart felt leaden and my head was elsewhere but none of the fancy dresses and suits had a clue what had just taken place below the surface.
My time at Kelton House spanned nearly two years in total. I had become accustomed—and loved—cohabitating with the spirits upstairs: the dog, Oscar with or without his cigarette, whatever Kelton was messing with the lights and the temperature. I was genuinely amused by the ghostly antics, not to mention my delight in the fact that this had become my normal.
But when the downstairs was a different story. When that terrified and terrifying spirit appeared, I thought, Oh no. I realized, a little sad, something had shifted.
My next shift following the downstairs scene was at night, alone. This had never happened before and I don’t recall the reasoning behind it. (Especially since the Kelton House was located in a truly unsafe neighborhood.) I sat with my book in the attached carriage house but I just stared at the page, on edge, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. I was drinking a can of Coke and a fly refused to let me be, it hovered then landed where my mouth was to go, then flew directly into my eye, then buzzed in my ear then back to the can. It felt personal. It felt menacing. I felt in my bones as if my life was in danger.
My experience of this beloved, historical, unique place had darkened, turned rotten like a peach. I wondered if I’d opened some sort of portal to allow the terror of those who passed through the space to actually pass through me.
I’m not certain if I came back for another shift or if I simply quit on the spot. Regardless, my time at Kelton House was clearly over.
But what a fabulous story to tell.
I remember loving to hear about all your experiences at Kelton House. It must have been so validating to learn that your coworkers also had the same sightings. I think it’s time for another visit to the Kelton House.💛