The Ironton Tribune/Teresa Moore

Ghosts.

Open doors that slam shut. Faces that appear out of nowhere. These are the staples of Hollywood movies. But for some Lawrence Countians, such events are fleeting moments in their lives and examples of mysterious events in Lawrence County.

Home sweet home

The Kearns family on South Sixth Street in Ironton is a typical family with some atypical experiences.

"People read this and they're going to think we're crazy," daughter Michelle Carter said with a laugh. It is their collective sense of humor that has helped the family cope with mysterious events they've encountered since they moved into the house in 1991.

"You'll hear doors slam, the dogs bark at the wall and no one is there, the dogs will sit and stare at the wall. Every now and then they'll (the dogs) start in a door, and stop and turn around and won't go in," she said.

Shortly after moving in, Michelle, who was then a teenager, said she got a visit from an unexpected guest. "You know how you can be half asleep and you sort of feel someone there? I thought it was Mom or Dad so I rolled over and I thought I saw the figure of a man standing there near the door and it wasn't Dad. He had on a yellow shirt and light blue pants."

At first she thought she was dreaming and closed her eyes, but when she opened them again, Michelle said the man was still there. That's when she

jumped up and ran through another door and summoned her parents. Her father, Tom Kearns, searched the house and found no one. The visitor was never seen again.

Tom Kearns said that once, he was lying upstairs watching television and heard someone open the door downstairs and walk up the stairs. A search revealed he was home alone.

Michelle, who has since married and lives in what used to be a doctor's office at the back of the house, said her dog, Thumpy, often refuses to sleep in the apartment with her, husband James and son James Michael, preferring instead to sleep in the main house with Tom Kearns and his wife, Jane.

"The hair will stand up on her back," Tom Kearns said.

What - or who - is making mischief in the Kearns household? They are hesitant to say.

"I do believe in entities. I don't doubt there is a such a thing as spirits. Why wouldn't there be?" Jane Kearns said.

"Whatever it is, it's a friendly ghost," Michelle said.

Teenie dancer

Woodland Cemetery is, not surprisingly, the site of many of Lawrence County's most colorful legends. Some believe that this resting place for the dead is actually a repository for the spirits of those whose remains are interred there.

One local legend surrounds that of Antoinette "Tennie" Sherpetoska Peters, the Russian ballerina who married industrialist James F.

Peters II and came to live in Ironton. "Tennie" Peters, who died in an automobile accident in 1962, is said to haunt the cemetery, as is rumored to dance at night on the lawn around her tomb. An Ironton woman said she may have seen the ghost of Peters one night last year. Carol Brown said the experience was sad rather than scary.

"It was the night of the (Lawrence County Historical) ghost walk last year," Brown recalled. "My daughter, Sarah, was one of the ballet dancers. They were actually finished and we were waiting on one of the other mothers to pick up her daughter so we could all leave and I glanced through the window (into the crypt) and saw this face and then it was gone and I thought 'oh my'.

"It was a sad face, dark hair, not scary or anything. It was forlorn. It was hard to describe."

Brown said others then came to peer into the crypt but by then, the face was gone. Does brown believe the stories of Peters dancing at night?

"I would like to go back some time and see," Brown said. "I do believe in ghosts."

Dear, but not departed

For many, the presence of a deceased person is not a fearful experience but a treasured visit from someone they cherished, now departed. Ruthanne Delong, of Ironton, said her mother, Betty Jo Baker, who died three years ago, still makes her presence known from time to time to the family that still misses her.

"My mother passed away in June 2001, and her first birthday after she died was very emotional and very traumatic for my family, obviously," Delong said.

"We talked about ways to remember her and still help the grieving process, particularly for the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren and we decided what we would do was take balloons to her grave on her birthday. We wanted to tie some balloons to her marker and then have the

grandkids and great -grandkids write heaven messages on some of the balloons and we'd turn them loose."

Delong remembered that it was a beautiful, dry September day, with the sky a vivid, cloudless blue. After visiting Baker's grave, the family proceeded to the

open area at Patriot's Path to release the balloons with the heaven messages.

"We watched them go up and I looked and there was the most brilliant rainbow in the sky right over where we were and it stayed there the whole time we were there," Delong said. Rainbows are not uncommon occurrences, but it had not been raining that day. "But you never see a rainbow on a beautiful day like that," she said.

That incident at Woodland Cemetery was the first in a series of incidents Delong and her family have come to explain as mother moments - moments when they feel Baker's presence in their lives as if she were still with them.

"My sisters have smelled her cooking. My sister once smelled green beans and fresh-sliced tomatoes and it was five o'clock in the morning. I sometimes smell her cologne. Once I was at the office (Lawrence County Domestic Violence Task Force) and Mother always wore Sunflowers cologne, and I smelled her cologne; the office just filled with that fragrance."

Empty hospital?

Once River Valley Hospital closed its doors in January 2001, all that remained of the medical center were files of medical records, equipment stored neatly away and stacks of bed linens, washed and waiting in case the hoped for reopening materialized. Or not?

Some deputies who guarded the hospital until the time it was purchased by Our Lady of Bellefonte Hospital have told stories of experiences that suggest they weren't alone in those days of uncertainty.

Deputy Brenda Wilson said she was working at the hospital one day when her mother, Bea Massie, stopped by to bring her lunch.

"I was sitting at the desk and all of a sudden this door slammed shut, just like someone took it and just slammed it," Wilson said. "I don't know whose eyes got bigger, hers or mine."

Sheriff's Deputy Sgt. Randy Goodall said he had heard the stories over the years from hospital employees who spoke of mysterious events while they were working. After guarding the empty hospital, he had his own to share.

Goodall said he was making his rounds one night on the midnight shift when he came upon an unsecured door he thought was supposed to be locked. He went into the room to make sure no one was in there, and inspected it for a few moments. When he turned around to leave, he saw something that startled him: a mop bucket in the door way.

"You know those mop buckets on wheel that janitors use? It was in front of the doorway. It wasn't there when I went in. If it had been I would have had to have moved it when I went in."

Teresa Moore is a staff reporter for the Ironton Tribune. She can be reached at 532-1445 ext. 25.