Ich bin ein Berliner (the one in Ohio)

Earlier this summer my son and I drove 40 minutes down the road to Amish country for a ghost tour. I was very excited for this one, as it is run by a family that performs a magic show at an old fashioned magic theatre in Berlin, Ohio, right in the heart of Amish country. Berlin is a quirky little picturesque village, usually packed with tourists in the summer. Madhrikan’s Ghost Tour is part of Catalpa Trading Company, a unique local business which houses the magic theatre, a magic store, seasonal shows, and the ghost walk. From what I can gather, the ghost walk is new this season, but the magic show has been around for over a decade. The theatre is an intimate setting, with room for approximately 50 patrons, and they describe the type of magic they perform as “old fashioned”, including illusions such as “Mascot Moth”, which is essentially a disappearing lady illusion. (One of my personal favorites!) You enter the theatre through the magic shop and descend down the stairs to the performance area, complete with antique (and a few modern) magic banners, church-style seating, and fairly advanced lighting and acoustics to enhance the set and complement the show. The ghost tour was led by no other than Madhrikan himself and his assistant, Amanda, to whom he gave accolades for doing a deep dive into the history of Berlin. She did most of the historical research for the tour. Berlin was founded by Joseph Troyer and John Swigert, both of other Berlins (one in Pennsylvania and one in Germany), so it was only natural that they called this town in Ohio Berlin as well. Berlin, Ohio is in the center of Holmes County, which is home to a community of 56,000 Amish, only second to Lancaster County in Pennsylvania.

The first stop was the local Berlin cemetery, as it closes at dusk so we had to be in and out before that. It is absolutely gorgeous at sunset and there we learned a lot about the Pomerene family. Peter, the patriarch of the family, was the town doctor. Their family had all sorts of tragedy throughout their generations, as we learned on the tour. We also visited the site of the former Christian Miller house. Beyond where his property once stood is wild terrain where, as legend has it, a tall imposing man named Tom Lions used to live. He squatted in a cabin in the middle of the woods and the story goes that he was so mean-spirited that in a raging fit he killed a human baby. Finally, after years of the townspeople trying to hunt him down he was killed by a wolf hunter. There is also a theory that a witch doctor named Orlinger may have killed the baby and then killed Tom after. Either way, Tom Lions haunts the entire area. He is the nefarious legend children are told as they huddle around a dimly lit campfire; a tall, partially wild, intimidating man with the intent to kill innocent children. Talk about fuel to induce nightmares….. I won’t give the entire tour away, but we did end back at Catalpa Trading company, on the main drag of downtown Berlin. We learned about other haunted locations in Holmes County, the most haunted being the Victorian Mansion and the Courthouse, both in Millersburg. I would agree with that conjecture. I’ve visited both and I’ve heard the stories. There is another blog I’ve written a few years back about Millersburg– employees and docents often refuse to go into the basement of the Victorian Mansion, reporting a “man in black” that is not a very pleasant entity to encounter. We also learned other stories of Holmes County including an Angel of Death in the Salem cemetery; a case of a cheating husband in Nashville (the one in Ohio) resulting in a house being burned down; a stage coach house with a black cat and yet another man in black; and a haunted boarding school. Perhaps the most interesting to me were the stories of what goes on in the Magic Theatre where we sat at the end portion of our tour. Madhrikan set up a REM pod as he spoke to us. The REM pod creates its own electronic field and detects energy/activity. Madhrikan bills it as the most reliable piece of ghost detecting equipment. It went off repeatedly while we were sitting in there. The theatre is full of antiques and while the theatre is fairly new, he believes that one of these objects may have brought some activity with it, as they did not have any strange occurrences until fairly recently, after some of these items were obtained. For example, there is a genie vase that he acquired, which may be considered a haunted object. The Madhrikan family also experiences lights that go on and off without explanation, changes in temperature, and other atypical odd activity, like merchandise in the magic shop being moved from shelves to being placed neatly on the floor when they are not looking and when no one else is present. Sharon, the store manager has experienced the theatre door that she vividly remembers closing one evening, being wide open when she returned and the lights that she knew she had turned off when closing up for the night, that were on when she returned. During their seasonal Halloween Super Show, they end with an 1800s Victorian seance, so perhaps that could have conjured someone or someTHING that contributes to the strange happenings in the building. Either way, this small town in the heart of Amish country has some interesting history and some gorgeous scenery. If you can, make it a point of attending a ghost tour and/or a magic show.