Rogues Hollow
Rogues Hollow is an area in northeast Ohio in a small town called Doylestown. I had heard about this place my entire life, but the other day was my first visit there. The historical society hosted a “walk in the hollow” for 5 bucks, so why not? It started out with a campfire and one of the board members of the historical society shared a bit of the local lore. After that, we were sent off to walk the trail. They had costumed characters jumping out at guests. While I don’t appreciate what I call “cheap thrills” like this, I did enjoy hearing the stories that I’ve heard bits and pieces of over the years, and I enjoyed exploring the area in person.
This area was once home to many coal mines. The ghosts of coal miners who died from the mines caving in and causing them to suffocate still allegedly haunt the area. They were industrious, and their work here was never complete. The entrance to the mines have been permanently sealed shut, but the sounds of tools picking away can still be heard echoing through the empty mines. And the walkways near the mine-shafts are equally plagued by miners who never wanted to leave a job unfinished.
Rogues Hollow was once a crazy place in the later 1800s. Outlaws and gangsters hid out here, dodging law enforcement, and drinking themselves silly, far away from civilization. Shoot-outs occurred on a regular basis. And robberies at gun-point were common. It has been speculated that the ghost stories were simply made up to keep people away from what was actually just a wild and dangerous place…but bizarre things continue to happen there, even 100+ years later, after the drunken debacles took place.
Chidester Mill was located right near the trail I explored the other night. The original mill is long-gone, but a replica stands in its footsteps.
The ghost of a young man wanders the grounds, and haunts the sawmill and dye-house building. He fell into a wheel and was crushed to death. Much like the coal miners, his work is never complete and he is often seen returning to work during the evening hours to finish the job that he was never able to finish in his lifetime.
We also have our own headless horse (not to be confused with the headless horseMAN) in Rogues Hollow (not to be confused with SLEEPY Hollow). There was once an old Oak Tree on the Rogue’s Hollow trail, with limbs hanging down to the dirt path. One dark, moonless night, a horse was galloping along the roadway and did not see the limb. His head hit the low-lying branch and it was cut off, and fell from his body. The ghost of the horse was seen many times by those traveling to Doylestown. Some folks report to have seen the devil, himself, with blazing red eyes seated upon that headless horse.
Among the other phantoms, there is also a ghost train that crosses Rogues Hollow. It is said that if you drove over the tracks at exactly midnight, your car will die. You’d see the train coming, but you would be trapped in your car and not have the ability to get out of it, nor to start it. The train would then disappear, right before it would have hit you.
Perhaps the most famous legend of Rogues Hollow is “Crybaby Bridge”. There are many versions of this story, and I reference one in my blog from this past summer, when I visited Canal Fulton. The story that I heard the other night alleges that a young woman was abandoned by her lover when he found out she was pregnant. When the child was born, she tossed it into the cold waters. If you stand on the bridge, you can hear the child screaming and crying. And you might even see the mournful mother. She stands along the edge, staring into the water, forever mourning her tiny forsaken ghost. Another version insists that a young mother’s house was on fire. Her baby, set ablaze in flames was in her arms, and not knowing what to do, she threw the child into the water to save him from burning to death. As fate would have it, she did not get him back out before he perished in the cold water on a moonlit night.
Do any of these stories merit? I don’t know the answer to that. I am always a skeptic with an open-mind and a fascination for the macabre. I’ll go back one day to explore more of Rogues Hollow, but you won’t catch me there alone on a moonless night on horseback, traversing the bridge, nor the train tracks.
