Mudhouse Mansion

Mudhouse Mansion is a scary true ghost story about a real haunted mansion in Fairfield County, Ohio. They say it is haunted by the ghosts of a family who died there years ago under mysterious circumstances. Update: Sadly, Mudhouse Mansion doesn’t exist anymore. It was torn down by the owner on Sept 21, 2015.

Mudhouse Mansion was a haunted house located outside Lancaster, Ohio. According to locals in Lancaster, the house was built in the early 1800s by a government official who lived there after the Civil War. The man still kept slaves in Mudhouse Mansion, even though it was illegal. It seems this man didn’t abide by the law and kept his slaves locked up in an outbuilding at night.

He treated his slaves very poorly and conditions were so bad that one slave started building a tunnel underneath the wall of the outbuilding. He dug a little every night after the lights in the mansion had gone out and the slaveowner and his family had gone to sleep. Eventually his tunnel was completed and he squeezed himself down the small opening and came up on the other side of the wall.

In the dead of night, he crept towards the mansion, slipped the lock on the back door, tip-toed up the staircase and killed everyone inside. In the morning, locals discovered what had happened, but all the slaves had escaped and no-one was ever charged with the crime.

The house lay vacant for years afterwards and neighbors heard strange groans and shrieks coming from within the empty mansion. Everyone believed it was haunted by the ghosts of the slaveowner and his family. Nobody dared to enter the menacing looking building.

According to local legend, a man actually did buy the house in 1892 and moved in with his wife and their 3 children. Neighbors saw the family moving in, unloading their belongings from trucks and carrying them into the house.

And then… nothing. Neighbors never saw them again. The family never left the house. Neighbors thought it was very odd for a family of 5 to spend all their time indoors. When one neighbor looked out her bedroom window, all she could make out was the figure of a woman, dressed all in white, standing at the second floor window. The figure wasn’t doing anything, just standing there, staring at her.

When the neighbor looked again, the following day, she saw the figure again, standing in the same position. Every day, whenever the neighbor looked at Mudhouse Mansion, the figure was always there. Standing in exactly the same position.

On the 10th day, she called the police and asked them to investigate. When policemen broke into the mansion and climbed the stairs to the second floor, they were greeted by a terrible sight.

All 5 family members were hanging lifeless from the ceiling. They were all dressed in white nightgowns. It appeared that they had taken their own lives. The figure the neighbor had seen was the mother of the family. And she hadn’t been standing at the window, she had been hanging there… for 10 whole days.

After that, nobody would live in the house and it has remained vacant to this day. People still come to visit the old mansion but the current owner will not allow anyone to enter the property. Sometimes, she sits outside with a shotgun in her lap, to frighten off trespassers. She is afraid that if anyone goes in, they will never come out alive.

Local children call it “Mary’s House” and tell each other that the famous Bloody Mary of legend grew up there. People who live in the area say that on cold dark nights, you can sometimes still see the figure of a woman, all in white, standing motionless at the second floor window.