By Bill Ward, Newbury resident and historian
Despite years of reputed hauntings, when Nick Fischbach became a ranger at Punderson State Park back in the 1970s, he scoffed at the notion of a ghost in the Manor House. But that all changed for Nick one stormy winter night in 1979.
“The lodge was closed for renovation,” Nick explained in a recent sit-down at the Manor House. “The weather was terrible outside. I was in the office around 8 o’clock when one of the other rangers, a fella by the name of Dave Gardener, stopped to help me lock up for the night. One thing I was required to do was to make sure the lodge stayed at 70 degrees. We went down to the basement and checked the boilers. Everything was fine. We went up to the next floor… nice and warm there. We went from room to room… checked the doors, checked the windows… everything was fine. We decided to make our way up to the third floor. We got halfway up the spiral staircase, and all of a sudden it was cold. Dave said, ‘My God, is there a window open?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, maybe the wind blew the window open.’ When we got up to the top of the stairs, the windows were shut tight. The whole upstairs was like ice. We could actually see our breath in the air. We walked around the stair banister and stopped at a short hallway that led to the master bedroom. All of a sudden, a cold wind gushed out of the hallway right past us, accompanied by a woman’s high-pitched laughter. That laughter went all the way down the hallway and disappeared. I’m telling you the truth. This all happened really quickly. When the laughter stopped, the whole upstairs was warm. It was instant. That was the first paranormal experience I had here. After that, I started paying attention to what people were saying.”
Nick went on to talk about other supernatural incidents that have occurred at the Manor House in recent years:
- Faucets that turn on and off at will.
- Orbs that are often seen hovering or streaking through the second-floor hallway and in the library.
- The white-haired man who entered the front door vestibule and disappeared before entering the lobby.
- Glimpses of shadow people vaporizing into thin air.
- The many visitors who have captured ghost-like images on film. In fact, during a Rotary meeting several years ago, Chardon attorney Paul Newman snapped a picture, later discovering he had captured the image of a wispy, translucent form believed to be a ghost. Paul’s photo can be seen in the display case in the Punderson lodge lobby.
And then there was the little girl who spent a rainy afternoon in her parents’ second-floor guest room coloring. She told her parents that she was talking with a kind old man. They asked who the old man was. Later, in the lobby, the little girl spotted a photograph in the display case and exclaimed, “That’s the man!” It was W.B. Cleveland, former owner of the mansion who had been dead for nearly 90 years.
Like all good ghost stories, Nick saved the best haunting narrative for last.
“This story I’m about to tell you happened in the spring of 1979,” he explained. “The lodge was closed. Renovation work was being done. I decided to have one of my rangers, Jerry Cunningham, stay at the lodge at night because people were starting to poke around. Jerry lived quite a distance away in Fairport Harbor, so I told him he could stay in the lodge. Of course, I teased him about being nice to the ghost upstairs. We both laughed. He was staying downstairs in the other section at the end of the lodge. Around 2 o’clock in the morning, Jerry awoke to the sound of someone walking past his room in the hallway. He thought someone had broken into the building. So he got up, grabbed his flashlight and pistol, and walked out into the hallway. Nothing. Then he heard somebody walking down the north end of the hallway toward the lobby. He rushed out to the lobby and didn’t see anybody. But as he looked into the hallway, he saw the figure of a woman walking up the spiral staircase. He told her to stop, but she kept going. Then he realized she wasn’t walking; she was gliding up the steps. Again, he told her to stop. She paused, turned toward him, and disappeared. Immediately after the incident, Jerry called me at home, extremely shaken. ‘Nick, I just saw a ghost!’ I could tell he wasn’t kidding. ‘I’m telling you, I saw a ghost. A woman, wearing a long white gown. When I told her to stop, she turned… and when she looked at me… I couldn’t see her face… and she just disappeared.’ Jerry couldn’t get out of the lodge fast enough. He spent the rest of the night at my house in Burton. The next day he told me he didn’t want to stay in the lodge anymore. ‘I’ll stay somewhere else,’ he said. A month later, he asked to be reassigned to Mohican. And that’s the truth.”
Disclaimer: The content of this article is intended for entertainment purposes only. The accounts of ghostly encounters and experiences described herein are based on anecdotal reports and folklore associated with Punderson Manor House Lodge. The author does not claim any factual accuracy regarding these stories and encourages readers to approach the subject of ghosts with an open mind and a sense of curiosity. Punderson Manor House Lodge is not responsible for any interpretations or conclusions drawn from this article.
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