Who’s Haunting Columbus: The Lady in Gray
With Halloween coming to Columbus, our attentions turn to those who have gone on from this world–and those who cannot, or will not, go.
One of the most well known haunted places in Columbus is a two acre plot of land on the city’s near west side. There, a lady in Gray weeps. But for whom?
The Lady in Gray is the spectre that haunts the Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery. I took the time to check out the cemetery myself. It is a sad place. There is a calm sort of melancholy that encompasses all cemeteries. But for Camp Chase the place is especially sad. There lie the remains of 2087 Confederate soldiers. American boys so far from what was home, most of whom were fighting a war that they really didn’t understand and were destined to lose. Regardless of your personal politics, it is hard not to feel compassion for these young men.
A quick internet search will tell you that visitors in the evenings have sometimes seen the ghost of a lady in a gray Civil War period dress. During the day, visitors claim to have heard sobbing, though no one was there. Fresh flowers are placed on graves, particularly the graves of Benjamin Allen and an unknown.
While I was there I did not see or hear anything. I noticed the mature trees and the well kept stones. They line up one after the other as in many other military cemetaries. Many are now unreadable. Some older stones have been replaced with new ones. As you enter there is a large monument reading “2260 Confederate Soldiers of the War 1861-1865 Buried in this Enclosure.” Above the stone is an arch with one solitary word as a tribute to these fallen men, “AMERICANS.”
Camp Chase is located at 2900 Sullivant Ave. and is officially open 8-5 daily, though I was there after 7 on a Saturday and the cemetery gates were open and I was undisturbed.
As an honor to our men in uniform and a shout out to my “fellow” blogger, please check out Being an Air Force Wife, and pray for the safe return of our current military men and women fighting all over the world to keep us safe at home.
Columbus, Ohio, OH, Camp Chase, ghosts, Lady in Grey, Confederate
Columbus, OH
October 8th, 2007 at 11:00 am
[…] There are at least 19 places in the Western Hemisphere named for Christopher Columbus. Perhaps instead of celebrating Columbus Day, you could visit Columbus, Ohio, and hold a seance with the weeping Lady in Gray. […]
October 18th, 2007 at 9:59 am
[…] Columbus? Colonel Prichard and the Scorned Lover by Marie Esselstein If you are on a ghost hunt for Columbus’ most notorious ghosts, you cannot afford to miss having a meal at the Elevator Restaurant on High Street. Head north out […]