07/22/2009: Thanks to Denise Miller for sharing her experiences while living at the former Ruth Farm along Bussey Road in Scioto County. Denise and her family witnessed many paranormal events while renting the home over a span of two years. From doors opening and closing on their own to footsteps in the stairwell to objects mysteriously moving to seeing the ghosts themselves. Even a priest called to bless the home ran out! Read Denise’s amazing story below.
In 1984, my husband and I were looking for a larger home to share with our three children. While looking through the newspaper, I found a large farmhouse with a smaller farmhouse all for rent, renters choice. It was on the old Ruth Farm. I called and set up an appointment with the owner knowing that an older couple had looked at the larger farmhouse and might choose it. On the very top of Bussey Hill, out in the country, sat a wonderful old farmhouse that had been remodeled, and about twenty yards away sat the smaller farmhouse. We met with the owner and took a tour of both houses and fell in love with the larger one…our first mistake…only to be told it was rented. We left a bit downhearted. The next day, the owner called us and asked if we still wanted the large house. The people backed out of renting it.
The very night we had moved in, while getting the kids settled into their new bedrooms, we could hear a loud chomping noise. It sounded like horses eating apples. That’s what my husband said it most likely was, but it was so loud and the field across the road was a good distance with a steep hill and no apple trees. My son Ryan’s room upstairs was in the very front of the house. It was a very little room with a large unfinished closet. The girl’s room was to the side of the house facing a large driveway and parking lot. Our bedroom was toward the back of the house with lots of windows.
At 11:00 PM, the phone rang. No one was on the phone, just a weird static sound. Little did we know that the phone would ring at 11 PM every night for almost two years we lived there. The morning after moving in, Ryan informed us that he didn’t want to sleep in his room anymore because an old witch-looking woman kept coming into his room talking to him. Ryan was 6, and at this time, was a very quiet, shy type of boy. That was soon to change. He told us that the woman had old hair (gray) and it was in a knot on top of her head. She had a long nightgown dress on. We started finding Ryan sleeping at the foot of one of his sister’s bed when we got up. Then the water in the kitchen kept coming on by itself. It was an old sink and so were the fixtures, so we replaced them. But they still would just come on.
By the end of the month, everyone noticed a difference in my husband Matt and our son. Matt became very withdrawn and didn’t want to leave the house. It was a fight to get him to go to work. Ryan became angry and unruly. Then the footsteps started. I wasn’t getting much sleep because someone was walking up and down the stairs all night…loud stomps. My husband and I would take turns getting up to see which kids were up, but they were always asleep. We moved Ryan’s bed into the large hall, then the crashes downstairs started. I can’t tell you how many times my husband and I, with guns, went downstairs looking for intruders.
My husband’s sister and her family moved into the little farmhouse beside us. Then the back door wouldn’t let you open it when Patty or Mike would come over. The front door was locked and the keys lost years before. Then all of a sudden it would just swing open. Then it started opening on its own, even though it had been dead-bolted. We made a family joke about our ghost “George” just came home. After this, Ryan started getting what looked like bite marks and scratches on his back and upper arms. My mother sore we had a rat that was biting him. At this point I was scared and wanted to move. Matt wouldn’t hear it. Our families hated coming over because they said the sense of dread and doom would overcome you…very depressing.
We started seeing a figure of a person looking out the girl’s bedroom into the parking area. We would sit out there when both families got their kids to sleep so we could talk and visit. Neither house had air, so all the windows would be open so we could hear the kids. I would have to get up and run through the house, then upstairs to see which child was up, but none were. Matt’s niece, Danette, came to live with us and took Matt’s radio room. Sometimes we would end up with the 16-year-old girl in our room at night because someone was talking to her. You could also hear a child cry at night in that room, a sobbing cry. Then there was the handprint that appeared between two panes of glass. A large handprint, almost twice the size of my husband’s. We couldn’t figure out how it could have gotten there.
Matt and Ryan’s moods got worse and things started flying off tables…a can, ashtrays, dishes… The washer and dryer came on by themselves. The front door flew open one night in front of a guest and slammed shut. It was still locked with no way to open it. The last straws was the night we both woke up to see the old woman looking back at us from our bedroom mirror. She was inside the mirror, not in front of it. Something held my husband down on the bed. He could feel it, large, heavy and furry. It was smothering him and I could see the large indentation in our bed, but I couldn’t see or feel it. I tried to pull Matt off the bed and he was finally able to move. All along, I would tell Matt I wanted to have the house blessed and he wouldn’t let me. He would tell me that the only thing I was going to do was make it madder…and I couldn’t stop.
We decided to buy a house in Franklin Furnace. I took my sister-in-law with me to tell our landlord that in a few months we would be moving as soon as our house got built. I decided to ask her if she thought the house was haunted. She wanted to know why, so I started to tell her all that had went on. She said she had seen and heard a few things when she was a child, but thought that it was just part of being a child. The house had been in her family for a very long time and a few family members had died there. Her great-grandparents along with her grandparents, which her grandfather died in what was our family room in a fire, but most of that part of the house was gone and remodeled. An aunt died in Matt’s radio room as a young adult. It was her bedroom. A couple of farmhands had died there after being in accidents on the farm. Shew! And her Grannie. So much went on during those two years, I could never remember everything. Something we talked about when all get together.
Two months before we were to move into our new house, I had called a priest at St. Peter’s Church in Wheelersburg to help me. Things were bad. He put me in touch with a priest from West Portsmouth that could help me and understood what I was battling. We made plans for the priest to come and bless the house while Matt was at work. Ryan had stayed home from school being sick and my sister-in-law Patty and her sister-in-law Tammy were at the house, along with our two girls Mandy and Amber. I gave the priest a rundown on what all had happened since I had last talked to him. He started with the living room, blessing the house, shaking holy water. We all followed him from room to room with holy water getting in Ryan’s eye and him complaining it burnt. We got back to the living room, getting ready to bless the last room, the kitchen, when the loudest high-pitched scream came from the kitchen. The back door flew open and then flew shut. We all climbed over each other getting out of the house, priest included. When Matt came home, I told him what I had done and what had happened. He was quite upset. Then everything just died down. It became just a lovely old farmhouse.
A few days before we were moving, there was a knock on the back door. It was the priest. I invited him in, but he wouldn’t come in. He told me he had come to warn me that it was coming back and I had to make sure that I didn’t accidentally take anything that belonged to this house with us or it would follow us to our new home.
I no longer live in Ohio, but every time we go home, we have to drive by the house on Bussey Road. The upstairs is no longer there and the front porch is gone, someone has redone the house. I always want to stop and ask the new owners if they ever see or hear anything, but won’t…just in case it is still there waiting.