The ghost of a night watchman haunts the furnace.

Ghost of Night Watchman at Hope Furnace

 One story begins with a young couple driving home from the husband’s parents in Nelsonville to McArthur about thirty five minutes away.  It was late that November evening around eleven o’clock. They were thinking about upcoming Christmas, getting the kids home to bed and the usual worries of paying the bills. They crossed State Route 56 and made a little jog in the road to the left to hop on State Route 278. State Route 278 is a lonesome sort of roadway nowadays. Few cars take this remote section this late at night unless they are coming into Lake Hope State Park campground or cutting through the area towards McArthur or Chillicothe.

It is nothing more than thick pine forest on either side of the roadway wavering for a few pitch dark miles. And it is deathly quiet and incredibly dark, the only homes for miles are a few tucked far into the hills. You almost expect ghostly white teams of horses to come racing around the sharp curves, laden with hundred year old charcoal for the fires.

But on the chilly night while little droplets of sleety snow tapped on the windshield,  there would be about 30 seconds the young couple wasn’t thinking about much of anything at all but the terror filling their chests.  Everything around them would seem to come to a halt while their car rambled past the small section of Lake Hope State property where the tumbledown remains of the old Hope Furnace chimney-like stack now stood.

A light. The woman in the car saw a tiny light dipping  up and down to her right along the hillside. Bob. Bob. Bob.It was as nearly as high as the treeline. The husband slowed the car while they watched it waver up and down along the hillside. Had it been summer, they would have tossed the idea around that it was nothing more than someone with a flashlight walking around the hills. But not on this night with the sleet coming down steadily and no cars in sight. They were nearly at a dead standstill when the light flared bright white. Ten seconds passed, then twenty seconds passed. They blinked into the darkness. Then suddenly . . . Bob. Bob. Bob.  The couple felt time nearly stood still before the wife gasped and pushed her hand to her lips. The light was now closer. Had it moved from atop the furnace across the expanse of the grassy picnic area? It was too fast for a human to run from atop the old furnace area to the bottom of the ravine. Another flash filled the night air. The man did not wait for the light to get closer, he hit the accelerator and slip-slid into the night.

It’s hard to believe driving along the lonely stretch of State Route 278 through Lake Hope State Park that this region was once bustling with traffic from the many small towns between. Look right to left anywhere after the lake and you are sure to see little more than the thick pine forests. The quiet solitude of the woodland belies what used to be. It is hard to imagine a town of furnace worker shacks, a general store, a post office and tiny schoolhouse. Until you notice the crumbling monster of the old furnace shoved into the valley floor. Not much more than a fortress of thick stone slabs, bent iron and a smattering of black, shiny rocks of slag remain to remind us of the past.

But during the mid and late 1800s, the drive to pull raw iron ore from Southern Ohio’s fertile sandstone soil and turn it into iron brought mining, railroading and iron blast furnaces. There was Zaleski and Mineral, Ingham and Hope – all filled with workers and their families, eking out an existence working in the mines or at the furnaces to make a simple living.

From approximately 1854 to the early 1900s, the tiny town of Hope lay spread  about the hills, knolls and valleys of what is now Lake Hope State Park and Zaleski State Forest. A little more than a hundred people worked and lived  the harsh life controlled by those who operated the furnace. Most of them owned little, lived in makeshift rows of shacks and worked long hours just to stay alive. Nearly any sign of life here from a hundred years ago has vanished. The only remaining hint of existence is a tiny, rundown cemetery, several foundations hidden beneath pine tree needles and a layer of deep green moss and the stone structure that was once a bustling iron furnace stack.

Ghost of Night Watchman at Hope Furnace

It is the furnace, legend tells, boasting the most popular ghost found in the hills around Hope. Whispers have always told of a night watchman for Hope Furnace who stumbled into the fiery stack. He burned to death almost instantly, not even a scorched bone to be found among the charred cinders at the bottom of the pit. The man’s name still remains a mystery and no newspaper article about his death can be found. However, it would not be uncommon for the furnace operators to hire a nameless tenant of a neighboring town or a vagrant passing through to work in their company.  Most were immigrants working for little more than enough food to get them by day to day. But the mysterious worker is said to be seen with an orange lantern still strolling across the top of the furnace on rainy evenings. He is seen as nothing more than a shadowy figure traveling as if walking on air where the old buildings once connected to the furnace.  

Except after dark. If legend is correct and the night is right, driving along State Route 278 just might be busier than you think. And where people once lived and died, come ghosts and tales just waiting to be validated or disproved.  Such is the legend of the floating lantern at Hope Furnace, the twinkling lights and gentle human-life murmurs floating through the pines.