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Fairfield County Ohio Ghosts and Hauntings - Still-House Hollow and Old Foglesong Road

 

Still-House Hollow and Foglesong Road
Jacob Spangler's Ghostly Ride

When Lancaster was in its early stages, a rugged road ran alongside Fetters Run through several farming properties like the Foglesongs, Spanglers, and Fetters. It meandered past the rear of the Poor House Farm and ended where Rising Park is now. Its path now roughly follows Stringtown Road, but it was named Foglesong Road back in the day for the family whose farm abutted a large portion of the road. A deep and dark valley along a place dubbed Flat Rocks was called Still-House Hollow, for it was known to have a whiskey still-house hidden in the glens and ravines. Most avoided this section after dark, for peculiar wails and screams came from this hollow. Some complained that they often could not shake a certain sensation of gloom when coming out the other side.
Yet, one late night, Jacob Spangler, who lived along Foglesong Road, was taking an anxious horse ride along that rutted road to summon a doctor for a sick family member. He descended the forested hill leading into the hollow when his horse made a frightened snort, fixed her front legs hard in the soil, and quivered violently. Spangler leaned forward and squinted into the darkness. But what did his eyes behold? It was a yearling steer in his path with strangely glowing eyes and long hair. He tried to urge his horse forward, but the usually fearless mare refused to budge. Spangler, deciding that perhaps the horse’s judgment was better than his own, started to turn her around. But before the two could change direction, he felt something seize his leg! Upon looking down, he could see this thing—this half-man, half-calf was climbing up! Spangler could not move while the beast sat behind him, placing his front hooves over his shoulders. There the two rode until the boundary of the hollow, where the strange calf jumped off and disappeared into the woods.
It was no secret that this dark hollow where Jacob Spangler came face to face with the half-man half-calf was where a traveler discovered a bloody trail in years past. A horse had come home without its rider, a man named Ornsdorff. Nothing was left except two empty saddlebags with a dried gummy mix of blood, brains, and hair stuck to them. A party of men had followed the blood to the top of the hill and could see from the marks in the grass and soil where the man had fallen from his horse. They continued, following the path where it appeared a body was sloppily dragged from the road and into the dark hollow until they came to a shack with a still nearby owned by an old man named Crowley. The doors were locked, but the men broke through and resumed their pursuit of the bloody trail into a rear room. A foul stench of death and moldering sent some running out the door. When the rest entered the threshold of the room, before them lay a bloody corpse, but it was not a man and, instead, that of a dead yearling steer. The bodies of the homeowner and the dead rider were never found. And even today, on certain nights, those driving along the path of Stringtown Road feel a certain gloom embrace them until they reach Lancaster proper. Yet, why they sense it, they do not know.

Part of Still House Hollow is in the Flat Rocks climbing trail area of Keller-Kirn Park off Stringtown Road north of Lancaster.

 

 

Still House Hollow along Foglesong Road