Ross County Ohio Ghosts and Hauntings - Elizabeth's Grave in Mount Union-Pleasant Valley Cemetery
Elizabeth's Grave in Mount Union-
Pleasant Valley Cemetery
Chillicothe, OH 45601
The ghost of a woman hanged there is said to haunt the cemetery - Elizabeth's Grave.
he cemetery’s location is no longer secluded along the short stretch of Union Lane within Pleasant Valley Wildlife Area, just outside Chillicothe. Once an eerie drive along a far backroad, the forested area has been replaced by new homes almost to the spot where the old Presbyterian Church used to stand, and now, only the Mount Union-Pleasant Valley Cemetery graveyard remains, with broken monuments and even old headstones scrapped in piles in the rear. It appears just another old graveyard lost to time. But this place where the dead were laid to rest is special; it holds much of the prominent McCoy clan, one of the earliest settlers to this part of the country.
Several generations lived, loved, and died on this land. Then, the state gobbled up the property surrounding it for a hunting area and it seemed left to waste; most of the gravestones are now destroyed by vandals and lay strewn about. The area is littered with remnants of hunting season and the curious - beer cans, shotgun shells, and trash from local fast-food restaurants, carelessly thrown out of car windows by patrons. The homesteaders who lived, worshipped, and died here are long gone, but there is one thing, barring the destruction of the once beautiful church and grounds, that remains-a haunting. This old cemetery is home to one of Chillicothe’s most famous legends-Elizabeth’s Grave.
For years, those who dare to seek out ghosts have traveled the spooky old gravel, pothole-ridden road, pausing in the drive just outside the cemetery proper, for to pass into the perimeter after dusk would not only bring bad luck but also dispel any signs of a ghost. They sat on the hoods of their cars or by the roadway to wait for a particular mist to slip up from a patch of woods behind the graveyard. On certain nights, the lucky ones would glimpse a white form materialize as if from deep beneath the hallowed earth, a fog that circled and formed into that of a woman. Then, she floated parallel to the woodlot along the overgrown grass and weeds. She passed the location of the old church until she came to a place where old gravestones once stood beneath a majestic old tree.
Those who visited called her Elizabeth.
The oldest stories of the haunting explain that the family buried the dead woman’s corpse by that church and near that tree well over a hundred years ago, next to her kin. However, an aged oak busted during a windstorm or vandals on a drunken spree toppled the gravestone. Mislaid, the tombstone was later dragged back to its proper position, or maybe the wrong site, by an unthinking caretaker until it was tossed like garbage with others to one far corner. The strange thing was that each time it was hauled away, the headstone returned to that place beneath the tree, where the ghost had returned before fading away. And those whose mortal hands moved it came to horribly bad luck for quite some time, and most until the day they died.
Read it in my Ohio Ghost Hunter Guide II- find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, at Grandma Fayes near Old Man’s Cave, or other stores carrying the books.
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