Expedition Team: Dave Miller, Rosie Miller, Jacque Kelly
Date: August – December 2020
HOUSE HISTORY: Columbus records went back to the 1910’s but the AIRBNB owner is trying to verify references that has the building going back to the 1870’s.
CLAIMS: We rented this very nice second floor AIRBNB unit (Photo #1) located on 2nd Avenue in the Victorian Village area of Columbus one mile south of the OSU James Cancer Hospital. This old building had two separate units upstairs and two on the first floor. Each unit has their separate entrance. Only our unit and one unit downstairs are currently occupied. Rosie lived alone in our unit for 36 days while I was in the James Hospital that entire time for my bone marrow transplant. Rosie heard unexplainable noises on the roof and on the back balcony. After being released from the hospital I joined her for 70 days as we had to live close to the hospital due to weekly checkups and treatment. We both began hearing the noise on the back balcony sometimes during the day but mainly between 8 and 11pm. We would quickly look out the window or open the back door (Photo #2) but would observe no one on the balcony or below. It sounded like the heavy outdoor chairs being moved across the wooden floor of the balcony. I began placing the chairs in slightly different places but every time we heard the scooting sound, the chairs had not moved. We always just heard the sound.
Jacque and Nick visited us September 12-14 and stayed in the unit next to us on the second floor. Both Jacque’s and our units had doors opening to both the front and back balconies. Rosie and Jacque were on the back balcony around 2pm. They were on different ends of the balcony due to Covid19 safety. Jacque went inside for a minute. Rosie had here head down reading when she heard a chair being pulled out at the other end of the balcony (Photo #3). Thinking Jacque or Nick returned back outside she raised her head and was startled to see no one there. Fifteen seconds later Jacque opened the door and returned outside. On September 14, Jacque was inside working on her computer and smelled an intense odor of roses for ten seconds then it disappeared.
On September 17, Rosie was sitting on the east end of the balcony texting and the door to Jacque/Nick’s unit slowly opened by itself. Rosie checked but no one was in the unit. Rosie was sure that the door had been locked when Jacque left three days before.
Speaking to the AIRBNB owner one afternoon we told her about the balcony sounds. She revealed that she had heard the same noises of chairs moving several times when she was inside working or on the balcony. She told me she had occasionally smelled a rose scent in the apartment. Her testimony verified what we were hearing.
Rosie and I continued to hear the sounds of the balcony chairs moving several days a week throughout our stay. We could not debunk it. More disturbing was a similar sound of chairs moving or drawers being opened in the vacant second floor unit next to us and also the sound of something heavy on the roof that we experienced almost every night. It is a flat roof and no access to it so we cannot get up there to investigate the situation. It is not the sound of squirrels or raccoons scampering around. Rosie feels that both sounds on the balcony and on the roof could be a residual haunt which is a noise or sound repeated from an event in history rover and over again. One night Rosie was awakened to the sounds of slams in the small kitchen but no one was there. As for the balcony sounds, my crazy old west theory is that perhaps the building, before being broken up into four units, was one big boarding house, a bordello or a saloon. Maybe a group of men were playing poker, somebody cheated and the sound is that of a chair being pushed back fast, a disgruntled loser standing and pulling a gun. Perhaps he shot the cheater. Maybe that is why there was trauma and the residual haunting is there. We have tried hard to debunk the sounds but no luck. If it is a residual haunt there is nothing to fear. But one thing is for sure – there is unexplained, consistent sounds on the balcony, in the empty unit next door and on the roof of this old structure.
