ZOAR, Ohio — Years ago, Libby Moffat felt a strange calling to stop at a local yard sale.
“I don’t usually go to those. I don’t need anything,” she told a group of tourgoers on Oct. 10. “But for some reason, I felt compelled to go to this sale.”
She and the homeowner made light conversation and got to talking about the neighborhood. When Moffat told her where she lived — in the old, white house in the middle of the village that she inherited from her late mother — the woman paused.
“And she says, ‘I have something to show you,’” Moffat recalled. “And she says, ‘It’s in my basement.’”
The woman seemed harmless enough, so Moffat followed her into the dark.
“And I got about halfway down the basement steps and I went, ‘That’s my mom,’” she said.
There, hanging in the stranger’s basement, was a portrait of Moffat’s mother, Bess.
“Well, my mom would stand either in the doorway or right here (on the porch) with her arms crossed, and she’d kind of look up and down the street, and she talked to people. If, you know, somebody was coming by, she’d greet them and just talk a little bit. She was social. She didn’t have anything better to do,” Moffat said.
The homeowner explained her husband, an artist, had painted Bess from a candid photo he’d taken of her, arms crossed staring out of frame. Moffat brought the painting home, but its sheer size made finding a spot to hang it on the wall an ordeal; a red box depicted in front of Bess’s feet confused her.
“And I thought, ‘I don’t know why you would do that,’ but I didn’t like it,” she said.
She couldn’t throw it away — it was her mother, after all — yet she decided not to display it, tucking it away in the attic instead.
Years later, while helping Moffat bring down holiday decorations, her grandson noticed the portrait.
“And he had this funny look on his face, and then he pointed toward the wall where this picture was, and he said, ‘That’s the lady I used to see at the end of my bed.’”
Whether or not ghosts are real, Moffat told Farm and Dairy that some stories are just too extraordinary to dismiss.
“The one with my mom, that one, you know, I really believe in that one,” she said.
Moffat’s house is just one stop on a lantern-lit tour of Zoar’s historic buildings, where a mix of guides, volunteers and residents bring eerie tales of the past to life and share unexplainable encounters with specters from beyond. Tickets are $19, with tours departing every 15 minutes, beginning at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 24, Oct. 25, Oct. 31 and Nov. 1. Reservations are required. More information is available online.
More than thrills
Several stops on Zoar Village’s lantern-lit ghost tours are tied to eerie legends as well as local history. The 1833 Zoar Hotel, once home to a basement bar called the Ratskeller, has long been linked to strange activity, from a doll that seemed to move on its own to guests feeling their hair pulled. Inside a grand red brick and sandstone home where the leader of the society that founded Zoar once lived, guides spoke of a toddler in a tour group pointing at empty corners of the room while laughing. The storehouse for the village, called the Magazine, is described as one of the creepiest spots, known for sudden coldness and shifting objects. The Bakery is said to be haunted by its last owners, and then there’s the Zoar Store, where staff have reported hearing unexplained footsteps and furniture moving upstairs.
For Chris Mathias, a paranormal investigator from nearby Dover, Zoar’s tours were a turning point. His interest in spirits began after losing his mother and grandmother, both of whom passed away in his home.
“I honestly started getting into it because I just wanted to speak to them one more time,” he said. “I started looking for answers. People say that you can speak to spirits, so that’s what got me into it. I wanted to see if it’s real or not.”
His first real encounter in Zoar came on a ghost tour he attended with his wife.
“We were handed a Polaroid picture of a full-body apparition they caught there in Zoar,” he said. “That day, I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Like, this can’t be edited. This is a real photo. I’m holding it in my hand.’”
Mathias asked to volunteer and eventually returned as a lantern tour guide. Before long, he was slipping ghost-hunting equipment into his pocket and letting visitors listen as his devices picked up unexplained activity.
One of his most vivid experiences came at the Bakery.
“Frank and Louise are the ones who used to operate it, and our devices came through with Frank and Louise’s names,” he said. “We were getting ready to leave. The door wouldn’t open. It was shut. It was like locked. It was really weird. (We) couldn’t get the door to unlock, and the device was saying, ‘Don’t leave.’ So everybody on the tour got to experience that.”
Mathias said he’s always searching for evidence, whether through audio recordings, photography or other tools. For him, it’s about more than thrills.
A medium was able to share details with Mathias about his late mother and family that they couldn’t possibly have known. The experience brought him to tears and gave him hope that his mother was still present in some way, reinforcing his belief that his paranormal investigations have a greater meaning and purpose.
“It let me know that my mom is there and she’s aware that I’m trying to communicate with her,” he said. “So it gave me hope, and I know that there is something else out there. But I don’t have the answer for it yet. So I’m still searching.”
Tammy Schrum, the site director for Historic Zoar Village, has been leading efforts to preserve the community and organize events like the ghost tours for more than a decade. She said Zoar’s ghost tours have grown into one of the village’s most popular attractions and traditions.
“It started out with just one weekend,” she said. “And each year, we just keep adding more and more. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger every year.”
Today, ghost tours attract about 1,200 visitors each Halloween season. Proceeds go directly into preserving the town, from the historic garden to school programs.
The ghost tours aren’t just about fundraising, though. They’re also about fun.
“I mean, whether you believe in ghosts or not, it’s just a fun experience,” Schrum said. “And I know a lot of people love the spooky season.”
