Get to Know Denise the Assistant

You only know me as the person behind the website and graphics and some posts. But Marin Thomas ad I have something fun in common. We both love visiting old places and if they’re haunted, even better. Since today is National Carousel/Merry-Go-Round Day I thought it would be fun to share a story about one of my favorite places.

One year, my friend, her teenage daughter and I drove an hour and a half west of Cleveland to the Lake Erie Islands and the Sandusky area. We stayed in a hotel on the mainland but split up the days doing touristy things. Normally I go to the islands, come home. Or go to Cedar Point in Sandusky and come home. I've been visiting that area my entire life because I live in Cleveland and don't normally do touristy things someone not from the area might do. On the last day of our trip, we went to the Merry-Go-Round Museum. Who knew there was one? Not me!

The Merry-Go-Round Museum is located in a large old post office building. What I remember from the tour (and confirmed with the museum's website), is that the museum started as an idea in the late 80s when the Post Office issued carousel stamps and one of them was from a carousel at Cedar Point. To celebrate the release of the stamps, a group of people set up a display of old carousel horses outside the post office building in Sandusky. They only expected a small crowd, but people from around the country came. And this was the the beginning of the carousel museum!

I went on the tour thinking it was a cool place with a working carousel inside and a display of different types of carousel animals. It wasn't the most exciting tour I've ever been on but it was a great place to visit. There's so much history in this place. If you are there at the right time, you might see someone working on the next raffle horse. Each year they have a carousel animal crafted that you can buy raffle tickets for as a fundraiser to support the museum.

Now here's my favorite part of the story...there are rumors of the museum being haunted—I didn't know that while I was there. I thought it was just a fun place...I found out differently. While we listening to the tour, I drifted away from the group. They kept going but I was taking pictures along one wall of display pieces. I kept hearing what sounded like a child running up behind me. There was one child in the tour group but she was on the other side of the museum. I thought I must be hearing things and blamed it on the acoustics in the building. The second time I heard running, it felt like someone came up behind me and grabbed my shirt then ran away. My niece would do that all the time, so I assumed it was the small child, but when I turned around the child in our tour group was being carried in a family member's arms. I turned around to finish taking pictures and every time I would take one, my shirt would get yanked. It took two pictures for each shot to get a usable one. I finally gave up at the end of the wall, thought I was losing my mind and caught up with the group in time for the carousel ride that comes with the tour.

I didn't tell anyone about the running I heard and shirt pulling because I honestly thought maybe I had gotten too much sun that day. Normally if you go someplace haunted you know ahead of time or it's part of the story on the tour, I heard nothing. One year later, I happened to come across information of Living Dead Paranormal investigating the museum. Then I heard the stories of the ghosts that are supposedly haunting the place. There are three stories that I've heard since of the people haunting the museum.

One has to do with a Muller military horse. The story is that Muller's wife so loved the horse that was on the carousel in Frontiertown at Cedar Point that after she died she came back to ride the carousel each night. That carousel was sold to another park...without the the horse. The carousel horse stayed at Cedar Point, there is a replica at the museum and there is a replacement at the park it was sold too. All three places have stories of Mrs. Muller haunting them.

The second story is of a post office worker who died in the building when it was still a post office. He died of natural causes but is said to still do his job as if the post office is still running.

The last story, fits what had happen to me. There is the story of a little girl haunting the museum. I don't think I ever got a clear understanding of how she got there. It's a museum, so things are donated. It's most likely she's connected to something that was donated. But there are lots of stories like mine—shirt tugging and a child running around as if playing a game. I have heard of people seeing small, child-size footprints on items. It's sad to think that a child's spirit is stuck there but really it's a museum with a working carousel with lots of carousel animals to play on. It's not a bad place to be for a child.

I was glad to learn the museum was haunted because for a while there I thought I was losing my mind!