The scene is nightmarish: fire engulfs an old wood frame house used as an orphanage. The dreadful agonized cries of small children trapped inside emanate from the blazing inferno, piercing the night air, as horrified onlookers stand by, unable to help. Though no one present says anything at the time, suspicions amongst the horrified staff witnessing the disaster all focus on Old Man Gore, the man in charge of the institution, as the one who set the tempestuous fire. His cruel and sadistic treatment of those in his care has long been the subject of hushed gossip around the small backwoods orphan asylum located near the shores of Lake Erie.
The carnage of the hellish inferno continues for over an hour until finally the screams fall silent and the only sound that lingers is the roar of the flames and the cracking of wooden timbers. Before long the building is reduced to no more than a pile of glowing embers and a few stone foundation pillars. As red-hot sparks ascend heavenward, trailing off into the black sky, so too go the souls of dozens of poor orphan children, burned alive. But were their earthbound spirits extinguished that evening with the flames, or do they still cry out for help and justice to this day from beyond the grave? Many in the Greater Cleveland area have reported experiencing strange occurrences in the woods near the site of that fateful fire and believe it to be one of the most haunted locations in all of Ohio. It is said that the screams of the trapped and dying children can still be heard there to this day crying out for help. Such is the legend of the Gore Orphanage.
But who was Old Man Gore, and what ever became of this notoriously evil administrator? As far as we can tell, no one with the name Gore has ever lived along Gore Orphanage Road on the outskirts of the small town of Vermilion, Lorain County. Though Gore Orphanage Road does exist, according to Bill Ellis, Associate Professor, English and American Studies Highacres, Penn State Hazleton: “…the road was originally laid out along the boundary line dividing Lorain County from its western neighbor, Huron County. When a surveying error was discovered, a thin strip of land resembling the gore of a dress had to be annexed to Lorain. The route then became known as Gore Road.”
In 1902 an orphanage known as the Light of Hope was established near Gore Road by a Lutheran Reverend named John Sprunger. Due to the popular association of the institution with the road, the name of the street came to be known as Gore Orphanage Road. Although it was not located far away, it was not found on the site that local teenagers have long visited late at night in search of the legendary Gore Orphanage.
The setting that has given birth to the legends is in a deep ravine located near the former location of the Light of Hope Orphanage. It is known as Swift’s Hollow. A graffiti covered sandstone column marks the entrance into the area, which contains the foundations of a once magnificent Greek revival house. The home was built in the mid-nineteenth century by Joseph Swift, a successful farmer. Its many rooms were appointed with elaborate furnishings, ornate window frames, marble columns, and other lavish decorations.
The first weird stories to come out of the Hollow appeared in the early 1900’s, when Swift sold his home to Nicholas Wilber, a renowned Spiritualist. Rumors spread of the rituals and seances that Wilber held regularly in his secluded mansion home.
Rumors of dead children, now told as parts of the Gore Orphanage legend, may find their origins around this time, based on some very tragic realities. According to the book Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live by Bill Ellis (University Press of Mississippi/Jackson, 2001): “The Wilbers were in the habit of calling the spirits of small children back to earth during their séances. Nicholas Wilber’s son, Miller, had four children, aged two to eleven, who died during the course of seven days at the height of a diphtheria epidemic. Residents insist that they died at the Swift mansion and were buried there. The tragic deaths of these four children, tightly packed into a week of horror for their relatives, were vividly remembered by this tight-knit farming community.”
The home was abandoned in 1901, and teenagers almost immediately began taking trips to the site, daring each other to enter the infamous home. The nearby orphanage did purchase the land upon which the Swift home stood, but never put the house to practical use. Instead it became a Mecca for late night vandals, and it is presumed that one of them was responsible for burning the house down in late 1923.
The legend of Gore Orphanage also owes greatly to a historically documented disaster that took place in the town of Collinwood, which is found some forty miles away from Vermilion. In 1908, 176 elementary school students were burned or trampled to death when they became trapped in a stampede situation and couldn’t escape a fire that was consuming their school. The similarities between this historical event and the legends surrounding Gore Orphanage are uncanny. The horror of this event may very well have been relocated at some point from the actual school where it took place to the already legendary site of Swift’s Hollow.
Today all that remains of the Swift Mansion are a few sandstone blocks from its foundation. Located deep in the woods, these few remnants of the once grand house are now scrawled with graffiti left behind by late night visitors. They stand in the forest like guide stones for those seeking to experience the legend of the Gore Orphanage first hand.
I have only been to the Gore Orphanage in Vermilion once. It started out as one of the biggest let downs I’ve ever experienced, but it turned out to be a pretty frightening night.
Kids in my high school had been ranting and raving about this place for a few years before I took my trip there. I had never had any real desire to go. I don’t believe in any ghosts or bullshit like that, so I just saw it as a big waste of gas. Even though I thought the stories were made up, they were pretty exciting. Being that my friends and I spend too much time sitting around being bored, we decided to take a trip to the Gore Orphanage to see if it was worth all the hype.
Before I go any further, let me explain this hype of which I speak. Apparently, in the early 1900’s, an orphanage stood in a patch of desolate woods just outside of Vermilion. One night, one of the orphans was walking to the outhouse with a lantern. He tripped and fell, igniting a huge fire. The steps leading from the top floor to the bottom collapsed almost immediately. Townsfolk from Vermilion gathered, but they didn’t have the time or equipment to stop the blaze. All they could do was stand and watch as the hundreds of orphans many floors above them met their unfortunate and collective doom. They say that it was so gruesome that people safe on the ground died just from the shock of seeing those kids burning in the inferno.
Ever since then, people have said that the ghosts of these orphans haunt the spot that the orphanage used to stand on. Kids from my school said that they had heard strange sounds in the woods, like kids crying and doors slamming shut, even though there are no buildings close by. Some kids even said they actually saw some orphan ghosts, but I never believed them.
When me and my boys went there, I was a bit creeped out by the road leading up to the place. It’s really dark because of the overhanging trees and there’s a messed up looking wooden bridge you cross over. When we arrived at the site where the orphanage had once stood (which was hard to find even though one of the guys I was with had been there before) all four of us got out of the car and went into the woods. There were a few pillars and some bricks and stones and stuff lying around on the ground. Really the only creepy part was the graffiti all over the place. There were 666s and stuff, but that’s to be expected at a place like this. It was definitely not an ordinary place, but I still was doubtful about it being haunted.
I did hear some strange creaking noises, but I’m pretty sure it was just the trees rubbing together in the night breeze. My one friend was freaking out, saying it was a kid crying, and I will admit, it did sound like it could have been. I think it was the trees though. After a while we decided to leave. I think that we were all a little creeped out from being alone out there in those dark woods. Regardless, we didn’t see any little ghost kids, we didn’t smell any burning flesh, and we didn’t hear any doors slamming. What happened when we made our way back to the car, however, would change my tune about the Gore Orphanage forever.
As we got close to the car, my friend Jake noticed that all the windows were fogged up. He ran up ahead of us because he thought someone had been messing with his ride. It was his mom’s car and she would have been really pissed if anything happened to it. When we caught up with him he was just standing there dumbfounded. There wasn’t another human being in sight, it was a cool night, and there was absolutely no explanation as to why the windows were fogged up. That’s when my other friend Shawn pointed out the back window. There on the misty glass, were the faint impressions of little handprints. We all freaked out instantly.
Trying to find a logical reason to explain the handprints, and to calm down my friends (who were really flipping out now) I pointed out that Jake did have a little brother who is only four years old, and the marks were surely made by him. Secretly though, I was just as freaked by those little fingerprints as anyone else there, and I was really just trying to convince myself that there was a rational explanation for them bring there--which there was not.
I still can’t explain how the hell those windows got fogged up, but if those handprints had been made by Jake’s little brother, how is it that nobody noticed them on the way up there that night? The whole trip freaked me out bad, and I vowed never to return to the Gore Orphanage. This all happened three years ago, and I have not been back to this day.
–Victor E.
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