Spooky tales abound at former county home

For years, there have been stories about the former Hancock County Home. People have heard laughter, smelled cigar smoke and found stray pennies. It has some employees of the Hancock County Educational Service Center — now located in the three-story brick structure on Hancock County 140 — thinking it could be the supernatural. "Things happen and you think, 'Did I just see that? Did I just hear that?'" said Laurie Betscher, who is attendance officer. Betscher, who has been working at the building since 2004, said unusual things started happening soon after the ESC moved into the building in 1999. "There was a woman who was working here by herself one time and she heard a knock at the front door," Betscher related. It was a sheriff's deputy asking if she was OK, as the sheriff's office had received a call about intruders in the building. "And she said, 'No, it's just me.' And then she realized that there weren't even any phones hooked up," said Betscher. "And it showed up on a 911 line, this address. And that's why he came out." Until last year, Betscher's office was in the basement, which she describes as "a hotbed for stuff." One of the first things she noticed involved a wall clock she kept finding on the floor. "But it wasn't like it just fell off the wall," she said. "It's halfway across the office, as if it's almost thrown. And this would happen on and off for probably about a month or so. Finally, I just took the clock down." Then she started finding stray pennies, all dated from the 1960s "I wondered, why are we getting these random pennies from the '60s. And another girl whose office was right next to mine, she was finding them, too. And she says, 'Oh, I think it's something paranormal,'" Betscher said. "Well, I thought either that, or somebody's just leaving pennies for us and trying to play a joke or something." The current building dates back to 1915. Originally called the Hancock County Infirmary, the facility provided a home for indigent residents. The Hancock County Board of Commissioners closed the home in 1997. Two years later, the ESC moved its offices into the building's main and south wings, as well as a wing in the basement. The second floor later became the location for the Hancock County Rehabilitation and Opportunity Center, known as the ROC. Chelsea Bodnarik, curriculum survivor, has been working in the building for nine years. "When I first came here, people were like, 'Oh, you're going into that building? You're working there? You know it's haunted, right?' And I'm like, 'It is? OK.' But I do think it is," she said. "I think things happen. You can't explain them. At least, I can't explain them." She said she often smells cigar smoke in the building. "It's funny because you'll be walking down the hall and not smell it, and then just for a few feet, you'll kind of walk through this and it's a cigar smell. If you know the odor of a cigar, it's very distinctive," Bodnarik said. "It's real concentrated in one spot," added Betscher. "And that's all over the building. I think a lot of people have ... experienced that." Bodnarik said people who work in the building have started calling the cigar spirit "Ciggy." Betscher said one evening, she was in a meeting on the first floor when she heard a commotion coming from the basement. "It sounded like stuff was being moved around. But there was no way I was going down in the basement to find out what was going on." The next morning, she told maintenance workers about the noises. "We walked into that room. Nothing had been moved at all, but there were huge black scuff marks clear across the floor," she said. "That's what I was hearing. It sounded like something heavy was being pushed across that floor." Betscher's basement room was also rumored to be part of the county home's morgue. She said the office has a storage area with a "huge, creepy drain in it." More drains were later found during building renovations. Employees periodically find pennies in the building. Betscher said she even found some coins in an old filing cabinet. "And I thought, 'These weren't put there randomly by people, I don't think,'" she said. "I would find them maybe four times a year or so. I was finding them clear up through last year. And they were never right out in the open. It would be, like, behind my phone or buried in a 30-year-old file cabinet or places like that." Bodart said she also found a penny in the old laundry room. "I was down there working and it was not there. Then someone came down. They were visitors to the building and they were lost, trying to find a way out. They started to ask questions like 'Is this the haunted hallway?'" she said. "Then they asked, 'Is there a spirit here now?' I'm like, 'Oh no. You're fine now.'" Bodart showed the visitors the way out, then turned around and found a penny on the floor. The women said some of the spirits have a mean streak. One of the most recent incidents involved a man who cleans the offices. "He had a lanyard with keys around his neck, and he went down to clean my office," said Betscher. "He had the lanyard on, and he bent down to open the lock. As soon as he opened the lock, the door just flung open. Thankfully he was not hurt. He said it literally jerked him into the room." "He was convinced it was a being of some sort," said Bodart. "It scared him to pieces." Another time, the man was cleaning in the hallway outside of Betscher's office. He finished and locked all the doors. "But then one of the doors was open again, so he had to go back and lock it — even though he was sure he had already closed it and locked it," Bodart said. When he turned around, a hot, steaming cup of coffee was sitting on a nearby shelf. "But there was no one down there and it was not there before," said Betscher. "And he could not figure out how this hot cup of coffee got on this shelf, because he had been walking past there the last half hour cleaning the different rooms, and just out of nowhere there was a hot cup of coffee." Bodart said she was working late one night in one of the copy rooms when she heard laughter coming from the room above her. "I thought someone was here. And when you're here alone late at night, you typically will go see who else is here with you. That's just what we do, (find out) who else is in the building." There was no one else in the building. "But I kept hearing laughter. I know I heard it." Betscher said there's no rhyme or reason for when unexplainable things happen. "I was working here one Wednesday, right before Thanksgiving. And again, I'm down in the basement and I'm by myself. I go to leave and there is the strongest smell of turkey. It was like somebody was cooking turkey, and it was right in front of my door," she said. Betscher also noticed the smell of mincemeat tarts. She said her great aunt used to make them when she was little. "At first, I thought, 'Oh, the ROC's cooking turkeys'. But then I thought, 'The ROC isn't cooking mincemeat tarts'. And that's the first time I thought, 'Oh, there's no explanation for this. I cannot explain this away,'" she said. Wolf: 419-427-8419 jeanniewolf@thecourier.com