Judy Cowling, president of Historic Fairmount, first heard the ghost stories from her son, Andy, the band’s guitarist. The students had been so spooked by their experiences that they were convinced there was a real phantom in the opera house.
One evening, Andy placed a coil of guitar wire on one of the speakers. A few minutes later he watched as the coil mysteriously unwound and began rising into the air like someone was stretching it.
Cowling tried to explain away the various reports that began coming from the band members. The eerie noises? That’s typical of old buildings. The lights going off and on with no one around? The electrical system needed to be checked or there could be a short in the wiring. And when band members reported that objects they’d put down would be moved to other locations, Cowling said it was probably one of the boys playing tricks on the others.
Then one night a band member saw a disembodied face of a bearded man! Cowling had no explanation, and the kids were really frightened. They began carrying Bibles to rehearsals.
Still Cowling was skeptical. She wasn’t convinced there was anything supernatural about the “unexplained” happenings. To prove this to the kids and alleviate their anxieties, she decided to spend an evening in the old opera house with the band.
At one point that evening, Judy Cowling opened the unlocked door of one of the building’s rooms, entered, and shut the door behind her. When she tried to reopen the door, she discovered it was locked! Eventually, she was able to force the door open.
Could this be the proof she needed that the building had a phantom? She shrugged off the incident, instead choosing to believe that the old door must have gotten stuck.
The mystery is still a mystery. It’s still possible there’s a phantom in the old Opera House.
The Spirit of Hostess House
A few years ago, a very sad and unfortunate event occurred at the Wilson-Vaughan house, located at 723 West Fourth Street in Marion—today known as the Hostess House. An elderly housekeeper tragically died there. The circumstances of the woman’s death are well known. Her loss to the community, friends, and family is still very painful. As so often happens in such circumstances, stories began circulating that a ghost had been seen in one of the upstairs windows. Those who say they’ve seen this apparition believe it to be that of the elderly housekeeper. There could be another explanation, however: It could be Lillian “Peggy” Wilson, the woman the house had been built for as a wedding present.
Far more intriguing than any of its residents may be the spirit of the Hostess House itself. The house’s tale of love, rejection, and remorse has endured half a century and no doubt will continue for many generations to come.
The historical Hostess House, rumored to a tragic presence. PHOTO: Peggy McClelland
The historically significant house is considered to be one of Grant County’s treasures. J. Woodrow Wilson, a prominent Marion bank-er, built the twenty-four room mansion as a wedding present for his wife, Lillian “Peggy” Pamell Wilson. Sadly, the newlyweds only lived in the house a short time, when Peggy, at age twenty-nine, became a widow in 1916.
After her husband’s death the young, wealthy, and vivacious widow traveled in the sophisticated circles of New York and Chicago. Noted to be a delightful hostess, she often entertained her rich and famous New York and Chicago friends at her beautiful home in Marion.
While attending a party in Chicago in 1919, she was introduced to the famous poet and author of the Spoon River Anthology, Edgar Lee Masters. He was fifty-one years old. She was thirty-two. Masters, though married, was well known for becoming involved with rich, sophisticated women. Peggy seemed drawn to men of prominence and artistic success. It wasn’t long before their meeting turned into a love affair.
Masters made several visits to Indiana to visit Peggy at her mansion. They also met in Paris, London, and at Masters’s retreat in Michigan. The affair lasted about two years.
In 1921 Masters attempted to obtain a divorce from his wife so that he could marry Peggy. Before the year’s end, though, Peggy’s ardor had drastically cooled. Masters learned that the great love of his life had been seeing other men and indeed, in 1926, she married Dr. John C. Vaughan.
The romance and his life shattered, the embittered Masters “told all” in his book Mirage, published in 1924. Many of Peggy’s Marion friends knew of Masters’s visits to the mansion, but they were unaware of the love affair between the famous poet and the prominent widow until this book came out.
Peggy continued to entertain and travel between Marion and New York, where she died in 1952. Masters and his wife were divorced. He remarried and moved to New York. Ironically, the two ex-lovers, whose romance would live on forever in the pages of American literature, apparently never knew they lived only a short distance apart in their later years.
Has the spirit of Peggy been seen in an upstairs window? Is she remorseful and waiting for Edgar Lee Masters? Or could she simply be waiting to once more entertain the many famous and rich who were a part of her world? Her presence is certainly felt in this elegant and beautiful home.
Perhaps the answer to the question whether Peggy, in spirit, re-mains within in the Hostess House can be found in the last lines of Masters’s 1926 poem titled “Peggy.”
“It’s night now, Peggy, and the electric arc
Throws lavender lights upon your brow;
You are a ghost now, and I bow
Myself into the dark.”
The Ghost of Mason’s Bridge
It happened one cold fall night, near midnight, under the full moon: The sounds of angry voices, then blood-curdling screams, and finally the splashing sound of something falling or being thrown into the river below the bridge.
Sometime during the early 1940s, a husband and wife began an argument that resulted in both of their deaths. The house where they lived is said to have been on a hill just outside of Gas City about five hundred feet from the road near Mason’s Bridge.
The argument began when the husband accused his wife of having an affair. His jealous rage became maniacal. Fearing for her life, his wife fled from the house, her husband close behind her brandishing an ax.
He caught up with his wife just as she reached Mason’s Bridge. With ferocity, he swung the ax and cut off her head. Picking it up, he tossed her head over the bridge and into the water below. Ex-hausted, he sat on the roadway beside his wife’s headless body. Maybe it was the chill of the night—or the chill in his heart—that shocked him back into a semblance of sanity and the realization of the horror that he had committed.
Overcome with grief and guilt, he returned to the house, climbed onto the roof, and hung himself.
That’s how it happened then—and how it still happens—or so the legend goes.
To witness the reoccurring murder at Mason’s Bridge, go there around midnight on a clear fall night with a full moon. Take State Route 22 out of Gas City to County Road 500 East. Park your car and walk to the east side of the bridge. Wait, watch, and listen.
Soon you will hear voices raised in anger, arguing, and the sound of people running down the hill toward the bridge. As the sounds reach the bridge two images begin to take shape. One small. One large. The larger of the two raises something above its head. The moonlight glints off the object. Suddenly a sickening dull thud is heard, mingled with a spine-chilling scream, and then—silence.
Wait a bit before you move—if you can move. Then go to the opposite side of the bridge and look along the river’s bank. There you will see a white figure walking along the edge of the river—the woman