Ironton's Woodland Cemetery

 The Ghosts

*NOTE:  The 2016 Ghost Walk will be held September 24!*

Teenie Peters   Antoinette "Teenie" Peters danced with the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Chicago Opera before marrying and settling down in Ironton, Ohio. She was tragically killed in a car crash. Shortly after her interment, vandals broke into her mausoleum, broke the corner off her glass coffin, and broke off two of her fingers, stealing her rings. Also stolen was a brooch given to her by the czar of Russia, and her photo outside the crypt was shot at with a BB gun. Today it is said that every night at midnight, the ghost of Teenie Peters dances around her mausoleum, scaring away would-be vandals.

 Osa Wilson   Osa Wilson was an abused wife. Legend has it that her husband slapped her across the face, resulting in her falling down a flight of stairs, fatally injuring her and her unborn child. Her tombstone portrays a woman's figure, where it is said a hand print appears on the face, no matter how many times it is sandblasted.  The statue is also said to cry real tears, and the belly is often warm...sometimes even a small, faint heartbeat can be felt. The gown of the statue was said to have been seen fluttering as well.    

  

 Dr. Lowry   Dr. Joseph W. Lowry, a respected Ironton physician who died mysteriously in 1933, is said to haunt the library which stands where his house once was.
Dr. Lowry was found dead in bed in the middle of summer with the heat going in his house. There were rumors that his heirs had him murdered, but the official cause of death was declared a stroke.

The next part is pretty gruesome. The undertaker, an employee of Schneider, out of Chesapeake, who received Lowry's body, was still angry at him for refusing to pay for a custom-made coffin he'd ordered for his wife Sarah two years earlier.  As the story goes, Dr. Lowry changed his mind about paying the steep price for the coffin, and used a small nick that would have been easily repaired as an excuse to cancel the order. As revenge, the undertaker broke Lowry's legs and folded them up to help him fit into the coffin he had refused to pay for. The lid still wouldn't close over his fat stomach, so the undertaker cut him open, scooped out his internal organs, and sewed him up again. The doctor was buried in Woodland Cemetery.

When the authorities later exhumed Lowry to check for signs of poison, they found his abdomen empty. The undertaker admitted what he had done and showed the police to the place where he had buried the organs, but by that time they were so rotten that nothing could be determined.

Today Lowry haunts the Briggs Public Library in Ironton, supposedly searching for his lost body parts. He is also seen in Woodland Cemetery, sometimes walking with his mother, near her crypt at the front entrance.

Means Cross   When erecting this stone cross, which weighed several tons, it fell, crushing one of the workers to death. That worker has said to be seen around the monument.  In one incident, a group of men went out after dark to look for the alleged ghost...and apparently found him.  One man was so startled at the sight of the apparition, he fired several shots from his pistol at the figure.  If you look closely at the cross and a monument nearby, you can still see markings from where the bullets hit. 

History of the Cemetery

All photos taken during the Ironton Ghost Walk 2007 by Theresa Racer