In the 1970s, in fact, a Punderson park ranger reported that when he climbed the staircase one night, he heard high-pitched laughter and could see his breath in the frigid hallway. Then the laughter stopped, and the hall immediately got warm. The Manor House is Punderson State Park’s showpiece hotel, but given its 31 guest rooms, Tudor Revival architecture, and history of eerie episodes, the stately mansionturned-lodge looks like the setting for a real-life game of Clue. Located east of Cleveland in Geauga County’s lush and lovely countryside, the Manor House overlooks Punderson Lake, a natural wonder created by glacial meltwater some 14,000 years ago. Lemuel Punderson, an ambitious Geauga County settler, erected a gristmill along the lake in the early 1800s, and in the 1920s, Detroit businessman Karl Long began building a Tudor mansion there as a home for his family. Because he lost everything when the stock market crashed, the Longs never moved in. After the State of Ohio acquired the old Punderson property and completed Long’s mansion, Punderson State Park opened to the public in 1956. It was Ohio’s second state park and featured lodging and dining in the Manor House. A decade later, the state added a new guest room wing to the Manor House and constructed numerous cottages in the park. Governor James Rhodes, who was a strong advocate of state park lodges, particularly liked the Manor House and frequently used the new wing’s Hospitality Room as a hideaway.
Though Rhodes was bewitched by the Manor House’s beauty and tranquility, he probably never People reputedly noticed anything mysterious during his stays, hear invisible because the original portion of the mansion children giggling — including its seven and playing, and English and Victorian-themed rooms — a blonde-haired seems to be Punderson’s girl sometimes paranormal focal point. Those “estate” rooms are materializes near where employees say lights inexplicably switch on and off; where the staircase. guests have thought someone was tugging at their blankets; and where a woman couldn’t open her bathroom door because something was blocking it. People reputedly hear invisible children giggling and playing, and a blonde-haired girl sometimes materializes near the staircase. “A local pizza delivery man also claims that a little girl always watches him through an upstairs window,” says Arnold. The specters of a young boy and girl and their mother even lurk in the dining room. “Since the woman is dark-haired and has a long dress, it’s believed that she is Mrs. Long,” says Arnold. “As soon as she realizes someone has spotted the children, she calls them to her and wraps them in her dress. Then they all disappear.” By all accounts, the Windsor Suite, which was supposed to be the Longs’ master bedroom, is the (Continued on page 12)
onference Center
CLM October 9-1.indd 11
OCTOBE R 20 16
• COU NTRY LI V I N G
11
9/18/16 1:39 PM