If you were to take a look at some of the more haunted locations in Cincinnati, you’re bound to run across “The Sedamsville Rectory”
According to rumors, this was one of the rectories where they used to send “bad priests” to hide them away from sexual abuse charges, murder investigations, or any number of other “sins”. One priest who was sent here in the late 1800s, they said, felt such remorse that he killed himself inside the rectory and has haunted the building ever since.
Rumor has it that in the 1980s, the building was used for everything from Satanic Worship to a haven for homeless people, doing drugs and engaging in prostitution. Others say that it was used as an underground location to get an abortion.
Or, maybe the place is haunted by a nun and a little girl. When the place was used as an orphanage, a nun died under “mysterious circumstances” (although there does not seem to be a consensus as to why those circumstances were so mysterious) and her ghost remains to haunt the place. The girl, they said, was an orphan who either died from illness, or was somehow connected to or involved with the nun’s death – with so many versions of the story out there, it is kind of hard to tell.
In 2011, the building was purchased and the new owners said they were going to fix it up and try to restore it (and the church next door) to its former glory. But, they said, it quickly became clear that there was something “otherworldly” going on at the site, and they were scared for their lives. So scared, in fact, that they opened it as a haunted house set to scare any residents willing to pay the entrance fee. But, only around Halloween, for some unknown reason…
The new owners also allowed television crews to come in and film episodes of shows like Ghost Adventures (and Ghost Adventures Aftershocks), My Ghost Story, and Haunted Collection. And we all know Reality Shows on television never make stuff up, right? … Right?
I have always liked reading ghost stories, and it has nothing to do with whether or not I believe in anything paranormal – ghost stories just have a unique way of shining a light onto parts of history that just might otherwise have been forgotten. One still needs to separate fact from fiction, though.
An Abbreviated History of Sedamsville
In the early 1800s, many people believed that Cincinnati was primed to become the largest city west of the original colonies, and that made sense. It was a comfortable distance from the east coast, wasn’t too hard to get to via the Ohio River, and would have made a great stop along the way for those heading even further west.
In the early days, Cincinnati enjoyed a fairly quick population boom. Being how most people arrived in town via the river, that area quickly became some prime real estate. There was just one small problem with that – that river tends to flood. Sometimes it floods a little, but every once in a while, it floods a lot.
Throughout all this, the city slowly backed away from the river itself, until after the next flood when it would try to back away a little more. The city did learn from its mistakes.
One of the early industries that took Cincinnati by storm were the meatpackers, who for whatever reason took up residence on the western edges of town. They were largely German, hard-working folk. On Sundays, many of them would trek across town to the only Catholic Church in town.
When St. Xavier began to get a bit more crowded, a second church was built. This Church soon catered more to the Irish Catholic community gathering, so while the two churches had a lot in common, they still felt very different. The Germans, on the other hand, wanted their own church as well.
In the mid-1800s, that church was finally built. The only problem – they built it close to the river, which tended to flood, and apparently people don’t like to be standing in frigid water up to their waists while singing Sunday Morning Hymns, so in 1888 they began constructing Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Sedamsville on Steiner Avenue. Before long, a rectory was built right behind it, a schoolhouse and orphanage was installed in the next adjecant block over) and for quite some time, Our Lady of Perpetual Help was a relatively major beacon for Sedamsville.
Fast Forward to Today
In 1870, Cincinnati indexed Sedamsville, but the neighborhood retained its name. Then, it was mostly known for a few meatpacking plants, as well as being home to an excellent mill, Fleischmann’s Yeast company, among others. During the industrial revolution, the town gained even more prosperity, but once that boom was over, the neighborhood began to wane. The Great Depression furthered this decline, but many residents who called the place home proved to be resilient.
Now, according to the last census, the area lists 1,256 residents, many of whom seem to have connections with the history of the place. There are, however, quite a few abandoned buildings … among them, the Our Lady of Perpetual Help church and all its associated buildings, including the possibly haunted rectory.
The Sedamsville Rectory
In 1989, Our Lady of Perpetual Help closed its doors. What remained of its staff and congregation merged with The Holy Family Church in east Price Hill. The building stood unused, abandoned to the elements for years to come.
In 1995, a man named John Klosterman purchased the buildings from the Archdiocese. He and his business partner Jim Grave had been purchasing various buildings in town with the hopes of fixing them up and providing decent housing and attractions for the lower middle class. They believed that with a little care, the neighborhood could make a return.
A few years later, the city wanted the old church torn down. Neighbors complained that it was an eyesore, and clearly it was a safety issue. One person commented that it looked as if the steeple could easily be knocked over by even a gentle wind. This did not seem to deter Klosterman from his dream and he was able to raise funds from private donations (as well as the city) to begin the necessary repairs. By the time he had started those, however, his dreams for the neighborhood were starting to wane, but he still believed that the building could be salvaged and re-sold.
In 2011, a group calling themselves the Midwest Preservation Society began restoring the rectory when, according to them, they began noticing “paranormal phenomena” happening at odd intervals. It wouldn’t take long before various “ghost tours” began to stop at the rectory, and for the right price, you could also go in for your own private ghost hunt.
The following year, the rectory was the subject of Season 7 Episode 6 of Zak Bagans’ Ghost Adventures. Then a few more shows followed suit.
It begs the question: Is it really haunted?
Ghosts or No Ghosts
Is the rectory haunted? That’s the question. The answer … kind of depends on who you ask. (Yes, I know, there are people who don’t believe that any place is ever haunted, and others that truly believe in ghosts and as usual we’re going to leave that debate to another day.)
With the Sedamsville Rectory, there didn’t seem to be much talk about ghosts or the paranormal until someone started trying to fix the place up and figure out what to do with it. It had that old world charm, a history of religion and spirituality, nearly everything that you’d need for a great ghost story.
If the place was as haunted as Ghost Adventures wanted you to believe, how come there wasn’t talk of paranormal activity before 2011? Frankly, the timing here is a bit off.
Under normal circumstances, I’d be ready to write this off as a hoax at this point, except … maybe not.
If the haunting was a hoax, is it possible they hoaxed a place that was already haunted?
I have yet to run across any church (or church-related building) that had been around that long without attracting some kind of ghostly legend. People, at least living ones, tend to go to places like churches for whatever spiritual connection they desire – so wouldn’t it make sense that if ghosts are real, they do too? Others suggest that if ghosts are real, maybe they’re attracted to important places from their lives – which would make sense they’d appear in churches.
So, what about the “ghosts” that have been spotted at the Sedamsville Rectory …
From what I’ve observed, they’re pretty generic and therefore impossible to even verify.
Some people claim to have seen a nun and a small girl, often at the same time, sometimes one without the other. At one point in history, Our Lady of Perpetual Help had an attached school, run by nuns, so that part checks out. But, without any further information – we cannot go any farther.
When the facility was open to amateur ghost hunters, several people took the opportunity to do their own thing and what we saw during those times was fairly predictable according to the genre. Shadows that could be anything … “cold spots” that don’t seem to appear on camera, the same can be said for “general creepy feelings”.
