Zane Mansion



The Zane Mansion in Martin's Ferry is supposedly located on the site of an old cemetery. Since the area flooded frequently, graves were moved, and legend has it that Hannah Zane's coffin was empty. (The Zanes had the town of Zanesville named after them, and are related in some distant way to western writer Zane Grey.) Today she is sometimes seen in the halls or dancing in the living room. A small child is occasionally spotted staring out of a stairwell window. Visitors sometimes feel unseen hands rubbing them, which really doesn't seem all that bad.

I tried to find this building in 2001, but the girl at the gas station told me there was no such thing. I did, however, see Shreve High School, which the poet James Wright mentions in one of his best poems, "Autumn Begins in Martin's Ferry, Ohio."

Later, a farily confident Martins Ferry resident assured me that the Mansion does exist, that it's been divided into apartments, and that it's definitely haunted. It stands at 210 South Third Street. I will have to check this out next time I'm in Martins Ferry. It's too bad I didn't get the chance to in 2004, which I spent most of in that town, working on the presidential election, but I didn't know the address at that time.

Poets.org: "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio" by James Lowell

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