The Witch's Ball of Myrtle Hill Cemetery

The cemetery on Myrtle Hill Road near Valley City in Medina County contains the Witch's Ball, a large spherical gravestone to which many legends are attached. The name on the stone is Stoskopf, and a ton of rumors about old lady Stoskopf have cropped up over the years to go with her unusual tombstone. According to one account (which may or may not have appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer), Mrs. Stoskopf poisoned her family's well and killed her abusive husband and sons, then threw their bodies down the well. She spent her life in an asylum and was finally buried beneath the ball.

More popular is the story that Stoskopf was a witch who practiced her craft out on Myrtle Hill Road, which today also has its own crybaby bridge legend. The story you hear most is that the townspeople put her to death.

Today her spherical tombstone is the focal point of a lot of folklore and legend-tripping. They say that it remains the same temperature, and that in the winter it is warm and in the summer it is cold. They also say that leaves and snow will not fall on or around the tombstone. These stories seems to be easy ones to test, and I definitely plan to check them out sometime soon.

Here are a couple of links to information about the Witch's Ball:

A site featuring stories about the ball.
Ohio Lost's take on the subject.

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