It is strange how these trips often take on a certain motif without my directing it. Yesterday, for example, it was impossible not to be aware of the dictating forces of nature as I was “Dodging Downpours” and witnessing examples of the power of nature, whether it was how a tornado brought down the great Kinzua Bridge or how a wall of water pushed aside a concrete dam and wiped out a town.

Today, the theme seems to be…ghosts.

It started when I arrived in Coudersport. I’d once read of a hotel where Eliot Ness was said to have written The Untouchables. How he got from the mean streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era to this quaint, little town in north, central Pennsylvania a couple decades later, I had no clue, but I figured if the place was still in business, I’d grab a beer and a bite to eat there. I parked the on Main Street and was stopped by this amazing looking place:

If ever a house looked like it should be haunted, this would be it. I found out it has been long abandoned and unless someone with the means to restore it comes along pretty soon, its days are numbered, which would be a shame. Built in the late 1870s as the dream home of a wealthy business man, it has had many incarnations since. And yes, there is a ghost story. In 1928, it became the Old Hickory Tavern and—according to local lore—a young man was shot there in a barroom brawl and carried upstairs where he later died. Over the many decades since, people claim to have seen a young man standing at the upstairs window gazing out into the night.

Also on Main Street, I found the Hotel Crittenden and lunch. Eliot Ness did indeed move to Coudersport and supposedly did like to drink at the bar and tell stories of his glory days as a Prohibition agent in Chicago. With a lot of help from a sports writer named Oscar Fraley, he did write much of his memoir at a corner table in what is now the restaurant.

I tried to get a room for the night there but they were renovating the hotel part of the building so I was back on the road where I encountered an even bigger ghost story a few towns away in Smethport.

I stopped off at the Old Jail Museum where for five bucks, I got a guided tour of the oldest public building in town. Built in 1872 and used as a jail until 1990, the place is packed with local history, original artifacts from the Civil War, and memorabilia of the area’s lumber, oil, and railroad past. For anyone interested in history, this is well worth the time.

But back to the ghost story…

It is well documented that 11 men were hung on the third floor of the jail. The most famous was a man by the name of Ralph Crossmire, who was hung for the murder of his mother in 1893. Crossmire swore he was innocent to the very end and as they led him to his death, he swore if they carried out the hanging, he would return and haunt the jail. Within days after his death—and countless times over the years since—inmates and guards claimed to have seen Crossmire’s ghost. Even today, visitors and workers at the museum have made similar claims.

While the 3rd floor is not yet open to the public, the dungeon is. Massive stones make up eight cold, damp, dark rooms where a prisoner was confined as a form of punishment. My tour guide stayed in the door way as I wandered through the area. “I don’t even like to think of what it must have been like when they locked the door,” she said, “and shut off the lights.”

By the time I left the museum, another storm was moving in. Dark clouds filled the review mirror, but there was a patch of blue sky off in the distance in the direction I was headed. I focused on that and made a run for it.

Unintentional selfie