Description Of Place: Expanded and remodeled over the years, the once two-story Dutch Colonial has been altered and rebuilt into a large wooden lodge and guest hotel with an additional external wing including an assembly hall for guests and eight more bedrooms to its original six. The interior is designed like the ski resorts of the Pacific Northwest with a bar and dining room and receiving hall. The guest rooms are still Mid-Western, decorated with antiques and furnishings from the area. Antique gas lamps and chandeliers have been converted into electric lights. A walk-around promenade surrounds the structure with a rear staircase to a third floor level reception area with a view of Lake Erie.

Ghostly Manifestations: Gore Orphanage is one of the most popular haunted houses in paranormal research; it is also one of the biggest urban legends of Ohio. What several people believe is Gore Orphanage is actually the foundations of an old mansion once known as Swift's Hollow. According to legend, the site is haunted by the ghosts of orphans who died in a horrible fire here, but the Wilber family who once lived here actually dabbled in Spiritualism and had séances after the deaths of their four children to diphtheria. The road here is known as Gore Orphanage Road, formerly Gore Road, which takes its expanded name from the old Light Of Hope Orphanage which burned down on November 22, 1910 without casualties after it had been empty for sometime. Despite this revelation, the curious still come out here looking for the voices and spirits of the nonexistent orphans who died by fire that never occurred. 

In reality, in order to find a real-life "Gore Orphanage," one only has to check into the modern Pine View Hotel near town which is haunted by the spectral images of young boys running loose in the halls and the stern angry voice of a woman disciplining her young charges. The employees don't talk about the hauntings or activity and neither do the staff, but rumors of disembodied voices, footsteps and even slamming doors do occur.

"I don't believe in ghosts, but I still struggle with what I experienced in the hotel." Robin McFarland is a drug sales representative for the Tolliver Medical Group based in Point Place, Michigan, and her sales route to New York City often goes through Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio. She often stays at the Pine View through her trips through the area. The staff is familiar with her, she appreciates and enjoys their morning breakfast and she is always comfortable enough to get a good sleep most nights when she stays there.

"I live in Green Bay, but I've made the New York City trip several times." She continues. "And I like the Pine View, because they used to have a place like it in Green Bay, and I always look for hotels that tend to hearken to that secluded off the beaten path mentality. I've stayed there several times without incident which tends to make this story more strange than it has to be.

"In May 2011, I was traveling with three other sales reps back to Toledo for a drug conference. It was getting a little late, but instead of staying and getting a room in Cleveland, I had talked the girls into waiting till we got to Vermillion to stay at the Pine View. I loved the place, enjoyed it and talked it up and it was after midnight by time we reached it and checked in. I shared one room with a girl, and the others shared another room in another part of the hotel. 

"While I was asleep that night, I heard the sound of someone trying to come in my room. I'm security-conscious, I always lock my door when I stay in hotels, but I'm hearing the door knob, tick-tick-tick, someone trying to enter, but I figure, maybe there's a problem and someone needs to share our room. So, after a minute or so of thinking it over, I decide to answer it, but no one's there. I'm thinking, maybe I took too much time answering the door and I go checking on them, but they're asleep. I had woken them up to go checking on them, so everything's okay, we going back to bed in the dark of this place, and I go back to my room, which I'm sure I had left slightly ajar to keep from getting locked out, but now it's closed and locked. This is like the worst turn of events for me. I try tapping the door, knocking on the door, I don't want to wake everyone up in this place, but I can't wake this girl I barely know from her sleep, and I instead go back to the other two who I'm pretty sure are awake now to stay with them. 

"Anyway, next morning I wake up, I get in my room, reach my clothes and shower and change quickly because we want to get breakfast before hitting the road." McFarland continues reliving a bit of the repressed annoyance she had from that night. "They have a great breakfast there. Anyway, I'm trying not to make a big deal about what had happened to me, and over breakfast the girl I had been sharing the room with asks if I had had a bad night because I couldn't stay in bed and was pacing around the room all night, and I'm wondering, what the heck happened in that room that night I got locked out of my room?" 

While such convoluted occurrences are rare, former employees of the Pine View and long-time locals are quite aware the place is haunted. Sounds as well as sights have been recorded. Most activity occurs around Rooms 7, 8 and 9, which once belonged to Leticia Gore, the last reputed owner. Brent Moseby, a former security guard was conducting a tour of the place one night for a local news segment on the ghosts when he came upon Room Nine and knocked at the door out of habit in checking for guests. When he did, a voice called out, "I'm in here." 

"It certainly surprised the Charles Dickens out of me." Moseby is a six-foot and two-inch tall retired police officer with a beaming round face and full beard and mustache alighted with salt and pepper hair. "I'm thinking I surprised a guest, and I'm standing there with this reporter and small film crew in this narrow hall waiting to see Room Nine to film in it, and we're waiting for a guest that didn't open the door. After almost ten minutes of small talk, we started wondering what's going on, so I used my key to open the room and the blooming thing is empty. The room was supposed to be empty, and no one came past us while we were at the door."

Brent's son-in-law, Josh MacGregor, was another security guard. As he was locking up one night, he checked out the men's room and as he was walking out, he noticed the reflection of a woman's face and figure in the clouded glass doors leading out to the back veranda. As he recalls, "it looked like the outline of a woman following me from the room toward the assembly hall." As he turned round acknowledging it, he felt a cold chill pass through him and left without checking the assembly room or turning off the light.

Author Charles Shurley of the "Supernatural" paranormal fantasy book series also had an experience in the inn while he was staying there for a convention of his fans. He was staying in Room 17 near Letiticia's old room when he awoke one night to see a cloud of smoke hovering at the foot of the bed. As he looked back two more times, it gradually "morphed" into the form of a woman staring at him. 

"I didn't have a chance to be terrified." The paranormal writer adds. "It was actually kind of fascinating as I watched this wispy form develop into this tall thin woman of moderate stature. She had jet black hair, both wild and trussed back in a small bun, this sort of bluish off-white pale skin and eyes that were both pale and tired. From the shoulders down, she she dressed in this long dark, I guess they called them prairie dresses, it was certainly from another time, and I remembered, ghosts can't talk to you unless you speak to them first, but, stupid me, I checked the clock to note the time, looked back, and she was gone.

"All my life, I pray to God that I want to see a ghost, I finally get my chance, and I ruined it! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"

Shurley adds that he was not the only guests to see ghosts that weekend. Two fans named Niles Demian and Elliott Barnes in asking him if he believed in ghosts casually described seeing the ghosts of two boys in the hotel. An actress playing Leticia Gore for the fan sighting also recalled seeing two boys looking at her in confusion. 

"It was a very supernatural weekend with people in costume." Chuck reflects. "I kind of wonder if the ghosts of the Pine View got active trying to figure out what was going on." 

Over the years, it has been mildly suggested that Leticia is not the only ghost at the Pine View. One of the first ghosts to be seen here was back in the 1920s and was the ghost of Barnabas Gore, the man that built the hotel as a private residence back in the 1830s, but his supposed appearance is not as active as the hotel's main spirit. It was in the 70s that the workers renovating the old place thought they saw a thin elderly female ghost dressed in black hovering on the landing of the second floor and looking down the stairs.. Eventually, they refused to enter or work on the inn after dark.

The "woman in black" or "shadow lady" is believed to be Leticia Gore, who last lived here in the 1890s. She had opened her home to raise young boys from broken families, and her ghost has been spotted in different places throughout the inn. Overnight guests staying in her old bedroom, now Room Nine, have reported seeing a lady dressed in black standing over their bed or sitting in the chair in the corner. It is believed the furniture in the room used to be hers.

Guests have witnessed doors that open by themselves. Others hear footsteps when no one else is around. Some report hearing their name being called out. During a wedding on the grounds in 1987, a photographer caught a photo of Letitcia's apparition standing on the balcony outside her room looking down and watching the guests.

"We had a copy of that photo among the period tintypes decorating the dining room." Former manager Patrice Hutchinson tells CGS. "But it came crashing down to the floor one day. There were around twenty-five photos on that wall and none of them fell off the wall but that one. We tried to replace it, but I don't know what happened to it.

"I worked for the Pine View from 1983 until 1991." She mentions. "Back in those days, we knew the hotel was haunted, and every year, the owners were always willing to update the public with new ghost stories every Halloween, but the new owners in 1991 were more about style and rigid adherence to rules than catering to a supernatural gimmick to attract guests, so I'm not surprised the hauntings aren't as popular now as they were then."

In those days, the unknown woman, or “the shadow lady” as she was affectionately known as, was an oft seen presence on the second floor and sometimes seen on the first floor. Dressed in a long flowing black dress and almost Mennonite in appearance, she was almost always seen near Room Nine, but we never knew who she was. Rumors were she was a guest who had fallen from her window or down the stairs or she was the wife of a Union officer grieving for her lost husband. Whoever she was, she could be seen drifting down the hallway past the doors of open rooms by housekeepers, many of which rarely stayed longer than a week, while remaining invisible to staff and guests in the hall.

Over the years, employees and guests have reported and even described seeing a cloudy gray mist, and even an apparition of a woman dressed in a dark period dress floating or gliding throughout the lodge. Her movement is described as "a figure floating along an unseen line" or "riding along an unseen assembly line." Though it might seem to some a little unnerving for guests to be sharing a residence with a ghost, no one has ever reported any malicious interactions with her.

The shadow lady seems especially drawn to children. In fact, after a family visit to the inn, a doctor once wrote that his children told him that “they enjoyed playing with the lady in the black dress.” Her pranks are child-like in nature; some guests have reported that their feet have been tickled at nighttime, the air conditioning has been turned off and on, as have the lights, and she has been blamed for doors and windows being opened. Though most interactions have been mostly harmless and no where close to alarming, Patrice did recall isolated incidents that must have bordered on terrifying.

"There was at least one incident I recall with a guest who swore he was being bothered by kids running up and down the halls." Patrice reflects. "He came down to let me know that the night before that he had been trying to sleep, but he was constantly being annoyed by boys racing up and down the halls, hitting the walls and trying the enter the rooms. Apparently, he had heard someone trying to open the door of his bedroom, but when he looked out, no one was there, but it kept happening.

"Anyway, after some point, he reported to me that he heard the angry voice of the boys' mother trying to scold the kids. At that point, everything seemed to come to an end, and he went back to bed, but the next morning, he decided to let me know of the disturbance and to pass along the message to the mother to try and control her kids a bit better. The thing is, when I checked the registry at that time, I didn't have any guests with children. There was no one with children, and I dropped the incident altogether. I guess that guest departed believing that I had had a talk with the nonexistent parent for controlling her sons.

This is not an isolated disturbance in the hotel. Other guests have heard the phantom children running and playing in the halls, spectral laughter from empty rooms, objects being moved and knocked around from the attic and even seeing the brief glimpses of children hiding under tables and inside closets. In 1989, Marshall Hoskins, a travel agent visiting the area hotels, described hearing boys bouncing on the bed in the next room followed by an exasperating woman screaming, "Quiet! You're going to wake someone up!"

Until 1991 when Patrice lost contact with the day to day stories of the hotel, guests and staff described seeing young boys hiding under the tables in the dining room and running out to nowhere. One guest checking into her room claimed she opened the door to her closet and surprised a young boy who ran out and vanished "in the blink of an eye." While Patrice no longer has anything to do with the place, she has met employees who left there and have shared stories of being watched from the empty doorways of vacant rooms.

"In 2004," Patrice adds. "I met writer Mike Enslin in preparing for his book, "Top Ten Haunted Hotels," and through him met the members of Great Lakes Paranormal based in Green Bay, Michigan. Enslin was very interesting in writing about our resident hauntings, but he left here reporting that he hadn't encountered anything. Despite his lack of success, Great Lakes paranormal was very interested in capturing the "shadow lady" on film, and took over the north end of the hotel down from Room Nine to try and capture her."

Now defunct, Great Lakes Paranormal was comprised of Ted Kornman, a contractor whose work took him into restoring abandoned structures, and his best friend, Barney Cobb, a structural engineer, and Lily Condon, Ted's girlfriend at the time, and now his current wife of three years. Kornman was often joined by a rotating membership of students from Green Bay Community College, but he now takes solo cases, sometimes tagging along with the CGS on area hauntings.

"It is of my opinion that the former Gore Orphanage, if I can be presumptuous of the fact to call it that, is very likely haunted." Kornman insists. "I think when you take the long history of reported activity, the credibility of the witnesses, the amount of physical, auditory and photographic evidence that we have a location with activity that still manages to defy explanation.

"After reading the many ghost stories surrounding the Pine View Hotel, we had decided to check it out for ourselves. We reserved Rooms Seven and Nine, the rooms where most of the activity is reported to happen.

"After being shown to our rooms, we were told if we wanted to see some photos of ghosts to visit the front desk. Someone had taken a photo of Letitcia's ghost during a wedding. When we got to the desk and the lady showed us the photo, she told us although others claim to see a ghost in the photo, she could not see it. We agreed, we could not see it either. It was my opinion that since it was Fall that a leaf floating at just the right time had been caught in a way to look like a figure. That was a little bit of a let down because we had been so interested to see the photo.

"When we made reservations, we informed them that we were coming for a ghost investigation. We were told that we would have full access to the basement and other areas. Since it was still early when we arrived, the hotel was really busy so we decided to wait until the restaurant and tavern closed at midnight to do our investigation. We couldn't do a serious investigation with customers coming and going, and about 12:30, we saw that most of the lights were out and all seemed quiet so we gathered our equipment and headed for the main part of the building. The rooms are separate from this part of the hotel.

"We soon discovered we were locked out of the of the inn. It was locked up tight. When we were told we would have full access, we were not told that it was only until midnight. We called the desk and were told that after midnight the doors are locked, and no one was allowed to enter the hotel. We were greatly disappointed. We only had access to our rooms so that is where we had to stay.

"When you enter Room Nine, you enter a small room that opens into a larger room. While sitting in the larger room, we heard what sounded like the outside door knob turning, but when we checked, it was always locked, and no one was outside. The sound never happened when one of us was in the smaller room where the door was located. Several times we heard what sounded like someone walking outside the door, but again no one was there. We were the only occupants on the entire wing that night.

"What this tells me is that there is one very common occurrence that is happening here - the sound in the hall and the shaking doorknob. Now, maybe we showed up at a time the spirits didn't have the energy to perform or they were just not in a mood to perform or perhaps, just perhaps, it's just an atmospheric thing causing activity to recur at very uncertain unspecified times of the year. I can't be sure until I get to make a more fuller investigation."

History: The former Gore Orphanage was built in the 1830s as the residence of the Gore Family on what was then a large section of property from the lake to the main road. It is believed to have once covered almost 150 acres with a small school house, chapel, graveyard and even a post office on the grounds. The last owner of the property was Leticia Gore, the widow of Desmond Gore, who died in 1907 of scarlet fever. After his death, Leticia lived alone in the house with her son, Daniel, and three homeless boys she was given ward of by the county. After their deaths in 1909, the house fell out of the possession of the Gore family and into a succession of families who lived here. It opened as the Pine View Hotel in 1978 after sitting empty for eleven years. It is believed activity is more prevalent around November 12, supposedly the anniversary of the murder/suicide. 

Identity of Ghosts: According to legend, the hotel is haunted by the ghosts of four children murdered by Leticia Gore, who owned and ran an orphanage here. Leticia herself is also said to also haunt the grounds, but the legend fails to mention that one of the children was her own son and that the house was never an actual orphanage. A closer examination of the historical and pathology records by researchers reveals that Daniel Gore was killed by the three boys, Morris Ackles, Jerome Padalecki and Lawrence Kripke, who his mother had taken into her house. While playing "Cowboys and Indians," the boys may have accidentally killed Daniel with a fatal arrow and a grief-stricken Leticia attacked them with an axe in the former parlor room, now part of the modern bar, taking her life afterward. Over the years, the gory tale having morphed into a local urban legend. 

"We have no evidence that it was a malicious act." Ted Kornman adds. "But then we have no evidence it was accidental either." 

Source/Comments: Supernatural (Episode: "The Real Ghost Busters") - Activity based on the La Posada in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Drury Mansion in Cleveland, Ohio, Wolfe Manor in Clovis, California, Keena House in Hollywood, California, the Davison House in Sherman Oaks, California and the Grey Whale Inn in Fort Bragg, California.

Point Place, Wisconsin from "That 70s Show" (1998-2006)

Mike Enslin from "1408" (2008)