ABOUTOne of the area's infamous spots is Buffalo Ridge, a hilly road located just northwest of Cincinnati in Cleves. It's actually home to Mitchell Memorial Forest, a park with a nature trail, fishing lake, and a children's playground! Woo-hoo! Not only that, but Charles Manson himself REALLY spent his years in Cincinnati on this road! (I say probably because I know his family used to live here, but I never actually checked to see if he grew up in the Cleves area. Not that it's crucial to this story, anyway) Well, the urban legends about this road are outrageous. The stories range from nighttime street chases by white vans, ghostly cars from failed gang initiatives, an evil dog with glowing green eyes, ghosts running down the street searching for missing parts for all eternity, and most importantly, the Crematorium. You see, urban legends say that on this road there was a corrupt crematorium that dumped bodies in the forest, blah blah blah. And now the bodies are probably still out there somewhere.
Well, in high school I had an English teacher who told me that one time he and a friend of his drove down there, stopped, and for some reason accidentally opened the barn door and found chickens hanging from the ceiling on chains. and their blood is collected on the leaves below. So they ran to their car and of course the Gravedigger or some other monster truck comes out of the driveway and chases him all the way to Cleves! EXCITEMENT!
That's all well and good, but as I soon found out from personal research… there was never a crematorium there. However, the ruins of Cincinnati's first planetarium still remain there, hidden in the forest. In fact, if you are still reading and want to learn more about this topic, I have created a website explaining all the background Buffalo Ridge (with attractive photos!). When I created this site, I tried almost everything and experienced nothing other than a police officer stopping me and literally laughing at us as we explained to him that we wanted to see dead people running across the street. I feel my self-esteem is growing. It also occurred to us that park staff were frequently visited by rangers in white vans, which spoiled our sense of chasing the white van.
And so! with all this behind me, I can now explain my story. About two weeks ago I was taking some novel friends in the area to Buffalo Ridge. These friends are my venerable friend Jonathan, who is the same age as me and grew up in Indiana, and Kay, his current girlfriend. I think. Well, we get there around 9 p.m., when the sun is almost setting, and as usual, I tell them to park farther down the street, off another road (the name of which has slipped my mind), and go back up to the “No Dumping Or We'll Take Your Ass” sign. Behind them there is a path leading through the forest to the ruins of the venerable Planetarium.
Being the loser who loves telling local history, I was quite vocal about the area while Kay and Jonathan followed behind me. They both had some flashlights with them to see better in the dense forest, and I just practiced at the front. Oh yes, I am a real man! …Try. Either way, we come to what I can only describe as the foundation of a building. All I have is a pile of bricks and torn metal on the hillside.
We sat down and started talking about whatever, and a good 30 minutes passed. Jonathan and I talked about manly things, like whether we should go for those petite fries at Steak n Shake or the even more manly pot of root beer at Jolly's in Fairfield. About then Kay started mumbling about how “the air had changed” or something like that. So, in hopes of seeing something scary, I went down to the foundations of the venerable planetarium and grabbed Jonathan's flashlight to lend a hand me navigate, walking over the fallen stones and whatnot. I remember at one point Kay said we should go and I had already walked to the other side of the rubble and wanted to look around some more. But! Jonathan didn't like to upset her, so I agreed to leave.
Since I'm a nice guy, I started back through the rubble. At this point I turned the airy back up the wall I had climbed down to see Kay and Jonathan, and that's when I saw it! A man I couldn't recognize from where I was was approaching both of them, so I jokingly shouted, “Hey, you better tell that guy we don't sacrifice children. Neither do drug dealers. Or drug dealers sacrificing children! ” and went back to climbing over the rubble. I finally made it up the wall and… no one was freaking out! Exasperated, I headed back up the trail to Buffalo Ridge and found Kay crying while Jonathan hugged her. Oh. So I asked what was wrong. with our guest when Jonathan started RANKING and continued talking about how “This guy just appeared out of nowhere, walked up to me… and disappeared!!” It made our heads spin.
From that point on we were so excited, running back to the truck with Kay scared, Jonathan excited and me pissed. I want the ghost to come to me and disappear! and I didn't even see it because I was walking on rolling rocks and whatnot. I'll never look where I'm going again! …OK, bad idea. Eventually this story became one of the few real ghosts we can talk about. Still, it's a fun story that became known at the Art Institute I go to as “Jonathan and Alex vs. the Invisible Amish Ninja.”
