MT. ADAMS, Ohio (WKRC) - Swapping ghost stories is just another day on the job at the Cincinnati Art Museum. The staff said it has proof their mysterious old building is haunted.
Maybe it's the architecture, maybe it's the stories behind the art inside. Whatever it is, there is definitely a spooky vibe inside the museum.
"They have had sort of paranormal investigators come in, and they claimed that they felt that it was incredibly haunted," said Russell Ihrig with the Cincinnati Museum of Art.
Staff members have stories that will send a chill down your spine.
"In the Great Hall, they'll see sort of shadowy figures moving around on the staircases and on the balconies, and they kind of disappear and move around," said Ihrig.
The building is protected 24/7, and when the lights go down, the unusual activity builds up.
"I've had guards tell me about a woman that walked past them in a certain staircase when they were closing and they said, 'Oh, we're closing, ma'am,' and then when they looked, they were gone," said Ihrig.
For one brave group, Halloween night seemed like the perfect night to learn more about the haunts inside.
"They heard someone cough, and they turned around and they didn't see anybody, and all they could hear was the whispering was someone saying, 'Frank!'" Ihrig said.
A Samuel Best clock inside the Cincinnati wing can be heard chiming; it has no bells. A painting of a woman with a lyre can be heard singing in French.
"People have seen a sort of hooded figure, which many interpret to be a monk, in that room, rising up and floating through the space," said Ihrig.
Observers have seen what they think is a ghost rising from a mummy in the antiquities gallery.
The unexplainable happens here year-round. Some think it's really the paranormal showing off their imaginations.
"A spooky story can sometimes make you connect with a place more, so I hope people walk away thinking about the building as a special place to them," said Ihrig.
Staff members said they see the most spooky activity in the oldest parts of the building in the Great Hall, the Cincinnati Wing, a 12th-century chapel and the antiquities gallery.
The art museum is not the only haunted site in Cincinnati: The Taft Museum has its share of spooky stories too.
