With autumn whispering its arrival in the chilly air, only the truly daring venture into the realm of the headless things—
Stumpy’s Hollow (Norwich, Muskingum County)
- The legend begins with the tragic 1835 death of Christopher Baldwin, the esteemed librarian of the American Antiquarian Society, who perished in a violent stagecoach accident. By the 1840s, whispers spread of a headless rider thundering from the hollow, sometimes even transforming into a fearsome man-faced dog—an apparition that chilled the blood of all who saw it.
- This haunting tale stands as one of Ohio’s earliest—and eeriest—recorded horseman legends.
Headless Horseman of Cherry Hill (Fayette County)
- A ghostly rider without a head was said to haunt the Cherry Hill area near Washington Courthouse. Whispers claim the specter belonged to a federal agent, lured to his doom and murdered by cunning innkeepers during the days when Ohio was a bustling stop for stagecoaches.
Headless Horseman of Rogues Hollow (Wayne County)
- According to local legend, the Rogues Hollow region is haunted by a devilish figure who rides a headless horse. The story claims the horse lost its head after running into a low-hanging branch, giving rise to the terrifying apparition.
That said, my favorite this week is . . .There is Something Unnatural in Stumpy’s Hollow…
Since the 1840s, it has been said that something supernatural lingers in the hollows of Norwich, Ohio. People talked, but it became more than idle chatter one night when the village doctor, returning from a midnight call, passed the cemetery and entered the valley below. He heard a rustling in the brush. He thought it was deer settling in for the night. Then the sound swelled into a charge.
From the darkness burst a horse and rider, both slick with blood. The rider’s neck ended in a jagged stump, torn flesh still dripping. The horse’s flanks were smeared red. The doctor’s horse reared, screaming, before bolting for town. Shaken, the doctor told his story. His neighbors mocked him. One man, determined to prove it false, walked into the hollow at midnight. He, too, came face to face with the bloodied, neck-stump rider. He never laughed again. Others over the years have met the figure, including a young girl who swore the ghost taunted her as a man-faced, dog-like creature that touched her on the shoulder before vanishing.
In time, the haunting found its explanation.
In the early 1800s, the Federal Government laid down the National Road, a hard ribbon of clay and stone carrying coaches west through Cambridge, Zanesville, and Norwich. The road was treacherous, and one curve outside Norwich proved fatal on August 20, 1835.
Christopher Baldwin, a thirty-five-year-old librarian at the American Antiquarian Society, was riding west to study the ancient burial mounds of Ohio. His coach barreled down the road when a farmer’s drove of hogs spilled into its path. The frightened horses panicked, the coach overturned, and Baldwin was crushed beneath. When they pulled him free, his skull was shattered and his neck grotesquely bent. His journey ended in the dust.
Norwich buried him. But the hollow did not forget.
At night, the specter comes. Sometimes, as the headless rider—“Stumpy,” with the knob of his neck shining dark in the moonlight. Sometimes, as a hulking beast, a dog with a human face and eyes that watch too closely. Always rushing. Always stinking of blood and soil.
And everyone knew then as they know now. It was Baldwin. Not at rest. Always striving to complete his quest. Condemned to ride forever between the place he died and the grave that holds his bones.
Hear me tell the tale on YouTube: https://youtu.be/mcNaphmQUhw
Or find it in my Ohio Ghost Hunter Guide II https://www.amazon.com/Ohio-Ghost-Hunter…/dp/1940087058/
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