Location:  A lovely little spot called Gore Orphanage Road.  It gives even non-believers the creeps at night.  It's just off of the road and is about three to five city blocks away from civilization.  There is heavy tree and undergrowth that likes to block out most light at night.  It's located in the basin of a small valley.

    Background:  Local folklore goes as such:  Gore Orphanage used to be a quaint little orphanage that was mildly popular, though quite a ways away from town (but at the time most places were).  As the story goes, one night a young boy was making his way to the out-house with an oil lamp.  Something startled him and he dropped the lamp on the stairs.  The resulting fire couldn't be stopped in time because of the suddenness of it and lack of good equipment.  The stairs were the first thing to go up in flames, so all of the upper floor was trapped.  Towns people gathered around to help try to put the fire out, but in the end could only watch as the children inside burned and suffocated from the smoke.  They say over one hundred children died from the fire.  Some from the mere shock of watching their friends burn.  We have yet to verify with historians if this is true.  But the fact that Gore Orphanage burned down and children died is common knowledge.

    Current Folklore:  Something as horrific as the fire of course would spawn superstitions and tales.  The most common one says that when you visit the place where the orphanage was (there's just foundation left) most people don't see or hear anything, but when they return to their car dusty children's hand prints cover the doors, windshields, and hood.  There have been supposed sightings of strange lights in the area and tales of people hearing the moans and screams of burning children.  There is even a statue of an angel placed near the sight in memory of the children who died.  They call this the "Black Angel of Death", and superstition says that if you kiss it, you will die within the next year.

    Mission Statement:  We at the Sandusky SPIRIT Chapter believe that most of the Current Folklore is false.  Most studies of famous haunted places turn out to be hoaxes, especially in such a superstitious place as Ohio.  We at SPIRIT of Sandusky believe we can disprove and discredit most common folklore.  As to the actual existence of ghosts in the area, we hope we find some, but also doubt this.  We hope with all our hearts that Gore is haunted, though.  After all, what's a paranormal investigation without a good scare or two?

    Visit #1 (Friday, May 8):
Pre-investigation:  This first visit proves to be most interesting.  I have three SPIRIT members (including myself) as well as a small, shall we say, flock of friends.  This "flock" of friends is threatening to become a "herd" of friends, but we are trying to discourage everyone.  The caste of people to be included are me (DeadGod), Andrew (Saerdna), Angela (Anastasia), Carley, Shendra, and Shauna.  (The first three being the SPIRIT members, the latter three being friends)  Our plans are to scout out the area on this first visit.  Maybe even find some places of extreme psionic energy (both I and Angela exhibit minor sensitivity to these things).  Even though I disapprove of them, we are bringing along a couple of Ouija boards (probably as entertainment instead of a source of information).  We plan to include some minor wiccan wardings against spirits, as well as attempting to summon one in the traditional method.  The fact that these methods haven't been scientifically proven has been noted, we only wish to get some sort of reaction for the night.  As to what we expect of the evening...... one can only guess.
(written Thursday, May 7, 1998)

Post-investigation:  I'm quite happy and quite disappointed all in the same.  First of all, we were able to deflect the hordes of people who wished to join us.  In fact, it ended up being only myself, Andrew, Angela, Nina (my younger sister), and Jeff (my dad).  We left at about eight to get there in time and totally misjudged sunset and travel times.  We got there somewhere around 9:45, and the way the trees envelope the road it was almost pitch black.  We wandered down the path where the ruins were supposed to be and instead found a developing mud river.  It was so dark, we might not have even been on the right path.  We decided (at about 9:55) that since we couldn't do anything else tonight, we pulled out a Ouija board.  Angela's Ouija board at that (it's possibly cursed; that's another report I'm working on).  We supposedly contacted the spirit of Billy, one of the dead children.  We proceeded to get this story out of him (in that broken, question-filled way that you do from a Ouija board):  He was being hurt because we were there.  He told us to get out because "she" was coming.  In some of the versions of Gore's story, the old lady who was the owner of the orphanage went crazy and burnt the orphanage down.  We assumed Billy meant she was coming.  At about 10:10 we called it a night.  More because all that talk of "she's coming" and the fact that the board wanted Angela souley to be on the board was freaking Angela and Nina out.  So we left.  On the way out of the valley we noticed that there were a lot of animals (dogs, cats, raccoons, etc.) just standing on the side of the road, staring at us.  These occurrences are rather strange, but maybe just product of paranoid brains.  Needless to say, I can't wait to go back.