Bigfoot, UFOs and ghosts, sisters write spooky Holmes County book – Wooster Daily Record
As a child, Shelly Spade would sometimes use her parents’ half-bath on the second floor. Usually, she would leave the room, go downstairs and return to whatever she was doing, but on this occasion, Spade looked back.
Standing tall in the threshold of the bathroom was an old woman staring at her, she remembers. After a second look, the woman was gone.
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Spade’s interest in the paranormal dates back to when she was growing up in her childhood home in Holmes County’s Lakeville. While she never knew who the old woman was, she knew one thing for certain, it was an old house.
Built sometime between the late 1800s or early 1900s, there was ample time for ghosts to take up residence before she was born.
Her sisters, Cheryl Fields and Mary Tipton, experienced their fair share of creepy occurrences, she said. From UFO sightings to a shadowy lumberjack, the three sisters were inspired by their experiences.
Decades later in 2019, they wrote their first book about the history of Lakeville.
Now, they’re celebrating a new book, “Holmes County Hair Raisers.” It features many spooky tales from Holmes County residents about ghosts, UFOs and even Bigfoot.
Published in September, the sisters will honor its release on Saturday evening with a free book signing at the Victorian House in Millersburg. The Holmes County Historical Society will host the event and offer self-guided tours through the old home.
Tickets for the tours are $5 per person. The event is from 7 to 10 p.m.
Childhood scares as inspiration
One night when they were young, Fields heard creaking, almost as if someone was trudging up the stairs. She remembered the noise walking toward her bedroom door.
When Fields looked up, she saw the shadowy figure of what she thought was a lumberjack preparing to swing an ax down on her.
Terrified, she screamed and it disappeared.
“My youngest sister Cheryl, she probably had the most terrifying experiences in there,” Spade said. “Her room was at the top of the stairs, and she said she just never ever turned her back to the stairs or closed her door.”
While the three sisters experienced the paranormal as kids, their brother and parents never did, Spade said.
“They probably just thought that we were hormonal teenage girls,” she said.
Despite this difference in experiences, their interest in the paranormal became a lifelong hobby.
Reporting the paranormal, UFO and Bigfoot sightings
To write their most recent book, they reached out to people in the Historical Society and on social media.
Spade said some of the entries are from the same person, but many of the stories were gathered by mere chance from individuals around the county.
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“We would stay at a hotel or someplace and ask the person in front of us if they had a ghost story,” she said. People usually answered yes.
From these chance encounters, she learned about the county’s many UFO and Bigfoot sightings.
“When it comes to Bigfoot, we have several people who saw it and one lady saw it two times plus had another experience where there couldn’t have been anything that caused that sort of damage,” Spade said.
Based on their conversations with locals, UFO encounters date back to the 1960s while Bigfoot sightings seem to be at least a few decades old.
Each story is written how it was told to them, minus some edits to make it clearer or grammatically correct. While some stories could be tall tales, the three authors simply wanted to collect local stories into one book.
After all, she said, who doesn’t like a scary story?
Reach Bryce by email at bbuyakie@gannett.com
On Twitter: @Bryce_Buyakie
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