CINCINNATI – Music Hall may need more than a renovation.
If you believe what you see in Matthew Zory's photographs, it may need an exorcism, too.
The Cincinnati icon is known as one of the Tri-State’s “most haunted” places, and was even featured on the SyFy Channel's 'Ghost Hunters'in 2014.
Zory, a bass player with Cincinnati Pops and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra who also runs Matthew Zory Photography, is photographing Music Hall during its renovations this year -- and the photos he snapped last Wednesday look like they were pulled directly from the SyFy Channel.
"As you an see in these first two long exposure pictures, Music Hall clearly has some apparitions," Zory wrote on Facebook above the following two photos:
Photo by Matthew Zory
Photo by Matthew Zory
Zory told WCPO he doesn't believe in ghosts, but has seen a lot of website traffic on his Music Hall photos.
Music Hall got its reputation as one of the “most haunted” places in America because of where it was built. Before its construction, Music Hall’s plot was home to Ohio's first insane asylum. Next door at 12th Street and Central Parkway was Cincinnati Hospital.
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In 1832, a cholera outbreak in Cincinnati killed 832 people and resulted in many orphans. In response, the city built Cincinnati Orphan Asylum next to Music Hall near the corner of 12th and Elm streets. The Orphan Asylum, a four-story building, was later called the “Pest House" because the hospital used it to isolate patients with infectious diseases.
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For 20 years, the grounds around the hospital were used to bury the homeless and those who had killed themselves. Instead of coffins, the dead were bundled and dropped into the ground, according to the book "Ghosthunting Ohio." In 1876, the land was turned over to the Music Hall Association.
Music Hall was later built over the countless unmarked graves on the original location of the “Pest House."
The building is currently closed for construction and scheduled to reopen in the fall of 2017.
