On Wednesday (October 27) I will be hosting a talk at the Hancock County Library from 6:30 to 7:30 in community rooms A & B. Over the years, I have been contacted by several people asking if I was ever going to reprise the Greenfield ghost walks from years ago. I will be revisiting the haunts of Greenfield with updates gathered over the past several years. Visit the Hancock County Library website at https://hcplibrary.org/ and pre-register for this free event. Registration for this event will close on October 27, 2021 at 6:30 p.m. Here is an article from a decade ago that will give you an idea of what we will be talking about that evening. I hope to see you there.
Although often overshadowed in the world of central Indiana haunted communities by its more famous neighbor to the east, Irvington, Greenfield has many great ghost stories of its own. The 180-year-old community located 20 minutes east of Indianapolis has seen its fair share of notoriety, tragedy, and sorrow, all of which have left their mark on this community smack dab in the middle of Hancock County.
Most Hoosiers connect Greenfield with its most famous son, poet James Whitcomb Riley. Indeed it can easily be claimed that Riley put Greenfield on the map. His boyhood home, which rests squarely on the Old National Road, is a treasured Indiana landmark with an understated haunted reputation of its own. I myself witnessed strange goings-on in the famous “rafter room” of Riley’s youth a few short years ago. This story will be updated with details of a full investigation of the Riley home from earlier this year. I will talk about my experience during the talk next Wednesday.
The poet’s spirit has also been witnessed on the courthouse square playfully dancing with the ghosts of two small children who were murdered on the courthouse lawn many decades ago. The ghost of the “Yellowman” has been seen gazing plaintively from the bell tower of the courthouse by generations of Greenfield youth populating the town square on hot summer nights. The echo of a shotgun blast is often heard coming from the National Road on the north side of the courthouse as a testament to a tragedy that took place there 70 years ago.
Greenfield’s two long-forgotten funeral homes, the Pasco and the Lynam, both have ghost stories aplenty just waiting to be shared. There are several ghosts and hauntings associated with Greenfield’s old Gooding’s Tavern, located directly across the street from the Masonic Lodge on the south side of the National Road. One of these is the restless spirit of a young rebel “Copperhead,” who was murdered in the center of what is now State Road 9 by a Union patriot after voicing his support for General Lee and the Confederate cause.
Greenfield’s Riley Park on the eastern edge of town is probably best known as the site of James Whitcomb Riley’s “Ole Swimmin’ Hole,” but how many realize that the park is reportedly haunted by a ghostly pack of wolves that were responsible for the death of the brother of an Indiana State Senator’s brother in 1838? The Old Log Jail Museum, located in the park, is also haunted by the ghost of the county’s 1st sheriff, who was incinerated in a fire in the jail in 1853. The peaceful-looking little white Chapel in the Park is rumored to be haunted by one of its former pastors.
Perhaps Greenfield’s most notorious ghostly phenomenon is connected to the time America’s “Public Enemy # 1,” Al Brady, who was incarcerated in the old jail awaiting trial for the murder of an Indiana State Trooper in 1936. Longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself called the Brady gang “The most vicious and dangerous gang in history.” Al Brady was known to boast that by the time he was done, he’d “make John Dillinger look like a piker.”
The spectral appearance of the Lincoln Ghost Train retraces its route through the heart of Greenfield every April, solidifying its spot as the most famous ghost story in American history. However, it’s the unsettling appearance of the ghost of a 24-year-old black man, unjustly lynched for a crime he did not commit, that continues to send chills up the spines of witnesses retracing the victim’s death march along the darkened Pennsy Trail in Greenfield.
All of these tales, and more, will be covered in this talk about Haunted Greenfield. I also invite you to come and walk the streets of Irvington on our Haunted Irvington ghost tour. We will have two more weekends this season before we vanish into the night. The tours are held Friday and Saturday at 7:00. We depart from the Irving Theatre on Johnson Avenue. Come and join us . . . if you dare.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
