Part one of two:
Things go bump in the night at old Montrose ...
Part one of two:
Things go bump in the night at old Montrose Mansion
Originally printed in the New Albany Tribune and The Evenings News, October 30 & 31, 2008. Written by yours truly, as I accompanied a local ghost-hunting group on a big adventure.
CLARKSVILLE, IN — The Montrose — otherwise known as Stratto's along Lewis & Clark Parkway in Clarksville — is a big place, much bigger than it looks from the street.
Quietly tucked midway back on its lot, the building is reputedly home to more than a banquet hall and former Italian restaurant. The huge former home is rented out for receptions and has served as a lunch and dinner spot, but when all is calm inside, its high ceilings and classic architecture recall the post-Civil War days of the Montrose's construction.
Stepping into the converted mansion, a visitor might get a little lost in the atmosphere — perhaps forget what year it is, altogether.
Many believe that's exactly what happened to the house's original owner, John McCulloch.
Stories have circulated about the Montrose's haunted nature since the 1920s, when a family member spotted what he believed was the ghost of McCulloch in an upstairs bedroom.
"My father, Kenneth, was John McCulloch's son," explains Walker McCulloch, of Jeffersonville. "He was living in the house in his mid-20s, and had been out of town up to things that he probably shouldn't have been.
"He was a rather fearful person — he slept with a gun under his mattress and 14 locks on his door. One night, he woke to the scent of roses in the air and said a figure materialized at the foot of his bed.
"According to my dad, it was somewhat foggy, like it came out of vapor. I remember him saying, 'I don't know how I got all those locks undone so fast, but I did,' and apparently he ran down the hall and hid in my uncle Bob's room.
"Uncle Bob was kind of a character, too, so he must have been scared to run down there for help. Dad took it as a sign from John McCulloch that he should stay out of trouble."
Does Walker believe the story?
"Well, Dad said there was very obviously someone there. I know the family that lived in the house for 30 years before it became a restaurant told spooky stories, as well."
Employees at Stratto's — and before that, Sunset Grille — have spoken of finding doors shut behind them, intercoms buzzing with no one on the other end of the line and various creepy feelings in the attic and basement of the house.
Light bulbs have been found removed inexplicably from lamps around the building, when no one was present to complete the deed. One night, an employee was rumored to have found an open window upstairs in McCulloch's bedroom, and upon closing it and returning downstairs to the restaurant, finding the same window open again.
"I hear footsteps upstairs sometimes," says Stratto's manager Nick Hatfield.
After working at the establishment for two years, dealing with spooked busboys and the like, he invited Southern Indiana Regional Paranormal Society, or SIRPS, in to have a serious look around.
"I just want to see what they find," he said.
The ghost of John McCulloch, should he really exist, has never been afraid of making noise in front of the help. A domestic employee by the name of Edna Spokes worked for Walker McCulloch's grandmother, Joyce, for many years.
"Edna told me more than once 'Mister John's stomping around the attic again,'" Walker said.
At midnight on a Friday night in September, six SIRPS members gathered in the darkened bar of the Montrose with an assortment of equipment. If at all possible, they set out to contact whoever — or whatever — has been making such a fuss in the old house for the better part of 80 years.
Their assembled gear filled two large tables in the room. Gauss meters — used to measure electromagnetic frequency, or EMF, beeped and whirred as the team chatted about where to set up night-vision video cameras, and who would volunteer to go upstairs to test the noise level in the house.
The restaurant was virtually unlit, but the team strode through it without trepidation as they ascended both wide and well-used staircases, as well as narrow, steep, even creakier versions into the lesser-used sections of the building.
"Ghosts were people, too" is their motto, and if John McCulloch or any of his relatives are present, they are mostly looking forward to meeting them.
Steve Lasley, a delivery driver from Palmyra, isn't in such a hurry to talk to ghosts.
"I'm out to prove it's not haunted," he says, through a modest smile.
He doesn't seem afraid, just interested — and perhaps somewhat amused at the goings on …
… Read details of the ghost hunt in the coming days.
