Butler County Courthouse

The Historic Butler County Courthouse in Hamilton, Ohio, was constructed between 1885 and 1889, designed by architect David W. Gibbs of Toledo in a Second Empire style with Italianate features, Corinthian columns, and a mansard roof. Gibbs, who also designed the Wyoming State Capitol Building, created a grand four-story structure on a site that has served as the seat of Butler County government since the days of Fort Hamilton. The original tower was four-tiered and domed, capped with a statue of Justice. The courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 22, 1981.

The building's haunted reputation begins with an earlier courthouse that stood on the same site. In the 1860s, a night watchman was found dead in the Treasurer's Office. The death was initially ruled a suicide, but investigators soon discovered that the office safes had been emptied. Suspicion turned to robbery, and it was believed the killers had staged the scene to cover up a murder. When the current courthouse was built on the same grounds in 1889, reports began almost immediately of the watchman's ghost still making his rounds. According to longtime staff accounts, his figure has been seen walking the corridors between midnight and one in the morning, apparently unaware that the building he patrols has changed around him.

The courthouse endured further tragedy in the twentieth century. On a night in 1912, a fire engulfed the building's tower. Three Hamilton firefighters lost their lives when the clock tower collapsed, sending the massive bell crashing through each floor below. The fire destroyed the cupola, tower, and the Goddess of Justice statue. The tower was rebuilt by local architect Frederick Mueller with a new dome, though that too was removed in 1926 after being struck by lightning. Then, during the Great Flood of 1913, one of the worst natural disasters in Ohio history, the courthouse served as a temporary morgue for ten days as the bodies of flood victims were brought in for identification.

During a paranormal investigation on July 23, 2022, the Spiritual Realm Paranormal Investigators, an eleven-member team founded in 2013 by medium Ashlee St. Denis, spent eight hours inside the building. The team's four sensitives reported distinct emotional impressions on different floors: sharp abdominal pain and nausea on the second floor, anxiety and sadness on the third, and dread, fear, and heaviness on the fourth. The basement produced nausea alongside intense electromagnetic field readings. Doors on the fourth floor closed by themselves during the investigation, a hallway light turned off without anyone touching it, and a flashlight was knocked off a table in the third-floor courtroom. Small objects, including a paperclip and a thumbtack, struck a door from an unknown origin. When the team asked questions aloud, a motion-activated ball responded by activating on request.

The sensitives also picked up on what they described as a possible shooting in the building. This correlated with stories passed down among courthouse employees about a shooting during a trial in the historic third-floor courtroom during the 1920s or 1930s, though specific records of the incident have not been confirmed. Team member Brian Smith noted that "a true investigation is nothing like the ghost-hunting shows on television." Staff who work in the building after hours continue to report shadowy figures in the hallways, unexplained footsteps in empty rooms, and sudden temperature drops in specific corners of the building.