Edwin Shaw Hospital

Edwin Shaw Hospital was established in 1915 as the Springfield Lake Sanitarium, a tuberculosis treatment facility built on one hundred acres overlooking Springfield Lake in Lakemore, Summit County, Ohio. Five counties -- Columbiana, Mahoning, Portage, Stark, and Summit -- pooled resources to construct the initial seventy-two-bed facility at a cost of $225,000, responding to a combined five thousand tuberculosis cases in the region. Summit County became the sole owner in 1920 after the other counties sold their interests. The sanitarium was renamed Edwin Shaw Hospital in 1934 in honor of Edwin Coupland Shaw, a B.F. Goodrich executive who had served on the Board of Trustees since 1918.

In 1922, Sunshine Cottage was opened as a one-hundred-bed annex for pediatric tuberculosis patients. The cottage featured murals of fairy tale characters and provided a structured schedule emphasizing rest and education alongside treatment. Many of the children housed there did not survive. Two hundred and forty-six tuberculosis victims, including men, women, and children who died between 1915 and 1922, are buried in a small cemetery hidden on the hospital grounds. Sunshine Cottage was turned over to Children Services in 1947 and expanded in the 1960s into Sunshine Village, which housed orphans and abused or neglected children until it was closed in 1985.

The paranormal activity reported at Edwin Shaw centers on the lingering presences of those who died on the grounds, particularly in Sunshine Village, where the bulk of the phenomena was said to occur. Staff and visitors described hearing ghostly humming and the voices of children in the corridors of the former orphanage. Some believed the building was haunted by what they described as the tormented souls of lost children who still wandered the Village's halls. Doors throughout the hospital opened and closed by themselves, and phantom footsteps were heard echoing down hallways when no one was present. One of the most frequently reported phenomena was the sound of a meal being served in the vacant cafeteria: the clatter of trays, the murmur of conversation, and the scraping of chairs, all in a room that had been empty for years. The sounds of coughing and labored breathing were heard in wards that had housed tuberculosis patients decades earlier.

In February 2017, the Malvern Exploration and Paranormal Society conducted an investigation of the facility before its demolition. The team reported rustling and heavy human-like breathing emanating from a doorway, though no physical source was found. In the basement tunnel system that connected the hospital's buildings, they heard strange noises resembling footsteps and small knocks coming from above and deeper in the tunnels. A loud banging noise from the tunnels, as though something substantial had fallen, prompted investigators to flee the area. The team reported capturing photographic anomalies they described as orbs. The Ohio Exploration Society had visited the site in 2004 but reported observing no paranormal activity during their time on the grounds.

As tuberculosis rates declined following the development of streptomycin in 1946, Edwin Shaw gradually shifted its mission. The hospital added skilled nursing in 1961, alcoholism treatment in 1974, and physical rehabilitation in 1977. By 1986, a $6.7 million expansion made it Ohio's largest head-injury rehabilitation center. The facility also opened Challenge Golf Course in the early 1990s, described as the first course in the world designed specifically for persons with disabilities. Operations at the Lakemore location ceased on December 3, 2009, when inpatient services relocated to the former Fallsview Psychiatric Hospital in nearby Cuyahoga Falls. The original Edwin Shaw complex was demolished in 2017 after years of deterioration and annual maintenance costs exceeding $250,000. The cemetery with its two hundred and forty-six graves remains on the property, which Summit County has since proposed repurposing for addiction treatment facilities.