Thurber House

Built in 1873 on the site of an asylum that burned and killed seven women, this Columbus literary museum is where James Thurber heard a ghost pacing his dining room table in 1915, inspiring two of his most famous stories. A jeweler also shot himself in an upstairs bedroom in 1904, and staff report books flying off shelves, figures in mirrors, and a broken clock that chimes on its own.

Thomas Tracy Tress, a Columbus jeweler, wanted to prove to his dinner guests that his .38-caliber revolver was not loaded. He pointed it at his own chest and pulled the trigger. It was loaded. He died in an upstairs bedroom of what is now the Thurber House, a Queen Anne Victorian at 77 Jefferson Avenue. That was 1904, and according to Operations Director Leah Wharton, the story has become part of the house's identity. "To prove his point to his guests, he pointed at his chest and pulled the trigger, and it was loaded," Wharton told WOSU in 2025.

But Tress was not the first person to die on this ground. The house, built in 1873, sits on the former site of the Central Ohio Lunatic Asylum. That building burned in 1868, killing seven women trapped inside. The land was cleared, subdivided, and sold off. Families moved in. One of those families was the Thurbers.

James Thurber lived here from 1913 to 1917 while attending Ohio State University. On the night of November 17, 1915, he heard what he described as "heavy footsteps of a man walking for nearly a minute around our dining room table," followed by the sound of someone running upstairs. Nobody was there. The experience rattled the family enough to become the basis for two of Thurber's most famous works: "The Night the Ghost Got In" and "The Night the Bed Fell." Thurber changed the address in the published story to protect whichever family was living there at the time.

The house opened as a museum and literary center in 1984, and the ghost stories came with it. Staff members have reported books launching off shelves on their own. Visitors have looked into mirrors and seen a man standing behind them, only to turn around to an empty room. A broken clock once chimed so loudly that an employee jumped out of her chair. One visiting writer's dog began growling at specific pieces of furniture and corners of rooms for no apparent reason.

In 2010, the SyFy Channel's Ghost Hunters investigated the house (Season 6, Episode 18, "It's Time to Get Touched"). The show brought national attention, but the house had been drawing paranormal interest for years before that. Columbus Ghost Tours now runs regular investigations on Friday and Saturday nights, with sessions running from 7 PM to 1 AM or 8 PM to 2 AM.

In October 2022, 614NOW magazine writer Jack McLaughlin spent a night alone in the house. Around 9:30 PM, on the third floor, he began hearing faint creaking noises alternating between the kitchen and hallway, repeating every 10 to 20 seconds. The sounds continued for roughly 30 minutes, then stopped abruptly. "Do I have an explanation for them, though? Also, definitely not," McLaughlin wrote.

The third floor, where McLaughlin had his experience, doubles as a writer-in-residence apartment. Visiting authors stay there for extended periods, sleeping in the same rooms where Thurber heard his ghost more than a century ago. Interim Executive Director Kathy Matthews put it plainly in a 2025 interview: "I don't believe in ghosts, although I kind of wish I did."

The house sits on ground that has seen an asylum fire, a self-inflicted gunshot, and a future Pulitzer Prize finalist scribbling notes about the thing he heard on the stairs. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 8, 1979. Today it hosts readings, workshops, and ghost investigations, sometimes on the same weekend. Admission for self-guided tours runs on Saturdays and Sundays, 1 to 4 PM.