Speaker 1 (00:00): Coming up on Art Palace, but I turned around and there was nothing. There absolutely nothing there. It was just dead quiet. Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host, Russell iig. Here at the Art Palace, we meet cool people and then talk to them about art. Today's cool people are the staff of the art museum who are sharing more of their personal ghost stories that they've experienced in the museum. This is our third year of ghost stories, so be sure to check out the last two years if you enjoyed this one. You guys have some good ghost stories. I hear Speaker 2 (01:15): Being in the gift shop. We're here a lot when the museum's closed and we set up a lot when the museum's closed and dark. Speaker 1 (01:26): It's a totally different part of the museum than people usually even think about as being kind of haunted or spooky. Speaker 2 (01:35): We're in a lot of the parts of the museum too that people just don't go. One of our stories is in our storage room downstairs. Well, and then there's columns that are kind of falling down. Then they built a new support column here, and it's just kind of pieced together. Turns out of the floor. Yes, there are. Oh yeah. And the one wall in the back that's always wet. That was where we were down there pricing for holiday, which we end up spending a lot of time down there at that point, Speaker 3 (02:13): And it's always a million degrees in there. It is so Speaker 2 (02:16): Stuffy. Speaker 3 (02:19): And I remember the Speaker 2 (02:20): Day Speaker 3 (02:20): That this happened. We went down there and it was Speaker 2 (02:22): Cold, and Speaker 3 (02:23): I was like, I didn't wear a sweater today because I knew I was going to be down in the dungeon and I'm always sweating. So I immediately was like, this is weird. This is unusual. And then I think I mentioned that to Leah. We were sitting down there together, and I think it was, she noticed on the wall behind me, there was a piece of paper that was taped the wall. Speaker 2 (02:49): It was a little merchandise tag that someone for some reason had taped to the wall Speaker 3 (02:55): And it was fluttering as if there was air coming at it or from behind it. And there's not a vent in that room. So that struck me as weird, but we mentioned the room is kind of crumbling in places, so I was like, Speaker 2 (03:10): Maybe Speaker 3 (03:11): There's a new air flow from somewhere, but I plucked up the courage to go over and put my hand in front of it, and there was absolutely no airflow at all. No wind coming from in front of it or behind it. It was just fluttering. Speaker 2 (03:28): Yeah, it was moving and there was no breeze, nothing. But like she said, it was cold down there too, so we're both just like, Speaker 3 (03:36): Hey, time to go back upstairs. Speaker 2 (03:42): Did it stay cold that whole day? Do you remember? I don't feel like it was in the afternoon when we were down there. Speaker 3 (03:48): I felt like it warmed up pretty much after that incident. Speaker 2 (03:57): We have some volunteers and stuff that just will not, Speaker 3 (04:01): Yeah, Speaker 2 (04:02): We go to a Speaker 3 (04:02): 10 Speaker 2 (04:02): Too tag and they're like, Speaker 3 (04:04): No, it's okay. I had an experience outside of a 10 too. There's that. There's a wooden ramp sort of leading up to the door. And I was standing outside during the terracotta exhibition where I was getting statues out of boxes that were piled outside the door. And I heard very clearly someone walk up the ramp towards me and I looked over my shoulder and there was no one there. Speaker 2 (04:35): They walk on it every day. So I mean, I can imagine the sound you Speaker 3 (04:39): Would Speaker 2 (04:39): Hear every single time, then you turn around, it's like, Speaker 3 (04:42): Oh, there's no one there. Okay. Speaker 2 (04:49): And we felt like even during terracotta, things were a little heightened, like our gift shop that was at the exited the exhibition, we actually named the Ghost Henry. Speaker 3 (05:04): Well, there was an evening that, I think it was a Thursday evening where I was there later and it wasn't very busy. And so I hadn't had anyone come in for a while. And I was just kind of sitting there looking around the shop and I noticed that this one particular pair of earrings, the tag kept going back and forth almost like someone was checking to see what the price was on it. I was like, that's beard. But I was a little bit skeptical and I was like, maybe it's just airflow in here and I just haven't noticed it before. So I moved it to the complete opposite side of the counter and sat there and waited and it started doing it again. And no matter where I put it on the counter, it kept doing it. Speaker 1 (06:00): Well, do you have the video right now? Yeah. So yeah, I kind of want to just watch it again. I remember when you showed this to me, I'm pretty skeptical guy, so I remember being like, sure, Speaker 3 (06:15): That's fair. Speaker 1 (06:16): Let's see this. So yeah, you've just got this little display rack of earrings here and they're all just kind of sitting there and the anticipation is so good on this waiting, something's going to happen. Yeah, it's so crazy when it happens. It just turns and it's like, but what's weird about it is that nothing else Speaker 3 (06:48): Moves. Speaker 1 (06:50): That's weird. I mean, I think when somebody tells me a story about something like this is like you kind of go, well, yeah, sure things move. The air is weird, but it is weird that there's all these others hanging up next to it and none of them move. And then this one, which is kind of in the middle too, moves. It's not on the end. It's not on the, Speaker 3 (07:13): And Speaker 1 (07:13): You said that was the one that always moved? Speaker 3 (07:15): Yeah, and the other thing was I was like, I can kind of understand, maybe the other ones were jade and stuff. Maybe it's heavy or maybe it's not as susceptible to the airflow, but there was identical pairs also on that Speaker 3 (07:34): That never moved. It was just that pair. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. And I was like, well, I don't feel threatened by this ghost, so I'm going to name it. It's going to be my buddy. And the name that kept coming back to me was Henry. And then a couple days later I was training one of the new staff for the terracotta exhibition, and I was telling her about it. I was like, this is just super weird. And then we had a bunch of other weird things happen that particular day. We went to turn the register key and the key snapped in half, or we dropped a coin and it fell perfectly in the slot between counters. And she turned to me at one point and was like, Henry's just messing with us. I was like, I don't remember telling you that I named him Henry. And she's like, oh no, I just felt like that was a good name for him. Oh, you said that you saw a scarf float open upstairs more than once. There was kind of like a half bust mannequin and we had little kimono wraps on it, Speaker 3 (08:52): And every once in a while we would just bust open and Speaker 2 (08:55): Be like, Henry. But I mean, that happened three or four times and there was not enough freeze through there. There weren't really any doors or whatever. So it just kind of became this thing. Anytime something happened up there, it was just kind of like, eh, Henry, I was reading a weird Facebook article that was the most haunted artifacts in the world, and one of 'em was the terracotta army. And it kind of made me realize that I had seen an increase in weird things happening while the army was here, and I haven't had as many experiences since they left. Oh my gosh. It's really cool to see if when we have the next satellite shop, if anything happens. Yep. Is it our ghost or was it, that's so funny. I never noticed anything during Van Gogh. No, me either. Speaker 1 (09:45): That's so funny. I had never really thought about that either until you just mentioned it, because when you were telling me that story, because I've listened to so many people tell these stories about things that happened already here, I just was like, oh, it's just our ghosts. We've got this. I never even thought for a second that it was, it could be a terracotta army ghost. Speaker 2 (10:04): And I was talking about this with my mom the other day, and she was like, I don't think the terracotta soldier was going to be named Henry. Speaker 1 (10:15): It was really Han Lee or something. And you guys, the best you could do was come to Henry. Speaker 2 (10:27): When I'm here on Mondays, usually it's very dark, very quiet, not much going on this side of the museum. And two different times when I've been in the restroom, I'll be in there and they have those automatic flush toilets and they all just start flushing. And it's happened twice. The first time I ran out of there, totally freaked out. The second time, I was just kind of like, okay, it's happening again. But that is an odd, yeah, I don't know. I can't really explain. Speaker 1 (10:57): And this is the great hall bathroom or Speaker 2 (11:00): Yes. Speaker 1 (11:00): Yeah. Yes. Speaker 2 (11:01): The bigger Speaker 1 (11:02): One. That's a common story, right? Speaker 2 (11:04): Yes. Did well, and they would kind of go 1, 2, 3. It was one of those Mondays where it was just pitch black in the museum, so dark. Speaker 4 (11:32): It happened about four months after I started working here. So it's about two years ago. It was on a Monday. And for those of you that do not know, we're closed on Monday. So they turn off a lot of the lights and it's very dark in the galleries. And I was checking the session number on an object in Gallery 1 22 in the Cincinnati wing. It's painted a kind of darker maroon, and around the gallery is portraits and paintings of Native American art. When I was done checking the number, I started walking back towards the offices and I heard a Speaker 1 (12:05): Weird Speaker 4 (12:06): Sound in my ear. It sounded like a breath, so it was like Speaker 1 (12:08): A ah, Speaker 4 (12:09): In my left ear. Speaker 1 (12:11): And Speaker 4 (12:11): I turned around fully expecting to see my sister there, and my sister works in the art museum as well, and I thought maybe she was playing a joke on me or something like that. She was running up behind me. She saw me, but I turned around and there was nothing there, absolutely nothing there. It was just dead quiet. And while I didn't feel Speaker 1 (12:29): The breath in Speaker 4 (12:30): My ear, I heard a human breath in my left ear Speaker 1 (12:33): As clear as day. Speaker 4 (12:36): And as soon as I turned around and saw that nothing was there, I just quickly booked it back to the office because it was absolutely terrifying. Speaker 5 (12:46): My most recent experience was in the Asian galleries. Sometimes when I'm walking through the galleries after hours, I swear I hear somebody walking behind me or feel a presence behind me. Sometimes it's even faint footsteps. And occasionally I've even felt a tap on my back. Speaker 2 (13:21): We've even when we've left at night through the Great Hall, we one time actually went down to security and said, we think someone might be in one of the bathrooms. Yeah, that was freaky. Didn't like that. I know. I mean, it was like the bathroom door was slamming. It was probably four or five of us gift shop employees. It was like an open and then bam. And they were like, well, they were just cleaning up there. I'm like, yeah, but there was no card up there. It's usually pretty obvious when they're cleaning. Speaker 1 (13:48): And Speaker 2 (13:48): I mean, it was enough to where all of us felt like we should tell security that maybe they should check it again Speaker 4 (13:52): Just Speaker 2 (13:53): In case. You never know. Speaker 1 (13:55): Oh, that's creepy. Since I last did an episode, I've had another weird thing happen to me, which I don't actually have that many. And again, I'm a very big skeptic, so I tend to be a person who doesn't jump to the ghost thing pretty quickly. It was after a lecture and I had left a laptop down in the audio booth of the auditorium. And so I just, because I was lazy that night and didn't want to drag it all the way upstairs to the office, I thought, ah, Monday, I'll just go in and get it. I'll just go grab it, take it upstairs when I come in. So it was around 11 or sometime like that. I remember there was a guard at the dewitt desk. And so I went into the auditorium and the first thing I noticed was that all the lights were out in the auditorium, which is normal, but the backstage lights were on, and the backstage lights are on a separate switch from all of the house lights. Speaker 1 (15:04): They're just like these fluorescence. And they're two switches. One up in the audio booth where I was about to go, and the other is backstage. So I go up, I unlock the audio booth, I grab my laptop, and as I'm walking out, I turn off the switch and I can see through the glass that the lights on the stage are now off, the backstage lights are off. And so I come through the door and I'm locking the key when I look around me and realize now all of the house lights are on, so I've turned off one light, but now all of the house lights are on. So I kind of laugh out loud, what is going on, but also I look around to see, because you can control those lights from a panel around the wall too. So I look to see if anyone's there, nobody's there, and I go back into the booth to turn them off from there. I can turn them off inside there too. So I go in and I turn off the house lights and I look out the glass and the backstage lights are back on now. It just really felt like somebody was messing with me at that point too, Speaker 1 (16:28): Me, because I turn off one light, another one comes on, I turn that one off, the first one comes back on, and so then I turn the stage lights back off and close the door and get out of there. And I go to the dewitt desk where the guard was stationed because they would've been able to see anyone coming in and out of the auditorium. And I say, has anyone come in and out of the auditorium besides me? And they're like, no, no, nobody else. So that was my most weird encounter that I've had. Thank you for listening to Art Palace. You just heard stories from Leah Larkin, Sammy Hayes, Keith Goller, Becky Ick, and me. You can watch Sammy's video of the Haunted Earrings by visiting the link in the show description or by visiting Cincinnati art museum.org/podcast. We hope you'll be inspired to come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and maybe have your own spooky experiences with the art. Speaker 1 (17:48): General. Admission to the museum is always free, and we also offer free parking. Special exhibitions on view right now are the fabric of India life, Jillian Waring and collecting calligraphy arts of the Islamic world. Join us on Sunday, November 4th at 3:00 PM for a musical gallery experience. Shostakovich Meets Rothko. Enjoy a performance of Shostakovich's Sonata for viola and piano, and discover how it's related to artwork by Mark Rothko. For program reservations and more information, visit cincinnati art museum.org. You can follow the museum on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and also join our Art Palace Facebook group. Our theme song is Efron Music by Al. And always, please rate and review us. It does help people find us. I'm Russell Iig, and this has been Art Palace produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.