Local history: Mysterious lights spooked Norton

The good people of Norton Township weren’t afraid of the dark. They were afraid of the light.

For more than a decade, residents reported seeing something strange after dusk. They weren’t quite sure what it was, but they suspected a ghost.

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This wasn’t a run-of-the-mill, moaning-and-groaning, chain-rattling specter. No, this was something different: a “blazing red ball” that floated in the air.

The hauntings, if they can be called that, took place in rural Summit County about a mile south of Johnson’s Corners, the present-day intersection of Wooster Road and Cleveland-Massillon Road (31st Street) in Barberton.

Neighbors said mysterious lights began to appear in 1892 after farmer John Shaneman died of a paralytic stroke at age 64. For the record, the German surname has several variations, including Schoenman, Schoneman and Sheneman, but we’re sticking with Shaneman for consistency.

“We never saw any of these strange things before the death of Shaneman, and the first time I saw anything supernatural was the night after Shaneman’s death,” farmer John Breitenstine recounted in vivid detail in the Akron Evening Times in 1902.

In those days, funerals were held in the front parlors of homes. Friends and relatives paid their respects during vigils at night.

“Peter Shaffer, John Mong and myself were sitting up with the corpse,” Breitenstine continued. “Mong was smoking, and Shaffer and I had been talking. All of a sudden, Shaffer gave me a little nudge and directed my gaze to the ceiling at the corner of the room where the corpse lay, when I saw a sight that fairly made my hair stand on end.

“What seemed a ball of fire had started from the corner of the room and was traveling slowly around the ceiling of the room.”

“Do you see it?” Shaffer asked.

“Yes,” Breitenstine replied.

“Let’s get out of here,” Shaffer said.

The men abandoned the vigil and fled Shaneman’s home, but, of course, that was not the end.

Other residents began to report seeing strange lights in the wake of the farmer’s death. They said glowing objects rose out of the field behind Shaneman’s home or rested on the roof of his home.

The mysterious fireballs “haunted this vicinity with the most unpleasant regularity,” Breitenstine said.

One night, the Breitenstines, Shaffers and other neighbors were gathered on the veranda of the Breitenstine home when a bright light “as large as a streetcar lamp” drifted up from Shaneman’s field.

It floated down the lane, passed the house and turned at the barn.

“Everyone on the porch was silent, but as soon as the light disappeared, by a common impulse, all were on their feet making for the barn behind which it had disappeared, but nothing could be seen,” Breitenstine said.

Another evening, Breitenstine’s teenage son Milton came home late. After putting the horse away, he rounded the house and saw lights dancing atop an old apple tree that had fallen in a storm.

“Oh, Ma, come here!” he cried to Sarah Breitenstine.

“My wife stepped to the door and there, playing about that old tree, were what seemed to be thousands of lights,” John Breitenstine said. “They were about the size of candle flames and seemed to be of all colors of the rainbow. After a time, they resolved themselves into balls of fire and rolled away down the orchard path.”

The mysterious lights appeared throughout the year but seemed to be most common during the winter. Breitenstine said he was asleep one evening when he awoke to find his bedroom bathed in a scarlet glare. A reddish light was shining outside the window, he said.

Peter and Mary Shaffer and their daughters Louise and Minnie were taking a shortcut through a field to a neighbor’s house when one of the girls began to scream. She saw a light following them. The family jumped over a fence and ran toward a road where the light disappeared.

On another occasion, the Shaffer girls reported seeing “a strange animal” walking on a path in front of them. It skittered between their feet but seemed to dematerialize when they shooed it away.

Perhaps it was the same gray animal that workers had observed at the coal mine that Adam Kiehl operated on the Breitenstine farm. Miners George Sherman and Jean Cady reported seeing the weird creature underground.

“They immediately took after it with picks,” the Akron Evening Times reported. “They would strike at it and it would fade into nothingness, but a moment later would be seen in another part of the mine. After a few fruitless attempts to approach it, the men became frightened, and Cady, it is said, quit work and could not be inducted to enter the mine again.”

Ah, the mine. A skeptic would point out that underground passages filled with bituminous coal could be an explanation for some of the sightings of mysterious lights. Was a fire burning underground? Were glowing embers floating up through crevasses? Could seeping gases create dazzling effects?

Sightings of the “blazing red ball” simmered down after a decade. Maybe there was a scientific explanation. Maybe there wasn’t.

“Folks may laugh if they will, but it is no laughing matter with us who live here and see it,” Breitenstine said. “What it is I do not know, but what I tell you I have seen, and this is gospel truth.”

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com

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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Local history: Mysterious lights spooked Norton