Local history: Phantom auto scared residents of Hudson and Twinsburg

Whether it was an elaborate hoax, a mass delusion or a supernatural event, the fear was real.

So was the tragedy.

It was a moonlit night in 1915 when Hudson mechanic Harley Sargent drove north on a lonely road toward Twinsburg. Hearing an automobile approaching him at a high speed, he pulled to the side to give the vehicle a wide berth.

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Sargent’s heart nearly leapt out of his chest when he locked eyes with the passing driver. He recognized the fellow immediately because he had worked on his car.

But it couldn’t possibly be him. That guy had died months earlier in a crash on the same route.

Sargent told all who would listen that he had seen a ghost.

He wasn’t alone.

Other Hudson and Twinsburg residents reported sightings of a wraithlike figure driving a “phantom auto” along a 10-mile stretch of Ohio road in 1915 and 1916. Some witnesses were pretty sure they knew who it was.

Tragedies on Elinor Avenue

Pennsylvania native Fred C. Brown, 23, had been a test car driver for the B.F. Goodrich Co. in Akron since 1908. He and his wife, Hazel, lived with their 10-month-old son, Jesse, in a bungalow on Elinor Avenue in what was then Springfield Township, a block from the city limits on East Market Street.

For a new street with only about 20 homes, Elinor witnessed a shocking amount of tragedy over a three-month span in 1914. To superstitious residents, the street felt cursed.

Hazel’s father, Thomas J. Wolfe, 51, was killed July 21 when he went to check on his daughter’s home while the Browns were on vacation. Next-door neighbor Anthony Olszewski, 23, mistook Wolfe for an intruder and fired a gunshot in the dark, striking Wolfe in the head.

Elinor resident Helen Antanesian, 26, a newlywed immigrant from Armenia, was killed Sept. 9 when the gas stove exploded in her home. Her husband, George, was seriously burned.

Two weeks later, Akron police arrested Harry Boomer, 24, at his Elinor home and charged him with the hatchet murder of Elvina “Vinnie” Baker, 23, at the Independent Tea Store on Bartges Street. Boomer had attacked the clerk Sept. 26 after she caught him stealing from a register.

So much trauma in one neighborhood. Then October arrived.

Fred C. Brown was testing Goodrich Silvertown tires on a Pierce-Arrow during a rainstorm at 2 a.m. Oct. 14, 1914, on the Twinsburg-Hudson highway now known as Darrow Road (Route 91). He was heading toward Cleveland on the newly paved, brick road when he lost control on a hill. The vehicle skidded off the road and rolled over, or as newspapers put it, “turned turtle.”

Manley Leach and his wife, Flora, who owned a 95-acre farm about where the Giant Eagle store stands today in Twinsburg, heard a honking horn and went to investigate.

Brown didn’t seem too badly hurt, but collapsed when he tried to walk. The Leeches called Dr. R.B. Chamberlin, who rushed to the farmhouse to examine the crash victim. He determined that Brown had internal injuries, including punctured lungs from broken ribs.

The young man lost consciousness in Billow’s ambulance and died en route to Akron City Hospital.

“I express my deepest appreciation and thanks to the employes of the B.F. Goodrich Co. and friends for the many floral offerings and expressions of sympathy at the death of my beloved husband, Fred C. Brown,” his widow, Hazel, wrote in a card of thanks to the Beacon Journal.

She buried her husband in East Akron Cemetery near the fresh grave of her father.

Fright on a moonlit night

The Pierce-Arrow was mostly undamaged in the crash, so Goodrich put it back into service. Test car driver Gus Anderson found himself taking the same route to Twinsburg on a moonlit night in 1915. He stopped briefly to get a drink at a public watering trough north of Hudson.

In the darkness, Anderson thought he saw something. Or, more accurately, someone. He recognized a former co-worker, but that wasn’t possible. That guy was dead.

“Brown’s ghost appeared out of thin air,” the Akron Evening Times reported March 8. “At least Anderson is willing to swear it was Brown’s ‘ghost.’ The spooklike being floated toward Anderson, waved his arms and perched itself on one edge of the trough.

“Anderson didn’t get his drink. He lost no time in getting into the machine and admits that he violated every known speed law in getting away from there.”

He told Harry Apple, another Goodrich driver, about the frightening incident. It’s unknown whether the co-worker believed him, but a few nights later, Apple was driving along the same route when he recalled Anderson’s story.

Suddenly, he saw something. Were his eyes deceiving him? As he neared the trough, he noticed a familiar-looking man sitting on the edge. It couldn’t be!

“Neither Anderson nor Apple stop near the watering trough now,” the Evening Times reported. “They’ve seen Brown’s ghost seated at the trough several times since their first experience but they do not pause in that immediate vicinity.

“They are said to be planning a new night route now — one by which they can dodge the Hudson district entirely.”

Several other drivers reported seeing the “phantom auto” and the “spectral chauffeur” over the next year. Most of the sightings took place between Hudson and Twinsburg on a 10-mile stretch nicknamed the “death strip” because so many fatal crashes had occurred there, but a few people claimed to view the car as far south as Stow.

A believer in ghosts might conclude that Brown had returned to warn motorists to be careful on the brick road. A skeptic would point out that vivid imaginations can run wild in the dark.

Fred H. Caley, secretary of the Cleveland Automobile Club, was among the skeptics, although he wasn’t above taking advantage of the situation to call for better roads in Cuyahoga County.

“The only ghost I ever heard or know of on the Akron road is that horrible 10-mile dirt road between Bedford and Twinsburg,” he told a reporter.

Last ride of the phantom auto

The last known sighting of the mysterious car occurred nearly a year after the first one.

“It seems that the people living between Twinsburg and Stow Corners are much wrought up over the appearance of a ‘ghost who rides a phantom automobile,’ ” the Akron Evening Times reported Feb. 7, 1916.

“Nearly half a dozen persons Sunday night saw the ghost speeding down the ten-mile stretch known as ‘death strip’ … Some persons say it was the ghost of an automobile tire tester who was killed in that vicinity some time ago.”

No further details were provided. The phantom vanished or perhaps the Evening Times simply decided it had written all it could on the matter. The stories ceased.

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Brown’s widow, Hazel, remarried in November 1917 and started a new family with her second husband, Samuel K. Ruckman, while also raising son Jesse Virgil Brown from her first marriage.

Sadly, Elinor Avenue recorded another victim, and it was a terrible twist.

Jesse, 15, a student at East High School, was driving along Mogadore Road on the night of Oct. 20, 1929, when he lost control of the vehicle and it overturned. He was rushed to City Hospital, where he died of a skull fracture.

He was buried next to his father in an unmarked grave at East Akron Cemetery.

If anyone reported seeing a phantom auto on Mogadore Road, it didn’t make the newspaper.

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

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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Local history: Phantom auto scared residents of Hudson and Twinsburg