by Bob Curran
Researcher Ryan Orvis, citing the West Geauga Sun as the source (Geuaga County is near to Kirtland), found evidence of a Dr. Kroh who was in the area around World War II. Kroh was an unlicensed doctor, but a follower of the Austrian priest and geneticist Johann Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) who conducted experiments in plant cross-hybridization. Kroh, it was claimed, attempted to alter the genetics of children by injecting them with various substances. One of his experiments allegedly increased the size of their heads in an attempt to increase their intelligence. The experiments failed and in a fit of scientific pique, Dr. Kroh bundled all his deformed subjects into a car and released them around the area of the Chagrin River Road in Kirtland. There they fled into the woods. In some of the newspaper accounts, Orvis acknowledges, the doctor treated his subjects with radiation, so these mutated children must also have been radioactive. Several other newspaper sources have pointed to the strangely large number of children’s graves in nearby King’s Memorial Road and suggest that many of these were from Dr. Kroh’s failed experiments.
Since the end of World War II, there have been a number of sightings of Melon Heads around Gore Orphanage Road and Wisner Road in the Kirtland suburbs. Most of these have been either the accounts of passing tourists in the area or by local schoolchildren who have been exploring in the woods. A number of them describe the same thing—a humanoid with an abnormally large head, dressed in what seems to be an “institutional” way, namely a torn (and often bloodstained) white shirt, and brown, ragged, button-up trousers. Maybe, of course, this has more to do with imaginations concerning the orphanage which operated in Swift’s Hollow than with Dr. Kroh. For all Ryan Orvis’s research and in spite of the newspaper stories, there is no real evidence to connect the Kirtland suburbs with certain abnormal genetic experiments. But that’s not to say that they didn’t happen!
The strange stories of the cursed family of Joseph Swift, the spiritualism of Nicholas Wilber, and the utter strangeness of the Light and Hope Orphanage of the Reverend Sprunger have all combined to create the creepiness out of which the legend of the Melon Heads has emerged. The region can certainly be spooky and several other local legends have grown up around it—for example, there is a Cry Baby Bridge (common in several areas of Ohio) on Wisner Road, just north of Kirtland’s Chardon Road. The ghostly child who weeps there is said to be one of the orphans from the old Gore Orphanage. In such circumstances, it might be easy to dismiss the Melon Heads as an urban myth dreamed up by teenagers and the gullible. But what if there’s something more to it? There are similar stories of these beings in other States.
In Michigan, for example, the story of the Melon Heads is told around the old Felt Mansion near Laketown Township. Local legends say that they are descendants of hydrocephalic inmates at the Junction Hospital for the Insane, not too far from the old mansion. As a result of abuse by some of the doctors, they broke out and fled into the woods, and lurk there until the present day. The flaw in this story is that there never was an asylum in the region, although there was a hospital. The Allegan County records simply denote it as a regular hospital with no special facilities for the mentally disturbed. Nevertheless, a local newspaper, The Holland Sentinel, carried stories of beings seen in the woods and some people’s recollections of the Weeble Heads who were supposed to live there. According to some of the printed stories, several of the doctors were killed by the Melon Heads and their chewed remains lie buried not far from where the old mansion once stood. A spectral sight of one of the doctors being killed was frequently seen through the Felt Mansion door.
In Connecticut, the legend takes on an even darker tone, with its origins supposedly dating back to Colonial times. In Fairfield County, a certain family settled in the Trumbull area, having been driven out of Massachusetts for suspected witchcraft and cannibalism. Faced with hostility from their neighbors, the family, which was a large one, retreated to the woods where inbreeding took place, giving rise to the Melon Head legends of today. The legend has of course been amended to include the now-obligatory insane asylum and the riot by some of the malformed inmates. There may have been a hospital at Grant Wood in the county, which experienced a serious fire late in 1960. It is said that some of the patients who were evacuated disappeared and were never found—these are the ancestors of the present-day Melon Heads. In Trumbull, they supposedly haunt Velvet Street (which is also known as “Dracula Drive”) whilst in Shelton, it is Saw Mill City Road, and in Milford on Zion Hill Road. Velvet Street is still an un-paved dirt road running through deep woodlands and several people disappeared along its length. During the recent paving of Saw Mill City Road a few years ago, a number of workers reported hearing voices in the woods calling to each other, but none reported seeing anything. Were these the voices of Melon Heads? Similarly, a couple of tree experts, checking the woodlands for a tree fungal infestation, thought they glimpsed a couple of strange figures moving in the undergrowth. The Melon Heads again?
Back at Swift Hollow in Ohio, nothing now remains of Rosedale, the grand mansion that Joseph Swift erected there, apart from a few old graffiti-covered sandstone blocks and a similarly decorated entrance column. There is nothing really to see. However, visitors to the site claim a feeling of being watched in the surrounding woodlands and there are often unexplained calls and noises around the ruin. Maybe the story of the Melon Heads is no more than an urban myth, but it’s one that is just about on the edge of believable. If you want to test it, I wouldn’t really advise that you go too far into the deep woodlands! You don’t know what might be waiting for you there!
Hermitage Castle (The Borders, Scotland)
“The evil that men do lives after them.”
—William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar Act III Scene ii
Perhaps no fortification anywhere in Scotland bears a more sinister reputation than the lonely Hermitage Castle near the town of Hawick in the Scottish Border Country. It stands on a stretch of bleak moorland, which runs down toward the English border in an area that was once driven by fierce conflicts earning it the nickname “gatehouse of the bloodiest valley in Britain,” and its grim and severe aspect blends well with that epithet. At one time, the stronghold was one of the most prominent fortresses within the Debateable Lands, an area that stretched between the Scottish and English Borders, but belonged to neither. They were passed between warring factions sometimes becoming Scots, sometimes becoming English, but never really settled. Today the castle is little more than a ruined shell alone on the bleak moorlands with its memories and ghosts.
No one is exactly sure when Hermitage Castle was built or exactly who built it. It is thought, however, that the original fortress was probably a timber affair built around 1240 by Nicholas De Soulis, a Norman knight who had been granted lands in the Scottish Borders. Its purpose was probably to control the area of Liddlesdale, which was especially wild and lawless during border wars between the Scots and the English. It seems to have been little more than a basic Norman castle—what was called a motte and bailey (a stout emplacement above a general military yard)—which was common of many Norman strongholds of the time. Hermitage would remain in the hands of the De Soulis, family until approximately 1320 when an infamous character, William De Soulis, was accused of plotting against the Scottish king of the time, Robert the Bruce. De Soulis was expelled from Court, imprisoned for a time in Dumbarton Castle, and his own castle and lands were taken in forfeit by the Crown.
In the early 1330s, the castle was in the hands of an English noble, Ralph de Neville, who did not enjoy particularly good relations with his Scottish neighbors. It was besieged in 1338 by Sir William Douglas, a local noble from Liddlesdale (known at the Knight of Liddlesdale), who claimed the fortress as his own. Douglas had an ongoing feud with Sir Alexander Ramsay, the Sheriff of nearby Teviotdale. Ramsay had the title of Sheriff conferred on him by the Bruce’s son, David II, and the powerful Douglas thought that it should have been his. So, although the two men had been close friends at one time, Douglas ordered Ramsay
seized and taken to his newly acquired Hermitage Castle. Here he allowed him to starve to death in its dungeons. His pitiful, emaciated ghost is frequently seen around the ramparts of the castle even today.
In 1353, William Douglas made an unfortunate alliance with the English and was murdered by his own godson for his betrayal. Hermitage was taken over by Hugh De Dacre, who rebuilt the wooden structure in stone, which form the ruins that we can see today. However, De Dacre only held it briefly and it soon passed back into the hands of the Douglases who began to refortify and extend their stronghold. They became the Earls of Angus, powerful Border lords. In the late 1400s, however, Archibald Douglas, the 5th Earl (also known as “Bell the Cat”) made a “treacherous treaty” with agents of the English king Henry VII and was ordered by the authorities of King James IV of Scotland to hand over Hermitage Castle in compensation. It was then handed over to the Hepburns, who were the Earls of Bothwell. The most famous of the clan was James Hepburn, the 4th Earl (see Dragsholm Castle, Denmark), who was the third husband of Mary Queen of Scots. The queen briefly visited Hermitage around 1560 on her way to Jedburgh toward the end of her reign while Hepburn was there recovering from a severe injury. However, by this time, it became a far less important border stronghold, and when Mary’s son, James VI of Scotland (James I of England), cleared out the Debateable Lands, there was little need for such as castle in the area. By the 1800s, it had become no more than a ruin, although interest in it was generated by the romantic writings of Sir Walter Scot, whose ancestors had, of course, come from the border region.
The main legends—especially the many dark ones—concern the last of the De Soulis line that dwelt at Hermitage. This was William De Soulis, widely known as “the Bad Lord Soulis” or “Terrible William.” This was a man who was hated in equal measure by his tenants and by his neighboring lords alike—which is probably the source of the allegations against him by his peers that he was plotting against the king. Reputedly the son of Nicholas De Soulis, who had initially built Hermitage (although some legends state that he was an illegitimate offspring), William was a tyrant and a bully, as well as being extremely arrogant (he once boasted that he should have been the true King of Scotland and not Robert the Bruce, because he was “more fitted.” But it got worse. William, the Lord Soulis, was widely suspected of being a Black Magician and of dabbling in the dark arts. It may be that, like many other noble men of the day, De Soulis was experimenting in alchemy (the forerunner of modern chemistry), but this is not certain. His attitude to those around him certainly did not help. It was said that he was involved in human sacrifice and other unspeakable abominations. It was even said that he summoned up the Devil at Hermitage. From the time that he became Lord of the castle in 1318 until he left it in 1320, scores of children disappeared from the locality and it was said that they were being used as sacrifices to dark spirits within the castle walls. It is said that their anguished screams can still be heard echoing around the ruins of Hermitage. De Soulis had a familiar spirit or imp named Robin Redcap that had been given to him by the Devil and it dwelt in Hermitage with him. This familiar was fed on human blood, especially that of virgin girls and children. In return for such offerings, the spirit promised him that he would be invulnerable to any weapon of steel or iron, and that he could not be bound by anything except a rope of sand.
Whilst thou shalt bear a charmed life,
And hold that life of me,
‘Gainst arrow, sword and knife
I shall thy warrant be
Nor forged steel nor hempen band
Shall e’er they limbs confine
Till threefold ropes of sifted sand,
Around thy body twine.
So ran an old verse concerning the Bad Lord, probably taken from a ballad by Sir John Leyden, a popular writer of ballads and friend of Sir Walter Scot. Believing himself to be invulnerable, De Soulis committed even greater atrocities. In a common tale about him, he murdered a local girl—the daughter of a local noble—during one of his frenzied, diabolical rituals, and then also killed her father when he tried to investigate her death. He was only saved from arrest by the intervention of Alexander Armstrong the Lord of Mangerton whom De Soulis later invited to a grand banquet and killed by feeding him poisoned meat. In some other versions of the story, it is Armstrong’s own daughter whom De Soulis sexually molested and killed.
This was all getting too much for the Border nobles, and following Armstrong’s death, they petitioned King Robert to have him removed. By this time, the king was weary by the ceaseless complaints that he was receiving about De Soulis and is reputed to have said dismissively, “Boil him if you must but let me hear no more of him.” This was taken by the Bad Lord’s enemies as a royal command to execute him. However, they were well aware of Robin Redcap’s magic protecting De Soulis and went to a local magician, Thomas of Ercildoune (often taken to be the celebrated Thomas the Rhymer, who is supposed to have been an actual Scottish poet/magician), to elicit his help. Using certain protections and charms, Thomas managed to bind the Bad Lord with a leaden belt in which a thin strand of fine sand had been hidden. This supposedly rendered De Soulis powerless and he was taken by his captors at Hermitage Castle. But they were not finished with him yet. In order to nullify his powers and to carry out King Robert’s instructions, they wrapped him in a single sheet of lead and carried him to the Nine Stane Rig, a great pagan stone circle area two miles to the northeast of Hermitage. There, they prepared a great cauldron and boiled William De Soulis alive.
On a circle o’ stanes they placed a pot,
The circle o’ stanes but barely nine,
They heated it red and fiery hot
Till its brass did glimmer an’ shine
They rolled him up in a sheet o’ lead,
A sheet for a funeral pall,
An’ they put him doon in the cauldron,
An’ they melted him bones an’ all.
Of course this may be no more than a gruesome tale of the Border Country, but William De Soulis does seem to disappear from the pages of recorded history after this, so there may be some truth to it.
Although probably dead, the legacy of the Bad Lord Soulis lived on amongst the stones of Hermitage. Although he was gone from the castle, it is said that his familiar Robin Redcap still lurked in the shadows of the place. Redcaps (also known as Dunters or Powters) are a type of malignant fairy in the Border areas. They supposedly resemble little old men with long beards and wizened faces, and are almost vampiric in their ways, subsisting partly on human blood. They are also invariably drawn to evil places, and the wickedness of the Lord De Soulis infested Hermitage Castle with their presence. Indeed, even today, Border folk will say that great numbers of them still hide in the darkness of the castle, ready to attack anyone who ventures too close.
The ghost of the Bad Lord himself, of course, is never far away. His figure, it is said, is frequently seen glowering out across the countryside from the fortress’s ruined battlements. Recently, according to several local newspapers, a group of workmen, engaged in some repair work at the castle, are said to have spied a figure looking down on them from one of the high windows where nobody could be (as there are no floors in the upper stories). Lord DeSoulis is also seen at various other points around the castle, always accompanied by the wailings and sobs of children. According to other local legends, the Bad Lord drives up to the castle gate on certain nights of the year (for example, at Halloween) in a carriage made entirely out of human bones and drawn by skeletal horses. Anyone he encounters will be invited to climb into this hideous carriage with him and taken off to the afterlife—and, says local tradition, it is almost impossible to refuse his invitation.
Other ghosts haunt Hermitage as well. One of the most frequently seen is said to be that of James Hepburn, the notorious Earl of Bothwell. His specter is seen dripping blood from an open wound (which he may have received in a battle before he was taken to Hermitage to recover) wandering mournfully about near the gate area. Both
the phantom and the blood disappear almost immediately after they are seen. And of course, the phantom of Mary, Queen of Scots, is supposedly often seen in the castle grounds. For a deceased person, she seems to travel quite a bit, as her specter is seen in many other Scottish castles. Yet another ghost, what seems to be a robed and cowled holy man, is sometimes seen in the vicinity of the castle and this may be a remnant of a time before the fortress was built. The word Hermitage means a place apart, often a religious retreat, and this may be the specter of some early hermit or monk who has availed himself of the isolated site.