Ghost tours explore spirits and history of Lebanon’s Coleman Memorial Park

Local medium Jan Helen McGee, known for her downtown Lebanon ghost tours, will lead ghost and history tours at Coleman Memorial Park Oct. 24 at 3:30 p.m., Oct. 25 at 12:30 and 3:30 p.m., and Oct. 31 at 3:30 p.m.

During the tour, attendees will walk the park alongside McGee, who will describe the spirits she sees in the park and explain the history behind those figures and the Coleman family.

In an interview, McGee said her ties to the park go back to childhood and one of her first supernatural encounters: a being she dubbed Pan after Peter Pan due to its rapid speed. She said she still sees Pan — who she now believes was a child living in worker houses — when she visits the park today.

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“It’s a little spooky for me, and I don’t usually get spooked; I worked with police for 15 years on murder cases and I didn’t get spooked very often,” explained McGee. “But to me it’s a little spooky because of those childhood memories. I first saw that Pan ghost when I was only about 8 or 9, so we’re talking 60, 65 years. I just can’t believe that a spirit would stay someplace for 65 years.”

She added that she still feels safe in the park, in part because of her positive childhood memories and in part because she doesn’t detect malice from the park’s ghosts. She says the ghosts she sees in the park include a man smoking a cigar (which she says she’s been able to smell since she was a kid), several dogs, and a woman making altars in the woods, who she now believes was a woman named Anne who was either married to a Coleman or a Coleman herself.

The idea for the tour came about when McGee was talking to Lydya Renninger, a member of the park’s board, and mentioned the spirits she sees throughout the park. Soon, an idea for ghost tours emerged, with Renninger noting that the Friends of Coleman Memorial Park have been looking for new experiences to draw people to the park.

McGee said the most challenging part of preparing for the tours has been researching the history of the location and the people connected to it, something Renninger elaborated on.

“Whenever she walked around and found that there were still souls there, trying to figure out which one it was was a task, because they were all very similar,” explained Renninger. She said the Colemans “were all very driven, and they all cared a lot, but all very quiet, so not having the research just made it really difficult. So yeah, the history part almost had to come first.”

McGee said she only read objective sources (needing to collect history on the Colemans through other recounts of history mentioning the family), avoiding anything superstitious or personal as she wanted to come to her own conclusions about supernatural activity.

“The Coleman’s research was so much more difficult, but I think it’s because they didn’t intermarry a local; their women were married to men who were able to be a president of a bank, or worked in railroads, or a couple of them worked in the steel business,” she said.

She added that another challenge, while researching the Colemans, was the number of Colemans with the same or similar names, which made distinguishing them more difficult.

Formerly the site of numerous mansions constructed for members of the Coleman family (with another portion formerly dedicated to worker housing), the land was donated to Lebanon city starting in 1936. Eventually, almost every existing structure was demolished due to maintenance costs.

Today, the land is held in a trust, which was designed to ensure the city follows the Colemans’ wish that the land be maintained as much as possible and used for free by residents.

“From a park perspective, we are trying to pour more into reconnecting what the Colemans really wanted the vision of the park to be; to have free accessibility for families, that was really what mattered to them,” said Renninger. “So learning about it through the ghost tours has made it a little bit easier to make sure that our events and our fundraisers and things coalign with what the Colemans really wanted it to be.”

Renninger said she hopes to continue the tradition of annual tours next year and beyond, possibly venturing into different portions of the park and different parts of history.

“We really hope to continue this, because it is something we can build on,” she said. “She’s only doing one path of the park, for an hour, so it would be really neat if we could do a different tour next year of going down through the ruins. We’re actively working to bring them out; to unweed them and make them visible again. This can be an ever-evolving mission; there’s so much history at the park.”

Tickets are available on eventbrite. More information can be found on the park website.

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