06/17/2026
For those of you who are looking for a northeast ohio ghost story, here you go...
On this wonderful evening we present the story of a woman by the name of Callista Ackley
Who was she?
According to legend, she was a woman who was known for healing the sick.. helping the injured.. and overall one of the nicest ladies in northeast ohio in the 1800s
She was a very determined lady by all accounts and when she eventually married, she married a wonderful man who designed and produced, of course, stables for farmers.
Her husband bernard was a fantastic worker, and a very hard worker at that...
So what happened to
Callista?
This is a story I heard about when I was growing up from an actual descendant of the family.
To add context
Callista bore bernard 7 children all healthy, happy and by all accounts good respectful children.
As to where this story takes place, we don't know the exact area. Because reports are kind of hazy with where everything took place But we believed that it took place just south of cleveland. Again, by all accounts, everything with this family seemed to be in good standing And there didn't seem to be any issues.
Until one spring day in in 1807 bernard was scheduled to show up to a job site to build a barn and never showed up..
The person that paid bernard for the work immediately thought the worst and got a group of gentlemen to go and check on him and his wife... when they arrived onto his property, the horror and devastation was unimaginable... the cabin house that they lived in was burned to the ground, six of the children were found burned to death, with what looked like, stab wounds to the majority of them.
Bernard was found hanging from a tree partially burned up and completely n**e.
And what happened to callista?
Well that's part of the mystery...
They assumed the worst that she was taken or kidnapped,
Yet they found evidence that her horses were left behind along with the majority of her clothes, including the dress that she apparently was wearing just the day before.
a massive search was organized by multiple people and they never found her.
Ten years would pass
A new family built onto the land of the original structure and then that's when some strange things started to happen.
The daughter of the new settler on the land,
Made allegations against a neighbor stating that this neighbor was trying to force him off his land by scaring him And his children by claiming that his wife was dressing up in old clothes and walking around in the woods late at night by his house.
The tension between both neighbors got so bad that other neighbors banded together to see what was going on And a group of them was assigned to watch The House Hidden and catch the responsible party for the transaggressions.
On a cold spring night twelve men came back changed forever.
One of the men spotted a woman walking in the woods Wearing what was described as exactly what had been seen by the children of the house owner. a woman wearing a brown dress with a white bonnet on top.
The men fired their guns up, letting them know that they had sights on whoever was doing it. And they ran towards their direction.. they cornered this person in the middle of the field And all twelve men watched this woman who matched a description of callista she turned around and looked at them... she didn't have eyes, but they felt their souls being slowly dragged away.. didn't have a mouth, but they could hear her speak.. and what she said was more terrifying than anything that could have Imagined, and the words that they remember were...
They burned my family, i burned their souls... as she evaporated right in front of them...
Completely speechless all twelve men refused to ever step foot on the property ever again...
All of them identified the woman as callista...
Not one man said any different... there was never a painting of the woman but a friend who knew her quite well painted a portrait of her and when she presented the portrait to the men... almost all of them began to weep... not because they were sad... but because they were terrified...
After this incident, the family that built on the land immediately burned down their house... sold the land... and no one ever built on it ever again... from what we understood of the area, it is now a park ( we have a rough idea of what the park name is ) but it's literally an open field... completely void of life, other than birds In the morning and people walk bike paths and walking paths on this place and have no idea below their feet It's something that is truly an ohio legend on its own... do we know if this story is real? We can't say because records from that timeframe Unfortunately are incomplete after generations of people talking about the story... i am reminded every day that every truth that we have in life has a little bit of a legend in it... and every legend, it has a little bit of truth behind it...
