Walnut Fork Inn (known originally as Hundred Mile Inn) is one of the oldest standing structures in Candell County, Ohio.  It has had a number of famous visitors, including U.S. Presidents Zachary Taylor and Ulysses S. Grant.  In the years since it became a private residence, it has been home to the silent film start Mame Lewis and industrialist Adam Jorgensen, among others.  But Walnut Fork is not a prosperous, happy place.  Violent outbursts and unexplained events pepper its 160-year history.  Like Walnut Fork, Candell County seems at first glance normal enough, but if you spend some time there you find plenty of odd things going on beneath the surface.

        This dark history resurfaced last fall when the body of a mutilated woman was found in the basement of the now-abandoned Walnut Fork.  Sheriff Ray Kates and his department attempted to reconstruct a plausible theory of the crime despite the puzzling lack of physical evidence.   The surrounding communities struggled to understand the crime and what it meant to their own well-being.

        The dead woman turned out to be Stephanie Dempsey, a student from Hartman College.  Learning who she was and where she came from turned out to be easier then figuring out who killed her or how she ended up in the Walnut Fork cellar.  The sheriff's office delivered no answers, and rumors of Satanic activity thrived.  Local minister Rob Sage was approached by a congregation member, Andrew Beltran, who claimed to have been involved in a local cult for a number of years.  His stories stirred up plenty of anxiety among the people, although some folks endeavored to stay above the fray.

        Research into the house's history showed many of the sinister events in its history centered on the original innkeeper, Jeremiah Wolfe.  He died in prison in 1871, awaiting trial for murdering one of the Inn's guests, a successful farmer and inventor named Jonathan Hode.  Wolfe may have murdered a good many more people: in the 1980s, a renovation project uncovered an unmarked graveyard on the inn grounds.  It was initially thought to be a pioneer cemetery, but archaeologists found evidence that most of the graves dated from the late 1800s.  Some factors in the Dempsey case, especially her amputated left hand and the mysterious doll found in her dorm room, echoed some to the details of earlier crimes at Walnut Fork.

        The history was clear enough, but the present investigation was floundering.  As Beltran's stories of cult activity dissolved in a mess of contradictions and lies, Dempsey's former boyfriend Mike Huber got help from noted TV psychic Margaret Whalley.  Meanwhile,   more conventional investigators turned their attention to Mike Pratt.  Pratt, a writer with an interest in local history and the bizarre, seemed to know more than he should about Dempsey's death.  The sheriff's department determined, eventually, that this was due simply to his extensive knowledge of Walnut Fork's strange past.  Pratt was guilty only of being a good researcher, at least in the eyes of Sheriff Kates.

        New Candell County prosecutor Sam Watts was not as easily convinced of this as Sheriff Kates had been.  Upon being sworn into office in January, Watts and the Tafton City Police executed a search warrant on the Pratt home.  When the found finger bones and a hand-made doll almost identical to the one from Dempsey's dorm room, Watts charged Pratt with Dempsey's murder.

        The trial was a media sensation.  Candell County eagerly watched the early maneuvering to see if the search warrant would be upheld or the trial would be moved.  Most of the pretrial decisions went Watts' way, but it quickly became clear that the case might be a complicated one.  Watts ignored warnings from Kates that he may have overplayed his hand.  

        Once the trial started the case was beset with problems.  Pratt has several alibi witnesses who placed him in Columbus at the time of the murder.  The crime scene itself was uncannily bereft of any physical evidence.  Watts sensed his case was in trouble.  Against Kates' advice, Watts put Beltran on the stand in an effort to link Pratt to alleged Satanic activity in the area.  This gambit backfired when the defense called Kates to testify and he was unable, under oath, to say that he believed Beltran's testimony.  The jury did not keep people waiting long: Pratt was acquitted.

        Kates had other problems, too.  As the year went on, residents around the town of Brickton began reporting encounters with a mysterious figure that the local media quickly named the "Brickton Stranger."  Big, hairy, and increasingly unfriendly, the nocturnal visitor reminded many locals of the legendary Crainey Boogerman.  Half-bigfoot, have ghost, stories of the Boogerman's exploits had been campfire favorites for over a hundred years--but everyone, especially the harried sheriff, would have preferred legends to remain legends. The number of sightings increased, no doubt augmented by pranks from local high school students, but capturing the Stranger proved maddeningly difficult.  

        Meanwhile, psychic investigator Margaret Whalley's first effort to contact Stephanie Dempsey had been limited by the refusal of Ben Fultz, the owner of Walnut Fork, to allow her access to the property.  His late father Mitchell Fultz had had strange, frightening experiences at the inn, and he was wary of disturbing the dark forces that dwelt there. Fultz, however, changed his mind when an old news item convinced him that a girl he once saw at the inn was actually a ghost: he agreed to let investigators in.  

        Whalley visited Walnut Fork in March with the crew of her Ghost Files television program to finalize filming plans.  At dinner with Fultz and Huber after walking through the house, she suddenly lost consciousness.  She slipped into a coma that doctors were unable to explain.  When she regained consciousness on Easter morning, she said she'd been contacted the spirit of Jonathan Hode, the man whose murder had led to Jeremiah Wolfe's final imprisonment.  The spirit told her that the bloodthirsty Wolfe still haunted the area and that his evil influence was responsible for not only Dempsey's death but many other unexplained events.  He said that the boogerman was a remnant of Wolfe's dark magic, an evil spirit that had to be contained--and instructed Whalley in a ritual that he said would do just that.

        On the night of the next full moon, May 5th, Whalley went to Walnut Fork with a television crew to perform the ritual.  They were joined by Fultz and Huber, as well as by Mike Pratt, asked to come because of his extensive knowledge of the place, and the Reverend Sage, whose interest in the occult drew him to the event.  This group watched as Whalley began a series of chants that would banish the demon to limbo.

        Something went wrong.  Moving so quickly that the horrified onlookers had no time to react, Whalley grasped a knife and cut Mike Huber's throat, all the while screaming, "I'm back."  Huber was dead before authorities arrived to take a strangely-sedate Whalley into custody.  Walnut Fork had claimed yet another victim.

        The summer months that followed were quiet.  The boogerman's visits ceased.  Whalley remained virtually catatonic, conscious but unresponsive to all stimuli.  She was quickly judged insane and incarcerated in a prison hospital in Columbus.  An uneasy peace settled over Candell County, and over the troubled halls of Walnut Fork.  

        But Sheriff Kates still wondered who had killed Stephanie Dempsey . . .  

This is it!  The final installment is in the case file now!