Last year, we checked out the rumor of a ghost at the Civic. This year, the ghostly roomer seems to have checked out. Well, a year ago, I called Richard Hodges, stage manager at the Civic, to ask him if the term "community spirit" had more than one meaning at the venerable downtown theater. He told me that employees and visitors at the grand building on South Main Street have consistently reported ghostly activity in three areas: at the top of the grand staircase, in the projection booth and in the basement dressing room area underneath the stage. That was enough for me. I immediately made the Civic one of seven scheduled stops for our first Akron area ghost tour. Although the goal was Halloween fun, the rules of the hunt were taken seriously. I would research about 25 Northeast Ohio locations where we had the ghost of a chance to see a ghost. From this list, seven finalists were selected. I would then visit the spectral sites with Carrie Konyha, a psychic (and good sport) who lives and works in Kent, and Beacon Journal artist Dennis Balogh. But neither Konyha nor Balogh was told where we would be going.

They were not told what to expect. They were not given the chance to conduct research (and, even if they had tried, they would have found no published stories on many of the "hauntings" I chose, including those in the Civic basement, at Hale Farm and at Stan Hywet Hall). This would put Konyha and the ghosts to the test. Konyha was most impressive at the Civic. To Hodges' amazement, she identified three areas of the theater as having ghostly activity -- the top of the grand staircase, the projection booth and the basement dressing room area. Only one of these spiritual inhabitants had been written about in previous newspaper articles. Since the mid-'70s, many people have believed that one of the ghosts was of Paul Steeg, an engineer with the theater when it opened in 1929 as the Loew's.

WISTFUL WRAITHS

Steeg remained on the job until his death in 1972. He often joked, "I'll always be here. I'll come back." Some think he's still on the job. He has always been described as a warm and positive presence, and that's precisely the type of presence Konyha described at the top of the staircase. Far more troubling was the presence in the basement. Hodges had told me about a small room halfway down a long dressing-room corridor. "It's in and near this room that people see a woman in an old-fashioned dress," Hodges said. "I've had people refuse to walk down this corridor . . . I've had people run up to me, ghost-white, and say, 'I've just seen her.' " People who encountered the basement ghost felt uneasy, sad or just plain scared. A year ago, we stood on the Civic stage, and Konyha felt drawn to the stairway that leads down the dressing room. A year ago, she walked down that long corridor and suddenly stopped in front of that small room.

A year ago, she looked into the room and then at Hodges. "You've got something right in here," she told him. "I'm getting a sense of lingering. There's something weird here. Lingering. Lingering. Somebody's crying. There's something very sad here. Mourning. Someone's crying over something very sad. . . . "It's a woman crying in there. She's sad. It's as if someone she loved died and left her behind. She's lost and looking for someone who isn't coming back. . . . "I really get the sense that someone she loved either died or was lost. In my heart, I feel like crying right now. Either her husband or someone she was going to marry died or she was separated from him, and she's looking and waiting. She just came up and asked me, 'Where is he? Where is he?' "

Concentrating on the presence, Konyha blurted out a year: 1827. Maybe she knew that this was near the beginning of Akron's canal days. Maybe she knew the Civic was built a few feet from the remains of the canal. Maybe she knew Hodges suspected the ghost was an old presence that "went back to Akron's canal days." And maybe that's too many maybes.

Standing in that hallway, I thought of an unsettling line from writer Shirley Jackson's landmark horror novel, The Haunting of Hill House (1959): "Whatever walked there, walked alone." "I get the feeling she died suddenly and doesn't realize she should have passed on, Konyha told us. "A blow to the head. I see mud -- a lot of mud. I feel that she slipped and hit her head on a rock and died instantly. I feel like she was from out of town and was waiting to meet someone." Overwhelmed by the sad feelings, Konyha took a moment to persuade the ghost that she needed to move on -- that the person she was waiting for would never show up in this world.

A year later, Hodges had news. The ghost was gone. Nobody had seen her since our October 1996 visit. Nobody minded walking down that corridor. Nobody caught a glimpse of her long dress trailing out of sight. Nobody refused to walk past the small room. Hodges' news made a return trip to the Civic our first stop on this year's ghost tour. Konyha, of course, was not told why. We went down the hallway and into the room. We went through other basement corridors and other rooms. We went outside to the remains of the canal system. "There are still some oppressive feelings lingering here," Konyha said, "but nothing as intense as last year. In general, it doesn't have that same incredibly sad vibe it had last year. I'm not seeing a clear image of her. Last year, it was clear and immediate and loud and strong. I'm trying to intentionally connect with her -- see her -- and I can't."

Try as she might, Konyha couldn't see the ghost. A delighted Hodges informed her that nobody else has either -- not for a year. "I still feel a little bit of leftover emotion," Konyha said, "like something oppressive left behind. The residual feeling is still here, but I can't see her." Hodges is certain that the ghost is gone. Konyha isn't so sure. "If she were here a long, long time," Konyha said, "she would have left behind a great deal of emotional energy, which probably is what I'm still feeling. On the other hand, I still feel that energy." Hodges will accept that: "This whole hallway has been a lot easier to walk through since last year." Whatever walked there, walks no more.

AT SQUIRE'S CASTLE

The second stop on this year's ghost tour was Squire's Castle, located on the North Chagrin Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks system. Built by Cleveland oil pioneer Feargus B. Squire (1850-1932) in the 1890s, the castle was meant to be the "gatekeeper's lodge." The family used it as a "country" retreat, planning to build a much larger castle behind the gatekeeper's lodge. This larger castle was never built, and Squire sold the property in 1922. But lurid legends have earned Squire's Castle a place in many studies of haunted houses, including one of Chris Woodyard's four Haunted Ohio books and the recently revised Haunted Places: The National Directory (Penguin Books).

The most macabre myth associated with the castle tells of how Squire's wife, Louisa, grew to hate the then-isolated country getaway. The terror tale has it that the poor woman wandered through the castle one night, holding a red lantern. Walking into her husband's library and trophy room, she swung the lantern, only to catch sight of dead animals staring at her. Frightened, she bolted from the room and caught her neck on a rope hanging near the basement. She was killed, the story goes, and you can still hear her screams and see the red lantern moving in the windows. Sound fantastic? Indeed it does, especially when you consider that Louisa Squire died in 1927, five years after her husband sold the property. But such minor drawbacks haven't stopped the legends from spreading, so Konyha was turned loose in what's left of the castle (open to the public and a popular place for family picnics).

Looking like an enchanted vision that one of King Arthur's knights might have encountered, Squire's Castle is a good place to let your imagination run wild. Indeed, a sign inside the building encourages visitors to "let your imagination wander . . . explore, daydream and reflect on a time gone by." Konyha, though, went through the stone structure several times without picking up even the suggestion of a ghost. "The only images I get is a black horse outside and a meeting in this front room," Konyha said while standing in what would have been Squire's library (all furnishings and the top floors have been removed). "But these aren't presences. These are more images from the past.

"The meeting is at night, and there are four men. Three of them are more significant than the fourth, and the fourth keeps walking in and out. They're drinking, but not in a party way. They're talking about strategy -- something about the dealings of someone they're working with and against at the same time. But I still don't feel like it's haunted."

So, whatever walked there . . . well, probably nothing ghostly ever walked there.

IN HOWER HOUSE

Our third stop was Hower House, located at Fir Hill and Forge Street on the University of Akron campus. The stately 28-room Victorian mansion is rumored to be haunted by, among others, Susan Hower, whose husband, John Henry, promised on her deathbed that he would never remarry. Four years later, in 1900, he broke that promise.

In 1982, a psychic investigator went through Hower House, claiming he received impressions of two ghostly entities, both strong-willed women. He believed that the other woman might be Blanche Hower, John Henry Hower's daughter-in-law, who died in 1953. Or, he thought, the second ghost might be Grace Hower Crawford, who lived in the house until her death in 1973 at the age of 91.

Other stories have been told about Hower House. A door that four painters couldn't force open suddenly flew open. A Kent State University architecture student was frightened out of the house by mysterious footsteps. A security guard was told by a ghostly voice to "get out of my house," and he left. He was found standing in the snow in his stocking feet.

Like Squire's Castle, Hower has the appearance of a haunted house. From the outside, it might be mistaken for the Addams Family home. But if two women do watch over Hower House, Konyha believes they're friendly. The people who work at the mansion and the students who live there agree. Still, a small upstairs bedroom had Konyha feeling anxious: "I get the feeling of a woman in distress, maybe losing a baby or perhaps miscarrying."

Sylvia Johnson, director of Hower House, said that an incident did occur in this bedroom. "An older sister once locked her younger brother in this bedroom," Johnson told her. "In his frustration, he tried to get out by smashing at the door with a hammer. And here are the hammer marks on the door. So I think it's kind of interesting that you were drawn to this particular room. "That doesn't rule out a miscarriage. It could have happened, and it doesn't necessarily mean it was a family member. It's not the type of thing that would have been reported or recorded." The only "sighting" Konyha experienced in Hower House was in one of the basement rooms used for the gift shop. She saw a young woman, trying to sew something in secret. "She's a young woman in her early 20s," Konyha said. "She has brown hair that's up in a bun. She's mending something by hand, and she's sneaking somehow, like she doesn't want anyone to know she's fixing this. She's afraid she might be in trouble." This isn't an active entity, however, "it's like a replayed scene from the past. It's not a lingering ghost. It's like an emotional moment imprinted on the environment and caught in a loop. Psychically, I'm getting 1870." "That's the year the house was built," Johnson said. Hower House's director thinks it's interesting that the guardian ghosts are supposed to be strong-willed women and most of the scarier incidents have been reported by men.

"Maybe when the house was being restored," Konyha said, "they were more active, more protective. It makes sense that, if there was remodeling going on, it would stir up activity. If an entity had a special attachment to this house, she might have wanted to make sure it was being treated right. "Now the house is obviously so carefully maintained, it decreases the chances for any kind of activity. But I don't feel any kind of permanent haunting. Remember, a haunting can last a day or an hour." Johnson said that any one of the three Hower women -- Susan, Blanche or Grace -- would have reason to be protective of the house.

"In the cases of Blanche and Grace," she said, "you're talking about two women who each had more than 50 years invested in this house. I don't deny they're watching out for us. I hope they are." So whatever walks there, walks contentedly.

There was a fourth stop and another ghost on this year's tour, but to find out about it, you'll have to wait for Halloween. The details of that visit to writer David Giffels' house can be found in a story in Friday's Designs section. Meet you there.