What is out there in the darkness?
Big Darby Creek runs 84 miles, and along its route, it passes through the town of Darbydale. Just outside this community is Little Pennsylvania Cemetery. It’s been there for quite some time; one of the earliest known burials was in 1811 for 20-year-old Rebecca Borland. Over the years, became the last resting place for families like the Nortons, Goodsons, Borchers, and many others. It has gained the name Woolly Booger, Wollyburger, or Woolyburger Cemetery. Some believe it is because a Bigfoot-like creature called a Woolly Booger lurks beneath the shadows of the trees.
Others have been told a man butchered his family before killing himself, only to return from the grave as a bogeyman. Several called this revenant Wooly Booger, and he attempted to hurt anyone entering his small family plot. There were even a few who believed the murdering beast’s name was Willie Butcher because somebody found a headstone belonging to Willie Boucher. When passed along by word of mouth, the name went from Boucher to Butcher, and then it turned to “Willie Butcher” and, later, Woolly Booger. The latter is easy to disprove; Willie was only a one year old when he died.
Still, there might have been a bogeyman nearby. And it is not simply that people have witnessed the dark figure of a man lurking in the woods or along the mowed path just outside the old cemetery and along Big Darby Creek. In mid-March of 1957, the half-clothed corpse of a young woman was found off a lover’s lane road there. Described as between 18 and 19 years old, she was five feet and two inches tall, 115 pounds, and depicted as “beautiful and perfectly proportioned” with short dark hair. Acting coroner Dr. Carl Tetirick had the easy task of assigning the death as a homicide. She was discovered already two days dead, strangled with a clothesline wrapped three times around her neck and submerged in Big Darby Creek near Darbydale by four teens heading out to fly fish. The murderer had placed a gag around the young woman’s mouth and cocooned the body in a bedspread before stuffing it into a raggedy feed sack and dumping it into the creek.
Even with blood found at the deserted drive, police had a tough time finding out who murdered the dark-haired girl as those they grilled in the Columbus bars and who had seen her before her murder knew her by different names-Sara, Ginny, Betty, and Gerry. Many parents probably warned their children from Columbus, past Darbydale, and beyond that, they better be in the dark because there was a bogeyman on the loose near Darbydale. They were right. Because people still attest to seeing that dark figure creeping around Big Darby Creek and the cemetery. So perhaps . . . he still is.
Just a reminder. Cemeteries are closed from dusk to dawn. If you aren’t sure of hours or any rules and regulations, always ask the property owner or local authorities. The area around it is among the Metropark’s public hunting areas. Both are patrolled regularly.
Check out my YouTube video on Woolyburger Cemetery! https://youtu.be/iR2vNDazbto
You can find these stories and others in my Haunted Ohio book or my Ohio book series: https://www.amazon.com/Haunted-Ohio-Stories…/dp/B0D8YHD8JB
