Ghostly sightings materialize in Mason
BY ERIC BRADLEY | COMMUNITY PRESS STAFF WRITER

MASON -- When Carl Muennich saw the ghost of Rebecca McClung, he did not
know it -- at least not right away.
Muennich is the former superintendent of Rose Hill Cemetery and worked
there for 25 years.
One day, he was in the office at the cemetery with his back to both
doors that lead into the building.

"You know how you get the feeling that someone is staring at you?" he
asked, nearly 15 years after from the incident.
Someone was there, actually -- an attractive woman, Muennich said, with
her dark hair up in a bun. She was wearing an old-fashioned lace dress
that covered her wrists and came up on her neck.

But her odd clothing did not seem too out of place, he said, because a
community group had recently run an ice cream social during which they
wore period clothing.
Muennich told her the section the grave was in and then turned around to
look up an exact location.

"Let me get my book so when we go out there I can point out exactly what
grave," he remembered saying to the woman.
By the time he got the book and turned around, the woman was gone.
Weeks later, Muennich went to the Mason Historical Society on a regular
run to deliver records. On the wall, he saw a black and white picture of
the woman who came to the cemetery office.

Curious, he asked the attendant who the woman in the picture was and
explained that she had visited the cemetery.
"I turned around and her jaw was standing open," Muennich said. "Then
she explained to me who she was."
With the exception of Muennich's sighting story at Rose Hill Cemetery,
most stories involving the alleged ghost occur in the building where she
was murdered at 101 E. Main St. in downtown Mason, though there have
been reports of the ghost appearing in nearby 105 E. Main St.

Actual sightings of the ghost seem to be rare. More common are incidents
involving loud sounds, objects that were moved, unlocked doors and
windows or other similar events.
One past tenant of the building who had an out-of-the-ordinary
experience was Jonathan Sams, an attorney who rented the building from
1999-2002.
Sams prefaced his story by saying he does not believe in ghosts.

Yet something happened that he said he cannot explain, even to this day.
Before opening, Sams said he was at the building many nights renovating.
As part of the renovation, all the doors were taken off their hinges.
One night he was alone at about 1 a.m., standing on a step-ladder
downstairs and painting above a doorway.
"Upstairs, there were three doors that slammed in right after each
other," Sams said. "Slam, slam, slam!"

But when Sams went upstairs, the doors were still off their hinges.
Donna Tudor, the property manager for Malhotra Real Estate, the company
that owns the building, had a story of her own, an event that she said
"scared the tar" out of her.
Just before leasing it to the current tenant, Tea Roses, Tudor said she
left a garbage bag in the kitchen before a showing to prospective
renters.

She called one of her maintenance workers and asked him to take a look
at a boarded up window in the kitchen and replace the glass --cautioning
him not to make a mess.
"When I went back, there was a mess all over. Plexiglas in the sink. I
called him and chewed him out. But he swore he hadn't been in the
building," Tudor said.
"From that point, I tried to avoid going in the building at all costs,"
she said, laughing.

The stories surrounding the ghost of Rebecca McClung are as varied as
the building's history.
Tales of chairs being moved between rooms, night-time calls by police
saying that all of the lights in the building are on and all the doors
are open and windows opened that were latched shut -- every new tenant
seems to bring new stories.

But one thing is for certain. By the accounts of those who have worked
in the building that is over a century old, something is not right at
101 E. Main St.