Black Moon Manor (site)

OVERVIEW

A nineteenth-century farmhouse at 5575 West 300 North in Buck Creek Township, Hancock County — described locally as the oldest house in the township — that belonged to the Eastes family throughout. From about 2010 a tenant, Matt Speck, leased it, named it Black Moon Manor and ran it as a haunted attraction and investigation venue, telling visitors it had been a smallpox hospital in the 1850s–90s where some two hundred patients died and were buried in the yard, that a girl of five haunted it and that a woman had drowned herself in the well. Ghost Adventures filmed the house for an episode aired on 12 October 2012. The house was demolished by 25 September 2013.

HISTORY

The Hancock County historians Diana Hoy and Joe Skvarenina found no death ledger and no 1850s outbreak; the doctor who treated smallpox in the area recorded 84 infections and five deaths. One claim checked out: a burial record for Rachel Eastes, aged five, in 1842. Ghost Adventures itself found nothing to support the story of the woman in the well. The Eastes family objected to their ancestors' names being used in the tale, ended the lease, and the house came down.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Visitors to the attraction reported voices, touches, a child, and photographs of figures; the venue's reputation lasted three years. The entry keeps the site as a lesson: a real old house, a real child's grave, and a history written for ticket sales that did not survive a trip to the county archive. vetted = false — the record contradicts the tradition.

VISITING

Nothing remains; the land is private farmland on a county road. Do not trespass. The entry exists for the record.