Bissman Building Investigation

Evie and Ray of Western Reserve Paranormal were joined by some friends of the group for an investigation of the Bissman building in Mansfield, OH. This building was used in the filming on the “Shawshank Redemption” and the upcoming release of “The Dead Matter”. The Bissman was built in 1886 using the same architect and materials used in building the Mansfield Prison (Ohio State Reformatory). It was run as a grocery warehouse until the 1970’s. Since then it has housed several smaller businesses including Pirate Printing.

Our tour guides for the evening were Ellis and Nicole with Gussethunters Paranormal. They were knowledgeable about the buildings history and haunting stories, and they were accommodating on a few special requested that we had. Not to mention they shared our sense of humor. Special thanks go out to Mr. Ben (Big Ben) Bissman for allowing us into his building.

There has only been one death confirmed in the building but it does seem to be fairly active. I and another sensitive, Larry, picked up on quite a few things, each of us confirming most of the same information.

Our evening started out just after 8:00 o’clock p.m. as one large group and we worked our way through the building. Several people through out the night saw shadow people and flashes of light. We also heard bangs and knocks, one of which I felt directly under me as I sat on the floor. Being as the ceilings are about 18 feet high, no piping runs along the ceiling, and there was no one on the floor below it must have come from something other than human interference. Not to be forgotten was the experience of an object being thrown at us while in the apartment scene from “The Dead Matter”.

As the evening wore on we split into smaller groups taking radios to keep track of were everyone was. Just as two of the groups were heading upstairs they got a very strong smell of roses or flowers. This smell was not there before nor could we find a source of anything that could have caused it. Ray and I decided to sit for a while in the front office area just to take a breather and try to communicate with someone that had been in the room. No luck on our part at getting this person to interact with us, but I still have audio to go through. However one of the other groups could have sworn that we walked up the stairs and across the floor near them. They stated that they had heard two sets of heavy footsteps so they called us on the radio to find out were we where.

We ended our investigation just about 3:00 o’clock a.m. with a round table discussion. We also received a haunted Bissman building t-shirt and a Pirate Printing t-shirt.

I’m not going to give details or hot spots, you are just going to have to go and experience the Bissman building for yourself.

Gussethunters Paranormal also does tours of the Mansfield Theater and the reformatory. You can contact them through their myspace page http://www.myspace.com/hauntedbissmanbuilding.
Happy Haunting