McClure Crybaby Hill

A Cry Baby Hill exists in the Henry County town of McClure. Many know it as Harris-Jones Cemetery, Crybaby Hill, Knob Hill, or Boot Hill. The story behind it is vague; it involves a large number of babies which were massacred either on the hill or somewhere else and then buried on the hill. A dozen or so unreadable tombstones dot the hill, which is located on County Road 7. The cries of babies are said to be audible there at night. Sometimes unidentified things are heard crawling along the ground. Kind of grisly.

The ForgottenOhio.com website describes this place:

“A Cry Baby Hill (not bridge this time) exists in the Henry County town of McClure. The story behind it is vague; it involves a large number of babies which were massacred either on the hill or somewhere else and then buried on the hill. A dozen or so unreadable tombstones dot the hill, which is located on County Road 7. The cries of babies are said to be audible there at night. Sometimes unidentified things are heard crawling along the ground. Kind of grisly.”

I asked Chad, one of the founders of Weston Paranormal to describe what had happened to him at the hill. He explained that it is way back in a cornfield and they have been there when there was no corn and when the corn was high. He also mentioned that there were only twelve marked gravestones and who knows how many unmarked. Every time he and his group have gone there something small always happens. For example, one time when there was no corn around, they saw shadows. On a separate occasion, one of Chad’s EMF meters went off, and then he felt something hit the bottom of his hand causing his meter to fly out of his hand and land on the ground. They’ve also seen lights within trees (that are now cut down) and unexplained lights near their parked vehicle. Chad explained that they have permission from the local authorities to investigate. A McClure police officer actually showed them where the hill was and then informed the sheriff they would be there.

Fringe accompanied Weston Paranormal on May 23, 2014. The night was clear and meteor showers were expected around 2:00 am. We got to the hill a little before midnight. We stood for a while being quiet, as that is the time when it is reported that you can hear babies crying. We did not experience anything during that time.

My first impression was that, even though it is mentioned in Forgotten Ohio, this place did not seem all that forgotten! There were newly placed American flags by several of the grave stones. This would also lead one to believe that the graves belonged to soldiers, not babies. The hill is just barely a hill, too. There is roughly a three to four foot incline before you reach the flat top where the headstones are located. I took only a few pictures. Some of these are on our Facebook page. I hope to go back during the day sometime this summer and take more pictures when the surroundings will be more visible.

While we did not hear any babies crying, we did experience one audio phenomenon. About an hour into the investigation, one of the Weston team members did a loud yell. We heard what we thought was barking and joked around about how it didn’t wake up any ghosts, but it did wake up the local dogs. Then he did it again. And we got the same noise. Soon we realized it was not barking, but a delayed echo! Could this be what former investigators mistook for crying? But why would they have been yelling? We repeated the experiment several times, always with the same results. It would be interesting to see if this happens when the corn is up and around the field.

As far as the “unidentified things crawling around the ground” mentioned at “Forgotten Ohio”, we think we may have identified at least one. About an hour and a half into the investigation we smelled skunk! We left pretty shortly after that.

Chad from Weston discusses the crybaby hill

Experimenting with echos on the hill

Report presented by Director Kelly

Update from the Director: on 7-16-2016 we returned to the hill. This time the corn was up so we were interested in whether we would still get the echo effect we noted during our last visit. Also, since our last visit it appears that more of the tombstones have been overturned (either naturally or by human hands) and some seem to have disappeared as seen by the photos below.