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Ghosts Haunt Cincinnati Music Hall And Here’s Why: Bones Beneath The Orchestra Pit

By Shelley Hazen
Published on: 03:02 PST, May 2, 2016

For decades, orchestras that played at Cincinnati Music Hall had an invisible, unearthly audience: the bones of the city’s long dead, laid to rest in the land a century before.

The bones of those dead have been unearthed at the Music Hall with grisly regularity since it was first built in 1876, and for Cincinnati residents, the news isn’t shocking, said the city’s paper the Inquirer.

In fact, so many bones have been found over the years that staff there have a long-standing procedure for how to deal with them: reburial at a nearby cemetery.

According to the Associated Press, the most recently unearthed bones were likely moved from an original burial ground and re-interred in a single grave, which just so happened to be located beneath the orchestra pit and north carriageway.

The bones are believed to belong to four adults. They were found during a $135 million renovation project at the Cincinnati Music Hall, which has just barely gotten started. Crews discovered the bones while digging up the soil for asbestos testing.

The property where the Music Hall sits has a sad and rather morbid history, and local researchers intend to analyze the remains to learn more about the people who lived and were buried there.

At first, the land was a public burial ground, or potter’s field, in the early 1800s. Years later, the Cincinnati Orphanage Asylum was built there; children orphaned after a series of floods and an 1830s cholera outbreak lived there. The bones of some of these children were found in the 1850s and reburied.

And when the Cincinnati Music Hall was first built, even more bones were disturbed.

Remains were uncovered when work began in 1876, and newspapers detailed the discoveries with gruesome detail; medical students and the public made off with some of the skeletons as well. In the 1920s, more remains surfaced during the digging of a tunnel foundation. They were reburied in an elevator shaft.

Fast forward to 1988, and those same bones were found again when a new shaft was excavated. In one day, 11 skulls and 88 pounds of bones were plucked from the earth. By the time the discoveries were finished, another 119 pounds were dug up.

Construction was last undertaken in the area near the orchestra pit in 1928.

The newest bones were found on March 29 during asbestos investigations. A local heritage management company that conducts archaeological and historical investigations, Gray & Pape, was called in to help remove the remains respectfully; they’re now storing them.

Three archaeologists and a forensic archaeologist confirmed that the bones were human. They’ll be documented and studied.

A variety of leg and arm bones were removed, and so far, archaeologists think they belong to four people. A report on the find concluded, albeit tentatively, that these people were likely buried somewhere else first and then relocated, together, in the single grave beneath the orchestra pit.

Six more grave shafts were also found at the Cincinnati Music Hall in the north carriageway, which is located between the main building and its North Hall.

Each of these shafts was home to wooden coffins, and media reports don’t indicate whether or not more skeletons were found inside. Archaeologists believe these, too, had been moved during a previous construction project.

Anyone found at the Music Hall is given a new grave for their eternal rest. So far, the remains have been re-interred at Spring Grove Cemetery, complete with a special ceremony.

The new bones are likely headed there or someplace similar. In the meantime, the remains will be studied to learn more about those whose lives were lived, and ended, near the Cincinnati Music Hall.

[Image via Max Herman/Shutterstock]

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