Huntington has long been home to its fair share of haunted houses and ghost stories. This Halloween, we take a look into the strange occurrences at a local dentist’s office.
By Renee Maass
HQ 79 | AUTUMN 2012
Recent polling shows that at least one-third of adult Americans believe in ghosts, with another 20 percent unsure of their beliefs. Dr. William Grimes, a local dentist, has no hesitation revealing his opinion on the existence of ghosts – he believes without a doubt that his dental practice is home to several spirits.
Grimes is a respected practitioner and a well-known collector of Huntington memorabilia and other historical items. He is a pleasant and knowledgeable man who appears perfectly normal in every way. Some people may believe his insistence that his practice is haunted makes him somewhat of a “kook,” and Grimes couldn’t care less.
In the fall of 1973, Grimes acquired a building to house his practice. The building, formerly a duplex home, required extensive renovations – new plumbing, new electrical work and other repairs familiar to anyone who has invested in an older home. Licensed contractors worked during the day, and Grimes and his father performed other repairs at night after they got off of work.
According to experts in the paranormal, remodeling or renovations can stir up supernatural activity in a building. The first indication that Grimes had purchased a haunted house came when he was removing door facings, baseboards and gas lines from the entire building. The large pile of wood and gas lines was piled up in the corner of a back room.
“I was removing flooring in that particular back room, and the entire stack of wood and pipes fell directly on me three times in one day,” Grimes said. “I knew that something had to be happening because there was no reason those boards and pipes would fall, especially not three times. I thought ‘someone has to be doing this.’ Then, tools would come up missing, but I just chalked that up to being so tired. I was working around the clock – dentist by day, carpenter by night – so a lot of the things that were strange I was attributing to the fact that I was sleep deprived.”
But the strange events continued.
“My father and I were working in what is now the waiting room. From the other side of the duplex, we heard a sound like someone was throwing cans of paint against the walls. We had to cross the porch to enter the other side of the duplex, and it was completely empty. Nothing had been disturbed, even though it had sounded like the place was being torn apart. My father tried to explain it away, saying someone just knew of a secret way to get into the duplex. But my mother knew that this place was haunted.”
Grimes said he was completely blindsided by the possibility he had purchased a haunted house. He had never had any previous experience with the paranormal and certainly didn’t want to begin with the new location for his practice.
“Research at the Cabell County Courthouse only revealed that the property had first been sold in 1909,” he said. “When I began to discuss the odd activity with people, I was surprised by the stories I heard about the place and its reputation as a haunted house.”
Grimes’ son lived in the duplex while he was a Marshall student, and one night Grimes came by and saw the whole house shaking from the volume of his music.
“I asked him why he was playing it so loud and he said it was the ghosts’ fault,” he said. “He had to turn the music up so he couldn’t hear them.”
For the first few years, Grimes’ paranormal experiences were limited to the loud, mysterious noises, missing tools and unexplained footsteps. All of that would change in 1975 when he had his first interaction with a ghost he calls Lavinia Wall (Livy), the apparition of a young woman by that name who he was told died in the house of appendicitis in October 1929.
“My first experience with Lavinia or Livy was just brief flashes of her,” Grimes said. “She would only briefly appear to me and I would try to concentrate on her appearance and memorize it. She continually appeared to me as I was wallpapering the stairwell on the left-hand side of the building, just quick flashes every time.”
Grimes said Livy was trying to communicate with him that she was a victim who had been hurt.
“I could see her but I couldn’t hear her; she was trying to express her emotions with her eyes,” Grimes said. “That is why her eyes are so sad in the portrait of her that I painted. I couldn’t get those sad eyes out of my mind. I definitely lost my fear of her. I just wanted to help her.”
The first time a patient had a similar experience was in 1979. Grimes received a late-night emergency call from a woman whose son had knocked out his front teeth in a sledding accident. He met them at the office and placed them in a room labeled “Operatory One.” Grimes began working on the patient, and the boy’s mom stood on the other side of the chair. Suddenly they heard loud stomping footsteps coming down the staircase and then the sound of someone brushing against the closed door to the operatory.
“The boy and his mother literally climbed up on the counter,” Grimes recalled. “I grabbed a scalpel and threw the door open. No one was there. I searched the office and found no one. The doors were all locked. I told the mom that it wasn’t an intruder but just one of my ghosts. She grabbed her son, and they ran out of the building.”
Other patients are more open to the experience.
“We have seen an older female ghost several times,” said Grimes, who believes the older ghost is Lavinia’s mother. “There is a pass-through between Operatory One and Two. I thought my assistant had come into Operatory One with the results of an X-ray I had asked her to develop. I expected her to pass it through to me but she just stood there with her head bowed. Well, I assumed it was her because I could only see her hair and part of her body. She never responded when I kept asking for the X-ray. As I approached the doorway to see what was wrong, the figure moved quickly to another area, began to rattle some instruments and then completely disappeared. Fortunately, this patient was aware of the house’s reputation, and she was excited about the experience. She didn’t run out in the middle of a root canal.”
The older female apparition has made other appearances.
“One time I was working in Operatory One on a set of dentures. I thought one of the employees had come in Operatory Two and was looking through the pass-through to see what I was doing. Then I looked at my assistant, who had a look on her face like she had just seen a ghost – literally. She told me the female ghost had been looking at me through the pass-through and seemed confused by what I was doing.”
According to Grimes, the paranormal activity in the office is a weekly occurrence. The receptionist has experienced someone playing with her hair, the dental hygienist complains that her instruments are moved and doors open and close all the time.
It was the frequency of the activity and the fact that a new, more menacing apparition had begun to appear in the building that led Grimes to cooperate with an investigation of his building by The Dead Files, a paranormal investigation show on The Travel Channel.
“The Dead Files contacted me this year,” he said. “They had found a ton of information about the office on the Internet. My first reaction when they approached me about participating in a show was hesitation. I was a little bit afraid that I was stepping into something that could go in so many directions and get out of control.”
The premise of the show is a dual approach to investigating supposedly haunted locations. A physical medium, Amy, who claims that she can see and talk to dead people, and a retired New York City police detective, Steve, work independently to verify that a building has the history and the ghosts to qualify it as haunted.
Amy walks through the location interacting with the spirits, and Steve concentrates on research and investigation.
The documented facts are as follows:
- Livy was born Sept. 7, 1908 to Bernice and Cyrus Wall of Ohio.
- Livy, her mother and her sister moved to the duplex in 1913.
- Livy was a dressmaker.
- Livy died in October 1929 of acute gastroenteritis and poisoned liquor.
According to research by local group Huntington Paranormal Investigations and Research, Lavinia, her mother and her sister moved into the duplex from Ohio in 1913 to escape her abusive father. They supported themselves by waitressing, and Lavinia worked as a seamstress. Times were extremely tough for the family, but they were no longer being tormented.
According to Amy, all of that changed in October 1929 when the father, Cyrus, burst into the duplex looking for his family. It is Amy’s belief that an angry Cyrus threw Lavinia over the second-floor stair railing.
Amy stated that Lavinia was badly hurt with a broken back and internal injuries, which Grimes believes occurred when Cyrus kicked her on his way down the stairs and out of the duplex. Bernice, who had been hiding in the bedroom, came out to find her daughter crumpled on the stair landing. Lavinia was carried into her bedroom where she lay in agony for at least nine days before she died at 3 a.m. on Oct. 29, 1929, at the age of 21.
Amy’s account is supported by an Oct. 30, 1929, article in The Herald-Advertiser reporting that Lavinia died from injuries sustained in a fall. However, an earlier article stated that she died after a brief illness. No autopsy was performed.
Whether Livy died from a fall or from acute gastroenteritis, the mention of liquor is intriguing. During prohibition, alcohol was only available for medicinal purposes. This medicinal alcohol was laced with cyanide to prevent “recreational” use. Did someone give Lavinia medicinal alcohol to drink to ease her pain, killing her unintentionally, or did she drink it herself and die from the side effects of poisoning? We will never know.
Grimes however, has a theory.
“I believe that someone gave her the alcohol for the pain,” he said. “Several people had to have carried her up to her room and laid her on the bed. She lingered for several days, and something had to be done to help manage her pain. Either they used medicinal alcohol or moonshine. It’s the only scenario that makes sense.”
Lavinia’s grave is in Locust Grove Cemetery in Lawrence County, Ohio.
There is no record of a murder at the duplex. Grimes said he believes that Livy’s mother and sister covered up the murder because they were terrified that the father would return and kill them. The pressure of being on their own with no one to protect or help them created the need to lie about what happened to Livy.
Grimes tied the loud stomping footsteps to the ghost of Cyrus who began to manifest in the last few years.
“The father goes out a door that doesn’t exist anymore,” Grimes said. “He is recreating the events of that day. He is slamming doors upstairs, stomping down the stairs and going out through the wall.”
Unlike Livy or the older female apparition, this ghost was always threatening, and Grimes became concerned for the safety of his employees and patients.
“I never attempted to remove the ghosts. I eventually thought I would have to do something because I was worried that something would happen to one of patients. What would I do if one of the things scared a whole bunch of people in the waiting room? I needed to do something, but I wasn’t sure what to do.”
After revealing her findings to Grimes, Amy recommended that the ghost of Cyrus be removed from the duplex.
“She was very specific about what I needed to do,” he said. “She gave me the tools and detailed instructions. I followed them exactly and threw him out. When I threw Cyrus out there was no reaction or retaliation from him. I believe it was because the truth of Livy’s death had come out. He had tried to drive us out of this building for years so his secret would be safe, but there was no more reason for intimidation. I really expected him to attack me or at the very least manifest himself. There was nothing, which is why I had to have confirmation from a friend who is a medium that he was truly gone.”
Lavinia is a different story.
“She won’t listen to anyone and leave,” Grimes said. “My ultimate goal is to have Livy go to a better place. If the medium can verify that Livy has gone through the portal and is no longer here it will make it easier for me. I know there is a better place for her.”
In addition to Livy, Grimes identifies other entities in the duplex as Livy’s mother Bernice, a male entity who has identified himself through EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) as Paco and another woman who has been seen looking out the back kitchen window. Paco is extremely playful and a prankster and may be responsible for the misplaced instruments.
Grimes said the recent visit by The Dead Files, which aired the Fatal Attachment episode on August 10 at 10 p.m., validated his claims of paranormal activity, and he no longer has any hesitation to relate his experiences.
“They stuck with the story. They didn’t do anything silly or out of control. I got to the point where I told myself, ‘I am speaking the truth,'” he said. “‘I am not trying to deceive anyone – and I stand to lose more than I gain.'”
However, there is one thing Dr. Grimes would like to make clear: “I’m not obsessed with the activity in this building. I acknowledge it and accept it, but first and foremost this is my dental practice.”
