Article and photos by Mary Ellen Graybill

“It’s not what you expect,” said York, PA resident Linda Strickler after a tour of the Columbia Market dungeon rooms where reports persist about a child named Katie who tugs on visitors clothes and begs, “Buy me some candy!”

Carmen Swinehart (right) shares some time with her grandson, Blade Mellinger-Smith, and her daughter, Christina Mellinger.

“It’s very interesting!” said Linda, now upstairs where buying candy is a possibility.

Carmen Swinehart, the market manager of the 1868 market house building, has just explained to a small group of tourists standing in the storage area in the market basement about people’s perceptions of ghosts.

Referring to the story that prisoners had been stuffed through narrow grated windows, she explained that the market had been first a farmer’s market for produce and that the storage rooms, later used as holding cells for hapless prisoners, were actually storage units, windowless and without light, for ice, grain, flour, sugar.

“It was whatever the farmers had because Read the rest of this entry »