Throwback Thursday: Tavern Troubles (Part V)

This Week, We Stay In the Yellow Springs Tavern, but Encounter Something More… Spooky

Setting the Scene

As Halloween approaches, many cultures recognize this time as one when the boundary between life and death grows thin. We are pausing our exploration of taverns to highlight one of the most haunting cassette tapes in our collection.

We featured this tape in last year’s Halloween post. It contains an interview with a woman named Muriel Ulmer, who claimed to be a medium. We do not know when or where someone recorded the tape. However, clues in the recording strongly suggest that it documents an investigation in the Washington Building.

The voices mention cars and lights, among other things. These details lead us to believe the investigation began in the Brick Room.

We have completed a transcript of the audio recording, which you can read by clicking on the tiles below.

Do You Believe in Ghosts?

Belief in ghosts and mediumship depends on personal experience and worldview. Stories of spirits contacting the living appear across cultures and throughout recorded history, though people explain these experiences in supernatural or ordinary ways.

This examination does not try to prove whether Murial Ulmer was a genuine medium. Instead, we compare her investigation with Yellow Springs’ history.

Although parts of the cassette recording have degraded, we can trace much of her tour. The tape likely dates to the 1970s, 1980s, or early 1990s. The group appears to have explored the Washington Building, including its ballroom and upstairs room, before visiting the Iron Springs, East Meadow, and Jenny Lind Spring. The recording misses the Iron Springs visit. Ulmer later seems to have separated from the group with an unidentified person, likely her guide and the organization’s main representative. They appear to have stopped near a tree by the Iron Spring and Main House before returning to the Brick Room.

Ulmer mentions spirits that map surprisingly well to several figures connected to Yellow Springs’ history, including Jenny Lind, a visitor during the second spa era, and possibly Dr. Samuel Kennedy. She describes a property owner connected to enslaved people and the army. She also references a tree near the Iron Springs gazebo, likely the same tree where our summer archaeology camp uncovered house foundations. Records have not clearly identified the building, but early research suggests it may have been a blacksmith shop. Work in the surrounding West Meadows has uncovered iron wagon wheels and horseshoes.

Some details of Ulmer’s investigation do not match the historical evidence. Kennedy died in his mid-40s, and descriptions portray him as thin and wiry, not overweight and in his 50s. He was dying of putrid fever, making bloodletting dangerous. However, interestingly, recently uncovered records suggest that the tavern (now the Brick Room) is indeed where the doctor died.

That said, while Ulmer claiming to contact figures like Jenny Lind (who would have been well-known at the time) is to be expected here, much of what we mentioned in connection to her supposed readings was previously not widely known by the public.

This intrigued us, so for this Halloween, we decided to analyze the transcript focus on the servant girl Ulmer seemed to contact most. She called the tavern keeper “cruel” and said he overworked his servants. We compare these claims with surviving records to investigate servants’ working conditions.

A Cruel Tavern Keeper

In the Brick Room, Ulmer seems to communicate with the spirit of someone who worked at the tavern. The spirit calls it the “Inn” and describes working conditions that seem unfavorable.

We cannot yet determine the exact conditions tavern workers faced before our records become more detailed. However, we have one lead to explore. In an earlier post in our Tavern Troubles series, we found more evidence of George Maxton’s controversial management of the Yellow Springs tavern. In August 1765, the Uwchlan Friends Meeting called the tavern a “place of promiscuous resort.”

Maxton also seems to have had a difficult working relationship with John Bayly. To learn more about the conditions at Maxton’s tavern, we have only a few pieces of evidence from 1765. One of them reports that Maxton lost an indentured servant, according to a local newspaper.

What is an Indentured Servant?

Indentured servitude was a form of bound labor in colonial Pennsylvania. A person agreed to work for a set number of years, often signing a contract before traveling to America. In return, an employer provided food, clothing, and housing and sometimes paid for the worker’s trip. Employers could sell a servant’s contract to someone else, and servants could not freely leave their jobs. When their contracts ended, servants became free and sometimes received supplies called “freedom dues.” Although indentured servitude differed greatly from lifelong enslavement, it still placed serious limits on a person’s freedom.

Pennsylvania relied on indentured workers to support its growing farms, businesses, and households. For immigrants who could not afford the journey, indenture offered a way to reach America. Some arrived with contracts already arranged, while others needed employers to cover their travel costs. If they could not find an employer, ship captains could sell their contracts. Courts also sentenced some people to indentured servitude as punishment for crimes, including people from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.

Tavern keepers like George Maxton relied on workers to run their businesses. Preparing meals, serving guests, cleaning rooms, washing linens, and caring for horses all required labor. Indentured servants performed these tasks without regular wages while their employers provided the necessities required by their contracts.

Although indentured servitude differed from enslavement, some former servants described abuse and terrible working conditions. We do not yet know how many servants Maxton employed, what duties they performed, or how long they worked at the tavern. However, records confirm their presence at the Yellow Springs Tavern. Their experiences offer important context as we examine this (alleged) ghostly encounter.

The Servant Girl

If we set aside our doubts about mediumship and consider Ulmer’s account as genuine, the servant girl’s story offers an interesting comparison with what we know about the tavern.

Throughout the recording, Ulmer describes a woman who seems to understand her place in the household but feels uneasy entering certain rooms. She admires the lace in one room but seems unfamiliar with such fine furnishings. She calls certain spaces “for the gentry” and says she has never entered the ballroom. She also seems afraid of meeting other people. The others repeatedly reassure her that an unnamed man, whose voice occasionally appears on the recording, cannot see her. Still, the spirit seems afraid someone will discover her and insists that she cannot stay.

Ulmer also mentions tasks associated with the woman’s possible work. The spirit talks about scrubbing floors but clarifies that she does not clean those particular floors. She also repeatedly mentions fetching a bucket, although the recording never makes its purpose clear. These details fit the work needed to run a tavern, where servants cleaned rooms, washed linens, and prepared spaces for guests.

Our research confirms that George Maxton employed at least one indentured servant, Thomas Haggerty. In 1765, Maxton placed a newspaper advertisement after Haggerty went missing. We do not know whether Maxton employed the woman Ulmer describes or whether her story connects to his time at the tavern. Our records also cannot establish whether the “cruel” tavern keeper Ulmer describes was Maxton. If the spirit exists, she could have worked under a tavern keeper we have yet to identify.

Still, her apparent fear of powerful people and limited access to certain rooms offer a possible glimpse into the restrictions servants faced. If Ulmer was sincere, her account raises questions that the surviving historical records cannot answer alone.

We Shall See

Some details, however, complicate this interpretation. Our research has found no evidence that people called the Yellow Springs Tavern an “inn” until the second spa era in the 1800s. By then, the building included a ballroom. If Ulmer contacted a servant who worked for Maxton in the 1760s, her amazement at the ballroom and its furnishings seems unusual. The word “gentry” also seems out of place for this period, especially for an indentured servant who cleaned floors and seemed amazed by lace. These details make it difficult to connect the recording to a specific person and time in Yellow Springs’ history.

We may never know whether Ulmer truly communicated with spirits. That question raises much larger questions about life after death. Still, examining her account as though it were genuine reveals some surprising connections to the history of Yellow Springs. Many tavern keepers worked here over the years, and surviving records suggest that some treated their workers poorly. We cannot identify Ulmer’s servant girl or prove she worked for Maxton, but parts of her story match what we know about the site. Other details remain uncertain or conflict with the historical evidence. If Ulmer had not researched Yellow Springs beforehand, she seems to have gotten more right than wrong, although we cannot explain how.

One final detail stands out. While Ulmer was likely upstairs and out of earshot, two unidentified women discussed what she had said. They seemed surprised by her knowledge, and one concluded, “we’ll see,” referring to Ulmer’s supposed supernatural abilities.

Decades later, we find ourselves in much the same position. We have Ulmer’s account, historical records, and new discoveries that sometimes connect in unexpected ways. We still have questions that neither the recording nor the surviving evidence can answer. As we continue exploring Yellow Springs’ history and the lives of those who lived and worked here, we shall see.

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Complete “Tavern Troubles” Series

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Featured History Event at Historic Yellow Springs

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