National Ghost Hunting Day, which Maria and Bob Schmidt say they established in 2016 is always on the last Saturday of September.
“To celebrate that, we’ve had the World’s Largest Ghost Hunt — this is our fourth year,” Maria Schmidt said. “The World’s Largest Ghost Hunt basically gathers all these historic haunted places and organizes ghost hunts that help to raise funds for the properties where they’re being held. And it’s all for the sake of historic preservation.”
The ghost hunts will be held essentially simultaneously on 80 properties, except for the fact some of the locations are in different time zones. Events will happen in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Philippines, England, India and Australia.
Last year, events happened at 150 places, “but I wasn’t happy with it,” she said. “This year, we became a little more focused on promoting the history of each location.”
Next year, the Schmidts hopes to increase the number back to about 150.
In addition to the carriage house, the other Hamilton ghost hunting location is the Butler County Historical Society on North 2nd Street.
The carriage house “is a beautiful little building, and it’s also very haunted,” Schmidt said. “We’ve had several investigations there, and there’s a little girl who lived upstairs. So we know what’s there and they interact well with all our equipment, and all the things that we bring along.”
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