Gore Orphanage Part 1

Well, since it's October, I promised to blog about Gore Orphanage... so here goes!

Many of us remember hearing about the Legend of Gore Orphanage while we were growing up. I know I did.

As the legend goes, all of the orphans died when the orphanage burned down long ago. Various stories explain how and why the orphanage burned. In one version, an orphan accidentally dropped a lantern. In another, the evil owners of the orphanage did it for the insurance money. In the version I heard, Indians were the culprits. (I guess we watched a lot of John Wayne movies while growing up, so it was natural to blame the Indians.)

But in all the versions of the tale, no matter how the fire got started, the common theme is that all of the orphans died – and their spirits still haunt the ruins of the place to this day.

And through the past decades, hundreds (if not thousands) of kids have driven out to Gore Orphanage Road to check out where all of this supposedly happened. (My friends and I did, and now I know that we were nowhere near the right spot!)

Unfortunately, the story simply is not true. But there is a lot of local history that contributed to the creation of the legend that is a bit spooky... so tune in here next week for the rest of the story!