The magic house of Collinwood
Joseph Gentilly was your local dentist back in the 1920’s. So why would he need hidden rooms and manholes built into his house? Sounds like the set up for some terrible horror film. It turns out the local dentist was also a professional magician. If you have lived in the neighborhood long enough, chances are you’ve heard stories about the “magic house”.
Built sometime between 1925 and 1928, the house located close to the lake, has more strange features than your typical North Collinwood bungalow. It was once a great place for entertaining, with two built in pianos in the basement, plenty of secret rooms for storing alcohol during times of prohibition, and allegedly a set of shackles in the basement floor that would allow for the magician to put on a show for his guests.
Most of the stories about this house are simply legend, but none of them have been disproved. When the current owners, Bill and Sandy Snodgrass, bought the house in 1997, they didn’t quite realize that they were moving into a local landmark. Sandy met an elderly woman and her son while walking her dog in the park one day. The son began filling her in on stories about the house, including the mailman who had died of “unknown causes” while living there. The elderly woman interrupts saying, “Enough bad things have happened in that house, let’s not talk about it”. Perhaps she was referring to the time when a bank robber hid out at the house sometime in the 1960’s, and the FBI shot it up in hopes of catching the burglar. There are certainly enough places for a criminal to hide.
Not all of the spooky stories are myth, however. The Snodgrass family included three kids, two adults, two dogs, and three cats when they moved into the house, after being inhabited by a single woman for years. “We disturbed the peace”, Sandy says. “That was about the only time living here that weird things happened”. Once, while the kids were playing pool in the basement, the fluorescent lights suddenly exploded. This was around the same time a mass of costume jewelry flew out of a hidden drawer that Sandy had stumbled upon. The house has been fairly peaceful since then, but the couple discovers new things about the it all the time.
When it comes time for Halloween, Bill and Sandy Snodgrass have very little preparation to do. They can entertain guests with scary stories and secret rooms all year round.