Olevia’s Room: Ghosts of the Spread Eagle Tavern, Ohio

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated September 15, 2026 · How we verify

The Spread Eagle Tavern has been standing on Plymouth Street in Hanoverton, Ohio since 1837, which means it went up while the canal boats were still running and the village still believed it had a future as a commercial hub. It survived the collapse of that boom, and it survived the century of quiet that followed. What it has picked up along the way is a reputation: a girl seen in the upstairs halls, a jilted woman associated with one particular bedroom, and a fire in the 1800s that the house has never quite stopped being asked about.

Federal Brick in a Canal Town

Hanoverton was laid out in 1813 by the Quaker abolitionist James Craig and incorporated as a village in 1836. Its growth came with the digging of the Sandy and Beaver Canal through the town in the 1830s, and at the peak of that decade the population reached something like 2,000 people. The Spread Eagle opened in 1837, right in the middle of that surge, and it was built to the standard a prosperous canal stop expected: a handsome example of Federal Period architecture, three floors of preserved interiors, eleven rooms, twelve fireplaces, and carved mantels above them.

The boom did not last. Growth slowed through the 1840s, and by the time the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad was completed in 1852 the canal was no longer profitable and the town went into decline. That decline is the reason the building is still recognizable. Nobody had the money or the motive to modernize it into something else. In 1977 a 23-acre area of Hanoverton was added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Hanoverton Canal Town District, noted for canal-era architecture that has remained largely unchanged since it was built in the mid-1800s.

Over the years the tavern filled a lot of roles besides innkeeping. It served as a stagecoach stop, rumored (and rumor is the right word) to have hosted Abraham Lincoln, as a meeting place for the Free Masons, and as a residence for the Justice of the Peace. In more recent decades the dining rooms have drawn political speakers to the village, among them Dan Quayle, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, John McCain and JD Vance.

The Tunnel Under the Tavern

Hanoverton played a real part in the Underground Railroad, and the documentation is unusually concrete for this kind of history. An underground passage connected George Sloan’s “Brick Row” with the home of his brother-in-law, Dr. James Robertson, across the street, where runaway slaves were taken to a secret room. The Spread Eagle Tavern was also connected to a secret tunnel.

That fact matters to the ghost stories, because the tavern’s most-repeated tragedy comes out of it. The account passed down at the inn holds that a fire in the 1800s killed both an escaped slave sheltering in the building and a young girl. No death certificate or newspaper report is offered alongside that story in the versions told to guests, and it should be treated as house lore rather than established record. What is not in question is that the building was part of a network in which people hid, in the dark, in spaces not meant to hold them.

The Girl in the Hallway and Olevia’s Room

Two figures dominate what visitors describe. The first is the child said to have died in the fire. Guests and staff report seeing her in the hallways, and the detail that recurs in every retelling is that she seems perfectly happy, playing, apparently unaware that anything happened to her. It is a familiar shape for this kind of story, and it is also one of the few consistent descriptions attached to the building.

The second is Olevia Nicholas, described in the inn’s own telling as a former resident who came back to the house after an engagement fell through and never really recovered from it. The room associated with her is where most of the complaints come from. The most specific one, and the one most often repeated, is bedcovers being pulled off during the night. Guests have also come away with photographs they believe show something in the rooms with them, which is worth weighing carefully: a dim, lamp-lit interior full of old glass, mirrors and carved woodwork is an excellent place to take an ambiguous picture.

What Gets Reported at the Spread Eagle

• The apparition of a young girl, seen playing in the upstairs hallways.
• A female apparition identified by the house as Olevia Nicholas.
• Bedcovers removed from sleeping guests overnight in Olevia’s room.
• Photographs taken by guests that they interpret as showing figures or anomalies.
• General unexplained disturbances reported by both overnight guests and staff.

None of this has been verified by anyone outside the guest book, and the inn does not pretend otherwise. What you have is a long, consistent run of personal testimony in a building where visitors usually arrive already knowing the names.

Dining and Staying at the Spread Eagle Tavern

This is not a ruin you photograph from the sidewalk. The Spread Eagle operates as a working restaurant and inn, with seven dining rooms and five guest bedrooms, and the whole property functions as a kind of living museum of Federal Period interiors. If you want the room attached to Olevia, ask when you book rather than on arrival, because five bedrooms is not many.

Hanoverton itself is small, with a population of 354 at the 2020 census, and it sits roughly 25 miles east of Canton and 30 miles southwest of Youngstown, which makes the tavern an easy detour from either. Come for the building and the food and treat the ghosts as an open question, and you will not leave disappointed either way.

See Spread Eagle Tavern and Inn for Yourself

Sources

• 2023 General Election Results for Columbiana County (Ohio (official))
• ArcGIS REST Services Directory (Census (official))
• Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places in Ohio: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2023 (Census (official))
• U.S. Census website (US Census Bureau)
• Hanoverton village, Ohio (Census (official))
• Wikipedia: Hanoverton, Ohio

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