Legends and Past Employees Persevere in Notable Landmark

The Bissman Building in downtown Mansfield, Ohio was built in 1886 where Peter Bissman's expanded wholesale grocery still stands today, but not in operation. In the early 1930s the twenty smokestacks on the north and south sides of the Bissman's filled the early morning air with the rich aroma of coffee, as its own brands Red Ban Java Blend, Steel Cut and Acme were prepared fresh each day. Downtown residents would wake to the scent of roasting coffee beans and return home at workday's end to the fragrance of roasting peanuts.

The building has an early Romantic Gothic styling and shares a haunting similarity with the Historic Ohio State Reformatory since they were both built in the same year by the same architect.

The Haunted Bissman Building was the site in the movie, Shawshank Redemption, of the Brewer Hotel where Brooks, actor James Whitmore, went to stay and hung himself soon after being paroled from The Shawshank Prison. The building was also utilized in the film as the front office of the building for the set of the Portland Daily Bugle.

"It's been in the family for six generations," owner Ben Bissman said. "It started out as a grocery distributor and we made roasted coffee beans."

Today it is used in part to house Pirate Printing, and also to store Bissman's personal car collection.

"There are different legends," Bissman said. "My grandfather used to tell me to stay away from the elevator."

According to old stories, Bissman said an employee once got his head cut off in the elevator on his last day of work.

It is also rumored that an 8-year-old girl named Ruthie haunts the upstairs.

Bissman said he'll never forget his first paranormal experience inside the building.

"I was a real skeptic at first," he said. "But I always had a feeling of never being alone in there. Two Augusts ago, we were on the third floor with an investigator and she was trying to communicate with my grandfather, saying things like, 'If you're there, give us a sign.' "

In addition to a lug nut rolling across the floor above, Bissman said he was hit on the right side of his neck with a softball-sized blast of cold air, which rolled across his chest and then hit his wife.

"I about passed out," he said. "It was just so freaky and scary. After that, I really started listening more to what people were saying about the building."

In 2007 the building was leased to a major film production company, the Midnight Syndicate, for the production of The Dead Matter, a vampire movie that was released in October of 2008.

"When your skin crawls and your goosebumps give you the chills...You know your on a shoot that has a story to tell!,and this building never stopped talking once it started!” - assistant producer of 'Shawshank Redemption'

Sources:
www.hauntedbissmanbuilding.com
www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com
www.mansfieldtourism.com
www.mrps.org


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