Lobry House



The Lobry Family built Lobry House in 1845. The home was built by Cooper Lobry and his wife Anna. It was to house their three children and their children’s children for a total of ten people.

Family

The elder was Tristen Lobry. He and his wife Mary had two daughters – Lilly and Shelly.

June Lobry was next in line. Her husband was Robert Law. They had one daughter – Naomi.

Margaret Lobry lost her husband to influenza and lived in Lobry House with her two daughters Annabelle and Rose.



The House

Lobry House had every modern convenience of the time. It was large, but it was not ornate or showy. The Lobry Family was old money and did not spend without reason. There were a total of 12 rooms, two dining rooms, a large kitchen and several drawing rooms within the main house along with a modest library. The house had servant’s quarters in back that could house four. While large, the number of people living within the home seemed to warrant its size.

The Incidents

In 1846, the first of a series of incidents occurred that would leave an indelible scar on the Lobry name forever.

• Lilly Lobry swore she could hear footsteps at night and tapping within the walls. When she tried to track the source of the footsteps down, nothing was found. Naomi Law backed up the stories saying that she, too, heard the sounds. The two girls believed the house to be haunted. Tristen was the voice of reason, stating that the house was new and questioning how it could be haunted.

• Shortly afterward, the first true sighting occurred. Rose was found in a crumpled heap on the second floor foyer – her face covered with tears. When revived, she shrieked and said she saw an apparition. She said it was a phantom mist drifting across the hall. She could not be calmed and was eventually moved during the night to a friend’s home where she eventually regained control of her senses.

• The sightings increased over the next few weeks. Ghostly mist, knocking in walls and dizzy spells struck every remaining family member in Lobry House. Annabelle joined her sister after Rose begged her to flee the house. Their mother joined them after she was shaken awake by an unseen force during the night. Naomi Law almost fell to her death trying to flee from “a specter with long, flowing robes and hair and claw-tipped hands”. She suffered multiple lacerations that she attributed to the ghost, but doctors said it was due to her crashing into a window on the third floor.

• Tragedy struck on the night of September 5th, 1846 when Mary Lobry attacked Tristen with an ax after hearing voices telling her that he had plans to dispatch the whole of the Lobry Family. She struck him down and hacked at him repeatedly before Robert Law wrenched the weapon from her hands.

Covered in blood and laughing hysterically, she kept repeating, ''“We’re safe now. We’re safe now.”''

The families left Lobry house on September 6th and the house remained closed and empty for several days before lawyers in Mary Lobry’s case wanted to investigate the scene. When they entered the home, a strong stench of gas assaulted them. They rushed from the home immediately and a team of workers were brought in to investigate. They found that the settling of the newly built home disrupted gas lines to the buildings light system. The small gas leak was consistent, but not large enough to perceive. It was determined that the leak caused the ghostly sightings, sounds being heard, dizzy spells and the subsequent death of Tristen Lobry. The leak was repaired, but the families never returned to Lobry House.

The house burnt to the ground in 1903 during the Marke Woods fire.