The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts.
All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages and is intended for a mature
audience.
Listener discretion is advised.
It's going.
Oh, I'm sleepy.
Okay.
Wake up.
That was for all of our 90s kids out there, if you watched Full House, which I know me
and my co-host Alexandra McLaughlin Sulkowski did.
And I did.
I'm back.
I made a film.
He made a film and he's back, everybody.
We've really missed each other.
While Ali was recording, her phone was off because she's a professional and I was texting
her, I just miss you.
It doesn't feel the same here without you.
It was a deep puppy love yearning and missing.
Completely.
We work together on a lot of things, so it felt weird to not be doing something together.
Yeah.
And if you listened last week, you heard me talk about how weird it felt to do this without
Eli.
I'm so excited to be doing the same project again.
Love it.
Yeah.
And I'll be more present in making the podcast with you, which is really exciting to me.
Yeah.
Because 95% of your brain will not be occupied with the film that you were making.
It will still stay the same.
I will still never know what Ali is going to tell me.
So that part will still always be a surprise.
Speaking of surprise.
Let's get to it.
What do you got for us?
I have, in honor of upcoming Halloween, I have a missing person case from 1953 and his
name is Ronald Tammann.
Ronald.
Shout out to Ronalds everywhere.
But Ronald is also sometimes known as the Phantom of Oxford or the Phantom of Fisher
Hall.
A Phantom?
A Phantom.
So this is a little bit of a ghost story, but it's very much-
Yes!
Woo woo woo woo woo.
Yeah!
Eli really wanted a ghost story.
Yes.
Spooky.
Well, I'm assuming, like myself, I'm assuming most of our listeners have a heightened interest
in spooky season.
I would imagine, yes.
And especially now, I think even if maybe Halloween isn't your personality, I think
a lot of people like a scary ghost story around Halloween.
Just a good red blooded American just loves it anyway.
And this takes place April 19th, 1953 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
So Miami of Ohio.
Ron Tammann is a 19 year old sophomore, originally from Maple Heights, Ohio, which is a suburb
of Cleveland.
He is the second oldest of five siblings.
And his younger brother is actually a freshman at Miami as well.
So his younger brother is there.
He worked as a freshman counselor, which is essentially an RA or a residential assistant
in today's college terms.
And his roommate was also a freshman counselor.
Ron is described as popular, smart, stable, someone of outstanding character.
He was part of the wrestling team and played bass in the Campus Owls, which is a dance
music organization.
Because he was part of this, they had gigs all over the area of around the college.
So he had special permission to have his car on campus because typically students at this
time were not allowed to have cars, but he had permission to have a car.
So that way he could go to his Campus Owl gigs.
And he was in the School of Business Management.
And at the time he went missing, he was five foot nine.
He had dark hair and weighed 175 pounds.
So Sunday, April 19th, 1953.
It is a strangely cold day for April and it is near freezing.
Throughout the day, snow flurries had been falling all day.
So it was a really cold day in April.
So that evening, it's reported that Ron is seen in Fisher Hall, which is his dorm room,
between 7 and 9 PM.
So that is when he's last reported being seen.
And Fisher Hall, just as a little offshoot, this place is prime location for a ghost story
already.
It's a really old building.
It was built in 1856 and was originally a women's college.
It was the Oxford Female College.
But then it was purchased by Oxford Retreat Co. and turned into a sanitarium for the mentally
disturbed.
And this lasted from the late 1890s to 1926.
So then in 1927, Miami University, they purchased this sanitarium and turned it into a dorm.
And it's reported that students would find straight jackets and quote other mementos
from the days of the sanitarium.
And during World War II, the Navy occupies the building for training purposes.
And the building is actually christened as a ship.
It's the USS Fisher Hall, which I just thought was kind of interesting that this was technically
a ship for a little bit, I guess.
Yeah, I have this like image of them, like breaking champagne on the side of the building,
like they do with ships, you know, I just, I don't know if they did that.
But that's all I can think about whenever I read that.
So then after the war, it was turned back into a dorm in 1944.
And this is where we find ourselves in 1953.
It's a men's dorm.
So around 8pm, Ron comes downstairs, his room is on the second floor.
And he asked the hall manager for two sheets, a pillowcase and a mattress cover because
someone had put a dead fish in his bed.
So he needed to change the sheets.
Around 830, it said that he went into his room, which is room 225.
And it was in the northwest corner of the building.
He shut the door and sat down at his desk to study.
And this is the last time that anybody truly sees Ron is in this moment.
Around midnight, Ron's roommate Charles Finley returns from visiting his family in Dayton,
Ohio.
And when he gets to Fisher, he finds that their dorm room, the door is open.
The radio is left playing.
Ron's textbook was left open on the table.
And it was a psychology notebook.
And this is an interesting fact because Ron had actually dropped psychology earlier that
semester.
So it wasn't a class that he was actively taking at the time.
But that's the book that was open and presumed he was studying out of.
Did you take psychology?
Yeah, it was considered a science.
So it was in my mind, one of the easier sciences that I could take.
Did you like it?
I didn't like it as much as I thought I would.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, it's surprising.
You would probably have liked, I made the mistake and I took sociology instead of psychology.
I think you would have liked sociology more.
Sociology is more statistics.
I did take sociology actually.
That was considered an arts and humanities class, but psychology was considered a science.
And we had labs and stuff that we had to do.
So it was pretty clinical.
Labs?
Yeah, we would have to go, we had to be part of the seniors' experiments that they were
doing, or the tests they were running, whatever they were.
What did they do?
I just remember the one that I sat in on was like, they made me sort bird seed.
But then after, so after they made me sort bird seed.
First of all, that's extra funny.
One, because of the sentence alone.
And what, you just said that that was a real thing.
That's real.
But after they made me sort the bird seed, then they like-
Wait, no, that's funny.
Because, because you, well I'm sure some of our listeners don't know what you look like,
but we constantly talk about how you are a bird person.
Yes.
Because like- And I'm cold and fragile like a bird.
But after they made me sort bird seed, like the whole point of the experiment was, then
they like brought me and like I guess other people that were like doing the same thing,
sorting bird seed in other rooms, they like brought us in and they like asked us if we
thought the task was interesting or if we like enjoyed doing it or something.
And so one person that spoke first was like, yeah, I really enjoyed it.
It was a lot of fun.
I thought it was cool.
And so then the experiment was to see if like we would be suggested to like say, oh yeah,
it was cool because this person that spoke first like set that bar.
But I remember when they got to me, I was like, I don't really understand why I had
to sort bird seed.
I was like, it wasn't terrible, but I don't think I'd do it again.
You were the Will Smith candidate in like Men in Black.
Yes.
Yeah.
That was just like, I will not be suggested.
You cannot suggest an idea to me.
You have to vary differently from all the other cadets.
Yeah.
The hypothesis was that I'd be like, yes, it was so fun.
Okay.
So we're back in 1953.
Ron's psychology book is left open, but he's not taking that class.
So Charles doesn't really think much of it because by all accounts, the lights are on,
the radio's on, the book is open.
It just seems like Ron has stepped out for a minute and will return at any moment.
Charles is up for about another hour.
You know, he just got back from out of town.
He's putting his things away.
And when Ron doesn't show up, Charles assumes that he must have went to his frat house,
which is Delta Tau Delta.
And so Charles goes to sleep, but he leaves the light on for Ron in case he comes back,
which I thought was really nice.
So some things to note about Ron's room.
So besides the things that I've mentioned of like what was left on, the book being left
out, none of Ron's clothes or luggage were missing.
All of that was there and accounted for.
The only clothes that did seem to be missing were the clothes that he was seen wearing
that evening.
His wallet and his IDs were there, but the cash was taken out of it.
But by all accounts, it was only $10 or $11 that he possibly could have had on him or
that was missing from his wallet.
But people kind of assume that he has the $10 or $11 on him.
Did you do the, what's it called, inflation?
How much that would be in today's money?
I did it for this, but he also has a bank account that has $100 in it.
And so I did do the inflation for that.
So in today's dollars, that'd be like right around a thousand dollars.
Hell yeah.
But this is never touched.
So after he goes missing, nothing ever happens with this bank account until his family has
it legally closed.
But that money is never touched.
And on his desk is a receipt for his car's insurance policy that he had paid a year for.
So he had paid his year policy.
He was up to date on his insurance and that receipt was sitting on the desk as well.
So the next day, Monday, April 20th, 1953, Charles wakes up and the lights are still
on and there's no sign that Ron had come back or had been there at all.
So Charles begins to worry a little bit, but he goes about his day and he swings by Ron's
frat house, Delta Tau Delta, to ask if anybody had seen him.
And they said that they hadn't and that he hadn't been there the night before.
So in the evening, Charles is nervous and he alerts the dorm staff who alert the Dean
of Men whose name is Karl Knox.
And so a thorough search is done of Fisher Hall and they don't find anything.
They do find Ron's car, which is a 1949 Chevy, and it's undisturbed, still sitting in the
parking lot where Ron had last parked it by all accounts.
And his bass is in the back seat and this is his instrument that he played with the
campus owls.
So that's all they are unaccounted for, but there's no sign of Ron anywhere.
So Tuesday, nothing really happens.
The university is kind of expecting him to show up and have a story for why he's gone.
On Wednesday, it's unclear if it's on Tuesday or Wednesday, but sometime during these days,
the university is getting a hold of his family and ask is Ron with you?
Do you know where he is?
He's not here and they're baffled.
They have no idea where he would be.
They ask his younger brother who's on campus, a freshman on campus, and he has no idea where
his brother went.
Nobody has any idea where Ron is.
On Thursday, April 23rd, so he's been missing since Sunday, there's no word from Ron.
So that evening, the university contacts the police to report that he's missing.
That Friday, April 24th, the police getting this missing person report, they searched
nearby creeks and his room and there's no sign of violence.
There's no sign of Ron anywhere.
So police immediately begin to report that it's likely that he's suffering from amnesia.
Okay.
Yeah.
And his parents think this unlikely.
The professors at the school are like, he had really good grades.
Yeah, what do you think of that?
I don't know how often this happens, to be honest with you.
Like this, I don't know.
It seems for the police to get called Thursday night and for Friday, them to be reporting
in the newspaper that they think it's amnesia.
I think it's a little fast to jump to amnesia.
They think he has just forgotten who he is, where he is and has wandered off and there's
been no sign of him.
Like nobody, like no hospitals have said like, hey, this young man walked in not knowing
who he is, you know, like nothing.
Yeah, that's odd.
Yeah.
It's just, it seems very quick to jump to amnesia with no other evidence.
He has no history of it.
His parents write this off.
His professors are like, he's a really smart guy.
Like he had good grades.
Like it doesn't seem like he was like so stressed to a point he got amnesia.
Like none of, all of that is kind of written out by others.
On Saturday, April 25th, more than 400 students search the countryside for Ron or for clues
about his whereabouts.
These frats and the ROTC, they make up a sizable portion of the search and the students cover
a three mile radius from Fisher Hall going in each direction.
So north, south, east, west.
They all fan out and look for Ron.
No trace of Ron anywhere.
No clues picked up.
That's reported.
Wednesday, April 29th.
So Ron has been missing for 10 days at this point.
The Oxford police chief is quoted as saying, quote, we have done everything we can at this
end.
We are just stimmied.
The trail simply vanishes in his room in Fisher Hall.
And that's the police chief, Oscar Decker.
And you'll hear me quote Decker quite a bit moving forward.
So police do not suspect that foul play is the case.
And they point to the facts that there doesn't seem to be any struggle or sign of violence
in his room.
They also mention, you know, Ron was part of the varsity wrestling team at Miami.
So he's a strong guy.
They think it unlikely that somebody could have overpowered him without there being signs
of a struggle or violence or something like that.
And because the only valuables that had been missing from Ron's room were the $10 or $11
from his wallet and they couldn't find his watch, but there's a good chance that he was
wearing that at the time.
So those were the only items missing besides his clothes and Ron himself from the room.
Oxford police will request help from the FBI.
But since no crimes have been committed at this point, they have no jurisdiction.
And then this is Decker again, quote, since everything points to the fact that the boy
left the room in Fisher Hall on his own accord, no crime has been committed.
All we can do now is wait.
And that's Decker.
And again, this is 10 days after Ron goes missing, which just seems like really quick
to be like, well, we've done everything.
All we can do is wait now.
Like we did all we could.
Yeah.
Over the weekend of May 2nd, 1953, frat members from Ron's fraternity will investigate a tip
that he was seen in Cincinnati, but this turns up nothing.
Also, I don't know why police are not investigating this.
I don't know why frat boys are Scooby doing around Cincinnati.
Haha, Scooby doing.
Sunday, May 17th.
So we're coming up on a month that Ron has been missing here.
There's a headline in the Dayton Daily that Tammond case might never be solved.
So this is just shy of a month that the newspaper is reporting that this will never be solved.
Police are still reporting and driving this belief that he is suffering from amnesia.
And now they're saying he probably hitched hike out of town.
There's no evidence of this.
Police are just kind of like, well, if he has amnesia and he's not in town, then he
must be somewhere else.
He hitched hike.
They just like keep adding to this story with no evidence.
I don't know.
Silly bellies.
On Monday, May 18th, Ron's family is informed that the FBI has joined the search for Ron.
So the FBI joins the case and they only join the case because the draft board tries to
get a hold of Ron, but they can't locate him.
So now he's like a draft dodger and the FBI is involved.
Okay.
The FBI is like, you are property of us, so we will find you.
This is it.
Friday, June 12th, 1953, the FBI reports that they can find no trace of Ron, so they're
unable to locate him.
And on June 21st, Decker is reported in the paper as saying, quote, he's a victim of
amnesia and he's probably alive and quite healthy, but hasn't the slightest idea who
he is.
He may be hundreds of miles away somewhere where no one has recognized him.
End quote.
Also, Decker- He has amnesia.
Yeah.
He also became police chief one month before Ron went missing.
So this was like his first big case and he's like, well, it's amnesia folks.
And they rerun Ron's picture in the paper.
And then that following week after rerunning his picture in the paper, Mrs. Carl Spivey,
and I am so, I apologize to our listeners.
I could not find a first name for her.
It's only reported as a Mrs. Her husband's name.
So Mrs. Carl Spivey, she comes forward and says that she saw Ron the night he disappeared.
She claims that Ron knocked on her door around 11 PM at her home in Seven Mile.
Seven Mile is around 10 or 11 miles from Miami University.
And when I plugged this into just Google Maps quickly, it says that this would be a little
over three hours to walk it.
He asked what town he was in and where he could be if he went, quote, that direction.
And he points towards Middleton, Ohio.
She told him he could catch a bus to Middleton and gave directions to a bus stop.
She learned the next day that the bus stopped operating that particular route that Sunday,
April 19th.
So she gave this young man directions to a bus stop that didn't exist anymore.
Mrs. Spivey thought that he could have been having car trouble because it looked like
he had grease or dirt on his face.
Mrs. Spivey continues to say that she must have missed the first reports of him going
missing but recognized him when his picture was re-ran in the paper.
And she described the clothing that Ron was wearing the night he disappeared.
But it's never confirmed if this encounter is Ron or not.
Oh, okay.
Police love this account because it helps support the amnesia theory.
Since Decker, again, thinks it makes sense that since the weather was bad, thus traffic
was light that night, there weren't a lot of cars in the road, Decker believed it was
possible that Ron could have walked the 10 or 11 miles in two and a half hours.
So I think that's a bit of a stretch because Ron also isn't dressed for the weather.
It's freezing and he doesn't have his coat on him at all.
But whatever, Decker loves to just write it off and chalk everything up to amnesia.
Okay, so summer of 1953.
The assistant dean of men, Howard Stevenson and his wife Kay are vacationing in upstate
New York.
They stop by a roadside diner and they're sitting down looking at the menu.
Howard looks around the restaurant and he sees a young man who looks like Ron sitting
alone in a booth.
So he turns to his wife to tell her and when he points to the booth, the man is gone.
Howard gets up and walks over to the...
The Phantom.
Howard gets up and walks over to the booth, but he isn't there.
There's no evidence that the young man was there.
And so then he goes to the parking lot.
I forgot about the Phantom.
So then he goes to the parking lot, but he doesn't see anybody leave.
So this young man just disappeared.
So yeah, the first kind of phantom-y Ron story.
April 19th, 1954, one year since he's been missing.
Ron's family fully believes that he's still alive.
His mother's quoted as saying, quote, almost nothing has turned up, but we feel sure he
is still alive somewhere.
He just wasn't the type to cause us worry, end quote.
And she also says that the last time she saw Ron was the weekend before he disappeared,
when he had visited home and he was in really high spirits.
He didn't seem depressed at all.
And he seemed excited a week before he disappeared.
So this doesn't seem like somebody who wants to run away or is stressed and needs to flee.
So fall of 1954, residents of Fisher Hall, this is the dorm he disappeared from, they
began to hear whispers in the formal garden just beyond Fisher Hall.
So they start to hear whispers, but loud enough to hear it from the hall.
So very loud whispers.
In late October, around midnight, a high falsetto voice is heard singing from the gardens by
several residents in Fisher Hall.
It happens again at the same time the next night.
So two nights in a row, this high falsetto singing is heard from the gardens.
One resident decides, you know what, second night, I'm going to be down there tomorrow
night so if it happens again, I'm going to see what happens.
I'm going to see this whole thing for myself.
So him and just a couple of his buddies, they go out there.
This is the third night.
So they hear the singing as they're out in the gardens and they see an all white figure
and they begin to walk towards it.
The figure sees them and takes off running.
And according to these boys...
Running like with, you could hear like...
That's not reported, but they say that it takes off running at a superhuman speed and
that they could not catch up.
So it takes off...
Superhuman.
And it disappears towards the golf course that was on campus at the time.
The boys had chased after it, but they couldn't catch up.
But they're far away from the gardens and as this figure disappears, they hear singing
coming from the gardens again.
Only this time, instead of just the high falsetto, it goes from a deep bass to a high falsetto
now.
So it's got full range now.
The next night, after the boys have told their encounter, a group of RAs decide they're going
to go out and figure out what's going on.
And so they go out to the gardens and again, they hear the singing.
This time though, they see a black cloud figure with long hair and long legs.
As they approach it, again, this black figure sees the group of RAs and takes off running
in the same direction as the white figure.
The RAs chase it, but they only do it half-heartedly.
None of them really want to get close to it.
So then the next night...
So this is about five or six nights now that the singing has been heard and two nights
in a row that a phantom-like figure has been seen out here.
So then the next night, a pack of freshmen, about 25 of them, they all get together and
they all go out there.
They're like, we're going to catch this person.
We're going to catch this thing.
We're going to figure it out.
All 25 of us.
So a big group of them go down there.
And the same thing happens.
They hear the singing.
They see a black figure with long hair and long legs.
And as soon as the figure sees them, takes off running.
The fastest runner of the group, so the person who got closest to this black figure, said
that the closer he got to it, the less interested he was in catching it.
So that's really icky to me and makes me feel creepy-crawly because it's like the closer
he got to it, the more he was like, you know what?
Fuck it.
I don't want a part of any of this.
Fuck it.
He's like, I don't know.
This time the figure doesn't run towards the golf course, but it runs towards a creek
and disappears.
And this becomes the phantom of Fisher Hall.
And it happens about one year after Ron goes missing.
So for Ron's case, nothing really happens at the two or three year mark.
There's no signs of him.
His bank account stays inactive.
In 1958, the first floor of Fisher Hall is turned into a theater.
And the theater department is housed there.
And the second and third floor are condemned.
And they are barricaded and blocked off from access.
In 1958, about five and a half years, there'll be like a resurgent of Ron's story in the
media because human remains will be unearthed at a gravel pit and they'll generally match
the size of Ron and the shape of him.
But this turns out not to be Ron.
It's actually a well-preserved 3000 year old indigenous skeleton.
So way before Ron.
In the seven year anniversary, this is April 20th, 1960.
So it's been seven years since he went missing.
Police will now believe that he walked away on his own will, his own accord.
They kind of ditch the amnesia theory at this point.
And they say he walked away on his own accord.
But again, people disagree because nothing was taken out of the room, not even his coat
on such a cold night.
His bank account again remains inactive and he only had maybe 10 or $11 on him potentially.
And a paper will interview Charles, his roommate.
And his roommate was deeply affected by Ron going missing because they were quote, very,
very close.
And he'll actually go under doctor's care for a nervousness disorder, which is reported
in the paper, which is crazy back in the day.
When nervousness disorder, I'm like, oh my, that's me every day.
I need to go under doctor's care for my anxiety.
Right.
Wow.
Shout out to Lexabrow.
Shout out to SSRIs.
Yeah, truly.
Wow.
If you are one who takes meds for that, good for you.
They've really helped me out.
So now we're in the sixties.
The theater guild will occupy Fisher hall and theater professors will have their offices
there.
And so these next stories, I couldn't find specific dates for them, but I know they happened
in the sixties.
So one Halloween, the theater guild, they hold a seance and nothing major happens at
the seance.
But the next day, someone who was at the seance is alone in the auditorium there and he's
listening to a speech and he'll hear footsteps up on the second floor.
Again, the second floor is supposed to be barricaded and no one should be up there,
but he hears footsteps up there.
Okay.
Another Halloween, the theater guild brought in a medium this time for the seance and the
medium has a vision.
The vision is of a young man coming down from the second floor alone.
He goes into the basement, opens the door and finds two men engaged in quote wrongdoing.
She's unable to see what the wrongdoing is.
So we engage in wrongdoing.
That's my first thought, but maybe like drugs or robbery, like a lot of things, whatever.
I don't think this is a real vision she's having.
I do believe mediums can have visions, but everything she says had been reported in the
newspaper except for the story she's making up, maybe making up.
I don't know.
The second could not tell what the wrongdoing was.
Had no idea.
So the two men in the room turn and beat up the young man that's alone and they end up
killing him.
He falls dead to the floor.
The next thing the medium sees is two men dragging the body up out of the basement,
down a deserted corridor and out into the darkness, then digging a hole on a hillside
and putting the body in.
Where the hole was, the medium had no clue.
So no real specifics, but this is a story that the medium tells the theater guild on
a Halloween.
And then the theater department professors who obviously spent a lot of time there, a
lot of time late at night, they reported hearing footsteps all the time coming from the second
floor of chandeliers moving really slightly and slowly, lights going dim and then returning
to full brightness.
October 31st, 1967.
This is 15 years since Ron has been missing.
A newspaper actually runs a story about the ghost of Fisher Hall and folks claim the haunting
is recent and they all tie it back to Ron.
They say that the haunting only started after Ron went missing.
On November 3rd, the same newspaper had received a letter from an alumni of Miami.
Her name is Virginia Ronald and she wrote in to tell the paper that the ghost had been
there before Ronald.
So she claims the phantom was well known beforehand.
And she's quoted as saying, quote, the ghost was supposed to have been left over when Fisher
Hall was transferred to the university.
It had served as a private mental home before being appropriated by the university, but
Tammans disappearance seemed to make the Fisher ghost more active, end quote.
And she went to Miami at the same time as Ron and she said that her husband actually
lived in the same dorm as Ron.
I don't know if that's Fisher Hall or maybe his freshman dorm, but that's what she says
that this ghost was there beforehand, but a lot of people tie the phantom to Ron.
So in the late sixties, the university discovered that fraternities mostly had been using the
second and third floor to break into to do ghost hunting.
They had been creating newspaper torches since there was no electricity.
So this is like a huge fire hazard.
The second and third floors were already condemned.
So the university closes the building in 1968.
Okay.
So now we're into the seventies, April 23rd, 1973.
This is 20 years Ron has been missing.
A doctor comes forward.
His name is Dr. Boone and he's the Butler County physician.
And he also serves as the coroner for Butler County.
And he says that Ron visited him November 15th, 1952.
So this would have been five months before he went missing.
And Ron visited him because he wanted to know his blood type because he might have to give
blood someday was the reason Ron gave.
And this has always stuck out to Dr. Boone.
He says it was very strange because this is the only time in his career that someone asked
for a blood typing test and also found it strange that Ron didn't have it done at the
university who had a hospital there where he could have gotten this test done or even
in Oxford that he went out of his small college town.
So Dr. Boone was very suspicious of this request from Ron and Dr. Boone says he tried to bring
this to the police and the university when Ron went missing, but nobody was interested
in this information.
And there's a part of me that kind of gets it.
I'm like, I can see myself being a plucky 19 year old and just wanting to know my...
Plucky.
Good word.
Really great, really great word.
Thank you.
Wow.
But yeah, I can see myself a plucky 19 year old being like, what's my blood type?
I'm going to go figure that out.
But I do find it strange that he didn't have it done closer.
So this is the newest clue to come out for Ron since the day he disappeared.
In May of 1973, so that same year, 20 years missing, there was a push to save Fisher Hall
because a lot of people...
The university was going to demolish it, but because it was such an old building and had
these historical ties, a lot of people wanted to save that.
So like kind of in an effort, they hosted an open house for Fisher Hall and it was actually
super popular.
They had like over a thousand people turn up to it that they had to turn people away.
So they decided they're going to do another open house the next week to accommodate everyone
who couldn't get in the first time.
So at the second open house, a man came by and he had been at the first open house and
he had recorded the tour on tape.
And I assume for the time that it's a cassette player that he recorded it on and not a video
camera.
So he comes back at the second tour and asks if there were any radios or record players
that had been playing during the first tour.
And they said, no, there's no electricity in this building.
There were no radios or record players during the first tour.
The paper says, quote, he remarked that it was strange since in the background of the
tape, he could distinctly hear someone playing a flute and the tape was new, end quote.
So we have a mysterious flute player at Fisher hall as well.
And Ron was a musician.
He played bass and I also found a report that he played clarinet as well.
So I don't think it's that far of a jump if you play a woodwind to like play a flute
or a piccolo or you know, something else.
So maybe Ron, maybe not, but I could not find any reports of Ron being a flute player, a
flautist.
So summer of 1978, 25 years, Ron has been missing.
Fisher hall is demolished.
However, when it's being demolished, the crew is instructed to take it apart piece by piece
and to look for skeletal remains.
So they are like, he's got to be in here.
Like he has to be in this building somewhere.
So they do that.
They take the building apart piece by piece and no sign of Ron anywhere.
Nothing.
They did, however, save 5,000 bricks from Fisher hall and incorporated them into the
Markham hotel, which now sits where Fisher stood.
And then that's, that's really the story of the Phantom of Oxford or the Phantom of Fisher
hall and Ron Tam and he, he hasn't been seen since he would be 89 years old today if he
were still alive.
I do just want to mention briefly that in my research, I came across the work of Jennifer
Wenger, I believe is how you say her last name.
Wenger maybe, but she is a Miami alumni and she began researching this case in 2010 and
she has done a crazy amount of research on this case.
And she has her own theory about what happened to Ron, which I just want to mention briefly
here, but she believes that Ron died around 1995 and she points to the FBI.
They had a set of Ron's fingerprints cause he was part of the draft.
And I also saw a report that his family, when he was in the second grade, he was fingerprinted.
So there were records of his fingerprint on file before he went missing, but the FBI discarded
Ron's fingerprints and regulations allow them to destroy fingerprints seven years after
a person's death.
She also believes that Ron's psych professor was involved in the CIA and that Ron may have
been recruited for the CIA.
And so that's why he disappeared.
And the psych notebook was like, kind of like a, a wink to where he was going.
If you want to read more about her research and there's a lot of it, like it would be
its own podcast to like go over all the things that she has found.
I hope she does make a podcast someday if she hasn't already.
And I saw her having updates from like October 13th.
So she's been researching this since for 12 years.
So she is, I would say she is like the end all be all.
I should say that she does not believe that the phantom of Fisher hall or the phantom
of Oxford is Ron.
I don't know if it's Ron or not because a lot of reports say that it got really active
after Ron was gone.
So I don't know, but Ron is still missing.
If you have any information about Ron, if you, maybe your grandpa, if he did have amnesia,
your grandpa has no memories before he was 19.
Maybe he's Ron.
If you know anything about Ron's disappearance, you are encouraged to call the Oxford police
at 513-524-5240.
But that's it.
That's the story of Ron Tammann and the ghost of, or the phantom of Oxford, Ohio.
I really love that it's phantom and not ghost.
Like I don't know what the distinction is.
Yeah, no, this is, this is the phantom.
Sources for today's podcast come from the Sydney daily news.
The Dayton daily times, the Tribune, the Akron beacon journal, Chillicothe Gazette, Marysville
journal tribunes, Springfield new sun, the journal Harold, the Cincinnati inquirer, the
Wilmington news journal, the daily times, the daily reporter, Dayton daily news, the
journal news, the Miami websites, the October 27th, 1982 lecture by Dr. Schriever and Ronald
Tammann.com.
Yeah, but that's it.
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But yeah, that's it.
Um, thank you so much and have a good week.
Thank you.