I first saw Indian mounds when I was in 4th grade. We went up to Lizard Mound State Park on field trip. It scared me for days. They had one mound opened and inside was a skeleton mounded up. In my childish way, I figured that skeleton would follow me since I desecrated the mound by looking at it. A lot of movies have a plot sort of like that. I think that is the basic premise of “Poltergeists”
Now the mounds are no longer scary, just interesting, which is why I went to visit the Hopewell Mounds near Chillicothe, Ohio. There was a whole mound building culture about 1500 years ago. The mounds in Ohio were loosely affiliated with those in Wisconsin in that they had a trading network.
I won’t go into too much detail about the mounds. You can Google them. The mound building stopped around 1500 years ago. Nobody is sure why. The leading theories have to do with climate change (it got cooler around that time) and maybe just the usual exhaustion and overpopulation.
The mounds are now grass covered, but according to the notes the used to be covered with gravel, making them more like little pyramids. Not all the mounds are burial mounds. The whole complex has a earthen berm around it.
Besides the mounds, there is not much in the town of Chillicothe. It has the usual chain restaurants. The town’s big industry is a paper mill. One of the novelties was this expressway. It is like a drive through Seven-Eleven. There was a woman inside who brings the stuff right to your car as you drive through. It looks like it was originally a car wash.