CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Yes, there are tunnels beneath the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument at Public Square. Some think they are haunted, too.

You can judge for yourself, when they are open for free public tours on Saturday, Oct. 29 -- an event that happens but once a year.

You won't see any powder or weapons there. Some maintain that such things were there. But "never" is the succinct assessment of Ted Prasse, president of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument Commission.

Tim Daley, the monument's executive director, said talk of the tunnels being connected to other buildings is also untrue. "An urban legend," he said.

Their real purpose is to support the weight of the entire structure and to distribute it evenly over the entire footprint of the monument.

Prasse said the black-marble shaft above the monument weighs 140 tons by itself.

But the tunnels have been used for storage during part of the monument's 122-year existence, Daley said, "and up until the '70s, it was a working fallout shelter."

It is, first and foremost, an acknowledgement of Ohio and the service of 325,000 from this state -- the third largest contingent behind New York and second-ranked Pennsylvania,

Daley said Cuyahoga County alone sent 9,000 to the war and 1,100 died. They are all named on the interior wars, but Daley clarified that "to have your name there, you had to serve, and either enlisted here or were from here."

Levi Schofield is credited both as the sculptor of the larger-that-life statuary outside the monument and the idiosyncratic design of the entire structure.

Simply put, it is about Cuyahoga County and the Civil War. One of the most amazing aspects is how much detail Schofield manages to present about that intersection, and how many media tell the story.

Stained glass, bronze and stone are the main ingredients, with life-size human figures in four bronze bas-relief panels indoors, representing personages and events, with Abraham Lincoln one of the few non-Ohioans. The larger-than-life bronze tableaus outside are among the first things people notice.

But close inspection is recommended. Prasse noted that the scene of the Union infantry color guard is accurate, right down to the boot heel of one fallen soldier.

Daley noted during a tour last May that Schofield also incorporated military artifacts, including bas-relief cannon barrels cut into the exterior stone.

He said the typical memorial of the time was either the statue of a lone figure or a roster of names. The people driving development of the monument after the Civil War decided to combine the two ideas.

Schofield's use of artifacts like the cannon barrels also was atypical.

Great museums and the National Park Service commonly have large canvasses with which to tell their stories, including the entire battlefield at Gettysburg. Schofield covered the historic sweep of the war and Cuyahoga County's role on what is probably less than two acres.

Prasse said the monument was a big draw during the Republican National Convention in July.

He said many visiting police officers from across the country dropped in when they were not providing security for the city and the convention, and many used it as a backdrop for their group pictures.

Daley said that the monument had 90,000 visitors so far this year, far more than any of the previous four years.