Monday, April 28, 2008

The Things Mom Sees ...

Living in a small town, it’s tough for a teenager to keep secrets from his mother. This is especially true if your mother doesn’t need eyes to see what you’re doing.

Michael Fox grew up in Indiana in the 1960s the youngest (or second youngest – he has a twin sister) of four children. When his mother was home recovering from surgery in 1965, he and his twin were 11 years old, his others sisters 15 and 17.

“My mother had just undergone what at that time was a major surgery,” he said. “She had been home for two days from the hospital and was in and out of delirium. She was on pain meds and they kept her rather loopy.”

Michael’s parents were strict about dating and didn’t want the teenage girls out too late. It was fall, about a week before Halloween, when Michael’s 17-year-old sister Janet asked their father if she could go with her boyfriend and another couple to a local drive-in restaurant. She promised to be home by 11 p.m.

“I remember dad sitting there reading the newspaper,” Michael said. “He lowered the paper and looked at her. ‘Eleven p.m.? That’s a little late, make sure you’re on time,’ he told her.”

Janet agreed and, before she left, stopped into her mother’s room to give her a kiss. Janet’s mother was sleeping so she kissed her and left. What Janet didn’t know is that she wasn’t going to the restaurant.

“She had no idea she wasn’t really going for a Coke,” Michael said. “Her boyfriend and his buddy had already decided to take the girls to an old graveyard that was out in the sticks.”

The weather that October day had turned cold and, although Janet was dressed for a restaurant, she wasn’t dressed to walk around a graveyard.

“She told me later the weather was really unseasonably cold for Indiana at that time of the year,” Michael said. “She was wearing flats with no socks and blue jeans. Her jacket was not thick and she said she had a lightweight top on under her flimsy jacket.”

The boys took the girls about 15 miles from their hometown to a spot called New Palestine.

“In those days, New Palestine was nothing but old farms, corn fields, fence rows, barns and the occasional small family graveyard surrounded by an old iron fence with an iron gate,” Michael said.

Janet’s boyfriend, Dennis, pulled his car off the old country road and the four got out and headed to the graveyard. Dennis’ flashlight did little to light up the night that sat under a canopy of dark clouds.

“Janet was freezing and the wind was whipping pretty good; she estimated the temp had dropped into the low 40s,” Michael said. “She remembered that it started to drizzle but later turned into a steady sleet.”

As the teens wandered through the graveyard, they noticed age had all but erased the names and dates from the ancient gravestones. Most of the stones they could read dated to the mid-to-late 1800s; many were headstones for children.

Then they realized they were not alone.

“All of a sudden Janet heard the approach of someone on horseback,” Michael said. “All the kids stood motionless as a man on a horse came over the hill on the road and passed by them. He wore a long black rain slicker and a cowboy hat. Janet said the hat was tilted down and you could not see his face.”

Dennis said to the man, “Don’t mind us, we’re visiting my Aunt Alma.” The rider did not acknowledge them and rode off until he was out of sight.

“Janet said the rider creeped her girlfriend and her out to the point they both wanted to leave,” Michael said. “She said her feet were freezing and the sleet had turned to a wet snow and her shoes were now soaked.”

Because of the black rider, the dripping cold night, and the fact that it was after 11 p.m., the girls convinced their boyfriends to take them home.

“Janet knew she would be in trouble,” Michael said. “I remember when she walked in the door, she looked at Dad like she was really sorry but he was much more concerned with my mom than to notice she was late.”

Michael’s mother had spiked a fever and was incoherent. Janet went into the room to tell her mother goodnight, and came out with her face drawn from fear.

“She (was) white as a sheet,” Michael said. “She asked Dad, ‘who told you? Who called and told you where we were?’”

Michael’s father was confused.

“My dad said, ‘what are you talking about? Nobody told me anything,’” Michael said. “As it turns out when Janet went to say goodnight to Mom my mom was barely awake. There was a dimly lit table lamp next to mom’s bed. Janet kissed Mom and Mom sat up and grabbed her arm. She said, ‘Janet, what in the world were you doing in that graveyard and why didn’t you wear your boots?’”

The kids treaded lightly after that.

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Something at the Bedroom Door

Early one morning, Alicia heard a baby cry. Her fiancé, John, had already left for work, her eight-year-old daughter was not yet awake, and the baby … well, Alicia was feeding the baby.

Alicia and her family moved into a two-story, 70-year-old house in Belton, Mo., recently and were surprised to find they weren’t alone.

“I have heard a young child several times and it is usually very early in the morning when I am feeding my son or getting ready for work,” she said. “I know that sometimes I hear the child and it sounds like it is coming from my son’s room.”

Or, even more disturbing, she’s often heard the child crying out from a passageway that connects the baby’s room to the master bedroom. Whenever she opens the door to the passageway, it’s empty.

But the baby’s room is home to more than the sound of a crying child.

“He has a deck off of his room that has long sliding blinds and it has sounded before that someone has ran their hands across the blinds to have them clank together,” she said. “There is no venting close by that would even cause that.”

The noises escalated … then things got physical. While downstairs one morning, a loud bang brought Alicia to the staircase.

“There was a crash down the stairs and there was a (curtain) rod at the bottom of the stairs,” she said. It was a curtain rod from the baby’s room. “It sounded like someone had chucked it down the stairs.”

And Alicia has seen something in her house. While sitting in the living room, she often sees movement on the stairs.

“A lot of times out of the corner of my eye I will see something,” she said. “To me it looks black and I am expecting something to come down the stairs and when I turn to look there is nothing. There is light all the way up the stairs so it’s something that blocks the light.”

During the April 5 weekend, the activity in Alicia’s home escalated to the point of terror.

“Over the weekend my fiancé and I were asleep in bed and we both heard someone or something coming up the stairs and our bedroom door knob jiggled,” she said. “I sat straight up because it sounded like someone was in our house about to walk into our bedroom.”

That night, Alicia said, was the only time she has been afraid of her house.

“I was never scared until I heard those footsteps in the dark and the door knob jiggled,” she said. “I was OK with it when I was hearing the child, but now at night when I hear the footsteps I don’t get the same feeling.”

Doors Alicia knows were closed, are later found open, lights she knows were turned off are also found on. And, Alicia knows she’s not the only one experiencing these things. Her fiancé, her daughter, and her two dogs have all reacted to something heard, but not seen.

“My fiancé is never home in the mornings because he leaves so early for work, but this Monday he was home with our son and had put our son down for his morning nap and was very startled when he heard movement upstairs,” she said. “When he went up there to check on our son, he didn’t see anything out of norm.”

Cries in the night, footsteps, a black blob on the stairs, and a jiggled door handle have all made Alicia question her sanity, but not like the morning something spoke to her as she put her son in his car seat.

“My daughter is notorious for dragging her feet in the morning and I was stressing about being late because of that,” Alicia said.

As she buckled the baby in, her back turned to the open front door of the house, she heard a voice – and it wasn’t her daughter’s.

“I heard what I thought was her holler ‘Mom’ and it sounded like it was coming from the doorway in the house,” Alicia said. “I started to holler back because I thought she couldn’t find her shoes or coat and I was getting cranky because we were running behind and I hollered back ‘what?’”

Alicia was surprised to find her daughter standing next to her asking who she was speaking to. Alicia was also surprised to see the front door shut.

“I am still trying to decide if it’s my mind playing tricks on me or if I am really hearing and seeing something,” she said. “I try debunking things as they happen but I am running out of explanations.”

Copyright 2008 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Ghostly Footsteps at the Jesse James Farm

Stephanie Gaddis, a historical interpreter at the James Farm and Museum, doesn’t believe in ghosts – but they may believe in her.

The most famous outlaw in American history, Jesse Woodson James, was born on the farm northeast of Kearney, Mo., Sept. 5 1847, the son of Rev. Robert and Zerelda James. His brother Frank, a Civil War soldier, train robber and celebrity, was born in Kentucky, but died on the farm grounds. A lot of people died on the 205 acres the James boys’ father bought from Liberty businessman Robert Gilmer in 1845.

Since the farm became a historic spot in 1978, ghost hunters, psychics and tour guides have reported experiencing something otherworldly there.

Which brings us to Stephanie from nearby Holt, Mo., who, apart from being a tour guide at the farm, studies at DeVry University.

“I was working one day and I walked through the house,” she said. “We always go through the house (from the rear entrance) and walk through the parlor and go through Frank’s room to let people in.”

The interior of the James home is dark in the mornings. A bed where Frank slept still sits in the front room, along with pieces of period furniture, a number of them donated by the James descendents. The house has seen a lot of history, not a lot of it good.

“I heard footsteps like people were walking in behind me,” Stephanie said. “I thought people were pulling a prank. I looked back in the room and someone was there. But it was empty.”

People have seen apparitions in the windows or walking up the path from a nearby creek where the young James boys once swam. Others have heard voices, and some have seen furniture move by itself.

But to Stephanie, the noise she heard was more unnerving than an apparition.

“It sounded like somebody walking across the floor,” she said. “It was heavy steps. Not light.”

As she stood in Frank’s room, inches from a bed where a killer once slept, the thump of boots grew closer.

“I’ve never seen a ghost in my life and I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said. “I thought it’s probably my tour group on the front porch.”

She pushed back the curtains, but the group was still coming up the dirt path. Stephanie opened the front door and let her group in. They filed up the steps, walked over the wood-planked porch and into Frank’s room.

“Then I heard it again,” she said, the loud, heavy steps of a boot-clad man. “I asked if the (group) heard it and they said ‘yes.’ They said they thought it was somebody in the house ready to jump out and scare us like they were Jesse.”

They went through the house and found no one who was trying to be Jesse. But it may have been Jesse, or Frank, or someone who walked onto the property looking for the James boys and never walked off.

The James gang planned robberies at the farm, and on Jan. 26, 1875, the Pinkerton Detective Agency attempted a raid on the house, tossing incendiary devices in through the window. The house didn’t burn, but it cost the James boys mother Zerelda her right arm to the elbow and mortally wounded their eight-year-old stepbrother Archie Samuel.

Frank died at the house in 1915 and, for a time, Jesse was buried there before his remains were exhumed and moved to Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Kearney.

Although Stephanie’s still not sure about the existence of ghosts, she knows there’s something strange about that house.

“Even now I don’t know,” she said. “It sounded just like somebody walking through the house… The house just kind of makes you feel nervous when you’re in there by yourself. It makes you kind of eerie.”

Copyright 2008 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

There's Something in Room 505

The Hotel Savoy rises seven floors out of the Kansas City street. The red brick hotel, built in 1888, has a storied history – some of which still roams its halls.

Long time bus staff speak of phantom carts squeaking down halls, shadows walking in the basement, and the ghost of a little girl who stalks the fourth floor. Although management doesn’t promote these stories, the stories persist. The daddy of which is room 505.

Legend has it a woman died in the bathtub of Room 505. Visitors have said the shower curtain shuts by itself and the water comes on. The room was turned into an apartment, but the stories of people staying there vary.

Mike Dobbins, who lived in 505 in 2004, hasn’t had an encounter with the shower specter.

“I haven’t seen anything,” he said. “I haven’t heard anything. I had someone who’d come in here and said she’d sensed something, but I’m not in tune with that sort of thing.”

But Anne Bishop of Lee’s Summit is. Bishop has stayed in that room, and she knows it’s haunted.

“There’s more than one ghost in the place,” she said.

She was staying with her brother who lived in room 505 when she encountered some of the spirits of the Savoy. Anne and her brother had gone to a club for a couple of drinks, and she’d come back and fell asleep on the couch.

“And I had a dream that was one of these dreams that was not a dream,” she said. “I dreamed I was on the couch sleeping and there was two women and one man standing over me talking about me.”

Anne, who’s sensitive to the spirit world, is convinced this was not a dream, but an encounter.

“I know the difference between when I get messages from the other side,” she said. “I know when it’s a dream or something in my head. It was very distinct who was standing there.”

Anne, a registered nurse, attended a medical conference in downtown Kansas City when she stayed with her brother a second time.

“He went to spend the night at his girlfriend’s house and all of a sudden I just thought, ‘I’m going to be in here by myself?’” she said. “I remember standing in his bedroom and saying, “listen. I know you’re here, but I really have to get up early so please don’t jack with me.”

She slept with the lights on, but that didn’t stop whatever inhabits 505 from saying hello.

“I’m a smoker and never go to bed without my cigarettes and a lighter next to me,” she said. “The next morning, the lighter was gone and I thought, ‘what the hell?’”

She went about her morning, getting ready for work when she walked back into her brother’s bedroom and found her lighter.

“In front of the bathroom door, from the middle of my left thigh, the lighter just, ‘boom,’ appeared and slipped down from inside my pants and right out in front of me,” she said. “I just said, ‘good one.’”

Anne said things like this happen all the time, we just don’t recognize it.

“The world is a much more magical place than people give it credit for,” she said. “It’s about our culture. Our minds are just not very open.”

And she’s convinced the Hotel Savoy is one of those magical places.

“There is no doubt that there is stuff going on there,” she said.

Copyright 2008 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.