The e-mail message was cryptic. “Hello. I might have some information you will want to hear.” No further explanation; just a telephone number.
“Any hints?” I wrote back.
Three hours later a second e-mail waited in my inbox. “What? Sorry. I thought you wanted information. UFO. No reply is necessary.” The man sent his telephone number again, and his name. At his request I haven’t used his real name; he’ll go by Marty.
Marty answered the telephone, his voice that once sang with a Navy choir was scratchy and weak. Doctors removed half of a lung from cancer and damaged his vocal chords removing a lump from his thyroid. Marty is 67 years old.
But he didn’t want to talk about himself; he wanted to share something he’d kept hidden for 59 years.
Marty was eight years old in 1949 when his father took him to the Pickwick Hotel at the corner of 10th and McGee Streets in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. The hotel sat next to a Trailways Bus Company station; a high school friend of his father was stopping there on his way through town.
Marty doesn’t remember the name of the man who walked into the hotel and greeted Marty’s father, but he remembers he was in uniform.
“This man was in the service,” he said. “I can’t tell you what branch.”
The three went to a room in the hotel and, as the adults sat at a table and talked, Marty sat on the bed and tried to entertain himself. After awhile, he started paying attention to the conversation, and the men noticed.
“They said, ‘whatever you hear, stop remembering,’” he said.
Then Marty heard things – classified things.
The man had worked at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico; site of the atomic bomb test. He said whenever the military tested a new missile there, Unidentified Flying Objects would appear to observe the launches.
“He said when they shot a missile up to test it this thing would come up to it and fly around it,” Marty said. “These things would come up, circle it and – swish – go away.”
Then Marty’s father asked a question and his friend’s voice dropped to just above a whisper. But Marty heard everything.
“Pretty soon my dad said, ‘I heard a rumor about Roswell and a (UFO) crash,’” Marty said. “My dad’s friend got real serious and he said, ‘I can’t talk about that.’ But he said it did happen and it was real. This man talking to my dad positively confirmed what crashed in Roswell was true and legitimate.”
Soon after, Marty and his father went home and didn’t discuss that night for months.
“After that my dad – six months later – said, ‘I want you to come with me tonight,’” he said.
Marty’s father took him to a UFO meeting in Kansas City.
“Those people were as squirrelly as squirrels,” Marty said. “My dad just sat there and chuckled. He said, ‘what you saw tonight was horse hockey. You know the truth and we can’t talk about it.’ And he never mentioned it again. He wanted me to know the truth and what isn’t the truth.”
Marty’s father died at 51 in 1961 and neither he, nor Marty, ever mentioned the strange conversation in the Pickwick Hotel.
“This happened years and years ago and I was sworn to secrecy,” Marty said. “I’ve never talked about it.”
Until now.
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.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Mom’s Ghost is Still Watching
As Alzheimer’s disease slowly deconstructed the mind of Denise Gedlund’s mother, she forgot her family – everyone but Denise.
Denise was her mother’s youngest child, and that may have been why.
“I come from a large family of two boys and three girls, of which I am the baby,” she said. “All my sibs grew up almost a generation before me and I was like an only child.”
Denise’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2005 and died in February 2008.
“Much of the upsetting details of her last few months in life were kept from me by the family, for which I am grateful,” she said. “I was very, very close with my mother. The past three years were very difficult for the family.”
During the last few times Denise saw her mother, she didn’t know Denise’s name, but knew who she was.
“She knew that I was her baby girl,” Denise said. “In fact, for a long time I was the only person she recognized.”
As Denise and her siblings watched their mother fade from life, they sometimes saw flashes of her old self.
“To the last my mother had a great and wicked sense of humor,” Denise said. “Even two days before her death she was teasing the nurses to bring her booze with her ice water.”
Denise’s mother died at 6 a.m. Feb 1.
“I am still having difficulty,” Denise said.
But Denise soon found her mother isn’t really gone because she comes to visit.
“About a week after her passing I was lying in bed reading when I heard footsteps come into the room and felt a heavy weight sit on the end of the bed,” she said. “I thought it was my boyfriend but when I looked he was not there, but I did see a definite butt print on the sheets.”
However, she wasn’t afraid because she knew who had visited her. After several similar visitations, Denise began calling out, “Mom’s here.”
“But the most stunning event occurred a couple of months ago,” Denise said. “Years ago she had given me a special fluorite crystal pendant and for the past couple of years it had been missing. Turning the house topsy-turvy several times never produced the gem. I was distraught as my mom had had a special purpose in mind when she gave me the gem.”
One night Denise’s mother visited her in a dream. Denise told her mother she was upset that she couldn’t find the pendant and her mother promised to find it.
“When I got up the next morning and went into the kitchen for coffee, I spied something on the floor that hadn’t been there the night before,” Denise said. “It was my fluorite pendant.”
Denise called out to her boyfriend who was also surprised because he hadn’t seen the pendant there earlier.
“There was no other explanation for the sudden appearance of the stone other than Mother really did find the stone for me as promised,” Denise said. “I began to cry and said out loud, ‘Thanks Mom.’ I gazed up at her photo on the wall and I swear she winked at me.”
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.
Denise was her mother’s youngest child, and that may have been why.
“I come from a large family of two boys and three girls, of which I am the baby,” she said. “All my sibs grew up almost a generation before me and I was like an only child.”
Denise’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2005 and died in February 2008.
“Much of the upsetting details of her last few months in life were kept from me by the family, for which I am grateful,” she said. “I was very, very close with my mother. The past three years were very difficult for the family.”
During the last few times Denise saw her mother, she didn’t know Denise’s name, but knew who she was.
“She knew that I was her baby girl,” Denise said. “In fact, for a long time I was the only person she recognized.”
As Denise and her siblings watched their mother fade from life, they sometimes saw flashes of her old self.
“To the last my mother had a great and wicked sense of humor,” Denise said. “Even two days before her death she was teasing the nurses to bring her booze with her ice water.”
Denise’s mother died at 6 a.m. Feb 1.
“I am still having difficulty,” Denise said.
But Denise soon found her mother isn’t really gone because she comes to visit.
“About a week after her passing I was lying in bed reading when I heard footsteps come into the room and felt a heavy weight sit on the end of the bed,” she said. “I thought it was my boyfriend but when I looked he was not there, but I did see a definite butt print on the sheets.”
However, she wasn’t afraid because she knew who had visited her. After several similar visitations, Denise began calling out, “Mom’s here.”
“But the most stunning event occurred a couple of months ago,” Denise said. “Years ago she had given me a special fluorite crystal pendant and for the past couple of years it had been missing. Turning the house topsy-turvy several times never produced the gem. I was distraught as my mom had had a special purpose in mind when she gave me the gem.”
One night Denise’s mother visited her in a dream. Denise told her mother she was upset that she couldn’t find the pendant and her mother promised to find it.
“When I got up the next morning and went into the kitchen for coffee, I spied something on the floor that hadn’t been there the night before,” Denise said. “It was my fluorite pendant.”
Denise called out to her boyfriend who was also surprised because he hadn’t seen the pendant there earlier.
“There was no other explanation for the sudden appearance of the stone other than Mother really did find the stone for me as promised,” Denise said. “I began to cry and said out loud, ‘Thanks Mom.’ I gazed up at her photo on the wall and I swear she winked at me.”
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, August 13, 2008
There Are Strange Things Over Kansas City (So Why Don't More People See Them?)
There are things in the sky – unidentified things. Some hovering, some flying, some triangular, some round.
The Mutual UFO Network takes hundreds of reports of UFOs each month. But maybe the strange part of these reports isn’t the people who see Unidentified Flying Objects; it’s the people who don’t see them.
Janice Vaughan of Des Moines, Iowa, was a Kansas City, Mo., teenager in 1986 when she and her mother were driving to the mall.
“We stopped at a red light,” Vaughan said. “Glancing out my window on the passenger side, I saw a huge silver disc with lights rotating around the middle hovering above the building on the northwest corner of Antioch and Englewood Road.”
The disc dwarfed the buildings at this busy intersection. It just hung there silently.
“I said something like, ‘Mom, look,’” she said. “We were both stunned by what we were seeing.”
While they watched, the object glided silently over the road and briefly hovered over a movie theater.
“Then it whooshed off to the west and disappeared from our sight behind some houses,” Vaughan said. “We turned right onto Englewood Road, abandoning our original errand, and drove around the neighborhoods hoping to see it again, but we didn’t find it.”
Then Vaughan and her mother drove home.
“We told my step-dad about it and watched the news that night for any mention of it,” she said.
But there were no news reports on the UFO that night or in the newspaper the next day. Vaughan doesn’t understand how no one else saw the object, but she knows she did.
“It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “If my mom hadn’t been with me I think I would have convinced myself by now that it didn’t really happen. Once in a while my mom and I will talk about it again, and I’ll ask her to tell me what she remembers about that day, just to verify my memories of it.”
Jim Johnson, Kansas City Section Director for the Mutual UFO Network said this type of sighting – a singular witness over a busy area – is all too common.
“Many of the reports I have received over the last decade-and-a-half with MUFON are from high-traffic areas,” Johnson said. “I was able to get to one of the scenes within an hour or so of the sighting event.”
The witness of this 1997 event, Johnson said, was convincing.
“Whatever she saw, she wasn’t making it up,” Johnson said. “(She) took me back to the locations where she turned off at Southwest Trafficway at 34th Street (another busy intersection) traveling north.”
The oblong object, roughly shaped like a rugby ball, moved slowly over a television tower then toward a second television tower about a mile away before it “blinked out.”
“It lasted a couple minutes,” Johnson said. “Her impression was that others were seeing it as well, as cars were slowing down and pulling to the right lane, but she was the only one who stopped.”
Like the other UFO sighting, there were no news reports about it the next day. So, why is it no one else saw these UFOs moving slowly over busy streets in the middle of the day?
“I have come to believe that in many cases, the people who are supposed to see flying objects, see them repeatedly, and the rest of us see them rarely, if at all,” Johnson said. “Keep in mind that most people aren’t looking for them and don’t want to get involved even if they do see them. The rest of us keep looking up.”
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.
The Mutual UFO Network takes hundreds of reports of UFOs each month. But maybe the strange part of these reports isn’t the people who see Unidentified Flying Objects; it’s the people who don’t see them.
Janice Vaughan of Des Moines, Iowa, was a Kansas City, Mo., teenager in 1986 when she and her mother were driving to the mall.
“We stopped at a red light,” Vaughan said. “Glancing out my window on the passenger side, I saw a huge silver disc with lights rotating around the middle hovering above the building on the northwest corner of Antioch and Englewood Road.”
The disc dwarfed the buildings at this busy intersection. It just hung there silently.
“I said something like, ‘Mom, look,’” she said. “We were both stunned by what we were seeing.”
While they watched, the object glided silently over the road and briefly hovered over a movie theater.
“Then it whooshed off to the west and disappeared from our sight behind some houses,” Vaughan said. “We turned right onto Englewood Road, abandoning our original errand, and drove around the neighborhoods hoping to see it again, but we didn’t find it.”
Then Vaughan and her mother drove home.
“We told my step-dad about it and watched the news that night for any mention of it,” she said.
But there were no news reports on the UFO that night or in the newspaper the next day. Vaughan doesn’t understand how no one else saw the object, but she knows she did.
“It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “If my mom hadn’t been with me I think I would have convinced myself by now that it didn’t really happen. Once in a while my mom and I will talk about it again, and I’ll ask her to tell me what she remembers about that day, just to verify my memories of it.”
Jim Johnson, Kansas City Section Director for the Mutual UFO Network said this type of sighting – a singular witness over a busy area – is all too common.
“Many of the reports I have received over the last decade-and-a-half with MUFON are from high-traffic areas,” Johnson said. “I was able to get to one of the scenes within an hour or so of the sighting event.”
The witness of this 1997 event, Johnson said, was convincing.
“Whatever she saw, she wasn’t making it up,” Johnson said. “(She) took me back to the locations where she turned off at Southwest Trafficway at 34th Street (another busy intersection) traveling north.”
The oblong object, roughly shaped like a rugby ball, moved slowly over a television tower then toward a second television tower about a mile away before it “blinked out.”
“It lasted a couple minutes,” Johnson said. “Her impression was that others were seeing it as well, as cars were slowing down and pulling to the right lane, but she was the only one who stopped.”
Like the other UFO sighting, there were no news reports about it the next day. So, why is it no one else saw these UFOs moving slowly over busy streets in the middle of the day?
“I have come to believe that in many cases, the people who are supposed to see flying objects, see them repeatedly, and the rest of us see them rarely, if at all,” Johnson said. “Keep in mind that most people aren’t looking for them and don’t want to get involved even if they do see them. The rest of us keep looking up.”
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.
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