Monday, April 27, 2009

The Legend of Vandalia Cemetery

The group of friends walked through Vandalia Cemetery, tombstones dotting the ground glowing yellow in the moonlight. This cemetery in Porterville, Calif., called Scranton Cemetery by the locals, has a troubled past.

“The legend that I have heard since I was in high school is that there used to be a home for wayward girls in the middle of the cemetery,” Porterville ghost chaser Tammy Heston said. “And the head mistress of the school was extremely abusive and also was into devil worship and some of the girls were used in that practice as sacrifice.”

A girl who is said to have escaped this home was captured, killed and buried somewhere in the cemetery, but Heston tends to think that part of the story is urban legend.

“I have not found anyone who actually knows this for a fact, but the kids around here seem to believe it,” she said.

A run-down building “with an old sink and bathtub” near the center of the cemetery lends some credence to the “home” story, but part of the legend Heston is convinced is true – the cemetery is haunted.

“From the moment we arrived at the cemetery, we started feeling weird things,” said Heston, who has seen spirits since she was young and is able to sense their presence.

The group decided to separate into pairs and investigate the cemetery. They were equipped with a camera and a compass.

“When a spirit is present, the compass needle will spin like crazy,” she said. “And it was going nuts that night.”

Heston chose to walk the perimeter of the cemetery, her niece by her side.

“We were together walking around by the side of the cemetery where the headstones date all the way to the early 1800s,” she said. “And I got the feeling that someone was walking along side me with their hand on my shoulder.”

Heston didn’t mention this to her niece because she didn’t want to alarm her – but the feeling alarmed Heston. Then she saw something dark and sinister.

“As we walked I would see a black figure hiding behind the headstones,” she said. “It wasn’t human and it didn’t walk or run ¬¬– it floated from headstone to headstone.”

After wandering Vandalia Cemetery, the group met back at the cars and discussed what they’d experienced.

“Everyone had seen the black figure that I had seen,” Heston said. “Then we saw it again as it darted behind a tree. So we started walking toward it to see what it was.”

As the group got closer to the figure, the black thing peeked from behind the tree and saw them approaching.

“When it saw that we were near it, it let out a blood-curdling screech and flew up into the tree,” she said. “We got a fairly good look at it and it was definitely not human but it wasn’t spirit either.”

The entity appeared to wear a long black dress or cape and a hat.

“It looked like a witch’s hat,” Heston said. “That was one of the freakiest things I have seen.”

Although Heston doesn’t belong to a formal paranormal research group, she does explore the unknown.

“I have done some ghost hunting on my own as I have had many experiences and I’m interested in the paranormal,” she said. “I have investigated a few reported haunted places and have taken some interesting pictures and things like that. I haven’t gone on an investigation in awhile but have some pretty freaky stories to tell about some of my experiences. But I thought the one with the humanoid thing was about the scariest.”

Copyright 2009 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.”

You can get Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at www.amazon.com.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Encounters With The Hat Man

George was about 10 years old when a friend’s mother spoke of a vision she’d had. A man with a tall black hat and trench coat approached her in the darkness.

“She referred to him as ‘Death,’” George said. “That was his name for whatever he represented. It wasn’t good.”

The image that story implanted in George’s head manifested itself into his life a few years later.

“I had my own vision of this same man,” George said. “He was pure evil with a very cold deep look in his eyes. I had to rebuke him in the name of Jesus to go away. It was very frightening.”

But it wasn’t until George’s family moved from Alaska to Texas that he discovered he wasn’t the only member of his family who had seen this entity.

“Years later, my mom started to tell me of a vision that had woken her up in the middle of the night of a man standing at the foot of her bed,” he said. “I was in shock. It was so chilling we were talking about the same old man.”

But George had never told his mother of his encounter and he doesn’t want to have another one.

“I haven’t seen him since that one time in Alaska,” George said. “I wonder, what does it mean? Who is this man many people see? Whoever he is he is pure evil and nothing good. Maybe he’s a worker for Satan to test us.”

George and his mother had seen an entity many have dubbed The Hat Man. This being is generally a shadow-black, slightly out-of-proportion, sometimes two-dimensional entity that often wears a trench coat, cape, or long out-of-date suit, and can appear and vanish without a trace.

This usually-threatening entity has been labeled a ghost, a Shadow Person or a demon – such as this explanation from an anonymous reader of “From The Shadows.”

“The men of darkness – or men of old, or men of perdition – do not reveal themselves. They are revealed by another to warn those that they come to discourage of their presence,” Anonymous wrote. “They have no fear of men. They only fear the One that has the power to send them to the abyss before the time. They flee at the mention of the Name that is above all names.”

Denise lounged on the sofa in her grandmother’s house one day when she was 17 and saw something at the window.

“I didn’t care about that because I did think it was just an impression,” she said. But it wasn’t. “I got up and went to the kitchen to drink water and was coming back, and I had the clear impression of a man in the window with a very long hat and a long coat. It was possible even to see the contour of his face, but it was not a human face, (it was) a horrendous one with a bad smile.”

Then the image vanished quickly enough Denise doubted she had seen it – until she spoke with her grandmother and aunt who were chatting in the next room.

“I told my aunt what I saw, it was black, like a shadow, well-defined contours outside of the window,” she said. “It was like he was trying to hear something, you know?”

Both women looked at Denise, terror painting their faces.

“She asked me to describe it,” Denise said. “Both said to me they saw the very same thing.”

Delta Elise, now in her 50s, was 11 or 12 and living in Austin, Texas, when she met the Hat Man.

“I came home after being out running around in the neighborhood with my friends,” she said. “I went to bed very tired and since I was the oldest girl, I got the bigger side of the bedroom with my own bed which faced the window with the curtains.”

As she lie there, looking at the curtains, the curtains moved.

“The top right hand side of the curtains moved aside as if someone was moving it with their hand,” she said. “And then there appeared to me a very tall man in a long black cape or trench coat with what I call a witch’s hat with the top cut off just standing there. Even though his appearance was dark and I couldn’t really see any eyes, I knew it was staring right at me.”

Delta Elise pulled the covers over her eyes and eventually fell asleep, but woke up shaking in fear.

“The house we lived in was definitely haunted but this was the scariest part of living there,” she said. “I always see Shadow People. It never stops and I always feel a presence in my back seat. I also always feel something touching me or calling my name.”

Copyright 2009 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.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Black-Eyed Kid at the Door

Author’s note: In the following encounter with a Black-Eyed Kid, the name Beth Stringfield and Ellen are pseudonyms. The woman requested anonymity because she’s worried for the safety of her children.

The knock on the door was strange.

On a day in early April, Beth Stringfield, a stay-at-home mom in Lawson, Mo., was in the kitchen making lunch when she heard a knock on the front door. No one comes to the Stringfield’s front door.

“We usually use the back door and everyone we know knows that and we hardly ever get visitors at the front,” she said. “I opened the door and there was a little girl standing there. I did not recognize her.”

Lawson is a small town of about 2,354 people where everyone knows everyone.

“She was about seven years old and she was starring down at her shoes,” Stringfield said. “She had blond hair and was dressed in an antique-type dingy white dress with blue embroidery birds at the edges.”

Stringfield opened the screen door and knelt to talk to the girl. She was worried the girl was hurt or in danger.

“She looked at my hands and said, ‘I need help. Can I come inside, please?’” Stringfield said. She was so polite and spoke so well. She did not sound as if she was from around town. I suddenly felt very afraid.”

Stringfield looked up and down the street, but no one was around.

“I looked past her thinking the fear I felt must be someone after her or that her parents or someone must be upset with me talking to her,” she said. “Thoughts raced through my mind quickly and I somehow could not think very clearly all of the sudden.”

Stringfield looked back at the girl preparing to ask where her parents were and where she lived when she noticed the little girl’s eyes.

“She looked at me and I immediately noticed that her eyes seemed wrong or something,” she said. “Like they were ink. Like someone had poured ink in her eyes. They were not normal kids eyes. They were coal black and black from rim-to-rim just staring.”

The girl again demanded to come inside.

“I could hear a kind of fake sweetness in her voice. She had a little girl voice but had an adult vocabulary and force about her,” Stringfield said. “I immediately stood up and knew I needed to protect myself and my girls inside and started to close the door.”

The girl asked Stringfield what she’d done wrong; why Stringfield wouldn’t invite her in.

“That is when my five-year-old daughter came into the living room and I knew that she should not look at her,” Stringfield said. “I closed the door on this little girl and I locked it. I scooped up Ellen and ran to the back door in the kitchen. I locked it and sat down at the table. My 16-month-old was sleeping upstairs and I needed to check her.”

Stringfield ran upstairs on shaking legs, holding Ellen tightly in her arms. The baby was still asleep.

“I got my cell phone out and called my husband and told him about it,” she said. “He thinks my story is crazy.”

But Stringfield knows the little Black-Eyed girl was on her porch and she knows the terror she felt.

“This little girl was real. I had started to feel sorry for her because she had bad breath and really dirty hair,” Stringfield said. “But I somehow know that she meant harm to us. I am not sure if I want to talk too much about it anymore. I would rather forget that it happened at all, but I worry that she will return.”

Hours after the encounter with the Black-Eyed Kid, the fear remains.

“I won't let the girls play outside now,” she said. “I have not gone out by myself to the store or anything. I still feel that dread, that sense of fear I felt emanating from the girl on my porch. I somehow knew that if I had let her in, that I would have regretted it and my girls and I would have been in some sort of real danger.”

Copyright 2009 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, April 07, 2009

Bigfoot Came Out of the Trees -- Part 2

Author’s note: This is the second of a two-part story chronicling Ben and Marli’s Bigfoot encounter near Pleasant Hill, Mo. In part one, a dark, hulking creature came out of the woods at Pleasant Hill Lake and approached Ben’s truck.

The thing walked within 20 feet from the truck and neither Ben nor Marli could hear it in the gravel.

“You could have heard a pin drop. There was no crunching of any gravel,” Marli said. “The window was cracked and I didn’t notice any breathing, but I was so petrified. It was so bizarre. I’ve never felt like that and I don’t ever want to feel like that again.”

As the creature came closer, Ben noticed it seemed to be leaning forward as it walked.

“It walked right past us,” Ben said. “As it was walking up it had this really strange stride. Not really hunched over. It had a real strong powerful stride to it.”

As it stepped even with the cab of the truck, the two froze in fear.

“The shoulders got real broad,” Ben said. “And the whole upper body actually turned. I knew whatever it was stared right at me as it walked by.”

Ben gauges the creature’s height somewhere between 6’2” and 6’5”.

“It walked by and as it got to the other road it stopped,” he said. “There’s like a hill that runs down the road and it was standing next to the hill. She couldn’t see it. I could only see part of it.”

As Ben stared at the thing, only seeing its head and shoulders against the hill, he knew they had to go.

“At that point, there was no question. We were leaving,” he said. “As I started the truck and I hit my break lights that head went up the hill and was gone.”
Ben and Marli are convinced they saw Bigfoot that night and it’s changed their lives.

“I didn’t believe in it,” Ben said. “I thought it was made up stuff. I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same. When I go out at night now I always have the lights on in front of the house and go right for my truck. I don’t want to see it again.”

Marli’s house is at the edge of Pleasant Hill, a tree line and fields sit across the road from her property.

“I’ve never been afraid of the dark, but I won’t even go outside after dark now. I just won’t,” she said. “I make sure the blinds are completely shut. I was completely freaked out. I never believed in (Bigfoot). I thought it was a hoax. Then after we saw what we saw I got on the Internet and started reading it. These people were saying the same exact thing I just saw. I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same after this. Even thinking about it sends chills up my spine.”

Marli won’t stay in her house alone after dark and disturbing dreams about Bigfoot trouble her nights. The encounter has her second-guessing what she allows her children to do.

“I haven’t talked with them about it,” she said. “I don’t like them going out after dark now. I don’t like it at all. I can’t keep them from doing it because they’ll go what’s up. But as far as going across the street in those fields and the woods; I wont’ let them go.”

Ben and Marli were so troubled by their encounter, they contacted Bigfoot researcher Randy Harrington of Leavenworth, Kan.

“They seem believable,” Harrington said. “We’re going to go up and check out the area. All we can do is go through the area and look for the signs. As far as their story, it’s as believable as anyone’s story I’ve heard or interviewed.”

The silence of the creature as it walked past Ben and Marli is common, Harrington said.

“You and I are used to hearing people walk across gravel with hard-soled shoes,” Harrington said. “If they weren’t wearing shoes you might not hear anything. How can it remain so hidden from so many smart people? They’ve got to be silent.”

The area around Pleasant Hill has had its number of Bigfoot reports over the years.

“It’s a good area,” Harrington said. “You’ve got some decent wooded areas there that would possibly harbor a small population of that creature.”

Although both Ben and Marli said they would never go back to that spot, on March 26 they did.

“When we went back out there and saw where it took place I feel better about it,” Marli said. “Although it rained that Monday, you can definitely tell someone was walking. There were broken branches. There was the first part of the footprints. You could tell there were three toes in the front. On one of the trees the bark had been peeled away and was laying right there. I’ll never say I don’t believe in anything again.”

Copyright 2009 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.

Friday, April 03, 2009

Bigfoot Came Out of the Trees -- Part 1

Author’s note: This is the first of a two-part story chronicling Ben and Marli’s Bigfoot encounter near Pleasant Hill, Mo.

The early morning of March 21was warm, about 50 degrees, when the truck pulled into the crescent-shaped driveway at Pleasant Hill Lake.

“It was dark, but your eyes had adjusted and you could tell the difference in the shadows of the darkness,” Ben said.

Ben and Marli were inside that truck, and they wish the night had been darker.

“Saturday night I had to do an upgrade for a client and I had to start at 11 p.m. and wasn’t going finish about 3,” he said. “I said, let’s go for a pop and go for a drive.”

After grabbing a soda, the two drove to the lake under a moonless sky.

“We drove out to the Pleasant Hill Lake,” Ben said. “On the back side of the lake there’s this one place I’d been fishing a lot over the past 15-16 years. I’d been out there by myself at night catfishing.”

Truck tires crunched across gravel as Ben pulled onto the back side of the lake toward a concrete square with a picnic table. People can fish right off the concrete. When Ben put the truck in park, his window was facing the water, Marli’s was facing crescent drive.

Ben left the truck running so they could listen to the radio, but soon he shut the truck off and they cracked the windows. A slight breeze brought the night through the cab of the truck.

“(Marli) is real easy to freak out,” Ben said. “I started talking about what her kids and my kid talked about, which was a Bigfoot.”

Ben started making monkey noises out the window, trying to scare Marli, but he soon stopped. After talking for about 15 more minutes, a strange smell crept into the truck.

“I was like, what was hat weird smell?” Ben said. “I couldn’t make out what it was. It wasn’t an overpowering smell. It was just enough to smell it.”

Marli suggested the smell was from earlier fishermen cleaning their fish on that spot. But something else was odd.

Ben noticed a light from a nearby farmhouse above a tree line about 25 feet away started blinking.

“The light kind of went away then it came back on,” he said. “I thought no big deal.”

Then the light went completely out. They soon found this was because something was standing in front of it.

“(Ben) said, ‘I feel like we’re being watched,’” Marli said. “We were sitting there talking and then that thing came up on that gravel road and I was like, oh my gosh.”

As they sat in the cab of the truck, something tall, broad a bipedal stepped from the trees and onto the gravel road.

“As it did that she said, ‘something is coming, and I’m not joking,’” Ben said. “I saw it step out.”

The figure was black in the moonless night, but two could make it out from its surroundings.

“You could see the outline of it,” Ben said. “The minute it stepped out on the road and I saw it, it was the weirdest feeling I’ve ever had in my life. My mind was telling me something wasn’t right but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but I could not take my eyes off it.”

The dark figure walked onto the right side of the gravel road and worked itself to the far left side of the road to give itself a wide berth of Ben’s truck.

“We didn’t know if it didn’t know if we were there,” Ben said.

As the thing approached, in what Ben and Marli said was a strong, confident stride, Ben’s bad feeling got worse.

“I think it’s because I couldn’t rationalize what it was,” Ben said.

The thing’s broad shoulders swung as it walked, although Ben and Marli only occasionally saw its arms swinging in the darkness. They couldn’t make out its hands. But what confused the two was its head.

“Marli said it kind of looked like someone wearing a hooded sweatshirt because of the head,” Ben said. “The head came up, but to me the head didn’t look as tall as a normal human being’s head. As the shoulder came up it transitioned right into the head.”

Because of the darkness, neither Ben nor Marli could make out facial features, but they both agree it wasn’t human.

“Whenever I realized this is really wasn’t a person with a hooded sweatshirt, you could tell where the hair came to a point. It didn’t look like a hood,” Marli said. “It looked like hair.”

Next week: The beast comes closer.

Copyright 2009 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.