Author’s note: This is the first of a two-part story about something wicked that inhabits a Liberty, Mo., home.
The 2000s looked promising for Kim and Mike Smithmeyer. Steady jobs at the Ford Motor Company’s Claycomo, Mo., plant, construction of a new house in Liberty, Mo., and the birth of identical twins, Dan and Randy; all by 2003. In 2006 Kim took a buyout from Ford to stay at home with the boys and go back to school.
Then things changed. Something dark came into their lives.
“The first thing was in 2006,” Kim said. “Dan was three. I was just holding him and he was looking at the stairs and said, ‘Mommy, who are the people coming down the stairs?’”
Kim looked, but the stairs were empty.
“Honey, I don’t see them,” she said. “Could you describe them?"
Dan ignored his mother, intently looking at the stairs, moving his head as if he was following something.
“Then he said they were gone,” Kim said.
Although she dismissed this incident as a three-year-old’s imagination, she soon discovered it wasn’t.
“A couple of months later, it was late at night, my family was sleeping and I was going to do laundry,” she said.
She reached toward the laundry room door and the door handle moved.
“I went to grab the laundry room door and the door just literally, like you were opening the door handle, it moved on its own.”
Kim stood before the door, not believing what she’d seen, put the laundry basket on the floor, walked to her bedroom and went to sleep, leaving the dirty laundry until tomorrow.
“I know what I saw and I know I heard it, but I tried to explain it away,” she said. “I just kept trying to dismiss it. I just could not come up with an explanation. I thought I did not see that. I told my husband, and he said, ‘yeah, no.’”
Then things escalated.
“We started hearing the sounds of footsteps above us,” Kim said. “Then it would sound like when our kids would run down the stairs and we’d look, and there would be nothing. The kids would be asleep.”
Kim was asleep one night when something in the house got personal.
“One time I was taking a nap on the couch and I woke up and to what I thought was my husband coming home from work,” she said. “I laid there because I just wanted to sleep. He tucked me in. I felt the tuck in. I (went back to sleep and) woke up 20 minutes later and it was not near the time for him to come home.”
Kim called Mike at work.
“I said, ‘did you come home?’ He said, ‘no.’”
Mike has downplayed the occurrences in the home, Kim said, although they’ve all experienced electrical problems, like a television changing volumes and lights turning on and off.
But his opinion changed with the banging.
“The last four months has been the worst,” Kim said. “Things have kind of changed.”
Kim came home one day in April to find her husband had taken the children to a pizza restaurant.
“I was so excited I was home alone,” she said. “I had taken my clothes off and was going to the bathroom.”
She found she wasn’t alone.
“My bedroom door slammed so hard that I have some knickknacky stuff on top of our armoire and everything shook,” she said. “I thought someone had broken into my house.”
She called Mike to see if he’d come home, but he and the boys were still at the restaurant.
“Someone is in the house and I’m naked,” she told him.
Mike said he would call 911, but Kim had second thoughts.
“I looked out the door and nothing was there, so I locked the door,” she said. She took a rifle out of the closet – a rifle with no ammunition, hoping the cocking noise would scare an intruder.
“I went out and everything was secure. There was nothing in my house – human,” she said. “All my doors were locked, nothing had been disturbed and my cats were sleeping.”
She ran back to the bedroom, locked the door and waited for her husband to come home.
“That’s the first thing that’s been scary to me,” she said.
It wasn’t the last.
Next week: Something talks to the children.
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, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s newest book on the paranormal, “Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Friday, June 03, 2011
What was that Thing in the Sky?
Author’s note: The following story may or may not be of paranormal origin. The story is, however, about something unknown, and that puts it firmly in the realm of “From the Shadows.”
The city glow of Sedalia, Mo., lit the night around the state fairgrounds as a crowd gathered for the coming July 4, 2010, fireworks show.
Paul Michaels stood in that small crowd when, at about 9:20 p.m., before the fireworks show began; something appeared in the evening sky he couldn’t identify.
“There was what looked like a plane about 150 feet off the ground,” he said. “There was a cloudbank right on the edge of the fairground, all along 16th Street. I saw it pop out of the clouds.”
As Michaels watched the craft, he became convinced it wasn’t a normal airplane.
“What I saw running south to north was a plane 150 feet above the tree line. It looked exactly like a plane,” Michaels said, but it didn’t behave like an airplane. “You couldn’t hear it coming. It came right over the top of us. The fireworks hadn’t even started yet.”
Little traffic drove past the area, most people there to watch the fireworks show had arrived, so city din was light.
“(The craft) was just as quiet as a balloon,” Michaels said. “It looked like a military plane.” But, at the same time, it didn’t.
Michaels, who had done electrical work at an Air Force base in Texas and had observed many military aircraft, noticed it didn’t act like any craft he’d seen.
“It didn’t have any blinking lights,” Michaels said. “And the canopy didn’t look like a canopy.”
The craft had an orange-yellow glowing “observation dome” in the front – and it was slow. Too slow.
“If you moved your hand through the air, that’s what you were experiencing,” Michaels said. “This thing was floating.”
Living in Sedalia, Michaels has had many chances to watch military aircraft in flight. Whiteman Air Force Base in nearby Knob Noster is home to the 509th Bomb Wing, the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber and many other aircraft that do training runs across the area.
“Mom lived out in the county on a 40-acre lake and (military aircraft) would shoot out over that lake,” he said. “They were buzzing all the time. They’ll come in at an angle, from southeast, not from south to north like this one. But you hear them coming and going.”
He stood and watched this craft fly slowly out of sight; then another appeared, floated slowly and silently until it was out of sight. No one else seemed to notice.
“Fighter jets will shoot through Mom’s yard at 8:50 at night,” he said. “But (with these craft) you didn’t hear any swoosh or anything. It was doing a steady speed. It was doing faster than traffic, but I’ve seen trucks going down the street faster than they were going.”
The craft had no markings, insignia or writing.
“They just baffled the hell out of me,” Michaels said.
One day Michaels spoke with a man who worked at Whiteman Air Force Base and described the craft to him. The man had an answer.
“A-10s,” Michaels said. “He said they can be quiet.”
So Michaels looked into the A-10 Thunderbolt fighter jet. Even though the craft Michaels saw looked like a military plane, “it didn’t look like an A-10.”
“Talking to people from the airbase, they said the A-10 can do that (fly low and silent), but you can still hear them,” he said. “It still makes noise. These were quiet as a church mouse. I’ve got an old ’63 Dodge that makes more noise than that.”
Michaels asked if what he saw could be an advanced military craft not released to the public. The people from the airbase said yes, but the base didn’t have it.
All Michaels wants to know is what he saw.
“I’ve seen some things I don’t know how to explain,” Michaels said. “I’ve talked to several different people who can’t explain them either. I don’t believe in things until I see them myself.”
And he has.
The question is, what did Michaels see slowly cruising low over the state fairgrounds in Sedalia, Mo., on July 4? A known military craft, an unknown military craft, or something from beyond this world?
“I’d be interested if someone out there has seen something like what I saw,” Michaels said. “I don’t want someone to try and explain it away. I know different.”
If you have an idea what might be flying slowly and silently through our night sky, please comment on this post or contact me by email.
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, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s newest book on the paranormal, “Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
The city glow of Sedalia, Mo., lit the night around the state fairgrounds as a crowd gathered for the coming July 4, 2010, fireworks show.
Paul Michaels stood in that small crowd when, at about 9:20 p.m., before the fireworks show began; something appeared in the evening sky he couldn’t identify.
“There was what looked like a plane about 150 feet off the ground,” he said. “There was a cloudbank right on the edge of the fairground, all along 16th Street. I saw it pop out of the clouds.”
As Michaels watched the craft, he became convinced it wasn’t a normal airplane.
“What I saw running south to north was a plane 150 feet above the tree line. It looked exactly like a plane,” Michaels said, but it didn’t behave like an airplane. “You couldn’t hear it coming. It came right over the top of us. The fireworks hadn’t even started yet.”
Little traffic drove past the area, most people there to watch the fireworks show had arrived, so city din was light.
“(The craft) was just as quiet as a balloon,” Michaels said. “It looked like a military plane.” But, at the same time, it didn’t.
Michaels, who had done electrical work at an Air Force base in Texas and had observed many military aircraft, noticed it didn’t act like any craft he’d seen.
“It didn’t have any blinking lights,” Michaels said. “And the canopy didn’t look like a canopy.”
The craft had an orange-yellow glowing “observation dome” in the front – and it was slow. Too slow.
“If you moved your hand through the air, that’s what you were experiencing,” Michaels said. “This thing was floating.”
Living in Sedalia, Michaels has had many chances to watch military aircraft in flight. Whiteman Air Force Base in nearby Knob Noster is home to the 509th Bomb Wing, the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber and many other aircraft that do training runs across the area.
“Mom lived out in the county on a 40-acre lake and (military aircraft) would shoot out over that lake,” he said. “They were buzzing all the time. They’ll come in at an angle, from southeast, not from south to north like this one. But you hear them coming and going.”
He stood and watched this craft fly slowly out of sight; then another appeared, floated slowly and silently until it was out of sight. No one else seemed to notice.
“Fighter jets will shoot through Mom’s yard at 8:50 at night,” he said. “But (with these craft) you didn’t hear any swoosh or anything. It was doing a steady speed. It was doing faster than traffic, but I’ve seen trucks going down the street faster than they were going.”
The craft had no markings, insignia or writing.
“They just baffled the hell out of me,” Michaels said.
One day Michaels spoke with a man who worked at Whiteman Air Force Base and described the craft to him. The man had an answer.
“A-10s,” Michaels said. “He said they can be quiet.”
So Michaels looked into the A-10 Thunderbolt fighter jet. Even though the craft Michaels saw looked like a military plane, “it didn’t look like an A-10.”
“Talking to people from the airbase, they said the A-10 can do that (fly low and silent), but you can still hear them,” he said. “It still makes noise. These were quiet as a church mouse. I’ve got an old ’63 Dodge that makes more noise than that.”
Michaels asked if what he saw could be an advanced military craft not released to the public. The people from the airbase said yes, but the base didn’t have it.
All Michaels wants to know is what he saw.
“I’ve seen some things I don’t know how to explain,” Michaels said. “I’ve talked to several different people who can’t explain them either. I don’t believe in things until I see them myself.”
And he has.
The question is, what did Michaels see slowly cruising low over the state fairgrounds in Sedalia, Mo., on July 4? A known military craft, an unknown military craft, or something from beyond this world?
“I’d be interested if someone out there has seen something like what I saw,” Michaels said. “I don’t want someone to try and explain it away. I know different.”
If you have an idea what might be flying slowly and silently through our night sky, please comment on this post or contact me by email.
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, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s newest book on the paranormal, “Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
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