The town of Villisca, Iowa, rests just off U.S. 71, a sleepy, friendly town of 1,344 that in 1912 was the site of seven brutal murders.
The Moore family and two of their children’s friends staying the night were killed by someone swinging an ax. Someone who’d paced the attic smoking cigarettes, waiting for the family to come home from a June church picnic and go to sleep.
The murders have never been solved.
Darwin and Martha Linn bought the murder house years ago, worried a piece of local history may be torn down. They’ve since found they bought something with the house – ghosts.
“I haven’t been pushed or my hair hasn’t been pulled,” Darwin said, but he knows spirits are in the house. Too many visitors have told him so.
In the 2009 fall semester at Northwest Missouri State University, I taught the one-time offering “Paranormal Journalism” and took 22 students on a field trip to the ax murder house. It was only a 50-minute drive. I would have felt guilty if we hadn’t gone.
A little about the class; the mainstream media has frustrated me for years with the terms “little green men” in stories of UFO sightings, “who you gonna call?” in reports of ghost sightings, and references to “Harry and the Hendersons” with Bigfoot stories. Each reference turns the story into parody. I proposed this class to my university as an effort to teach young journalists to report on the paranormal as seriously as they would a city council meeting or a car wreck. The university said OK. The field trip was just a bonus.
In 1912, the two-story ax murder house sat on the outskirts of town. It’s now just a few blocks away from downtown. We pulled up to the house at dusk in two university vans, a light mist promising for a chilly night.
The house spread in front of us, seeming larger than it was. Maybe the oval sign that spelled “Ax Murder House” in bloody letters had something to do with that.
Pie-shaped windows from the attic of this white building – the same room where the murderer waited with an ax (the Moore family’s own ax) – stared into the coming dusk like angry eyes. A few students were a little tentative. Cool.
One student, Karra, was a little more than tentative. She seemed unnerved.
Weeks before the trip, Karra related a dream about the ax murder house. In the dream she was in the second-floor children’s bedroom and a doll – a Raggedy Ann-type doll – lay on the bed. As she approached the bed, the doll turned its head and smiled. She awoke screaming.
Before we arrived at the house, I assured her everything would be fine.
I was wrong.
As tour guide Johnny Houser led us into the structure horror swept through 97 years before, we broke into groups, one going upstairs, the other exploring downstairs. Moments later, terror-filled screams rang throughout the house from the second floor. I rushed to the stairway and met Karra pounding down the steps screaming.
“The doll,” she screamed.
Although nothing unexpectedly moved or smiled when she’d walked into the children’s upstairs room, the wallpaper, the bed, the comforter, and the Raggedy Anne-type doll sitting on the bed were the same as in her dream.
That wasn’t the only thing strange on that field trip.
A student, Logan, carried a Franks Box, asking the device random questions as a group followed him into an unnaturally cold cupboard.
A Franks Box is a radio receiver that randomly tunes to spots on a radio dial with the thought that spirits may be able to communicate through this white noise, much like they do with EVPs, but in real time.
I have my doubts about any electronic device that’s “supposed” to detect ghosts, but something happened with the Franks Box.
In the van, before we pulled up to the Ax Murder House, I instructed my students to be respectful and to not – under any circumstance – be a jerk. Even to something they couldn’t see.
One student, Stratton, didn’t follow my advice. He walked throughout the house shouting things like, “Coward. Come face me. If there’s a ghost here, show me.”
Crowded in the cupboard with six people, Logan began asking questions.
“Is there someone here with us?”
Static, followed by a distinctive male voice, “yes.”
This device was scanning radio frequencies. I discounted that “yes” as naturally random.
“Do you want us to leave?”
Static again, followed by the same voice, “yes.”
Odd, but still accounted for.
“Is someone making you angry?”
Static, “yes.”
Still within the realm of normalcy. Although repeated three times, this was just one word. I wasn’t reading anything into the Franks Box.
“Are they here in this room?”
Static, “no.”
Hmm. A different word.
“Who’s making you angry?”
Static, “Stratton.”
Stratton? A device randomly scanning radio signals came up with the name of the only person on the field trip who was trying to make something angry. Bill, John, Aaron, or Dave, I could have brushed off easily. But Stratton? The box answered the question, and the answer was correct.
I’ll never be convinced something like a Franks Box is legitimate, but I can’t say it’s not.
Students also reported a planchet moving on a Ouija board and a ghostly finger tapping a girls’ shoulder.
You can see some of these accounts, and more stories of the paranormal, at paranormaljournalism.blogspot.com.
For more information on the Villisca Ax Murder House, or to schedule a visit, go to http://www.villiscaiowa.com.
Copyright 2011 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, 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.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
A Case of Time Traveling Tourists?
Wind-driven rain pounded the pavement on a mid-October Sunday in 2006 when Ken Helbling, 40, walked into Barnes and Noble.
“It was a miserable morning, so I thought I would go have a coffee and look at the books,” he said.
As Helbling stood in line for coffee, he was amused by the conversation with the barista and the man in front of him.
“I was standing behind a tall, rather large man who looked about 65,” Helbling said. The man wore a red-checkered flannel shirt and blue jeans. “When his turn came he said he didn’t have his discount card but could he use his sister’s number. He then rattled off about a 17-digit number off the top of his head. I was impressed.”
Then Helbling noticed two girls, one blonde, one brunette.
“Two girls were waiting for their drinks and looked strangely out of place,” he said. “I looked closely because they were wearing designer jeans and hairdo’s that were 25 years out of date. They looked about 17, but seemed older.”
They also seemed familiar. The girls looked like friends Amy and Alicia he knew from high school. He initially thought they may be his friends’ daughters, but quickly dismissed it.
“While they looked young and attractive, their faces seemed more defined and mature. More like 35 years old,” he said. “In the blonde girl’s case, she looked strikingly like Amy. In the brunette’s case she looked like Alicia but six inches taller.”
Helbling wanted to ask the girls where they got their seemingly brand-new retro clothes, but didn’t.
“I didn’t want to seem like a creep,” he said.
Helbling paid for his coffee and browsed books, picking up one that interested him. “I didn’t buy it, though. I just went home.”
He didn’t think any more of the man in line who’d memorized the long account number, nor the out-of-place girls – until he saw them again.
“Next Sunday, the exact same kind of day, the exact same time, I decided to go back and buy that book,” he said.
Helbling stood in line for coffee behind the same 65-year-old man in the same red flannel shirt and blue jeans who spouted the same long account number.
“Both times he did it he had to do it like three times because it was so fast the (barista) couldn’t keep up,” he said.
The man in the flannel shirt wasn’t the only element in play from the previous Sunday.
“I look over and the same two girls in the exact same clothes are standing in the same spot, but this time they had their drinks,” he said. “When I walked past them they gave me a weird look. I’m thinking this is really strange.”
Helbling bought a coffee and walked to the far corner of the two-level store to find the book he’d browsed the Sunday before. The girls followed him.
“This store is their flagship, two floors and enormous,” he said. “The book was as far away from the coffee shop as you could get. When I got the book and turned around the two girls were sitting on the floor right behind me, staring at me.”
When Helbling noticed the girls, they quickly moved books in front of their faces like they’d been caught spying on him, he said.
“I was so startled I couldn’t say a word,” Helbling said. “I just went down the escalator and went home.”
At home, Helbling began to read the book and found the plot twist revolved around time-traveling tourists.
“I started to wonder if I had experienced something of that nature,” he said. “Were they waiting for me to buy that book? Was the tall man the tour guide? It was something I’ll never forget. I never really thought of time travel ‘til I got to that part of the book then it all clicked.”
Helbling said he thinks the girls he saw at Barnes and Noble on those rainy October Sundays were related to his old friends Amy and Alicia, but were not their daughters – maybe their great-great granddaughters.
“Were the girls were descendents of people I knew, and were they taking a school tour of the past?” he said. “The checkered-shirt guy was possibly the teacher. Or did I slip into an alternative timeline? If you slipped into a different timeline would you ever even know it? And even if you knew it, would it make a difference?”
Copyright 2011 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, 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.
“It was a miserable morning, so I thought I would go have a coffee and look at the books,” he said.
As Helbling stood in line for coffee, he was amused by the conversation with the barista and the man in front of him.
“I was standing behind a tall, rather large man who looked about 65,” Helbling said. The man wore a red-checkered flannel shirt and blue jeans. “When his turn came he said he didn’t have his discount card but could he use his sister’s number. He then rattled off about a 17-digit number off the top of his head. I was impressed.”
Then Helbling noticed two girls, one blonde, one brunette.
“Two girls were waiting for their drinks and looked strangely out of place,” he said. “I looked closely because they were wearing designer jeans and hairdo’s that were 25 years out of date. They looked about 17, but seemed older.”
They also seemed familiar. The girls looked like friends Amy and Alicia he knew from high school. He initially thought they may be his friends’ daughters, but quickly dismissed it.
“While they looked young and attractive, their faces seemed more defined and mature. More like 35 years old,” he said. “In the blonde girl’s case, she looked strikingly like Amy. In the brunette’s case she looked like Alicia but six inches taller.”
Helbling wanted to ask the girls where they got their seemingly brand-new retro clothes, but didn’t.
“I didn’t want to seem like a creep,” he said.
Helbling paid for his coffee and browsed books, picking up one that interested him. “I didn’t buy it, though. I just went home.”
He didn’t think any more of the man in line who’d memorized the long account number, nor the out-of-place girls – until he saw them again.
“Next Sunday, the exact same kind of day, the exact same time, I decided to go back and buy that book,” he said.
Helbling stood in line for coffee behind the same 65-year-old man in the same red flannel shirt and blue jeans who spouted the same long account number.
“Both times he did it he had to do it like three times because it was so fast the (barista) couldn’t keep up,” he said.
The man in the flannel shirt wasn’t the only element in play from the previous Sunday.
“I look over and the same two girls in the exact same clothes are standing in the same spot, but this time they had their drinks,” he said. “When I walked past them they gave me a weird look. I’m thinking this is really strange.”
Helbling bought a coffee and walked to the far corner of the two-level store to find the book he’d browsed the Sunday before. The girls followed him.
“This store is their flagship, two floors and enormous,” he said. “The book was as far away from the coffee shop as you could get. When I got the book and turned around the two girls were sitting on the floor right behind me, staring at me.”
When Helbling noticed the girls, they quickly moved books in front of their faces like they’d been caught spying on him, he said.
“I was so startled I couldn’t say a word,” Helbling said. “I just went down the escalator and went home.”
At home, Helbling began to read the book and found the plot twist revolved around time-traveling tourists.
“I started to wonder if I had experienced something of that nature,” he said. “Were they waiting for me to buy that book? Was the tall man the tour guide? It was something I’ll never forget. I never really thought of time travel ‘til I got to that part of the book then it all clicked.”
Helbling said he thinks the girls he saw at Barnes and Noble on those rainy October Sundays were related to his old friends Amy and Alicia, but were not their daughters – maybe their great-great granddaughters.
“Were the girls were descendents of people I knew, and were they taking a school tour of the past?” he said. “The checkered-shirt guy was possibly the teacher. Or did I slip into an alternative timeline? If you slipped into a different timeline would you ever even know it? And even if you knew it, would it make a difference?”
Copyright 2011 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, 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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