Luci and her husband were moving from Oregon to Ohio in 2003 when they encountered something they never expected to see, and now never expect to be without.
“We were severely sleep deprived and on the evening of day two I began to notice something very odd,” Lucy said. At first, she thought she may be hallucinating, but later realized she was not. “I was seeing amorphous, floating, black, cloaked and hooded figures skimming about six inches to a foot off the ground.”
Some of the beings were standing still, but most seemed to be “heading somewhere definite,” Luci said. Some of the shadow people were traveling as fast as the truck her husband drove.
“I saw them here and there every few minutes and I couldn't help but feel disturbed,” she said. “Though I was quite tired, I felt wide awake and everything else I saw looked completely normal.”
As they drove east, the sightings continued, almost like Luci was catching a glimpse of another highway in another realm.
“I was amazed every time I saw another shadow figure,” she said. “Several passed over the highway crossing our path as we drove. For the few hours when this happened, I saw them through dusk, dark, and into the next morning.”
Luci and her husband stopped for a rest that morning after an encounter that was too close to be comfortable.
“Towards dawn one shadow figure passed right through the cab of our moving truck,” Luci said. “I clearly saw the drape of the folds of the encompassing cloak, though the face and head were hidden deep in a cowl. I couldn't help but gasp and pull away, too stunned to worry about how crazy my actions might seem to my husband.”
But he noticed her jump, and Luci was surprised that he knew why.
“He turned and looked at me and said, ‘You saw it too?’” she said. “I was astonished. But at last we were able to compare notes and it seemed we were seeing the same thing. What's more, we were seeing the exact same figures at the exact same time.”
They began pointing out the cloaked, hooded shadow people as they drove, slightly relieved they weren’t going crazy.
“Neither of us had been ingesting any substances or drinking anything but coffee, so these mutual ‘hallucinations’ were perplexing,” Luci said.
“All we could guess was that the lull of the truck engine over hundreds of miles and both of us being sleep deprived made it easier to see beings that were perhaps of the astral plane.”
It was then they began to get nervous.
“When two people start seeing figures of death seemingly everywhere, they might worry for their longevity all of a sudden,” she said. “We pulled off to stop at a motel shortly after we admitted to one another that we were seeing these things.”
The couple arrived in Ohio safely and has lived there since – but their drive through the astral plane seemed to open a door that has remained open for them.
“Since then, my husband and I have both seen these beings a couple of times a year usually just ‘passing through’ our yard or house,” Luci said. “They ignore us for the most part, though once I chased one down and put my hands right through it.”
When Luci’s hands sank into the chest of the shadow person, she felt an “odd, chilled, deep vibration” ripple through her.
“The shadow person stopped when I did this and I got the distinct impression that his kind are not used to being seen, let alone chased down and poked,” Luci said. “But, apparently, they can see us well enough, and ‘feel’ us, too.”
Copyright 2007 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 at jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Include your name, address and telephone number. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason Offutt is a syndicated columnist, author and fan of all things strange. His book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri,” is available at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Strange Lights over England
Sparse dark clouds dotted the sky over Chawton, Hampshire, England, on the evening of June 22, 2002 when Ashley Martin stepped outside with his camcorder. In the distance he could see the construction of his sister’s house, but was surprised when something dropped out of the clouds.
The time was 9:35 p.m.
“I noticed a very bright white light approaching from the east,” he said. “I decided to take a closer look at it and I zoomed in.”
The strange, hovering light he captured on video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgVWJ1vWen8) seemed to throb as it flew closer. Ashley’s video moves from lack of a tripod, but the object seemed to creep closer during the seven-minute recording.
“I soon realized that this was not a normal object,” he said. “It was pure white, pulsating … After a few seconds of travelling in a level direction it suddenly, and without warning, dropped down.”
At one point, the object almost disappeared into a cloud before dropping below it.
“When it emerged from out underneath the cloud it had gotten bigger but was still … traveling at an angle, then stopped stationery and flashed out several times,” Ashley said. “It then moved off again.”
The light hovered a few more minutes until it disappeared.
“During the course of me filming it, it gave off an orangey-red glow a few times, then completely disappeared,” Ashley said.
The object almost immediately dematerialized, then the video ends.
But this wasn’t the last unidentified flying object Ashley saw. Eleven days later, one appeared again.
“On July 1, I saw another alien spacecraft,” he said. “This was in the same place as the first object and was similar but not the same. I filmed this object for 20 minutes.”
Although already a firm believer in UFOs, the sightings gave Ashley something he’d never had – proof. But, they also brought more questions.
Ashley, considering the light might be something manmade, contacted people who might be able to explain the light in his videos. An American company expressed interest and asked to see the video.
“I had all the footage from my first video put onto a second video and sent it all the way across the Atlantic to America,” Ashley said.
He sent his video to a company in Lampasas, Texas, with the understanding the footage might make it onto a television program. He never heard from the company again.
“Disappointingly and annoyingly they never bothered to respond on what they thought of the footage,” he said.
Ashley’s sightings may be more common than not. Worldwide, eyewitnesses report about 70,000 UFOs yearly, according to the Mutual UFO Network, a UFO research organization. The reports range from lights to physical craft to alien contact, and there’s no way to gauge how many sightings aren’t reported.
Although Ashley is sure he saw something not of this world, he also realizes there could be a terrestrial explanation. Either way, he’s happy he saw the lights in the sky.
“I have always believed in UFOS and their existence,” Ashley said. “But never in my wildest dreams did I believe that I would actually see them myself. I count myself extremely fortunate and privileged to see them.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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 time was 9:35 p.m.
“I noticed a very bright white light approaching from the east,” he said. “I decided to take a closer look at it and I zoomed in.”
The strange, hovering light he captured on video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgVWJ1vWen8) seemed to throb as it flew closer. Ashley’s video moves from lack of a tripod, but the object seemed to creep closer during the seven-minute recording.
“I soon realized that this was not a normal object,” he said. “It was pure white, pulsating … After a few seconds of travelling in a level direction it suddenly, and without warning, dropped down.”
At one point, the object almost disappeared into a cloud before dropping below it.
“When it emerged from out underneath the cloud it had gotten bigger but was still … traveling at an angle, then stopped stationery and flashed out several times,” Ashley said. “It then moved off again.”
The light hovered a few more minutes until it disappeared.
“During the course of me filming it, it gave off an orangey-red glow a few times, then completely disappeared,” Ashley said.
The object almost immediately dematerialized, then the video ends.
But this wasn’t the last unidentified flying object Ashley saw. Eleven days later, one appeared again.
“On July 1, I saw another alien spacecraft,” he said. “This was in the same place as the first object and was similar but not the same. I filmed this object for 20 minutes.”
Although already a firm believer in UFOs, the sightings gave Ashley something he’d never had – proof. But, they also brought more questions.
Ashley, considering the light might be something manmade, contacted people who might be able to explain the light in his videos. An American company expressed interest and asked to see the video.
“I had all the footage from my first video put onto a second video and sent it all the way across the Atlantic to America,” Ashley said.
He sent his video to a company in Lampasas, Texas, with the understanding the footage might make it onto a television program. He never heard from the company again.
“Disappointingly and annoyingly they never bothered to respond on what they thought of the footage,” he said.
Ashley’s sightings may be more common than not. Worldwide, eyewitnesses report about 70,000 UFOs yearly, according to the Mutual UFO Network, a UFO research organization. The reports range from lights to physical craft to alien contact, and there’s no way to gauge how many sightings aren’t reported.
Although Ashley is sure he saw something not of this world, he also realizes there could be a terrestrial explanation. Either way, he’s happy he saw the lights in the sky.
“I have always believed in UFOS and their existence,” Ashley said. “But never in my wildest dreams did I believe that I would actually see them myself. I count myself extremely fortunate and privileged to see them.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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, December 12, 2007
The Thing on the Stairs
The house in South Euclid, Ohio, had been on Telhurst Road since the early years after World War I. It was a Sears Modern Home, a mail-order house popular before the Great Depression. Nobody lived in the house long, and, during the years of 1967 to 1975, Lisa Falour discovered why.
“The house had already had numerous owners and changed hands often,” Lisa said. “It always felt creepy to me.”
Repairs were seemingly endless; especially the roof. It always leaked. But what bothered Lisa’s family most was the cold.
“It was impossible to keep the place warm enough in winter, and Ohio winters by Lake Erie are deadly nasty,” she said. “The family room was the kitchen, as it was usually the only warm place in the whole house. Even when the living room chimney was lit, what little heat we had ran up the flue.”
The cold continued in Lisa’s bedroom; it was the coldest room in the house and she usually did her schoolwork in the kitchen.
“I spent quiet evenings at the kitchen table, doing my homework. It was impossible to study in (my room),” she said.
But from the kitchen, she could see unwelcomed visitors – black human shapes punched into the fabric of the dimly lighted dining room.
“I constantly saw shadow people walking around in the dining room while I sat at the kitchen table,” she said. ”They were normal sized and silent, and though usually out of the corner of my eye, when looked at straight, they would just quietly move on. It wasn’t a trick of the eye.”
When she turned on the dining room light, the brightness drove these shadows from the room.
“They annoyed me, but it’s hard to know what to do about such a thing,” Lisa said. “I spoke to my mother about the shadow people, and she just calmly said, ‘well, maybe the place is haunted. If they don’t hurt you, don’t worry about them too much.’”
But Lisa had other things to worry about. She also saw a door in the dining room – a door that wasn’t there.
“I repeatedly saw ‘another’ door,” Lisa said. “It may have been at another point in time, as the house was constantly worked on and changed. It was just slightly to one side of the ‘real’ door leading to the bathroom, cupboards, TV room, closet …”
But if her parents believed the house was haunted, Lisa never knew.
“You have to understand, ours was a typical family in denial. Very typical of the times,” she said. ”We just tended not to talk about ‘real issues.’ My father certainly was no believer in the supernatural, as far as I could tell.”
Visitors to the house never knew the things Lisa had seen, and were never told it was haunted, “just that it was creepy.” But every guest she brought home saw something in the house … something that shortened their stays. Lisa’s second husband saw it, too, in her old bedroom while she was sleeping.
“(He) heard a thing climbing the rickety old wooden stairs, then showing itself at my old bedroom door where we were sleeping,” she said. ”He was aghast, and angry at me for subjecting him to this.”
He couldn’t describe the thing in detail. He only said it was a huge creature “and utterly ghastly.” Lisa had heard the footsteps on the stairs while growing up in the house, but never saw what made them.
“I just always kept my eyes closed tight, but I used to hear it creep up the steps and stand at my door,” she said.
Lisa moved from the house on Telhurst Road when she turned 18, “and never lived there again.” She would stay with her parents on short visits, again seeing the shadows that walked in the dining room.
The house is no longer in Lisa’s family, which doesn’t bother her at all. She does, however, wonder if the new owners have experienced shadow people or the thing on the stairs.
“I never heard a sound from the shadow people, and didn’t feel particularly threatened, but I did feel uneasy and not happy they were there,” she said. “It made me not like the house. All I can say is the house was creepy.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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 house had already had numerous owners and changed hands often,” Lisa said. “It always felt creepy to me.”
Repairs were seemingly endless; especially the roof. It always leaked. But what bothered Lisa’s family most was the cold.
“It was impossible to keep the place warm enough in winter, and Ohio winters by Lake Erie are deadly nasty,” she said. “The family room was the kitchen, as it was usually the only warm place in the whole house. Even when the living room chimney was lit, what little heat we had ran up the flue.”
The cold continued in Lisa’s bedroom; it was the coldest room in the house and she usually did her schoolwork in the kitchen.
“I spent quiet evenings at the kitchen table, doing my homework. It was impossible to study in (my room),” she said.
But from the kitchen, she could see unwelcomed visitors – black human shapes punched into the fabric of the dimly lighted dining room.
“I constantly saw shadow people walking around in the dining room while I sat at the kitchen table,” she said. ”They were normal sized and silent, and though usually out of the corner of my eye, when looked at straight, they would just quietly move on. It wasn’t a trick of the eye.”
When she turned on the dining room light, the brightness drove these shadows from the room.
“They annoyed me, but it’s hard to know what to do about such a thing,” Lisa said. “I spoke to my mother about the shadow people, and she just calmly said, ‘well, maybe the place is haunted. If they don’t hurt you, don’t worry about them too much.’”
But Lisa had other things to worry about. She also saw a door in the dining room – a door that wasn’t there.
“I repeatedly saw ‘another’ door,” Lisa said. “It may have been at another point in time, as the house was constantly worked on and changed. It was just slightly to one side of the ‘real’ door leading to the bathroom, cupboards, TV room, closet …”
But if her parents believed the house was haunted, Lisa never knew.
“You have to understand, ours was a typical family in denial. Very typical of the times,” she said. ”We just tended not to talk about ‘real issues.’ My father certainly was no believer in the supernatural, as far as I could tell.”
Visitors to the house never knew the things Lisa had seen, and were never told it was haunted, “just that it was creepy.” But every guest she brought home saw something in the house … something that shortened their stays. Lisa’s second husband saw it, too, in her old bedroom while she was sleeping.
“(He) heard a thing climbing the rickety old wooden stairs, then showing itself at my old bedroom door where we were sleeping,” she said. ”He was aghast, and angry at me for subjecting him to this.”
He couldn’t describe the thing in detail. He only said it was a huge creature “and utterly ghastly.” Lisa had heard the footsteps on the stairs while growing up in the house, but never saw what made them.
“I just always kept my eyes closed tight, but I used to hear it creep up the steps and stand at my door,” she said.
Lisa moved from the house on Telhurst Road when she turned 18, “and never lived there again.” She would stay with her parents on short visits, again seeing the shadows that walked in the dining room.
The house is no longer in Lisa’s family, which doesn’t bother her at all. She does, however, wonder if the new owners have experienced shadow people or the thing on the stairs.
“I never heard a sound from the shadow people, and didn’t feel particularly threatened, but I did feel uneasy and not happy they were there,” she said. “It made me not like the house. All I can say is the house was creepy.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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, December 05, 2007
A Field of Dreams
Author’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on Mary Vincent who’s had more than one encounter with the unknown.
Everybody dreams. Some dreams are frightening, some are forgotten and some, like those of Mary Vincent of Kingston, Ontario, seem to predict the future.
Over the years, Mary’s dreams have given her a look at “the other side,” which she describes as just another dimension … a dimension eerily accessible to our own.
“This is something I don’t understand at all,” Mary said. “I have had dreams that took
me to the other side … but involve a big yellow door.”
Beyond this door may be the future – Mary has seen the future in her dreams.
“I dreamt that I was standing in my brother’s yard in the country and it was night,” she said. “My brother and his family, including my mother, were chasing horses trying to keep them out of the garden. The property next door kept horses and they had broken down the fence. It was pandemonium.”
Mary stood there, in her dream, watching but not participating.
“The next morning I was telling my husband about my dream when I got a call from my mother,” Mary said. “She started with, ‘you should see what happened here last night.’”
Mary’s mother told her exactly what she had seen in her dream, “point by point.”
Can we have prophetic dreams? There are endless stories of people who didn’t go on a doomed airplane/passenger ship/automobile because of a dream; Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet, made eerily accurate predictions from a trance, and Nostradamus’ 452-year-old quatrains fascinate us today.
A Baylor University study showed 52 percent of people believe in prophetic dreams. Paranormal author Rosemary Ellen Guiley wrote in her book, “Dreamspeak: How To Understand the Messages in Your Dreams,” that we probably have more precognitive dreams than we realize. We’re simply not paying attention.
After the horse dream, Mary started paying attention. Her next dream took her across the Atlantic.
“I dreamt that I was on a dirt road in some country in Africa, riding in an open jeep,” she said. “There were other people on the jeep, all North Americans, but I didn’t seem to know them well.”
As the jeep sped down the road, Mary became more and more terrified as they approached a curve.
“Every time we came to a bend that there would be armed Africans jumping out ahead of us,” she said. “I felt two things primarily, fear and hunger. We were running because of some upheaval in the country and there had been some killings.”
Because of the intensity of the dream, Mary told her coworkers.
“I noticed one of the men staring at me with his mouth open,” she said. “He started telling me his daughter was in Africa and what I described was just what she had described having happened to her and the group she was with. He had lost contact with her for a few days and had contemplated going there.”
Mary, like the rest of her office, didn’t know the man’s daughter was in Africa.
“Being a private man, he had never mentioned anything to anyone,” she said.
Mary’s dreams also reach out to her neighbors. In a recent dream, she was in her bedroom – it wasn’t Mary’s bedroom, but it was in the dream.
“I heard somebody in the house,” she said. “I realized I was being robbed but I was too scared to go out of my room.”
She tried unsuccessfully to call 9-1-1 when she got a glimpse of the robber. He was about six-feet-tall, solidly built, had shoulder-length blonde hair and wore a blue plaid shirt.
“I didn’t think much more about this until a few days later a woman I walk my dog with once in awhile was telling me she had been robbed,” Mary said. “She said she was in her room sleeping and she had heard them but was too frightened to confront them.”
The thief took her purse and her car, but the description of the incident struck Mary.
“I realized it was my dream and I described the man I had seen,” Mary said. “She said she had seen the same man I described hanging around her street a few days before.”
Are precognitive dreams real? No one knows, but if your dreams are particularly vivid, it might be wise to pay attention.
“These dreams were strange because they were explicit,” she said. “They didn’t go off to strange things, or other fantasies, they stayed right on target and were crystal clear. I never had to try and remember them, they were right there.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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.
Everybody dreams. Some dreams are frightening, some are forgotten and some, like those of Mary Vincent of Kingston, Ontario, seem to predict the future.
Over the years, Mary’s dreams have given her a look at “the other side,” which she describes as just another dimension … a dimension eerily accessible to our own.
“This is something I don’t understand at all,” Mary said. “I have had dreams that took
me to the other side … but involve a big yellow door.”
Beyond this door may be the future – Mary has seen the future in her dreams.
“I dreamt that I was standing in my brother’s yard in the country and it was night,” she said. “My brother and his family, including my mother, were chasing horses trying to keep them out of the garden. The property next door kept horses and they had broken down the fence. It was pandemonium.”
Mary stood there, in her dream, watching but not participating.
“The next morning I was telling my husband about my dream when I got a call from my mother,” Mary said. “She started with, ‘you should see what happened here last night.’”
Mary’s mother told her exactly what she had seen in her dream, “point by point.”
Can we have prophetic dreams? There are endless stories of people who didn’t go on a doomed airplane/passenger ship/automobile because of a dream; Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet, made eerily accurate predictions from a trance, and Nostradamus’ 452-year-old quatrains fascinate us today.
A Baylor University study showed 52 percent of people believe in prophetic dreams. Paranormal author Rosemary Ellen Guiley wrote in her book, “Dreamspeak: How To Understand the Messages in Your Dreams,” that we probably have more precognitive dreams than we realize. We’re simply not paying attention.
After the horse dream, Mary started paying attention. Her next dream took her across the Atlantic.
“I dreamt that I was on a dirt road in some country in Africa, riding in an open jeep,” she said. “There were other people on the jeep, all North Americans, but I didn’t seem to know them well.”
As the jeep sped down the road, Mary became more and more terrified as they approached a curve.
“Every time we came to a bend that there would be armed Africans jumping out ahead of us,” she said. “I felt two things primarily, fear and hunger. We were running because of some upheaval in the country and there had been some killings.”
Because of the intensity of the dream, Mary told her coworkers.
“I noticed one of the men staring at me with his mouth open,” she said. “He started telling me his daughter was in Africa and what I described was just what she had described having happened to her and the group she was with. He had lost contact with her for a few days and had contemplated going there.”
Mary, like the rest of her office, didn’t know the man’s daughter was in Africa.
“Being a private man, he had never mentioned anything to anyone,” she said.
Mary’s dreams also reach out to her neighbors. In a recent dream, she was in her bedroom – it wasn’t Mary’s bedroom, but it was in the dream.
“I heard somebody in the house,” she said. “I realized I was being robbed but I was too scared to go out of my room.”
She tried unsuccessfully to call 9-1-1 when she got a glimpse of the robber. He was about six-feet-tall, solidly built, had shoulder-length blonde hair and wore a blue plaid shirt.
“I didn’t think much more about this until a few days later a woman I walk my dog with once in awhile was telling me she had been robbed,” Mary said. “She said she was in her room sleeping and she had heard them but was too frightened to confront them.”
The thief took her purse and her car, but the description of the incident struck Mary.
“I realized it was my dream and I described the man I had seen,” Mary said. “She said she had seen the same man I described hanging around her street a few days before.”
Are precognitive dreams real? No one knows, but if your dreams are particularly vivid, it might be wise to pay attention.
“These dreams were strange because they were explicit,” she said. “They didn’t go off to strange things, or other fantasies, they stayed right on target and were crystal clear. I never had to try and remember them, they were right there.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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, November 28, 2007
Followed by the Unknown
Author’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on Mary Vincent of Kingston, Ontario, who’s had more than one encounter with the unknown.
The paranormal seems to follow certain people. Are they blessed, cursed, or just unlucky? Mary Vincent of Kingston, Ontario, is one of these people … one of the unlucky, or one of the cursed.
Mary, at the time 17, was staying with her brother when she realized something in his house wasn’t right.
“I was sleeping in a loft-type bedroom,” she said. “I woke suddenly one night with the immediate knowledge I wasn’t alone.”
Sitting at the side of her bed, staring at her, was a man.
“He just sat very still and the darkness of the room wouldn’t allow me to see his face,” she said. “It seemed as if he had a hat on. I was totally terrified. I tried to move but found I couldn’t. I couldn’t even turn my head away.”
She lie in bed, trying to scream for help, but could only manage a whisper. Then, as quickly as she’d noticed the dark man, he was gone.
“I lay there scared and shaken,” she said.
The next morning, she didn’t talk about her encounter … nor the next day, or the next.
“I did not tell anybody about this for years,” she said. “I didn’t want to hear ‘you were dreaming’ when I knew I wasn’t.”
The dark man with a hat remains a mystery to Mary but she wonders if she somehow invited him into her life.
“As a young mother I started doing the Ouija board with a close friend,” she said. “The more time we spent on it the more depth the messages seemed to have.”
One message was from her friend Milly’s mother, who had recently died.
“She told us some personal stuff that we did not know about money left to an alienated brother,” she said. The entity told Mary’s friend not to fight the will, which, unbeknownst to Mary, Milly and her sister were planning to do.
Was the entity Milly’s mother? According to people well-versed in the Ouija board, no, the entity was demonic. But it was convincing … even down to spelling “mom,” “mum,” like Milly’s British mother would.
Then Mary’s Ouija board experiences escalated. A group at a military camp asked her and Milly to hold a Ouija session at the base.
“I knew some but not all of the people,” Mary said. “We explained to them this was just for fun and we were in no way psychics.”
After what Mary calls “fluff,” the Ouija became alive, the planchette forcing itself across the board.
“It finally spelled out a name I had never heard of,” Mary said. “When I asked if anyone recognized the name, a woman – a German wife of a Canadian soldier – said it was her sister’s name.”
Then Mary stared to feel “terrible.”
“I felt ill, panicky and dark,” she said. “There was no better word than ‘dark’ for my feelings. I told the woman that I wasn’t getting a specific message just a terrible feeling. I felt angry, confused and totally unstable. She told me her sister had committed suicide.”
This frightened Mary.
“I realized that I was getting too close to the spirit side and, in this case, it wasn’t a good feeling,” she said. “I have never sat at the Ouija board since.”
But she couldn’t stay away from the paranormal. Curious about automatic writing, she allowed something unseen to write with her hand.
“I twice tried automatic writing,” she said. “The first time, when the pen started to move I got scared, being alone, and threw the pen.”
But that didn’t stop her from attempting to contact the spirit world again.
“The second time I kept my head averted but let the pen write,” she said. “When I looked at it I saw various words that didn’t mean anything but in the last place it said ‘Mary Elizabeth, it’s Grandma Hogeboom.’”
The handwriting of the last five words wasn’t Mary’s.
“I took the paper to my mother and she pulled out an old card my grandmother had once sent her,” she said. “The handwriting was identical. Absolutely identical. My mother flipped out.”
Did Mary channel her grandmother, or did something evil write with her hand … something that would find its way into her dreams?
Next week: A field of dreams.
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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 paranormal seems to follow certain people. Are they blessed, cursed, or just unlucky? Mary Vincent of Kingston, Ontario, is one of these people … one of the unlucky, or one of the cursed.
Mary, at the time 17, was staying with her brother when she realized something in his house wasn’t right.
“I was sleeping in a loft-type bedroom,” she said. “I woke suddenly one night with the immediate knowledge I wasn’t alone.”
Sitting at the side of her bed, staring at her, was a man.
“He just sat very still and the darkness of the room wouldn’t allow me to see his face,” she said. “It seemed as if he had a hat on. I was totally terrified. I tried to move but found I couldn’t. I couldn’t even turn my head away.”
She lie in bed, trying to scream for help, but could only manage a whisper. Then, as quickly as she’d noticed the dark man, he was gone.
“I lay there scared and shaken,” she said.
The next morning, she didn’t talk about her encounter … nor the next day, or the next.
“I did not tell anybody about this for years,” she said. “I didn’t want to hear ‘you were dreaming’ when I knew I wasn’t.”
The dark man with a hat remains a mystery to Mary but she wonders if she somehow invited him into her life.
“As a young mother I started doing the Ouija board with a close friend,” she said. “The more time we spent on it the more depth the messages seemed to have.”
One message was from her friend Milly’s mother, who had recently died.
“She told us some personal stuff that we did not know about money left to an alienated brother,” she said. The entity told Mary’s friend not to fight the will, which, unbeknownst to Mary, Milly and her sister were planning to do.
Was the entity Milly’s mother? According to people well-versed in the Ouija board, no, the entity was demonic. But it was convincing … even down to spelling “mom,” “mum,” like Milly’s British mother would.
Then Mary’s Ouija board experiences escalated. A group at a military camp asked her and Milly to hold a Ouija session at the base.
“I knew some but not all of the people,” Mary said. “We explained to them this was just for fun and we were in no way psychics.”
After what Mary calls “fluff,” the Ouija became alive, the planchette forcing itself across the board.
“It finally spelled out a name I had never heard of,” Mary said. “When I asked if anyone recognized the name, a woman – a German wife of a Canadian soldier – said it was her sister’s name.”
Then Mary stared to feel “terrible.”
“I felt ill, panicky and dark,” she said. “There was no better word than ‘dark’ for my feelings. I told the woman that I wasn’t getting a specific message just a terrible feeling. I felt angry, confused and totally unstable. She told me her sister had committed suicide.”
This frightened Mary.
“I realized that I was getting too close to the spirit side and, in this case, it wasn’t a good feeling,” she said. “I have never sat at the Ouija board since.”
But she couldn’t stay away from the paranormal. Curious about automatic writing, she allowed something unseen to write with her hand.
“I twice tried automatic writing,” she said. “The first time, when the pen started to move I got scared, being alone, and threw the pen.”
But that didn’t stop her from attempting to contact the spirit world again.
“The second time I kept my head averted but let the pen write,” she said. “When I looked at it I saw various words that didn’t mean anything but in the last place it said ‘Mary Elizabeth, it’s Grandma Hogeboom.’”
The handwriting of the last five words wasn’t Mary’s.
“I took the paper to my mother and she pulled out an old card my grandmother had once sent her,” she said. “The handwriting was identical. Absolutely identical. My mother flipped out.”
Did Mary channel her grandmother, or did something evil write with her hand … something that would find its way into her dreams?
Next week: A field of dreams.
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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, November 21, 2007
Has it all happened before?
The apartment in Leighton Buzzard, a town 40 miles north of London, was only two years old when Adam Patterson moved in. It was typical; bedroom, bathroom, kitchen/dining area and a living room spilling inside the front door.
But, as normal as it looks, there is something strange about the apartment.
“Upon my first day there, I noticed the carpet was all worn out in front of where the TV goes, but I didn't think too much of it, only that it was a little bit odd,” Adam said. “I also saw that a plug socket above the sink was hanging off. Again, I didn't think too much of it, but at first glance, I did question the reasons for this.”
Adam’s life in the apartment was “fine for the first few months.” But that has changed.
“Despite being very low about certain aspects of my life, in regards to the actual flat, I was pleased,” he said. “However, the past two months have been increasingly strange.”
Like the feeling of being watched every night. Then there are the lights and shadows.
“Strange lights appear whilst sitting on my couch in front of the TV, when I only had two small wall lights on, which are placed behind me at the kitchen area,” he said. “A couple of strange shadows would regularly appear and they would react to my movements when I decided to 'test' them.”
And, by testing, Adam meant touching.
For the past two months, Adam has kept the same schedule. He’s spent every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, sitting in front of the TV waiting for the lights and shadows to appear.
“(I turn) the TV off with the remote control, and look in the TV's reflection if I can find the source of these shadows and lights,” he said. “I have always been convinced that what I am searching for is behind me at the kitchen area.”
For these two months, Adam has obsessively moved from the couch to the TV to gain a better view of the light and shadow reflections on the screen.
“Last week, I had an extremely interesting consideration dawn on me,” he said. “I suddenly realized that for two months now – several times each week – I have been in the middle of experiencing these strange lights and shadows, and ended up moving from my couch to sit in front of the TV in order to give a closer inspection to the screen's reflections.”
He thought, ‘I am probably going to start wearing out the carpet at this rate,’ when he realized the carpet between the couch and the television was already worn – probably by the previous occupant.
“This same night, I worked out that from the direction of light, together with the placement of each shadow, the source of the disturbance was most definitely coming from the kitchen wall,” he said. “‘Next door have found a way to look at me through the wall,’ I thought.”
He walked into the kitchen to try and find a gap where his next-door neighbor might be playing jokes on him, when he thought if he were doing the peeping, he’d unscrew the wall socket.
“Wow, another coincidence,” he said, the wall socket in the kitchen already hanging loose. “This has perhaps already been done by someone else.”
Was the apartment’s former tenet, he wondered, thinking and doing exactly what he was … and if so, why?
“Saturday night I stayed in to watch TV and during the entire night I was experiencing a very strong feeling of being watched,” he said. “The shadows on the wall were looking more and more like human heads, and they were once again reacting to my movements.”
Adam turned off the television and he saw a reflection on the television screen.
“Two slightly distorted human silhouettes were sitting on either side of me,” he said. “I also noticed my own silhouette was very unlike me; my head seemed a little larger than usual, and the reflection of my movements was often delayed or ahead of me.”
He started playing games with the reflections, watching them move as he motioned toward them. Then he noticed something even more unnerving – one of the shadows was nudging him closer to the other.
“For the entire evening, one of them was attempting to lure me into the other one,” he said. “I think it wanted to consume me somehow. I know this all sounds crazy, but ... I was in direct contact with two very real 'shadow people.’
Although Adam speculates the shadow people are from a different dimension, he doesn’t know this. He only knows what he feels.
“I don't think they are necessarily evil. I describe them as curious,” he said. “But it's absolutely horrible for me.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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.
But, as normal as it looks, there is something strange about the apartment.
“Upon my first day there, I noticed the carpet was all worn out in front of where the TV goes, but I didn't think too much of it, only that it was a little bit odd,” Adam said. “I also saw that a plug socket above the sink was hanging off. Again, I didn't think too much of it, but at first glance, I did question the reasons for this.”
Adam’s life in the apartment was “fine for the first few months.” But that has changed.
“Despite being very low about certain aspects of my life, in regards to the actual flat, I was pleased,” he said. “However, the past two months have been increasingly strange.”
Like the feeling of being watched every night. Then there are the lights and shadows.
“Strange lights appear whilst sitting on my couch in front of the TV, when I only had two small wall lights on, which are placed behind me at the kitchen area,” he said. “A couple of strange shadows would regularly appear and they would react to my movements when I decided to 'test' them.”
And, by testing, Adam meant touching.
For the past two months, Adam has kept the same schedule. He’s spent every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, sitting in front of the TV waiting for the lights and shadows to appear.
“(I turn) the TV off with the remote control, and look in the TV's reflection if I can find the source of these shadows and lights,” he said. “I have always been convinced that what I am searching for is behind me at the kitchen area.”
For these two months, Adam has obsessively moved from the couch to the TV to gain a better view of the light and shadow reflections on the screen.
“Last week, I had an extremely interesting consideration dawn on me,” he said. “I suddenly realized that for two months now – several times each week – I have been in the middle of experiencing these strange lights and shadows, and ended up moving from my couch to sit in front of the TV in order to give a closer inspection to the screen's reflections.”
He thought, ‘I am probably going to start wearing out the carpet at this rate,’ when he realized the carpet between the couch and the television was already worn – probably by the previous occupant.
“This same night, I worked out that from the direction of light, together with the placement of each shadow, the source of the disturbance was most definitely coming from the kitchen wall,” he said. “‘Next door have found a way to look at me through the wall,’ I thought.”
He walked into the kitchen to try and find a gap where his next-door neighbor might be playing jokes on him, when he thought if he were doing the peeping, he’d unscrew the wall socket.
“Wow, another coincidence,” he said, the wall socket in the kitchen already hanging loose. “This has perhaps already been done by someone else.”
Was the apartment’s former tenet, he wondered, thinking and doing exactly what he was … and if so, why?
“Saturday night I stayed in to watch TV and during the entire night I was experiencing a very strong feeling of being watched,” he said. “The shadows on the wall were looking more and more like human heads, and they were once again reacting to my movements.”
Adam turned off the television and he saw a reflection on the television screen.
“Two slightly distorted human silhouettes were sitting on either side of me,” he said. “I also noticed my own silhouette was very unlike me; my head seemed a little larger than usual, and the reflection of my movements was often delayed or ahead of me.”
He started playing games with the reflections, watching them move as he motioned toward them. Then he noticed something even more unnerving – one of the shadows was nudging him closer to the other.
“For the entire evening, one of them was attempting to lure me into the other one,” he said. “I think it wanted to consume me somehow. I know this all sounds crazy, but ... I was in direct contact with two very real 'shadow people.’
Although Adam speculates the shadow people are from a different dimension, he doesn’t know this. He only knows what he feels.
“I don't think they are necessarily evil. I describe them as curious,” he said. “But it's absolutely horrible for me.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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, November 14, 2007
Sleep deprivation or a glimpse into another dimension?
A cool October breeze brushed Len Berroth as he stood at his front door in 2006. Len, of DeLand, Fla., thought he was at the end of three mostly sleepless nights and a seven-hour drive.
But something wasn’t right at Len’s house.
“Sleep depravation lifted the veil between parallel plains that coexist at different vibration levels would be my guess,” Len said. “What showed itself was not of this world yet interacted with dwellings, objects, landscape surroundings as if it were theirs.”
The world around Len rippled, sending streaks of light dancing past him, as his perception of reality changed. For the next nine and a half hours, he watched his neighborhood team with life that shouldn’t be.
Like the giants.
“Three giant beings were visible, human-like … except in height. They ducked their heads to go under the wires on the telephone poles,” Len said. “The tops of their heads were even with the roof tops.”
The giants gently groomed bushes and trees as they made their way down the neighborhood.
“It looked like they were twining rope from the leaves and branches,” Len said.
His neighbors across the street were on vacation, but as Len stood at his door, two SUVs pulled in the neighbor’s drive and six “average-looking people” got out of the SUVs and spent several hours talking, never approaching the house.
“Positioning myself for a better look across the street I heard the sound of grass being ripped up behind me,” Len said. “Turning, I saw my two 15-foot high, elephant yard adornments grazing the front lawn. Their trunks yanked the grass up, feeding to their mouths while slowly walking around the yard.”
Tires sliding across pavement drew Len’s eyes back to the SUVs which, like the giants and the lawn ornaments, were alive.
“The two SUVs were acting like a pair of grazing buffalo,” Len said. “Their tires scraped at the driveway as their front ends dipped down till the bumpers touched the ground as if eating. I did go over the next day and have pictures showing erratic black rubber markings on the concrete consistent with what I saw.”
The “average-looking people” didn’t seem to notice the activity because they were interested in something else.
“I saw one person in their group holding what I’ll describe as box-like, four inches high, 14 inches deep, 18 inches wide, a series of different colored lights forming several rows,” he said.
The others circled around the man with the box as a sequence of colored lights turned on and off in a pattern. Len said the box was a signal light.
“The group now looked up to the night sky, then I saw hovering about 2,000 feet above us was a saucer-shaped craft completely silent, then it’s underbelly lit up as rows of colored lights flashed the same sequence toward the ground,” Len said. “Just then six beings appeared on the sidewalk in front of that house, they were in mid stride when they popped out of nowhere.”
The beings were eight-feet tall, slender and dressed in black, hooded robes.
“They seemed relevant to the space craft as the colored light exchange stopped,” Len said. Then the beings dressed in black disappeared as did the craft. “The craft shot from sight directly after the black robed beings disappeared.”
That wasn’t the end. Len later saw what he described as Neanderthals milling for hours in his yard until a friend of his pulled up to his house.
“Ten of them were in my front yard, taking no notice as a friend pulled up next to them,” he said. “These beings acted like we weren’t there as I met my friend at the curb, she couldn’t see them.
“Tell me you don’t see these people,” Len demanded of his friend. “‘Nobody’s there,’ was her response. The commotion from my raised voice caused the people that signaled the UFO to walk toward us.”
The people crossed the road and stopped several feet from Len and his friend.
“You know I can see you,” Len thought, and a voice in his head said “yes.”
Len grabbed his friend’s arm and ran into his house. A year later, Len is convinced his experience was not caused by sleep deprivation, but by our dimension merging with dimensions we don’t normally see.
“That night, trees and plants took active roles, exposing their living spirits as being more in tune to surroundings, quite capable of telepathic exchange,” he said. “But that’s another story in itself.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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.
But something wasn’t right at Len’s house.
“Sleep depravation lifted the veil between parallel plains that coexist at different vibration levels would be my guess,” Len said. “What showed itself was not of this world yet interacted with dwellings, objects, landscape surroundings as if it were theirs.”
The world around Len rippled, sending streaks of light dancing past him, as his perception of reality changed. For the next nine and a half hours, he watched his neighborhood team with life that shouldn’t be.
Like the giants.
“Three giant beings were visible, human-like … except in height. They ducked their heads to go under the wires on the telephone poles,” Len said. “The tops of their heads were even with the roof tops.”
The giants gently groomed bushes and trees as they made their way down the neighborhood.
“It looked like they were twining rope from the leaves and branches,” Len said.
His neighbors across the street were on vacation, but as Len stood at his door, two SUVs pulled in the neighbor’s drive and six “average-looking people” got out of the SUVs and spent several hours talking, never approaching the house.
“Positioning myself for a better look across the street I heard the sound of grass being ripped up behind me,” Len said. “Turning, I saw my two 15-foot high, elephant yard adornments grazing the front lawn. Their trunks yanked the grass up, feeding to their mouths while slowly walking around the yard.”
Tires sliding across pavement drew Len’s eyes back to the SUVs which, like the giants and the lawn ornaments, were alive.
“The two SUVs were acting like a pair of grazing buffalo,” Len said. “Their tires scraped at the driveway as their front ends dipped down till the bumpers touched the ground as if eating. I did go over the next day and have pictures showing erratic black rubber markings on the concrete consistent with what I saw.”
The “average-looking people” didn’t seem to notice the activity because they were interested in something else.
“I saw one person in their group holding what I’ll describe as box-like, four inches high, 14 inches deep, 18 inches wide, a series of different colored lights forming several rows,” he said.
The others circled around the man with the box as a sequence of colored lights turned on and off in a pattern. Len said the box was a signal light.
“The group now looked up to the night sky, then I saw hovering about 2,000 feet above us was a saucer-shaped craft completely silent, then it’s underbelly lit up as rows of colored lights flashed the same sequence toward the ground,” Len said. “Just then six beings appeared on the sidewalk in front of that house, they were in mid stride when they popped out of nowhere.”
The beings were eight-feet tall, slender and dressed in black, hooded robes.
“They seemed relevant to the space craft as the colored light exchange stopped,” Len said. Then the beings dressed in black disappeared as did the craft. “The craft shot from sight directly after the black robed beings disappeared.”
That wasn’t the end. Len later saw what he described as Neanderthals milling for hours in his yard until a friend of his pulled up to his house.
“Ten of them were in my front yard, taking no notice as a friend pulled up next to them,” he said. “These beings acted like we weren’t there as I met my friend at the curb, she couldn’t see them.
“Tell me you don’t see these people,” Len demanded of his friend. “‘Nobody’s there,’ was her response. The commotion from my raised voice caused the people that signaled the UFO to walk toward us.”
The people crossed the road and stopped several feet from Len and his friend.
“You know I can see you,” Len thought, and a voice in his head said “yes.”
Len grabbed his friend’s arm and ran into his house. A year later, Len is convinced his experience was not caused by sleep deprivation, but by our dimension merging with dimensions we don’t normally see.
“That night, trees and plants took active roles, exposing their living spirits as being more in tune to surroundings, quite capable of telepathic exchange,” he said. “But that’s another story in itself.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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, November 07, 2007
A Shadow in the Night
Lindsie Harlan of Austin, Texas, often wrestles with sleep. One night in the spring of her senior year in high school, the math education major at Austin Community College, awoke to find something dark, something cloaked in shadows.
“I was asleep and I just woke up for no reason and there was this huge tall black figure standing on the side of my bed,” Lindsie said. “Its legs were all the way to the ceiling and it was staring down at me with two beady, shiny eyes.”
Lindsie lie in bed, the hooded figure staring down at her.
“I didn’t move because I was afraid if I moved it would know I was alive and try to kill me,” she said. “I felt as if I was paralyzed from the eyes down.”
As many people experiencing ghosts and shadow beings have reported, Lindsie was able to shut her eyes and strangely fall back to sleep. She didn’t talk to anyone about the experience until her second paranormal encounter later that summer – a night wrapped in cold.
“Before I fell asleep that night I ended up going into the laundry room and getting another comforter because I was freezing,” she said.
Lindsie woke in the early morning hours to find another visitor in her room, a swirling, smoky cloud that slowly coalesced into the head of a lion.
“I woke up and I looked toward my door,” she said. “I didn’t even realize I was looking at anything until I saw these huge eyes staring at me. It was this swirling vortex of a cloud with two huge eyes. It had a mouth – and it was open. It looked more like a human mouth on a lion head with huge eyes. I was afraid, terrified.”
Lindsie muttered “oh, my God, go away, go away, go away, go away, please go away,” and the apparition slowly disappeared, leaving her in the cold, dark room.
“I turned on my lamp and could actually see my chest move from my heart pounding,” she said. “It was beating fast for maybe 30 minutes. I couldn’t calm down. I panicked. I felt nothing but evil coming off of that thing.”
The next day she reluctantly told her mother the story.
“She got scared for me,” Lindsie said. “She started going into this whole thing about Jesus and to say ‘in the name of Jesus, I command you to go away.’ She also said something about ‘death comes knocking on peoples door all the time, you just have to be careful.
“Do you really think it’s death?”
Lindsie found her mother spoke from experience. Her mother confessed that, as a child she experienced something dark and sinister knocking at her door.
“When she was younger, she shared a room with her sister, and while she was laying in her bed she kept hearing this noise coming from the living room like footsteps,” Lindsie said.
The footsteps moved through the living room and kitchen before marching down the hallway to her bedroom door.
“As these footsteps grew louder she said that she could barely breathe,” Lindsie said. “And it started to get really cold and she had become really scared for her and her sister.”
Lindsie’s mother began praying aloud as the footsteps came closer and a shadow appeared under the closed bedroom door like someone was standing right outside.
“Right as the footsteps got up to her door she saw the knob turn and right as she said, ‘protect me lord,’ the shadow disappeared,” Lindsie said. “The knob quit trying to turn to open the door.”
Lindsie hasn’t been visited in the night since the cold, dark lion, but that doesn’t leave her comforted. She’s still waiting for the night something dark with glaring eyes wakes her in the darkness.
“I find it hard to go to sleep,” she said. “I am so paranoid that the next time I open my eyes I’m going to see something else that will scare me.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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.
“I was asleep and I just woke up for no reason and there was this huge tall black figure standing on the side of my bed,” Lindsie said. “Its legs were all the way to the ceiling and it was staring down at me with two beady, shiny eyes.”
Lindsie lie in bed, the hooded figure staring down at her.
“I didn’t move because I was afraid if I moved it would know I was alive and try to kill me,” she said. “I felt as if I was paralyzed from the eyes down.”
As many people experiencing ghosts and shadow beings have reported, Lindsie was able to shut her eyes and strangely fall back to sleep. She didn’t talk to anyone about the experience until her second paranormal encounter later that summer – a night wrapped in cold.
“Before I fell asleep that night I ended up going into the laundry room and getting another comforter because I was freezing,” she said.
Lindsie woke in the early morning hours to find another visitor in her room, a swirling, smoky cloud that slowly coalesced into the head of a lion.
“I woke up and I looked toward my door,” she said. “I didn’t even realize I was looking at anything until I saw these huge eyes staring at me. It was this swirling vortex of a cloud with two huge eyes. It had a mouth – and it was open. It looked more like a human mouth on a lion head with huge eyes. I was afraid, terrified.”
Lindsie muttered “oh, my God, go away, go away, go away, go away, please go away,” and the apparition slowly disappeared, leaving her in the cold, dark room.
“I turned on my lamp and could actually see my chest move from my heart pounding,” she said. “It was beating fast for maybe 30 minutes. I couldn’t calm down. I panicked. I felt nothing but evil coming off of that thing.”
The next day she reluctantly told her mother the story.
“She got scared for me,” Lindsie said. “She started going into this whole thing about Jesus and to say ‘in the name of Jesus, I command you to go away.’ She also said something about ‘death comes knocking on peoples door all the time, you just have to be careful.
“Do you really think it’s death?”
Lindsie found her mother spoke from experience. Her mother confessed that, as a child she experienced something dark and sinister knocking at her door.
“When she was younger, she shared a room with her sister, and while she was laying in her bed she kept hearing this noise coming from the living room like footsteps,” Lindsie said.
The footsteps moved through the living room and kitchen before marching down the hallway to her bedroom door.
“As these footsteps grew louder she said that she could barely breathe,” Lindsie said. “And it started to get really cold and she had become really scared for her and her sister.”
Lindsie’s mother began praying aloud as the footsteps came closer and a shadow appeared under the closed bedroom door like someone was standing right outside.
“Right as the footsteps got up to her door she saw the knob turn and right as she said, ‘protect me lord,’ the shadow disappeared,” Lindsie said. “The knob quit trying to turn to open the door.”
Lindsie hasn’t been visited in the night since the cold, dark lion, but that doesn’t leave her comforted. She’s still waiting for the night something dark with glaring eyes wakes her in the darkness.
“I find it hard to go to sleep,” she said. “I am so paranoid that the next time I open my eyes I’m going to see something else that will scare me.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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, October 31, 2007
David Haunts the Children
The house in Maryville, Mo. was built in the mid-70s. Nobody has died there, but as those who have lived in the house can attest, ghosts don’t come and go with houses. Sometimes they’re affixed to the property.
“My parents’ house is haunted and things started happening from the first day they moved in,” Susan McFee, Kansas City, said.
When Gary Sherlock and his wife Judy moved into the home with their three daughters, Susan, Lori, and Michelle, in 1975 they soon realized they were not alone.
“All my life I’ve heard voices whispering in the night,” Susan said. “We’ve all heard that. You’ll be the only one home and you’ll hear the drawers squeaking away. Cabinets slamming. Doors slamming. The cleaning lady quit because she said something attacked her.”
That something was a “little furry animal running around” Gary said many people – except him – have seen. The thing ran into Susan when she was just a year old.
“My mom said something knocked me over,” she said. “It was a brown furry thing. The cleaning lady said something cornered her and growled at her and it was gone. My parents have five cats. But it wasn’t it.”
Then there’s the little boy.
“All the grandkids (when they were ages) one to two-and-a-half … they’ve all seen it,” Susan said. “And they all say the same thing. ‘Little boy. Nightmare. He tried to take my toy.’ And it was in the same bedroom.”
Lori Durbin, Maryville, has more than a cursory interest with the little boy – her son once interacted with it.
“My son, Brad, he was only two so he doesn’t remember it,” Lori said. “He had a conversation with it and called it David. He was in the other room taking a nap. You’d hear him ask a question and answer a question.”
Lori and her husband only heard part of Brad’s conversation, but Brad was interacting with someone.
“I said, ‘who are you talking to?’” Lori said. “And he said, ‘David.’ We asked where David went and he pointed toward a wall.”
Brad wasn’t afraid of David, but most of the Sherlock’s 11 grandchildren were because they didn’t see a little boy, they saw a monster.
“The little ones, they’re two or three, have become petrified and have said, ‘it’s right there can’t you see that monster?’” Gary said.
The entity may have appeared as a monster to Brad, too, but that didn’t bother him.
“Shortly after that he saw something on TV or in a book, and he said, ‘that’s David,’” Susan said. “The picture was something scary.”
Even when the visage is of the boy and not a monster, it’s not friendly.
“They say he takes toys from them,” Lori said. “The youngest two said he growled at them all the time.”
The sightings have only been experienced by children under three, except one night when Lori was pregnant in her early 20s.
“I’ve seen the little boy, yeah,” Lori said. “I was getting up one night and he was standing in front of this picture and he was dressed in knickers; brown, and a white shirt and he was blonde.”
The visitation didn’t last long, less than a minute, but it was long enough for Lori to remember vividly.
“It scared me,” Lori said.
Although the entity – be it little boy or “monster” – has never harmed any member of the Sherlock family, it has been bothersome to them and dangerous to others.
Most of the visitations didn’t start until Susan, Lori and Michelle were grown and out of the house, but strange things have always happened there – especially in the basement.
“A lot of the encounters, at least early on, were in the basement,” Lori said. “We’ve all heard things like drawers opening. My mom, her silverware will disappear. She’ll buy a new set and within a month it’ll be gone.”
Gary, although he hasn’t experienced anything strange in the house, has noticed the basement “seems a lot colder sometimes than other times.”
Susan became concerned enough about the thing, or things, haunting her parents’ home that she contacted a medium.
“(The medium) said the little boy was lost before he died,” Susan said. “Maybe he was a missing child or he was murdered, she didn’t know.”
But that’s all Susan and her family want … to know.
“I just want to know what happened to the boy,” Susan said. “Everybody gets freaked out, but if we know what happened to him we wouldn’t be afraid anymore.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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.
“My parents’ house is haunted and things started happening from the first day they moved in,” Susan McFee, Kansas City, said.
When Gary Sherlock and his wife Judy moved into the home with their three daughters, Susan, Lori, and Michelle, in 1975 they soon realized they were not alone.
“All my life I’ve heard voices whispering in the night,” Susan said. “We’ve all heard that. You’ll be the only one home and you’ll hear the drawers squeaking away. Cabinets slamming. Doors slamming. The cleaning lady quit because she said something attacked her.”
That something was a “little furry animal running around” Gary said many people – except him – have seen. The thing ran into Susan when she was just a year old.
“My mom said something knocked me over,” she said. “It was a brown furry thing. The cleaning lady said something cornered her and growled at her and it was gone. My parents have five cats. But it wasn’t it.”
Then there’s the little boy.
“All the grandkids (when they were ages) one to two-and-a-half … they’ve all seen it,” Susan said. “And they all say the same thing. ‘Little boy. Nightmare. He tried to take my toy.’ And it was in the same bedroom.”
Lori Durbin, Maryville, has more than a cursory interest with the little boy – her son once interacted with it.
“My son, Brad, he was only two so he doesn’t remember it,” Lori said. “He had a conversation with it and called it David. He was in the other room taking a nap. You’d hear him ask a question and answer a question.”
Lori and her husband only heard part of Brad’s conversation, but Brad was interacting with someone.
“I said, ‘who are you talking to?’” Lori said. “And he said, ‘David.’ We asked where David went and he pointed toward a wall.”
Brad wasn’t afraid of David, but most of the Sherlock’s 11 grandchildren were because they didn’t see a little boy, they saw a monster.
“The little ones, they’re two or three, have become petrified and have said, ‘it’s right there can’t you see that monster?’” Gary said.
The entity may have appeared as a monster to Brad, too, but that didn’t bother him.
“Shortly after that he saw something on TV or in a book, and he said, ‘that’s David,’” Susan said. “The picture was something scary.”
Even when the visage is of the boy and not a monster, it’s not friendly.
“They say he takes toys from them,” Lori said. “The youngest two said he growled at them all the time.”
The sightings have only been experienced by children under three, except one night when Lori was pregnant in her early 20s.
“I’ve seen the little boy, yeah,” Lori said. “I was getting up one night and he was standing in front of this picture and he was dressed in knickers; brown, and a white shirt and he was blonde.”
The visitation didn’t last long, less than a minute, but it was long enough for Lori to remember vividly.
“It scared me,” Lori said.
Although the entity – be it little boy or “monster” – has never harmed any member of the Sherlock family, it has been bothersome to them and dangerous to others.
Most of the visitations didn’t start until Susan, Lori and Michelle were grown and out of the house, but strange things have always happened there – especially in the basement.
“A lot of the encounters, at least early on, were in the basement,” Lori said. “We’ve all heard things like drawers opening. My mom, her silverware will disappear. She’ll buy a new set and within a month it’ll be gone.”
Gary, although he hasn’t experienced anything strange in the house, has noticed the basement “seems a lot colder sometimes than other times.”
Susan became concerned enough about the thing, or things, haunting her parents’ home that she contacted a medium.
“(The medium) said the little boy was lost before he died,” Susan said. “Maybe he was a missing child or he was murdered, she didn’t know.”
But that’s all Susan and her family want … to know.
“I just want to know what happened to the boy,” Susan said. “Everybody gets freaked out, but if we know what happened to him we wouldn’t be afraid anymore.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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, October 24, 2007
Demons in the Dark
Something dark haunts a slow, quiet street in the small town of Folkston, Ga. Most people don’t realize this evil is in their midst, but gunsmith Eric London does. He’s seen the creatures of this street … and he’s felt their touch.
“They are demons,” Eric said. “They are demons who have not found a human host.”
Eric has seen them out of the corner of his eye; black, human figures or, “shadow people,” lurking in his home.
“My former wife, a year before the divorce, was possessed by one of these,” he said. “I was awakened by her jabbing me in the back while she was screaming at me, ‘There is someone in the room.’ I looked up and one of these solid black things was making its way quickly around the foot of our bed in the dim of the night.”
As Eric jumped out of bed he yelled for his wife to turn on the light.
“I thought, at the time, it was a human breaking in. I was going for my handgun,” Eric said. “She turns the light on by her bed, and has a real smart assed tone in her voice I had never heard before, ‘whatca doin’?’”
With the light on, the figure Eric and his wife had seen was gone.
“I looked everywhere,” he said. “I am really creeped out. She even says, ‘He is not in there,’ referring to a closet I was looking in.”
Then Eric’s life changed; the wife he knew no longer existed. Eric is convinced she was possessed by a demon that night.
“We ended up divorced due to her buying an insurance policy, trying to kill me, telling me she never loved me, etc.,” Eric said. “Do you think these ‘shadow people’ are harmless?”
Eric’s ex-wife stopped communicating with him until she came to his house unannounced about a year later.
“‘They’ entered unwelcome in to my home and told me she was coming back,” Eric said, ‘they’ referring to his ex-wife and what Eric calls her demon. “When I said no, ‘it’ came part the way out of her face in a ‘ghost like’ manner. It made one hell of an ugly face and went back into her and she gathered up her purse and left.”
“They” have not been back to Eric’s house, but he has received a few telephone calls from his ex-wife and knows the demon is with her.
“It still has her,” he said. ”I suffer grave guilt that I could not stop it. But I am told by many I could not have anyway, but feelings are hard to deal with.”
Even though his ex-wife is now gone from his life, he’s still seen these demonic “shadow people.”
“I have seen them inside my home,” he said, once while working at his computer. “I slowly moved my eyes to the side, and yes, it was a human shaped solid black figure. It was totally startled to figure out I noticed. It faded away quickly.”
But more horrifying, he’s felt the ones he hasn’t seen.
“I have actually been grabbed on three occasions so far, all within a month,” Eric said. “I feel them move up from behind me, and on the first try I had one grab my bare calves.”
He felt icy fingers and a thumb grip each calf, spreading cold through his legs.
“This angered me that they would rudely touch me,” he said. “I told it to ‘go away’ and it did.”
Other occurrences ended the same; Eric told the entity to leave, and it did. He doesn’t know why these entities have targeted him, but he knows how to make them leave.
“Tell them to leave you alone,” Eric said. “They are not aliens, not time travelers, not pleasant Disney characters. They are (expletive) demons.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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.
“They are demons,” Eric said. “They are demons who have not found a human host.”
Eric has seen them out of the corner of his eye; black, human figures or, “shadow people,” lurking in his home.
“My former wife, a year before the divorce, was possessed by one of these,” he said. “I was awakened by her jabbing me in the back while she was screaming at me, ‘There is someone in the room.’ I looked up and one of these solid black things was making its way quickly around the foot of our bed in the dim of the night.”
As Eric jumped out of bed he yelled for his wife to turn on the light.
“I thought, at the time, it was a human breaking in. I was going for my handgun,” Eric said. “She turns the light on by her bed, and has a real smart assed tone in her voice I had never heard before, ‘whatca doin’?’”
With the light on, the figure Eric and his wife had seen was gone.
“I looked everywhere,” he said. “I am really creeped out. She even says, ‘He is not in there,’ referring to a closet I was looking in.”
Then Eric’s life changed; the wife he knew no longer existed. Eric is convinced she was possessed by a demon that night.
“We ended up divorced due to her buying an insurance policy, trying to kill me, telling me she never loved me, etc.,” Eric said. “Do you think these ‘shadow people’ are harmless?”
Eric’s ex-wife stopped communicating with him until she came to his house unannounced about a year later.
“‘They’ entered unwelcome in to my home and told me she was coming back,” Eric said, ‘they’ referring to his ex-wife and what Eric calls her demon. “When I said no, ‘it’ came part the way out of her face in a ‘ghost like’ manner. It made one hell of an ugly face and went back into her and she gathered up her purse and left.”
“They” have not been back to Eric’s house, but he has received a few telephone calls from his ex-wife and knows the demon is with her.
“It still has her,” he said. ”I suffer grave guilt that I could not stop it. But I am told by many I could not have anyway, but feelings are hard to deal with.”
Even though his ex-wife is now gone from his life, he’s still seen these demonic “shadow people.”
“I have seen them inside my home,” he said, once while working at his computer. “I slowly moved my eyes to the side, and yes, it was a human shaped solid black figure. It was totally startled to figure out I noticed. It faded away quickly.”
But more horrifying, he’s felt the ones he hasn’t seen.
“I have actually been grabbed on three occasions so far, all within a month,” Eric said. “I feel them move up from behind me, and on the first try I had one grab my bare calves.”
He felt icy fingers and a thumb grip each calf, spreading cold through his legs.
“This angered me that they would rudely touch me,” he said. “I told it to ‘go away’ and it did.”
Other occurrences ended the same; Eric told the entity to leave, and it did. He doesn’t know why these entities have targeted him, but he knows how to make them leave.
“Tell them to leave you alone,” Eric said. “They are not aliens, not time travelers, not pleasant Disney characters. They are (expletive) demons.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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, October 17, 2007
The Thing in Her Dorm Room
Katie moved into her fourth floor dorm room the Friday before 2007 classes started at Northwest Missouri State University. This was her sophomore year; she had a job, a spot on the yearbook staff and best yet, no roommate.
She went home to Nebraska for the weekend and came back to find she didn’t have the room to herself after all.
“When I first moved in, it was really damp in the room and it had a different smell to it,” she said. “An old smell.”
A friend, Harrison, noticed the smell, too.
“He said, ‘it’s a fragrance,’” Katie said. “It wasn’t my perfume. I didn’t know if it was something or nothing.”
For the first week in her new room, it was nothing. The second week, she realized something else was there with her.
“I felt a presence in my room,” Katie said. “It’s almost oppressive. The feeling I get I just feel tense all the time. When I feel the presence I start looking over my shoulder a lot. It’s hard to go to sleep.”
Katie see’s things in the corner of her eyes – things that move and vanish when she turns to face them. She sleeps with covers up to her neck.
“I get these images in my mind,” she said. “It’s a guy. It’s a shadow peering over the side of my bed. It’s a loft bed so you’d have to be as tall as the room. It was just dark, but it was definitely a form. I could see eyes, nose, mouth. I just couldn’t see the details.
“I know I would freak out if I saw something, but seeing something in my head is just as bad.”
Katie hears creaking during the night that she can’t explain away as neighbors or sagging floors.
“You know how a laptop sounds when you open and close it?” she asked. “It sounds like someone is messing with my computer but they’re not. Then I just hear random noise. It is in my room. Not next door, not upstairs, not in the hallway.”
Katie flips on her lamp when she hears these noises, but has never seen anything out of the ordinary. And she only feels the presence when she’s alone … but not just when she’s in her room.
A small common room sits between Katie’s room and her floor’s women’s bathroom. She hates going through the common room at night, but sometimes nature forces her.
“The light is usually turned off (in the common room) when I walk through that room to go to the bathroom,” she said. “I always feel like someone’s following me when I leave my room. I still feel the presence in the women’s bathroom. It’s still a very male presence. I don’t know how I know that. I just do.”
Harrison’s girlfriend lives on the fifth floor of the dorm, and when he uses the men’s bathroom – directly above the women’s bathroom Katie uses – he’s never alone.
“The bathroom’s empty except for me and it sounds like someone unzips their pants, but nothing happens, and you hear it zip back up,” he said. “I’ve looked (into the stalls) and no one is in there. I’ve also heard jingling keys in the men’s bathroom. I’m the only one in there.”
Ghosts are usually associated with a violent, or unexpected death. The most recent death on campus was in December 2005 when a male student died of diabetic shock. He died in Katie’s dormitory two floors beneath her room.
Michael, a broadcasting major, lives next to Katie and said he hasn’t heard or experienced anything paranormal. And Evan, a journalism major, lives in the room where the 21-year-old student died. He said his room is quiet, too.
“I picked it because, hey, 214, the Valentine suite,” Evan said. “Then I found someone died there.”
Has he experienced anything in his room?
“No, but if I do I’ll have you on speed dial,” Evan said.
This doesn’t make Katie feel any better. She just wants to be left alone.
“All I know is it’s a guy and I don’t know what he wants,” she said. “I don’t want to piss it off. I don’t want to talk with it. I just want to coexist. I don’t like to talk about what’s going on when I’m in my room. I hate the dark.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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.
She went home to Nebraska for the weekend and came back to find she didn’t have the room to herself after all.
“When I first moved in, it was really damp in the room and it had a different smell to it,” she said. “An old smell.”
A friend, Harrison, noticed the smell, too.
“He said, ‘it’s a fragrance,’” Katie said. “It wasn’t my perfume. I didn’t know if it was something or nothing.”
For the first week in her new room, it was nothing. The second week, she realized something else was there with her.
“I felt a presence in my room,” Katie said. “It’s almost oppressive. The feeling I get I just feel tense all the time. When I feel the presence I start looking over my shoulder a lot. It’s hard to go to sleep.”
Katie see’s things in the corner of her eyes – things that move and vanish when she turns to face them. She sleeps with covers up to her neck.
“I get these images in my mind,” she said. “It’s a guy. It’s a shadow peering over the side of my bed. It’s a loft bed so you’d have to be as tall as the room. It was just dark, but it was definitely a form. I could see eyes, nose, mouth. I just couldn’t see the details.
“I know I would freak out if I saw something, but seeing something in my head is just as bad.”
Katie hears creaking during the night that she can’t explain away as neighbors or sagging floors.
“You know how a laptop sounds when you open and close it?” she asked. “It sounds like someone is messing with my computer but they’re not. Then I just hear random noise. It is in my room. Not next door, not upstairs, not in the hallway.”
Katie flips on her lamp when she hears these noises, but has never seen anything out of the ordinary. And she only feels the presence when she’s alone … but not just when she’s in her room.
A small common room sits between Katie’s room and her floor’s women’s bathroom. She hates going through the common room at night, but sometimes nature forces her.
“The light is usually turned off (in the common room) when I walk through that room to go to the bathroom,” she said. “I always feel like someone’s following me when I leave my room. I still feel the presence in the women’s bathroom. It’s still a very male presence. I don’t know how I know that. I just do.”
Harrison’s girlfriend lives on the fifth floor of the dorm, and when he uses the men’s bathroom – directly above the women’s bathroom Katie uses – he’s never alone.
“The bathroom’s empty except for me and it sounds like someone unzips their pants, but nothing happens, and you hear it zip back up,” he said. “I’ve looked (into the stalls) and no one is in there. I’ve also heard jingling keys in the men’s bathroom. I’m the only one in there.”
Ghosts are usually associated with a violent, or unexpected death. The most recent death on campus was in December 2005 when a male student died of diabetic shock. He died in Katie’s dormitory two floors beneath her room.
Michael, a broadcasting major, lives next to Katie and said he hasn’t heard or experienced anything paranormal. And Evan, a journalism major, lives in the room where the 21-year-old student died. He said his room is quiet, too.
“I picked it because, hey, 214, the Valentine suite,” Evan said. “Then I found someone died there.”
Has he experienced anything in his room?
“No, but if I do I’ll have you on speed dial,” Evan said.
This doesn’t make Katie feel any better. She just wants to be left alone.
“All I know is it’s a guy and I don’t know what he wants,” she said. “I don’t want to piss it off. I don’t want to talk with it. I just want to coexist. I don’t like to talk about what’s going on when I’m in my room. I hate the dark.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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, October 10, 2007
What's it like to live without fear?
Christie Geier-Pratt grew up in Kansas City, spending her youth in one of the grand old houses in the northeast section of the city. The home’s large second floor, like many in the neighborhood, had been turned into apartments for soldiers returning from World War II.
Christie’s family moved into the first floor in 1964, just before she began third grade, and left during her sophomore year in high school. During that time, Christie’s parents returned the upstairs to family living … and awakened something that would haunt Christie for years.
“It started day one,” Christie said.
Her father and brothers were running errands and Christie was home with her mother and older sister.
“My sister was upstairs and my mom was in the dining room,” Christie said. “She told us to stop crying. We weren’t crying.”
Christie’s mother called the girls into the dining room where the sound of a weeping girl spread through the room.
“When you stepped into the dining room you could hear this sobbing and moaning,” Christie said. “It came in waves. It would get louder then it would fade away. If you weren’t paying attention to it you would miss it.”
The crying lasted about 40 minutes, but they only heard it in the dining room. The crying didn’t make Christie uneasy; the feeling of being watched did.
“Never before or never since I lived in that house did I have that feeling of being watched,” she said. “It was acute and was frightening at times. It was in my room on the second floor, and in a few other parts of the house – it was overwhelming.”
So much so, she wouldn’t go upstairs at night without her sister and she never changed clothes in her room.
“There was a huge stairway that went upstairs and I would wait on my sister who was five years older than me,” she said. “I would never go in my room and go to sleep by myself.”
Christie’s friends didn’t want to stay the night because they also felt they were being watched.
“It was just creepy to be in that room,” she said.
Things would bang in the attic, doors and the downstairs cabinets would slam in the night and Christie felt unseen hands holding hers.
“I remember thinking, I wonder what it would be like living in a house that wasn’t haunted?’” she said.
One night when Christie’s older sister, then a high school senior, came home from a date, they both experienced something that made them tell their mother they wanted to move.
“My sister was dating then and would come back and smoke (on the deck),” Christie said. “(One night) she said, ‘stay up and I’ll bring you something.’”
Christie tried to stay awake, but finally fell asleep on her bed.
“All of a sudden my bed started going back and forth,” she said. “It was like someone was pulling my mattress back and forth. I had to hold on.”
Christie’s sister had come home after curfew and, afraid the noise from Christie’s room would wake up their parents, ran there.
“I heard my sister running through the room and she jumped on the bed and said, ‘what are you doing? You’ll wake up mom and dad.’”
She thought Christie had been jumping on the bed … she wasn’t. But it wasn’t what Christie’s sister heard that upset her, it’s what she saw.
“She said, ‘you weren’t supposed to go on the deck without me and I saw you there,’” Christie said. “It wasn’t me. (From outside) my sister saw someone get up from my bed and walk out the door.”
They ran from the room, but something followed them.
“All of a sudden I felt tingling from my shoulders to my knees,” Christie remembered. “I said, ‘do you feel that?’ She said, ‘the tingling?’ Then she said, ‘I’m not living here anymore.’ Now I had validation.”
Christie’s family moved from the house in 1972.
“Lots of people have different experiences growing up and they are just what they are,” Christie said. “But when we moved I had peace, peace to live.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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.
Christie’s family moved into the first floor in 1964, just before she began third grade, and left during her sophomore year in high school. During that time, Christie’s parents returned the upstairs to family living … and awakened something that would haunt Christie for years.
“It started day one,” Christie said.
Her father and brothers were running errands and Christie was home with her mother and older sister.
“My sister was upstairs and my mom was in the dining room,” Christie said. “She told us to stop crying. We weren’t crying.”
Christie’s mother called the girls into the dining room where the sound of a weeping girl spread through the room.
“When you stepped into the dining room you could hear this sobbing and moaning,” Christie said. “It came in waves. It would get louder then it would fade away. If you weren’t paying attention to it you would miss it.”
The crying lasted about 40 minutes, but they only heard it in the dining room. The crying didn’t make Christie uneasy; the feeling of being watched did.
“Never before or never since I lived in that house did I have that feeling of being watched,” she said. “It was acute and was frightening at times. It was in my room on the second floor, and in a few other parts of the house – it was overwhelming.”
So much so, she wouldn’t go upstairs at night without her sister and she never changed clothes in her room.
“There was a huge stairway that went upstairs and I would wait on my sister who was five years older than me,” she said. “I would never go in my room and go to sleep by myself.”
Christie’s friends didn’t want to stay the night because they also felt they were being watched.
“It was just creepy to be in that room,” she said.
Things would bang in the attic, doors and the downstairs cabinets would slam in the night and Christie felt unseen hands holding hers.
“I remember thinking, I wonder what it would be like living in a house that wasn’t haunted?’” she said.
One night when Christie’s older sister, then a high school senior, came home from a date, they both experienced something that made them tell their mother they wanted to move.
“My sister was dating then and would come back and smoke (on the deck),” Christie said. “(One night) she said, ‘stay up and I’ll bring you something.’”
Christie tried to stay awake, but finally fell asleep on her bed.
“All of a sudden my bed started going back and forth,” she said. “It was like someone was pulling my mattress back and forth. I had to hold on.”
Christie’s sister had come home after curfew and, afraid the noise from Christie’s room would wake up their parents, ran there.
“I heard my sister running through the room and she jumped on the bed and said, ‘what are you doing? You’ll wake up mom and dad.’”
She thought Christie had been jumping on the bed … she wasn’t. But it wasn’t what Christie’s sister heard that upset her, it’s what she saw.
“She said, ‘you weren’t supposed to go on the deck without me and I saw you there,’” Christie said. “It wasn’t me. (From outside) my sister saw someone get up from my bed and walk out the door.”
They ran from the room, but something followed them.
“All of a sudden I felt tingling from my shoulders to my knees,” Christie remembered. “I said, ‘do you feel that?’ She said, ‘the tingling?’ Then she said, ‘I’m not living here anymore.’ Now I had validation.”
Christie’s family moved from the house in 1972.
“Lots of people have different experiences growing up and they are just what they are,” Christie said. “But when we moved I had peace, peace to live.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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, October 03, 2007
The Hat Man
The tumor was large, about the size of a chicken egg. In the spring of 1971, a surgeon removed the cancerous mass from 11-year-old Rob Langevoort’s brain and Rob spent a month undergoing radiation therapy.
So, when Rob started seeing things that didn’t belong in his home, he didn’t know if they were real or imaginary. His first encounter was summer 1971.
Rob slept in on a Saturday. His mom was shopping and his dad was out repairing rental property so he had their home in Framingham, Mass., to himself.
“I proceeded down the hall to the kitchen to make myself something to eat for breakfast (and) I fell flat on my face,” Rob said. “It felt as though I was pushed.”
Rob tried to push himself up but couldn’t move – he felt someone standing on his back.
“All of a sudden things gave way and my arms had straightened out and I was staring down the hall to the living room just in time to witness what appeared to be a silhouette of a man in a trench coat wearing a fedora move from the living room to the dining room,” he said.
Rob would later call this entity the Hat Man, but despite the attack, Rob followed it.
“What I did next I find hard to believe,” he said. “I ran into the adjoining kitchen, grabbed the biggest knife I could find and ran into the dinning room.”
The Hat Man wasn’t there. The sliding glass door that led from the dining room to the back porch was still closed, the drapes covering it hung still. He ran through the house and found himself alone, clenching a knife. All the doors and windows were locked.
“I searched that house good,” he said. “Nothing. I went back to the dining room and checked the sliding glass door again. It was locked.”
But he hadn’t heard the front door open, so the back porch was the only way out. He unlocked the sliding glass door and stepped onto the porch, thinking the Hat Man had somehow locked the sliding door behind him and leapt off the porch. But 10 feet below the porch railing was rock – and that was the only way down.
“My father had the builders purposely not install a stairway up to the porch to prevent any intrusions,” Rob said. The Hat Man was gone, and he didn’t jump off the porch.
Was the Hat Man real, or just a side effect of the brain tumor? Rob wondered.
“What exactly did I see or did I see it?” he asked. “And how am I gonna tell Mom?”
Rob’s mother listened to his story, and filed it away as a product of radiation or an overactive 11-year-old mind … until she saw the handiwork of the Hat Man herself.
Seven days later, “my mother prepared breakfast in the dining room, opened the drapes and got the shock of her life,” Rob said. “The sliding glass door was shattered.”
The entire six-foot glass door had been broken into small pieces. Not by a projectile from outside the house, but from something inside – only the interior of the double-pane glass was shattered. Rob was sure the Hat Man had been hiding inside the door.
But that was just the beginning. Although Rob hasn’t seen the Hat Man since he was 11, he’s seen similar shadow beings all his life, although nothing has pushed him or broken glass in decades.
Now an Internet programmer with two children, shadow people remain a part of his life.
“I still see them after 30-plus years and more often now since I have moved in with my elderly father,” Rob said. “It’s not disturbing to me other than they won’t stay still long enough for me to take a good look at them. They appear as semi-transparent charcoal gray foggy silhouettes that I catch in the corner of my eye.”
When Rob tries to look at them straight on, they zip away.
“I see them mostly in doorways and hallways,” Rob said. “I saw one once dash around a sofa. This tells me they can see objects – probably including me. I don’t get excited, (they’re) pretty commonplace with me after all these years.
“How often do I see these shadow people?” Rob said. “All the time.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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.
So, when Rob started seeing things that didn’t belong in his home, he didn’t know if they were real or imaginary. His first encounter was summer 1971.
Rob slept in on a Saturday. His mom was shopping and his dad was out repairing rental property so he had their home in Framingham, Mass., to himself.
“I proceeded down the hall to the kitchen to make myself something to eat for breakfast (and) I fell flat on my face,” Rob said. “It felt as though I was pushed.”
Rob tried to push himself up but couldn’t move – he felt someone standing on his back.
“All of a sudden things gave way and my arms had straightened out and I was staring down the hall to the living room just in time to witness what appeared to be a silhouette of a man in a trench coat wearing a fedora move from the living room to the dining room,” he said.
Rob would later call this entity the Hat Man, but despite the attack, Rob followed it.
“What I did next I find hard to believe,” he said. “I ran into the adjoining kitchen, grabbed the biggest knife I could find and ran into the dinning room.”
The Hat Man wasn’t there. The sliding glass door that led from the dining room to the back porch was still closed, the drapes covering it hung still. He ran through the house and found himself alone, clenching a knife. All the doors and windows were locked.
“I searched that house good,” he said. “Nothing. I went back to the dining room and checked the sliding glass door again. It was locked.”
But he hadn’t heard the front door open, so the back porch was the only way out. He unlocked the sliding glass door and stepped onto the porch, thinking the Hat Man had somehow locked the sliding door behind him and leapt off the porch. But 10 feet below the porch railing was rock – and that was the only way down.
“My father had the builders purposely not install a stairway up to the porch to prevent any intrusions,” Rob said. The Hat Man was gone, and he didn’t jump off the porch.
Was the Hat Man real, or just a side effect of the brain tumor? Rob wondered.
“What exactly did I see or did I see it?” he asked. “And how am I gonna tell Mom?”
Rob’s mother listened to his story, and filed it away as a product of radiation or an overactive 11-year-old mind … until she saw the handiwork of the Hat Man herself.
Seven days later, “my mother prepared breakfast in the dining room, opened the drapes and got the shock of her life,” Rob said. “The sliding glass door was shattered.”
The entire six-foot glass door had been broken into small pieces. Not by a projectile from outside the house, but from something inside – only the interior of the double-pane glass was shattered. Rob was sure the Hat Man had been hiding inside the door.
But that was just the beginning. Although Rob hasn’t seen the Hat Man since he was 11, he’s seen similar shadow beings all his life, although nothing has pushed him or broken glass in decades.
Now an Internet programmer with two children, shadow people remain a part of his life.
“I still see them after 30-plus years and more often now since I have moved in with my elderly father,” Rob said. “It’s not disturbing to me other than they won’t stay still long enough for me to take a good look at them. They appear as semi-transparent charcoal gray foggy silhouettes that I catch in the corner of my eye.”
When Rob tries to look at them straight on, they zip away.
“I see them mostly in doorways and hallways,” Rob said. “I saw one once dash around a sofa. This tells me they can see objects – probably including me. I don’t get excited, (they’re) pretty commonplace with me after all these years.
“How often do I see these shadow people?” Rob said. “All the time.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Brad Steiger takes us into the world of darkness
There’s a world we rarely see while walking through our daily lives of work, family and play. It’s a world of ghosts, earth spirits, demons and “spirit mimics” author Brad Steiger calls the Shadow World.
Steiger, who’s published 162 books since 1965 selling more than 17 million copies worldwide, first published “Shadow World: True Encounters with Beings from the Darkside,” in 2000. “Shadow World” has been re-released by Anomalist Books, giving readers another chance to peek into a world of darkness.
“There is a Shadow World that exists all around us, and when it impinges upon our ordinary plane of shared reality this dark dimension is sometimes frightening, occasionally menacing, but always worthy of cautious exploration,” writes Steiger, who has investigated ghosts, demons and UFOs since the 1950s.
So, let us enter Steiger’s Shadow World, a world of stories Steiger has collected over the decades, such as:
A Midwestern graduate student takes a drive through farm country to get his mind off an exam. In a small town he finds a midday Scandinavian festival and stopped to join the party. He not only discovers some of the residents claim to be his relatives, he finds a girl he is instantly attracted to – along with some men who instantly hate him.
After a day laughing and dancing with the girl she suddenly shuns him, and the men tell him to leave. He soon begins searching for her.
Weeks later, the student again meets some of the men who, when asked how they are related, reply, “we are related, but not in the way that you probably understand it … There are those among us who have some resentment toward your kind because truly, we were here first.” Then they tell him to give up his search for the girl.
Who were these people who were here “first?” In the Midwest, not Scandinavians, surely. Steiger calls them “spirit mimics;” beings who try to appear human for reasons unknown.
Steiger shows us glimpses into this Shadow World that uncover spirit possession, nature spirits, devils, American Indian spirit encounters, spirit parasites, and pet spirits that may not be man’s best friend.
A couple moves into a house in Birmingham, England, in May 1955, and immediately find something from the Shadow World is at work in their home. It starts as unexplained noises – doors slamming, low whispers, and an invisible dog running across the floor. One night their infant son dies. His brother later says, “On the night the baby left us, the little dog was sitting on the baby’s face.”
The Shadow World is as real as our own, and just as deadly, Steiger says.
“Shadow World” shows us a place we should strive to recognize, strive to prepare ourselves for, and strive to avoid. Yes, these are “true encounters with beings from the darkside,” and “Shadow World” acts as a handbook for people troubled with entities beyond our reality. A handbook, yes, but one that is convincing, frightening and fun to read.
Enjoy.
Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to the Show-Me State’s Most Spirited Spots,” is available now. Order it from amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com or tsup.truman.edu. Visit Jason’s Web site, www.jasonoffutt.com, for his other books.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
When Ouija Boards Go Bad
A plastic triangle skittered across the surface of a game board. A group of preteen girls, including Inez Pace of St. Louis, didn’t believe anything supernatural moved the piece because, after all, the Ouija board was a toy.
“Early in my teenage years, my friends and I would often play with the Ouija board when we would have sleepovers,” Inez said. “We would ask harmless questions as to how many children we’d have, who we’d marry, etc.”
Nothing really out of the ordinary happened to the girls during their play sessions, “and certainly nothing too scary,” Inez said. The friends eventually outgrew their interest in Ouija boards until the spring semester of 1983 while Inez attended Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau.
“One boring night, my dorm mates and I decided to use the common room’s Ouija board,” Inez said. “At first it seemed harmless enough. We’d ask silly questions and our spirit named Sarah would answer us.”
Inez and her friends were quickly entrapped by the board, feeling “compelled to use the board as often as possible.” Then a friend named Tracy from another floor attended a Ouija session, and their harmless play turned sinister.
“We started asking Sarah how she died, how old she was when she died, and finally what she looked like,” Inez said.
Sarah told the coeds she died at 23 when she was hit by a runaway horse and carriage. But Sarah’s answer to the final question sent the girls running.
“When we asked Sarah what she looked like, she spelled out ‘like Tracy only different eyes,’” Inez said.
One young woman in the group asked Sarah to show them.
“Tracy was a red head with green eyes,” Inez said. “Sarah spelled out for us to look at Tracy and instantly her eyes turned blue and her facial features became sharper.”
Tracy screamed and said an electrical current had run through her body.
“We all became excited and told Tracy what happened,” Inez said. “Of course, she wanted to see it, too.”
Sarah spelled out for Tracy to take a mirror and look in the window behind her. As Tracy looked into the mirror, she saw someone standing in the room’s window – a window that looked over a treeless courtyard from three floors up.
“We looked and saw what appeared to be a head looking in at us,” Inez said. “We asked the spirit, ‘are you Sarah?’ It went to ‘no,’ so we asked, ‘who are you?’”
The girls didn’t wait for the entity’s entire response.
“It started to spell S-A-T-A … that was enough for that me,” Inez said. “I knocked the center piece off of the board and told everyone to go to their rooms. We were pretty frightened – the (figure in the window) did not look like a lady at all.”
As Inez struck the center piece off the board, the room grew cold enough the students saw their breath. They ran from Inez’s room to another girl’s room and began praying.
“We were so frightened that none of us could sleep; we held vigil that evening to make sure nothing was going on in my room,” Inez said. “Around 2:30 a.m., we decided to get a snack from the vending machine and as we walked by my door, the alarm clock went off. It had been set for 6:30 a.m.”
One of the girls entered Inez’s room to shut off the alarm and found the windows thrown open and sheets pulled off the beds.
“As she bent down to turn it off the alarm, the two necklaces she was wearing became entwined and started to choke her,” Inez said. “When she got to the hallway she removed her necklaces and noticed that the cross had been moved from one chain to the other. That was enough for us.”
When the sun rose, the girls went to the Catholic house on campus and told the priest what had happened.
“He came to my room that day and blessed it with holy water,” Inez said. “He also removed the board from the dorm and burned it. We got a stern lecture that as Catholics we should know better than to use something like that.”
Inez graduated from Southeast Missouri State University with a degree in communications and theater in 1987. But she didn’t live in that dorm room for much of that time.
“It took me a while to get the courage to return to my room to sleep, and even then I always had someone stay in the room with me,” Inez said. “The following year I requested a different dorm to reside in.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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.
“Early in my teenage years, my friends and I would often play with the Ouija board when we would have sleepovers,” Inez said. “We would ask harmless questions as to how many children we’d have, who we’d marry, etc.”
Nothing really out of the ordinary happened to the girls during their play sessions, “and certainly nothing too scary,” Inez said. The friends eventually outgrew their interest in Ouija boards until the spring semester of 1983 while Inez attended Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau.
“One boring night, my dorm mates and I decided to use the common room’s Ouija board,” Inez said. “At first it seemed harmless enough. We’d ask silly questions and our spirit named Sarah would answer us.”
Inez and her friends were quickly entrapped by the board, feeling “compelled to use the board as often as possible.” Then a friend named Tracy from another floor attended a Ouija session, and their harmless play turned sinister.
“We started asking Sarah how she died, how old she was when she died, and finally what she looked like,” Inez said.
Sarah told the coeds she died at 23 when she was hit by a runaway horse and carriage. But Sarah’s answer to the final question sent the girls running.
“When we asked Sarah what she looked like, she spelled out ‘like Tracy only different eyes,’” Inez said.
One young woman in the group asked Sarah to show them.
“Tracy was a red head with green eyes,” Inez said. “Sarah spelled out for us to look at Tracy and instantly her eyes turned blue and her facial features became sharper.”
Tracy screamed and said an electrical current had run through her body.
“We all became excited and told Tracy what happened,” Inez said. “Of course, she wanted to see it, too.”
Sarah spelled out for Tracy to take a mirror and look in the window behind her. As Tracy looked into the mirror, she saw someone standing in the room’s window – a window that looked over a treeless courtyard from three floors up.
“We looked and saw what appeared to be a head looking in at us,” Inez said. “We asked the spirit, ‘are you Sarah?’ It went to ‘no,’ so we asked, ‘who are you?’”
The girls didn’t wait for the entity’s entire response.
“It started to spell S-A-T-A … that was enough for that me,” Inez said. “I knocked the center piece off of the board and told everyone to go to their rooms. We were pretty frightened – the (figure in the window) did not look like a lady at all.”
As Inez struck the center piece off the board, the room grew cold enough the students saw their breath. They ran from Inez’s room to another girl’s room and began praying.
“We were so frightened that none of us could sleep; we held vigil that evening to make sure nothing was going on in my room,” Inez said. “Around 2:30 a.m., we decided to get a snack from the vending machine and as we walked by my door, the alarm clock went off. It had been set for 6:30 a.m.”
One of the girls entered Inez’s room to shut off the alarm and found the windows thrown open and sheets pulled off the beds.
“As she bent down to turn it off the alarm, the two necklaces she was wearing became entwined and started to choke her,” Inez said. “When she got to the hallway she removed her necklaces and noticed that the cross had been moved from one chain to the other. That was enough for us.”
When the sun rose, the girls went to the Catholic house on campus and told the priest what had happened.
“He came to my room that day and blessed it with holy water,” Inez said. “He also removed the board from the dorm and burned it. We got a stern lecture that as Catholics we should know better than to use something like that.”
Inez graduated from Southeast Missouri State University with a degree in communications and theater in 1987. But she didn’t live in that dorm room for much of that time.
“It took me a while to get the courage to return to my room to sleep, and even then I always had someone stay in the room with me,” Inez said. “The following year I requested a different dorm to reside in.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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, September 18, 2007
The paranormal is intrusive – don’t invite it home
Mary moved into an old farmhouse outside St. Louis in February 2006, away from highways, concrete oceans and close neighbors. She generally stayed alone and things were relatively quiet … until something came into her home.
“Shortly after (moving in), on a whim I bought a book about spirit summoning, spells and other bits of magic,” she said. ”I thought it would be fun to try a spell, so I did. Nothing life altering, something cute and mild, although it escapes me what I was trying to do at the time.”
Casting the first spell roused her curiosity further, so she tried more. That’s when her trouble began.
“I have always had a mild interest in the occult, and also enjoy a good scare now and again,” she said. “But I am beginning to wonder if I might not have created some problems for myself unintentionally.”
Mary may have invited negative entities into her home. According to “Disciple To Magic” by Rev. Lucian Agrippa Melampus’ Paul, spells and rituals “open the spiritual doors to powers and forces unseen;” doors that may best remain closed.
As the spells increased, strange shadows began appearing to Mary.
“It seemed the more I did the more I began to see these shadow people,” Mary said. “At first it was just out of the corner of my eye and only for a fleeting few seconds.”
But the shadows moved in and made themselves at home. Mary stopped casting spells, but the shadows have not left her.
“They continued to progress, however, to a point where they were no longer just out of the corner of my eye, and while they wouldn’t sit down and have a cup of coffee, they seemed to linger,” she said. “I have a feeling both my cat and my dog see them even better than I do, as they will throw fits for no reason even in broad daylight.”
The back door to Mary’s home started opening on its own, straight razor blades have began appearing in odd places around her house, and the shadows have become bolder.
“I’m not just seeing shadow people anymore; I’m seeing actual things with color and features. It is rare, but it does happen,” she said. “I’m also beginning to hear things.”
Mary’s heard her name screamed in the house at night while sleeping, and during the day when she’s fully awake.
“I don’t have close neighbors, so its not just ambient noise,” she said. “I’ve also heard music. It’s pretty faint, but if I concentrate I can hear the words.”
Dawn, a medium from southern Missouri, is familiar with opening these spiritual doors. During an emotionally stressful time as a teen, she opened one – and let something out.
“They are very dangerous,” she said. “(People) begin to open up the doorways of communication with the other side.”
Negative energies come through these doorways, she said.
“I actually had something evil in my house; this very large dark presence,” Dawn said. “From 18 to 21 I tried hard to ignore it. The more I tried to ignore it, the more things moved in my house. People who haven’t experienced that think it’s make believe … You have to deal with it.”
Mary hasn’t dealt with it. The visitations continue and she’s beginning to doubt her sanity.
“Is it really real?” Mary asked. “I’m really worried that I might be becoming a schizophrenic.”
Or maybe she’s just the host of a house guest she didn’t want to invite.
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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: https://tsup.truman.edu/store/ViewBook.aspx?Book=849 or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.
“Shortly after (moving in), on a whim I bought a book about spirit summoning, spells and other bits of magic,” she said. ”I thought it would be fun to try a spell, so I did. Nothing life altering, something cute and mild, although it escapes me what I was trying to do at the time.”
Casting the first spell roused her curiosity further, so she tried more. That’s when her trouble began.
“I have always had a mild interest in the occult, and also enjoy a good scare now and again,” she said. “But I am beginning to wonder if I might not have created some problems for myself unintentionally.”
Mary may have invited negative entities into her home. According to “Disciple To Magic” by Rev. Lucian Agrippa Melampus’ Paul, spells and rituals “open the spiritual doors to powers and forces unseen;” doors that may best remain closed.
As the spells increased, strange shadows began appearing to Mary.
“It seemed the more I did the more I began to see these shadow people,” Mary said. “At first it was just out of the corner of my eye and only for a fleeting few seconds.”
But the shadows moved in and made themselves at home. Mary stopped casting spells, but the shadows have not left her.
“They continued to progress, however, to a point where they were no longer just out of the corner of my eye, and while they wouldn’t sit down and have a cup of coffee, they seemed to linger,” she said. “I have a feeling both my cat and my dog see them even better than I do, as they will throw fits for no reason even in broad daylight.”
The back door to Mary’s home started opening on its own, straight razor blades have began appearing in odd places around her house, and the shadows have become bolder.
“I’m not just seeing shadow people anymore; I’m seeing actual things with color and features. It is rare, but it does happen,” she said. “I’m also beginning to hear things.”
Mary’s heard her name screamed in the house at night while sleeping, and during the day when she’s fully awake.
“I don’t have close neighbors, so its not just ambient noise,” she said. “I’ve also heard music. It’s pretty faint, but if I concentrate I can hear the words.”
Dawn, a medium from southern Missouri, is familiar with opening these spiritual doors. During an emotionally stressful time as a teen, she opened one – and let something out.
“They are very dangerous,” she said. “(People) begin to open up the doorways of communication with the other side.”
Negative energies come through these doorways, she said.
“I actually had something evil in my house; this very large dark presence,” Dawn said. “From 18 to 21 I tried hard to ignore it. The more I tried to ignore it, the more things moved in my house. People who haven’t experienced that think it’s make believe … You have to deal with it.”
Mary hasn’t dealt with it. The visitations continue and she’s beginning to doubt her sanity.
“Is it really real?” Mary asked. “I’m really worried that I might be becoming a schizophrenic.”
Or maybe she’s just the host of a house guest she didn’t want to invite.
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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: https://tsup.truman.edu/store/ViewBook.aspx?Book=849 or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.
Monday, September 10, 2007
The Ghost of Dugan Lane
Author's note: As my loyal readers know, I took a few months off from the blog to work on my new book, "Never to Far From Home: UFOs, Ghosts, Bigfoot and the Gates of Hell" (I’m making progress), and to promote my current book "Haunted Missouri" (which is selling quite well ... thank you). Now I'm back, and the poll I posted overwhelmingly (65 percent) requested a ghost story, so here it is: The Ghost of Dugan Lane. Enjoy.
Dugan Lane runs north along Indian Creek through the wooded, hilly landscape of southern Missouri. It lies near a small town that boasted a tomato cannery during the Great Depression.
The town is almost empty now, but this story isn’t about the town, it’s about a young woman who lived near the town at the turn of the 20th century.
Amanda Dawn is a fictitious name given to the young woman by Ozark author Ronnie Powell who promised family members and witnesses he’d never use real names, and, for the sake of Ronnie’s pledge, the town’s nameless, too. The house Amanda lived in isn’t there anymore; it burned several years ago, but Ronnie knows Amanda’s still there – he’s talked with people who’ve seen her.
“I’ve talked to people who say they actually saw the ghost of Dugan Lane,” Ronnie said. “Two or three of the last surviving people who witnessed the ghost – they’re dead now – and to them it was real. The ghost of Dugan Lane has some legend and truth in it.”
Amanda lived in a house at the bottom of a hill with her husband and toddler, Roberta. One morning, Amanda sat Roberta on the floor and started preparing breakfast. When she turned to look for Roberta, Roberta was gone.
“Roberta got curious,” Ronnie said. “She tried to pick up a cricket and it hopped out the door and she went with it.”
Roberta wandered into the well house and fell into the well.
“Amanda heard her scream and ran looking for her,” Ronnie said. “The only thing she saw was Roberta’s hand disappearing in the dark water below. They tried for days and days to find the body and never did.”
Depression consumed Amanda. She sat staring at nothing for days.
“A few days later she walked out to the road as her husband went to the corn field. Then went and jumped into the well,” Ronnie said. “They found her body.”
For years after the tragedy, people saw Amanda walking the road crying out for Roberta.
“The last time she’s been sighted, strangely, was about a year ago,” Ronnie said. “There’s no house there or nothing, but this woman said she saw a woman dressed in an old tattered gown with long black hair. She didn’t know anything of this story.”
Ronnie stayed in the old house one night, waiting and watching for Amanda’s ghost, but she never appeared.
“There are areas and there are buildings that have very (strange) activities,” he said. “I’m not afraid of ghosts and would like to see one and visit it. I’m on the upper end of non-believing, but there are things that are unexplained.”
Ronnie’s had an interest in ghosts, and writing, all his life – he’s written six books and published two. His account of the ghost of Dugan Lane was published in the premiere issue of Country Folk Magazine.
As the years, and decades slip past, and people forget the story of Amanda and Roberta, a silent witness keeps vigil on Dugan Lane.
“Whatever happens down there keeps happening,” Ronnie said. “She’s still looking for her little girl.”
Ronnie’s book, “South Through Bare Foot Pass,” is available in some local Ozark stores or by e-mailing him at captredoak@centurytel.net.
His second book, “Tiddleson Son of Tiddle” – an Ozark fantasy adventure – is available at Powell's Web site: www.ronniepowellproductions.com.
Copright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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: https://tsup.truman.edu/store/ViewBook.aspx?Book=849 or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.
Dugan Lane runs north along Indian Creek through the wooded, hilly landscape of southern Missouri. It lies near a small town that boasted a tomato cannery during the Great Depression.
The town is almost empty now, but this story isn’t about the town, it’s about a young woman who lived near the town at the turn of the 20th century.
Amanda Dawn is a fictitious name given to the young woman by Ozark author Ronnie Powell who promised family members and witnesses he’d never use real names, and, for the sake of Ronnie’s pledge, the town’s nameless, too. The house Amanda lived in isn’t there anymore; it burned several years ago, but Ronnie knows Amanda’s still there – he’s talked with people who’ve seen her.
“I’ve talked to people who say they actually saw the ghost of Dugan Lane,” Ronnie said. “Two or three of the last surviving people who witnessed the ghost – they’re dead now – and to them it was real. The ghost of Dugan Lane has some legend and truth in it.”
Amanda lived in a house at the bottom of a hill with her husband and toddler, Roberta. One morning, Amanda sat Roberta on the floor and started preparing breakfast. When she turned to look for Roberta, Roberta was gone.
“Roberta got curious,” Ronnie said. “She tried to pick up a cricket and it hopped out the door and she went with it.”
Roberta wandered into the well house and fell into the well.
“Amanda heard her scream and ran looking for her,” Ronnie said. “The only thing she saw was Roberta’s hand disappearing in the dark water below. They tried for days and days to find the body and never did.”
Depression consumed Amanda. She sat staring at nothing for days.
“A few days later she walked out to the road as her husband went to the corn field. Then went and jumped into the well,” Ronnie said. “They found her body.”
For years after the tragedy, people saw Amanda walking the road crying out for Roberta.
“The last time she’s been sighted, strangely, was about a year ago,” Ronnie said. “There’s no house there or nothing, but this woman said she saw a woman dressed in an old tattered gown with long black hair. She didn’t know anything of this story.”
Ronnie stayed in the old house one night, waiting and watching for Amanda’s ghost, but she never appeared.
“There are areas and there are buildings that have very (strange) activities,” he said. “I’m not afraid of ghosts and would like to see one and visit it. I’m on the upper end of non-believing, but there are things that are unexplained.”
Ronnie’s had an interest in ghosts, and writing, all his life – he’s written six books and published two. His account of the ghost of Dugan Lane was published in the premiere issue of Country Folk Magazine.
As the years, and decades slip past, and people forget the story of Amanda and Roberta, a silent witness keeps vigil on Dugan Lane.
“Whatever happens down there keeps happening,” Ronnie said. “She’s still looking for her little girl.”
Ronnie’s book, “South Through Bare Foot Pass,” is available in some local Ozark stores or by e-mailing him at captredoak@centurytel.net.
His second book, “Tiddleson Son of Tiddle” – an Ozark fantasy adventure – is available at Powell's Web site: www.ronniepowellproductions.com.
Copright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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: https://tsup.truman.edu/store/ViewBook.aspx?Book=849 or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Shadow People
The response to all the Shadow People articles posted here has been amazing, so I'm expanding my "From the Shadows" realm to include one forum just for tales of the Shadow People.
Do you have a story you'd like to tell? There's always a place at "Shadow People" (http://www.shadowpeoplebook.blogspot.com).
Fresh "From the Shadows" entries will resume in mid-September. Stories on ghosts, UFOs, and a visit from Death are a few of the dark offerings.
See you in the Shadows.
Do you have a story you'd like to tell? There's always a place at "Shadow People" (http://www.shadowpeoplebook.blogspot.com).
Fresh "From the Shadows" entries will resume in mid-September. Stories on ghosts, UFOs, and a visit from Death are a few of the dark offerings.
See you in the Shadows.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
A Couple of Announcements
ANNOUNCEMENT 1: “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to the Show-Me State’s Most Spirited Spots” is now available.
Go to Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, tsup.truman.edu or www.jasonoffutt.com to order a book Loyd Auerbach, author of “A Paranormal Casebook: Ghost Hunting in the New Millennium,” calls “a great book of hauntings, well-researched and fun to read;” and Rosemary Ellen Guiley, author of “The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits” calls “an engaging read from start to finish, and an invaluable resource for every paranormal collection.”
The book will also be available at Barnes and Noble, Borders or
Books-A-Million stores in Missouri after May 28.
I’d like to thank all of you for your e-mails of support for my book and my blog. They’ve meant a lot to me.
ANNOUNCEMENT 2: The following is a list of book signings and radio interviews scheduled throughout the summer. This list, I hope, will grow.
June 2: Hannibal book signing. Details at
www.rockcliffemansion.com/special_events.shtml.
June 4: Radio interview on World of the Unexplained from 7 to 9 p.m. Go to www.worldoftheunexplained.com for more details and to listen live, or to find the archive (uh, later, of course).
June 23: Book signing at the Ray County Library, Richmond, Mo., 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Go to http://raycountylibrary.homestead.com/index.html for details (soon. The event isn’t yet posted).
June 29: Book signing at Borders in St. Joseph, Mo., 6 p.m.
June 30: Book signing at the Jesse James Farm near Kearney, Mo., 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
July 6: Book signings at Downtown Book and Toy, Jefferson City, Mo., from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., and at Sedalia Book and Toy, Sedalia, Mo., 4 to 6 p.m.
July 21: Book signing at Pythian Castle, Springfield, Mo. Details at
www.pythiancastle.com.
July 29: Radio interview on Ghostly Talk from 5:30 to 6 p.m. Listen live at www.ghostlytalk.com.
Other events are in the works. Stay tuned.
ANNOUNCEMENT 3: This blog is going on hiatus for a few months. With all the promotion for “Haunted Missouri,” and the research and writing for my next book of paranormal stories, I have to take a break. Fresh “From the Shadows” entries will resume this fall. Stay tuned!
But, please, if you have any stories of the paranormal, let me know. Even though I’m taking a break from this blog, I’m still writing the book; your stories will be welcomed. I can always be reached at jasonoffutt@hotmail.com.
Thanks again.
Jason
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Oklahoma -- a Bigfoot hotspot
Author’s note: After the recent “From the Shadows” detailing Kansan Randy Harrington’s Bigfoot encounter in southern Oklahoma, others have come forward with their sightings. Here is one such encounter.
Tall, straight pine trees cover portions of southern Oklahoma and northeast Texas. These woods are home to mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes and an animal that is still in the realm of legend – except to those who have seen it.
Retired autoworker Ray E. Irwin, Sr., 63, of Blue Springs, saw something in the woods of southern Oklahoma in September 1961. He saw Bigfoot.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I saw it.”
Randy was on leave from the Navy and went home to Hugo, Okla. He and his girlfriend went on a date.
“We went to Spencerville Crossing about 15 miles northeast of Hugo,” he said. “We went there to swim and picnic and we stayed there pretty late.”
Spencerville Crossing is now under the waters of the man-made Hugo Lake, but in 1961 it was a popular swimming hole.
“We were coming back from that area, going south on Highway 93,” he said. “It was about 2 to 2:30 in the morning about 8 miles from Hugo, that’s when I saw this Bigfoot.”
Ray was driving his girlfriend home when the headlights of his car struck a creature standing in the highway.
“He was standing upright in the middle of the highway on the yellow strip,” Ray said. “He was standing upright on two legs. And, as I got closer to him, his head was turned toward my car – I didn’t stop.” Ray paused to laugh. “I was probably doing 30 to 40 (mph). When I got next to him he looked right at me.”
The creature didn’t move as Ray passed.
“I passed right by it on the driver’s side,” Ray said. “It stood there. It didn’t run. When it saw me coming it looked at me. It did not run off the highway, like he might have seen cars before. He wasn’t scared of the vehicle.”
The Bigfoot was smaller than the usually reported 7- to 8-feet tall, 450-pound creatures. Ray said it was about the height of his car, about five feet.
“It might not have been full grown. It could have been a smaller one,” Ray said. “The hair was brown, but its facial features didn’t have hair.”
The one part of its face Ray could make out as he drove past was its nose.
“It had a nose, but it seemed like it wasn’t like a gorilla,” he said. “It seemed like it wasn’t as wide.”
He turned around to make another pass by the creature, but it was gone. He took his girlfriend home, then went to tell his family.
“Nobody believed me,” he said. “They were saying you probably saw a monkey.”
The winter quarters of a local circus nearby, but Ray’s positive he didn’t see a monkey.
“When you see something you’ve never seen before it really scares you,” Ray said. “The closer I got the more scared I became. I had goose bumps come up on my arms. It wasn’t a monkey.”
The term Bigfoot wasn’t used in Oklahoma in 1961, but that doesn’t mean people hadn’t seen one. It was called things like Hairy Man, Big Ed, the Green Hill Monster, and Chicken Man.
“They called it the Chicken Man. It was stealing chickens,” Ray said. “They didn’t call it Bigfoot.”
Recent Bigfoot sightings in this area include a fall 1995 sighting in Choctaw County near Soper, Okla., an Oct. 30, 2002 sighting in Choctaw County near Sawyer, Okla., a Aug. 5, 2004 encounter near a hunting cabin in the Arbuckle Mountains and occasional sightings in nearby Lamar County, Texas.
Ray, however, has kept his encounter quiet, until now.
“I’ve told my family about it and bored my wife with it,” Ray said. “But I’ve never told anyone else. This is the first time I’ve really told anyone my story.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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: https://tsup.truman.edu/store/ViewBook.aspx?Book=849 or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.
Tall, straight pine trees cover portions of southern Oklahoma and northeast Texas. These woods are home to mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes and an animal that is still in the realm of legend – except to those who have seen it.
Retired autoworker Ray E. Irwin, Sr., 63, of Blue Springs, saw something in the woods of southern Oklahoma in September 1961. He saw Bigfoot.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I saw it.”
Randy was on leave from the Navy and went home to Hugo, Okla. He and his girlfriend went on a date.
“We went to Spencerville Crossing about 15 miles northeast of Hugo,” he said. “We went there to swim and picnic and we stayed there pretty late.”
Spencerville Crossing is now under the waters of the man-made Hugo Lake, but in 1961 it was a popular swimming hole.
“We were coming back from that area, going south on Highway 93,” he said. “It was about 2 to 2:30 in the morning about 8 miles from Hugo, that’s when I saw this Bigfoot.”
Ray was driving his girlfriend home when the headlights of his car struck a creature standing in the highway.
“He was standing upright in the middle of the highway on the yellow strip,” Ray said. “He was standing upright on two legs. And, as I got closer to him, his head was turned toward my car – I didn’t stop.” Ray paused to laugh. “I was probably doing 30 to 40 (mph). When I got next to him he looked right at me.”
The creature didn’t move as Ray passed.
“I passed right by it on the driver’s side,” Ray said. “It stood there. It didn’t run. When it saw me coming it looked at me. It did not run off the highway, like he might have seen cars before. He wasn’t scared of the vehicle.”
The Bigfoot was smaller than the usually reported 7- to 8-feet tall, 450-pound creatures. Ray said it was about the height of his car, about five feet.
“It might not have been full grown. It could have been a smaller one,” Ray said. “The hair was brown, but its facial features didn’t have hair.”
The one part of its face Ray could make out as he drove past was its nose.
“It had a nose, but it seemed like it wasn’t like a gorilla,” he said. “It seemed like it wasn’t as wide.”
He turned around to make another pass by the creature, but it was gone. He took his girlfriend home, then went to tell his family.
“Nobody believed me,” he said. “They were saying you probably saw a monkey.”
The winter quarters of a local circus nearby, but Ray’s positive he didn’t see a monkey.
“When you see something you’ve never seen before it really scares you,” Ray said. “The closer I got the more scared I became. I had goose bumps come up on my arms. It wasn’t a monkey.”
The term Bigfoot wasn’t used in Oklahoma in 1961, but that doesn’t mean people hadn’t seen one. It was called things like Hairy Man, Big Ed, the Green Hill Monster, and Chicken Man.
“They called it the Chicken Man. It was stealing chickens,” Ray said. “They didn’t call it Bigfoot.”
Recent Bigfoot sightings in this area include a fall 1995 sighting in Choctaw County near Soper, Okla., an Oct. 30, 2002 sighting in Choctaw County near Sawyer, Okla., a Aug. 5, 2004 encounter near a hunting cabin in the Arbuckle Mountains and occasional sightings in nearby Lamar County, Texas.
Ray, however, has kept his encounter quiet, until now.
“I’ve told my family about it and bored my wife with it,” Ray said. “But I’ve never told anyone else. This is the first time I’ve really told anyone my story.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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: https://tsup.truman.edu/store/ViewBook.aspx?Book=849 or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Far and wide, ghosts share a common thread
The strange and unnerving are universal. Separated by languages and oceans, people from across the world have experienced similar visits from things they can’t explain.
Greg Keskinen is an American who has lived in Tokyo for almost four years.
“I’ve found that quite a few people here are able to see ghosts or spirits,” he said. “In the States, I never met even one person who had seen an apparition, but here, I’ve met over 10 so far.”
Some of the encounters include a woman seeing a man dressed in samurai armor standing in her home, a nurse who often sees shadow people in a hospital, and a friend who saw an angel.
“My coworker, Tokiko, sees ghosts often, and once saw an ‘angel,’” Greg said. “A beautiful woman dressed in shining white, who was scattering a golden, glittering dust in the air. … It seems to me that Japan is quite a goldmine of strangeness.”
A “From the Shadows” reader in Stockholm, Sweden has also seen a ghost in her home – but her experience was a little too personal for comfort.
Fatima-Zohraa Tribak, 39, was cooking dinner when she realized she was not alone.
“It all started in the middle of the day,” she said. “I tried to turn a lid that didn’t want to open. I remember I was thinking, ‘now it would have been nice to have a strong man helping me.’”
The lid wouldn’t budge. She placed the unopened can on the counter and started preparing something else.
“I gave up trying to open the can and I turned my back on it,” she said. “Then I heard ‘click,’ but I didn’t care because I had something cooking on the stove. I just thought that it was the food cooking making the sound. And then I turned around and what I saw made me jump.”
The lid was lying next to the can.
“I thought it was a good helping spirit, so I said ‘thank you’ out loud,” she said. “And then I felt stupid and started to try to think of a good natural explanation for what happened.”
Later that evening, she was getting ready for sleep when her ‘good helping spirit’ visited again.
“I had been in the bathroom and was walking out. I turned the light out and started to walk towards my bedroom,” she said. “For some reason I looked into a big mirror and I saw a shadow shaped like a man. I thought to myself, ‘what is making this shadow look like this in the hall?’”
In the mirror, the shadow was accompanied by a light … a light she had turned out.
“I turned around and the light in the hall was still turned out, so there was nothing I could see there,” she said. “I was still looking into the dark when I thought I must have been mistaken of what I saw.”
She wasn’t.
“I turned around to go to my bed and I looked into my big mirror again to make sure I was wrong from the start,” she said, but what she saw terrified her. “There the light was and the man again. This time I ran into my bedroom and I jumped up on my bed shaking. I’m a 39-year-old woman, but I felt like a small girl at this moment.”
She’s seen the apparition since this encounter – as recently as April, “but this time it moved” – and, although the figure has never harmed her, she’s worried it might.
“I have tried to find out if this is something I should be scared of or if I can relax,” she said. “I didn’t know where I should go to ask someone without them thinking that I’m crazy. I feel quite silly. But in the same way I’m thinking, why should I feel silly? I really would like to know what this is. Is it something in my mind, or is it something real?”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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: https://tsup.truman.edu/store/ViewBook.aspx?Book=849 or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.
Greg Keskinen is an American who has lived in Tokyo for almost four years.
“I’ve found that quite a few people here are able to see ghosts or spirits,” he said. “In the States, I never met even one person who had seen an apparition, but here, I’ve met over 10 so far.”
Some of the encounters include a woman seeing a man dressed in samurai armor standing in her home, a nurse who often sees shadow people in a hospital, and a friend who saw an angel.
“My coworker, Tokiko, sees ghosts often, and once saw an ‘angel,’” Greg said. “A beautiful woman dressed in shining white, who was scattering a golden, glittering dust in the air. … It seems to me that Japan is quite a goldmine of strangeness.”
A “From the Shadows” reader in Stockholm, Sweden has also seen a ghost in her home – but her experience was a little too personal for comfort.
Fatima-Zohraa Tribak, 39, was cooking dinner when she realized she was not alone.
“It all started in the middle of the day,” she said. “I tried to turn a lid that didn’t want to open. I remember I was thinking, ‘now it would have been nice to have a strong man helping me.’”
The lid wouldn’t budge. She placed the unopened can on the counter and started preparing something else.
“I gave up trying to open the can and I turned my back on it,” she said. “Then I heard ‘click,’ but I didn’t care because I had something cooking on the stove. I just thought that it was the food cooking making the sound. And then I turned around and what I saw made me jump.”
The lid was lying next to the can.
“I thought it was a good helping spirit, so I said ‘thank you’ out loud,” she said. “And then I felt stupid and started to try to think of a good natural explanation for what happened.”
Later that evening, she was getting ready for sleep when her ‘good helping spirit’ visited again.
“I had been in the bathroom and was walking out. I turned the light out and started to walk towards my bedroom,” she said. “For some reason I looked into a big mirror and I saw a shadow shaped like a man. I thought to myself, ‘what is making this shadow look like this in the hall?’”
In the mirror, the shadow was accompanied by a light … a light she had turned out.
“I turned around and the light in the hall was still turned out, so there was nothing I could see there,” she said. “I was still looking into the dark when I thought I must have been mistaken of what I saw.”
She wasn’t.
“I turned around to go to my bed and I looked into my big mirror again to make sure I was wrong from the start,” she said, but what she saw terrified her. “There the light was and the man again. This time I ran into my bedroom and I jumped up on my bed shaking. I’m a 39-year-old woman, but I felt like a small girl at this moment.”
She’s seen the apparition since this encounter – as recently as April, “but this time it moved” – and, although the figure has never harmed her, she’s worried it might.
“I have tried to find out if this is something I should be scared of or if I can relax,” she said. “I didn’t know where I should go to ask someone without them thinking that I’m crazy. I feel quite silly. But in the same way I’m thinking, why should I feel silly? I really would like to know what this is. Is it something in my mind, or is it something real?”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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: https://tsup.truman.edu/store/ViewBook.aspx?Book=849 or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Windyville and the Internet Curse
A woman with the head of a goat. A spectral hitchhiker. Red eyes that stare at passersby from the dead, black windows of abandoned buildings.
This is the legend of Windyville, Mo.
“Visitors have reported screams from the old cannery building, and a horseback rider was spotted at Lone Rock Cemetery. It’s also home to spiritual cults, so watch out,” proclaimed an Oct. 20, 2005 article in USA Today.
Sounds like a great place to hunt ghosts, right? Not really.
Ronnie Powell lives in Windyville, a town many sites on the Internet say is a ghost town. It’s not. The town was once home to a tomato cannery, grocery store, post office and a number of families. The buildings are still there, but the businesses aren’t, and only four or five houses are occupied.
“Windyville looks deserted,” Ronnie said. “But real live people live here.”
The population of Windyville grows, however, when ghost hunters are in town.
“(These) people came to Windyville and they pilfered, they broke into buildings, they had rituals, and it got so bad that we got the law to get rid of most of them,” he said. “They told them not to come back.”
Ronnie, who retired after 30 years with the Missouri Department of Conservation, has always liked to write and once penned a few Windyville ghost stories for “More Missouri Ghosts,” by Joan Gilbert. He wrote the stories as fiction but they were published as fact. Although the stories were left out of the next edition of the book, they’d already hit the Internet.
“I know (the trouble) is all because of me and my stories,” he said. “‘The Ghosts of Windyville’ was just tidbits of things that I couldn’t corroborate. They were just stories. I sure did ruin Windyville. ”
Ghost hunters and the curious have vandalized the buildings, trespassed and terrorized the few residents of the town.
“The stories I could write about the ghost hunters would be better than the ghost stories,” Ronnie said. “They wouldn’t want people looking in their windows.”
Although people have trespassed around his home, nothing bothered him as badly as the Goths.
“They had some kind of a fire ritual down here,” he said. “I ran them off. They all ganged up around me. I told them I was armed and they scattered. They were dancing around a fire and were chanting and all that. One man had a knife. I saw that.”
The School of Metaphysics in Windyville probably hasn’t helped the town’s reputation.
“They picked Windyville as the ninth (most haunted) place,” Dr. Barbara Condron of the School of Metaphysics said of the USA Today article. “They picked dead places. Windyville isn’t dead.”
The school, which has 15 branches throughout the Midwest, focuses on channeling the mind’s energy in positive ways and learning how to co-exist with your fellow man – but the locals don’t always view it that way.
“We’re kind of the talk of the high school here,” Barbara said. “A lot of times we get joke calls. ‘Ah, yes, you guys move things with your mind out there?’ It’s the Uri Geller bending spoons thing. It hasn’t been good.”
And the school has experienced trespassing and vandalism, too; much like a recent incident.
“Two guys who graduated Lebanon high school were going to chain our gate to their pickup, tear it down and drag it down the road,” Barbara said. “They were fortunately caught by local authorities.”
The nature of the School of Metaphysics calls for thinking positively. The school rarely prosecutes – it didn’t in this case – and Barbara said she doesn’t think the kids from Lebanon will come back.
“It’s one thing to do it in the night time and another to look the people in the eye the next day,” she said. “It’s the golden rule in Christianity. You treat people the way you want to be treated. I hope it heals.”
Today, the Windyville ghost stories remain on dozens of ghost hunter Web sites, which means Windyville may not be off the paranormal map anytime soon.
“It’s Pandora’s box. It’s already been opened,” Barbara said. “Technology brings good to the world, but there’s always a dark side.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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 coming in May. FREE SHIPPING when you order online at: https://tsup.truman.edu/store/ViewBook.aspx?Book=849. Visit Jason’s Web site, www.jasonoffutt.com, for his other books.
This is the legend of Windyville, Mo.
“Visitors have reported screams from the old cannery building, and a horseback rider was spotted at Lone Rock Cemetery. It’s also home to spiritual cults, so watch out,” proclaimed an Oct. 20, 2005 article in USA Today.
Sounds like a great place to hunt ghosts, right? Not really.
Ronnie Powell lives in Windyville, a town many sites on the Internet say is a ghost town. It’s not. The town was once home to a tomato cannery, grocery store, post office and a number of families. The buildings are still there, but the businesses aren’t, and only four or five houses are occupied.
“Windyville looks deserted,” Ronnie said. “But real live people live here.”
The population of Windyville grows, however, when ghost hunters are in town.
“(These) people came to Windyville and they pilfered, they broke into buildings, they had rituals, and it got so bad that we got the law to get rid of most of them,” he said. “They told them not to come back.”
Ronnie, who retired after 30 years with the Missouri Department of Conservation, has always liked to write and once penned a few Windyville ghost stories for “More Missouri Ghosts,” by Joan Gilbert. He wrote the stories as fiction but they were published as fact. Although the stories were left out of the next edition of the book, they’d already hit the Internet.
“I know (the trouble) is all because of me and my stories,” he said. “‘The Ghosts of Windyville’ was just tidbits of things that I couldn’t corroborate. They were just stories. I sure did ruin Windyville. ”
Ghost hunters and the curious have vandalized the buildings, trespassed and terrorized the few residents of the town.
“The stories I could write about the ghost hunters would be better than the ghost stories,” Ronnie said. “They wouldn’t want people looking in their windows.”
Although people have trespassed around his home, nothing bothered him as badly as the Goths.
“They had some kind of a fire ritual down here,” he said. “I ran them off. They all ganged up around me. I told them I was armed and they scattered. They were dancing around a fire and were chanting and all that. One man had a knife. I saw that.”
The School of Metaphysics in Windyville probably hasn’t helped the town’s reputation.
“They picked Windyville as the ninth (most haunted) place,” Dr. Barbara Condron of the School of Metaphysics said of the USA Today article. “They picked dead places. Windyville isn’t dead.”
The school, which has 15 branches throughout the Midwest, focuses on channeling the mind’s energy in positive ways and learning how to co-exist with your fellow man – but the locals don’t always view it that way.
“We’re kind of the talk of the high school here,” Barbara said. “A lot of times we get joke calls. ‘Ah, yes, you guys move things with your mind out there?’ It’s the Uri Geller bending spoons thing. It hasn’t been good.”
And the school has experienced trespassing and vandalism, too; much like a recent incident.
“Two guys who graduated Lebanon high school were going to chain our gate to their pickup, tear it down and drag it down the road,” Barbara said. “They were fortunately caught by local authorities.”
The nature of the School of Metaphysics calls for thinking positively. The school rarely prosecutes – it didn’t in this case – and Barbara said she doesn’t think the kids from Lebanon will come back.
“It’s one thing to do it in the night time and another to look the people in the eye the next day,” she said. “It’s the golden rule in Christianity. You treat people the way you want to be treated. I hope it heals.”
Today, the Windyville ghost stories remain on dozens of ghost hunter Web sites, which means Windyville may not be off the paranormal map anytime soon.
“It’s Pandora’s box. It’s already been opened,” Barbara said. “Technology brings good to the world, but there’s always a dark side.”
Copyright 2007 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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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 coming in May. FREE SHIPPING when you order online at: https://tsup.truman.edu/store/ViewBook.aspx?Book=849. Visit Jason’s Web site, www.jasonoffutt.com, for his other books.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Dead and Buried: The KC area has a lot of famous non-breathers
There are a lot of famous people in Kansas City – and they're dead. From gangsters and Western outlaws to Mormon pioneers and sausage makers, the Kansas City area is full of famous stiffs.
Paranormal? No, but kinda neat.
"There's a lot of famous dead people," said Vicki Beck, a local historian. "Charlie 'Bird' Parker is up there in Lincoln Cemetery, Jim Bridger, Mount Washington; Cole Younger is out in Lee's Summit, Frank James, Annie Chambers, a famous madam ..."
There are seven Revolutionary soldiers buried in the Kansas City area and more Civil War personalities than you can count. The most famous name in the area is probably the outlaw Jesse James, buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Kearney, Mo. But who's the most famous name buried in Jackson County?
"Frank James would probably be the best known," said Victor Meador, a staff librarian at the Jackson County Genealogical Society Research Library.
Let's keep it in the family.
Of course, there are famous dead Kansas Citians who never made it home to rest, like "Beverly Hillbillies" creator Paul Henning, and dancer Ginger Rogers.
"She was born here, went to Hollywood, came back here afterward, but of course she lived in Hollywood and died and was buried there," Meador said.
The following is a list of famous Kansas City-area graves compiled with information from Findagrave.com and some guys I know.
Famous KC-area graves:
– Anderson, William T. "Bloody Bill." Civil War guerrilla, one of Quantrill's Raiders. Pioneer Cemetery, Richmond, Mo.
– Armour brothers, Andrew, Charles W., Kirkland B. and Simeon. Four of five Armours who started Armour and Company Meat Packing. Elmwood Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Atchison, David Rice. U.S. Senator who was allegedly "president for a day" between the terms of James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor. Greenlawn Cemetery, Plattsburg, Mo.
– Bingham, George Caleb. Famous American painter. Union Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Brink, James W. Rider for the Pony Express who carried mail on the first run. Mount Auburn Cemetery, St. Joseph, Mo.
– Buchanan, Junious "Buck." Kansas City Chief and Pro Football Hall of Famer. Mount Moriah Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Civella, Nick. K.C. crime boss, although he always denied it. Mount Saint Marys Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Coates, Sarah. Instrumental in the Woman's Suffrage movement and was a friend of Susan B. Anthony. Elmwood Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Cowdery, Oliver. Scribe who wrote down the Book of Mormon as it was dictated by the prophet Joseph Smith. Pioneer Cemetery, Richmond, Mo.
– Ford, Bob. The man who shot Jesse James – says so on his plaque, I’ve been there. Richmond City Cemetery, Richmond, Mo.
– Goldberg, Larry. Author and owner of New York City pizza chain Goldberg's Pizza. Kehilath Israel Blue Ridge Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Goodloe, James W. The Lawrence Raid by Quantrill's Raiders was planned on his farm. Blue Springs Cemetery, Blue Springs.
– Grooms, William. One of two Kansas City police detectives who were ambushed by mobsters in the 1933 Union Station Massacre. Mount Saint Mary's Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Hall, Joyce Clyde. Founder of Hallmark Cards. Forest Hill Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Harris, Martin. One of the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon. Pioneer Cemetery, Richmond, Mo.
– James, Frank. Outlaw and older brother of Jesse. Hill Park Cemetery, Independence.
– James, Jesse Woodson. Notorious outlaw. Mount Olivet Cemetery, Kearney, Mo.
– Jim the Wonder Dog. Setter believed to have psychic power. Marshall Ridge Park Cemetery, Marshall, Mo.
– Kauffman, Ewing Marion. Founder of Marion Laboratories, Inc., and owner of the Kansas City Royals. Kauffman Foundation and Memorial Garden, Kansas City.
– Kearns, Leannah "Annie Chambers." KC's most notorious madam. Her cathouse was at the southwest corner of Third and Wyandotte. Elmwood Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Kelley, Clarence M. Director of the FBI under Richard Nixon. Mount Washington Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Kelly, Edward Harry. Band leader and ragtime composer. Mount Saint Mary's Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Land, Frank S. "Dad." Founded the Order of De Molay in 1919. Mount Moriah Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Lazia, John. Crime boss of Kansas City's North Side. Linked to the Union Station Massacre. Mount Saint Marys Cemetery, Kansas City.
– McCoy, John Calvin. Founder of Westport and, later, Kansas City. Union Cemetery, Kansas City.
– McElroy, Ken Rex. Bully of Skidmore, Mo., killed by the townspeople he terrorized. Memorial Park, St. Joseph, Mo.
– McKitterick, William. The man who domesticated bees. Pleasant Hill Cemetery, Pleasant Hill, Mo.
– Moten, Benjamin "Bennie." Pianist and band leader who helped define Kansas City jazz. Highland Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Nation, Carry Amelia. Prohibitionist. Belton Cemetery, Belton, Mo.
– Nelson, William Rockhill. Cofounder of The Kansas City Star. Mount Washington Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Nichols, Charles "Kid." Major League Baseball Hall of Famer. Mount Moriah Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Noland, Ledstone. Soldier from the Revolutionary War. Pitcher Cemetery, Independence.
– Paige, Satchel. Major League and Negro Baseball Hall of Famer. Forest Hill Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Parker, Charlie "Bird." Legendary jazz musician. Lincoln Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Pendergast, Thomas. Kansas City crime boss and Democratic Party powerhouse – the guy who got Truman elected to the Senate. Calvary Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Porter, Darrell R. Former Major League Baseball catcher for the Kansas City Royals, Milwaukee Brewers and St. Louis Cardinals. Longview Memorial Gardens, Kansas City.
– Quantrill, William Clarke. Guerrilla leader. Confederate Cemetery, Higginsville, Mo.
– Quisenberry, Daniel. Major League Baseball pitcher for the Kansas City Royals, St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants. Mount Moriah Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Rice, Raymond B. Founder of the R.B. Rice sausage company. Forest Hill Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Sappington, Dr. John. Used quinine as a cure for malaria. Sappington Cemetery, Arrow Rock, Mo.
– Scott, Martha. Actress who appeared on "General Hospital," "Charlotte's Webb 2" and "The Bionic Woman." Masonic Cemetery, Jamesport, Mo.
– Smith, Hilton. Major League Baseball Hall of Famer. Mount Moriah Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Stover, Russell. Founder of Russell Stover chocolates. Mount Moriah Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Taylor, Johnnie Harrison. R&B and Gospel singer who sang "Who's Making Love" and "Disco Lady." Forest Hill Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Thomas, Derrick Vincent. Kansas City Chiefs perennial All-Pro linebacker. Mount Washington Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Truman, Bess. First Lady. Truman Presidential Museum and Library, Independence.
– Truman, Harry S. 33rd President of the United States. Truman Presidential Museum and Library, Independence.
– Whitmer, David. One of the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon. Richmond Cemetery, Richmond, Mo.
– Williams, Claude "Fiddler." Jazz pioneer. Mount Moriah Cemetery, Kansas City.
– Young, Hiram. Social reformer and former slave. Woodlawn Cemetery, Independence.
– Younger, Cole. Outlaw and murderer. Lee's Summit Historical Cemetery, Lee's Summit.
– Younger, James "Jim." Outlaw. Lee's Summit Historical Cemetery, Lee's Summit.
– Younger, Robert "Bob." Outlaw. Lee's Summit Historical Cemetery, Lee's Summit.
Yep, there are a lot of famous dead people around Kansas City. Let’s hope they stay that way.
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. Include your name, address and telephone number. 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 coming in May. FREE SHIPPING when you order online at: https://tsup.truman.edu/store/ViewBook.aspx?Book=849. Visit Jason’s Web site, www.jasonoffutt.com, for his other books.
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