The quiet, hidden cemetery in Chariton County, Mo., sits at the end of a slice of gravel snaking into hills. A dark roof of trees turns the long stretch of rocks and dirt into a leafy tunnel.
Ryan Straub, founder of the Missouri-based ghost hunting group Tir Firnath, has often visited the cemetery and experienced strange things. However, nothing has disturbed him as much as what he and fellow Tir Firnath member Mike Haurcade saw standing on that gravel road.
“Mike and I we were leaving one day,” Straub said. “As we were leaving, we were in the middle of the hills and we saw a very large dog in the road. It stood up on its hind legs and left the road.”
Straub and Haurcade froze as the beast walked on two legs into the thick trees.
“That bothered me,” Straub said. “The only thing I could think of was it was the mythical beast the werewolf.”
Werewolves, in various forms, have existed in many cultures across the world. From the Medieval European werewolf that dominates horror movies, to American Indian skinwalkers, the image of a man changing into a beast has terrified people for centuries. But, sitting safely in a cozy house, watching television, the werewolf stalking the night is nothing but legend.
Some people think that’s dead wrong.
The glow of city lights bathed the Arizona night in gray as four teenagers walked onto the Shalimar Golf Course in Tempe. Carl Davis, now an adult, was in high school when he and his friends, bored with their weekly Bible study meeting, walked outside.
“The girl’s house we did it at lived right on (the) golf course,” Davis said.
The Shalimar Golf Course sits in a highly populated residential area of the city, so the group tried to be quiet as they kept to the edge of the golf course, walking along palm trees that lined a wall.
“We were there talking and (goofing) around,” Davis said. “My girlfriend says something like, ‘hey something just jumped out of that palm tree.’”
The trees were approximately 35 feet tall, so the other teens laughed and resumed their conversation.
“A few seconds later she lets out a blood-curdling scream, just pure shocked terror,” Davis said.
As Davis turned toward his girlfriend, he saw something he couldn’t believe.
“I look in the direction and there’s a … creature lumbering along the wall towards us,” Davis said. “It was as tall as me, six foot, hunched over, huge snout like a werewolf.”
The beast, blacker than the night surrounding it, lunged toward the teens and they ran.
“It was chasing after us,” Davis said. “It was running along the wall toward me and I just turned and ran, I didn't think to look back.”
The teens never saw the thing again, although something about the encounter still confuses Davis.
“It was in the middle of town,” he said. “That’s what always gets me about that thing. Not out in the woods or at a secluded cabin, but in Tempe, Ariz.”
But Arizona and Missouri are not alone in these encounters.
Kori Williams, her cousin Richard and two friends, were driving near Midlothian, Ill., on a late-night trip when a large, man-like beast ran into the road.
“A six- to seven-foot man beast thing ran from the Rubio Woods to the woods behind an electrical fence of some kind,” Williams said. “Richard swerved to miss the creature.”
The beast was covered in bluish-gray fur, its snout was “like a coyote or wolf, but longer,” its eyes “were like holes,” and the smell of wet dog waft throughout the car. Although the four didn’t see the creature for long, the thing that stuck with Williams was the beast’s hands.
“I call it ‘manlike,’ because of its size and hands,” Williams said. “They looked like human hands except for the fingers were really long, clawed and covered in fur. Richard thought it was a werewolf or something.”
A universe of the unknown lies just beyond human perception – maybe there is truth to the legends.
Copyright 2009 by Jason Offutt
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
The Disappearing Girl – Part Two
Author’s note: This is the second of a two-part series about the Torres family who, after moving into their new home, discovered something was already there.
Pouring through the stacks of memories her home’s previous occupants left behind, Sammy Torres unmasked the spirit of a young Hispanic girl that sits on her son’s bed.
“One day as I was looking through the photo albums left by the previous owners I saw a newspaper clipping about a car accident,” she said. “It told about a Hispanic family who had been in an accident in which the father and the 12-year-old daughter had been killed.”
A memorial card, Torres presumed had been passed out at a funeral, showed a picture of the girl with long braided hair.
“There were also several pictures of her at different times in her life,” she said. “There were school pictures, pictures from birthday parties and Christmas and pictures of a laughing young girl splashing in a swimming pool and many family photos.”
It was the same girl she had seen that first day in the home, and the same girl who sat on her son’s bed.
And, she later found, the spirit of the little girl wasn’t alone.
“Recently, I was awakened by the feeling of someone staring at me and when I opened my eyes there standing beside the bed was an old woman,” Sammy said. “She was wearing a dress that looked like it was from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.”
The dress was long and black with a high collar and puffy sleeves. The top of the dress had buttons on the front and the apparition wore a cameo brooch at the throat of her dress. It’s hair was gray and pulled into a bun.
“She looked very stern,” Sammy said. “I lay there looking at her for a few seconds and then she was gone. She just disappeared. We have seen her several times since then and always in the bedroom. And we always smell stale cigarette smoke right before she appears.”
But the apparitions don’t appear singularly. Sammy has at least felt them both in the room at the same time. Sammy was lying in bed one day when they visited her.
“I could feel them leaning on the bed and then they touched the top of my head and stroked my hair,” Sammy said. “At first I thought it was my husband as this is the way he does when I’m not feeling well, but he never said anything so I turned to look at him but he wasn’t there.”
When her husband eventually came into the room, Sammy told of her visitors
“He then asked me, ‘why is your head wet on top?’” Sammy said. “I told him I didn’t know my head was wet. I told him about the spirit or whatever it was touching the top of my head.”
When Sammy reached to touch the spot where her visitor touched her, her husband was right. It was wet.
“I can only say that that was one of creepiest things I have experienced here,” she said.
Sammy has also felt an unseen force tugging her hair and one night woke because she was choking.
“I tried to sit up but couldn’t as something or someone had wrapped my long braid around one of the little wood bars in the head board of my bed,” she said. “Not long after that I cut my hair.”
Balls of light, globs of mist and an ominous black mass often float around their house and hangers rattle in the closets, but have not driven the Torres family from their home.
“We are not frightened by them,” Sammy said. “I think we have gotten used to them being here.”
Copyright 2009 by Jason Offutt
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
Pouring through the stacks of memories her home’s previous occupants left behind, Sammy Torres unmasked the spirit of a young Hispanic girl that sits on her son’s bed.
“One day as I was looking through the photo albums left by the previous owners I saw a newspaper clipping about a car accident,” she said. “It told about a Hispanic family who had been in an accident in which the father and the 12-year-old daughter had been killed.”
A memorial card, Torres presumed had been passed out at a funeral, showed a picture of the girl with long braided hair.
“There were also several pictures of her at different times in her life,” she said. “There were school pictures, pictures from birthday parties and Christmas and pictures of a laughing young girl splashing in a swimming pool and many family photos.”
It was the same girl she had seen that first day in the home, and the same girl who sat on her son’s bed.
And, she later found, the spirit of the little girl wasn’t alone.
“Recently, I was awakened by the feeling of someone staring at me and when I opened my eyes there standing beside the bed was an old woman,” Sammy said. “She was wearing a dress that looked like it was from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.”
The dress was long and black with a high collar and puffy sleeves. The top of the dress had buttons on the front and the apparition wore a cameo brooch at the throat of her dress. It’s hair was gray and pulled into a bun.
“She looked very stern,” Sammy said. “I lay there looking at her for a few seconds and then she was gone. She just disappeared. We have seen her several times since then and always in the bedroom. And we always smell stale cigarette smoke right before she appears.”
But the apparitions don’t appear singularly. Sammy has at least felt them both in the room at the same time. Sammy was lying in bed one day when they visited her.
“I could feel them leaning on the bed and then they touched the top of my head and stroked my hair,” Sammy said. “At first I thought it was my husband as this is the way he does when I’m not feeling well, but he never said anything so I turned to look at him but he wasn’t there.”
When her husband eventually came into the room, Sammy told of her visitors
“He then asked me, ‘why is your head wet on top?’” Sammy said. “I told him I didn’t know my head was wet. I told him about the spirit or whatever it was touching the top of my head.”
When Sammy reached to touch the spot where her visitor touched her, her husband was right. It was wet.
“I can only say that that was one of creepiest things I have experienced here,” she said.
Sammy has also felt an unseen force tugging her hair and one night woke because she was choking.
“I tried to sit up but couldn’t as something or someone had wrapped my long braid around one of the little wood bars in the head board of my bed,” she said. “Not long after that I cut my hair.”
Balls of light, globs of mist and an ominous black mass often float around their house and hangers rattle in the closets, but have not driven the Torres family from their home.
“We are not frightened by them,” Sammy said. “I think we have gotten used to them being here.”
Copyright 2009 by Jason Offutt
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
The Disappearing Girl – Part One
Author’s note: This is the first of a two-part series about the Torres family who, after moving into their new home, discovered something was already there.
When Sammy Torres and her family moved into the mobile home in 2004, they knew something was wrong. The former tenants had left in a hurry.
“The people who had owned it before had just up and left without taking any of their belongings,” she said. “They left their furniture, their appliances, photo albums with baby pictures and other family photos. They didn’t even take their clothes. I have tried to find anyone who may have known the people that lived here before to see if anyone knew anything about them or the reason they fled as they did.”
Neighbors don’t seem to know.
Unpacking boxes the first night Torres’ family stayed in the home, Sammy saw something she couldn’t explain.
“I was sitting on the floor in front of the television unpacking a box of DVDs and videos and putting them away,” she said. “The television was off and I saw on the blank screen a young girl with very long braided hair walk behind me from the direction of the bedroom towards the kitchen.”
Thinking it was her youngest daughter going into the kitchen, she kept unpacking the box – then she realized the girl never left the kitchen. She looked in the kitchen; no one was there.
“I got up from the floor and went to check on my daughter but when I poked my head inside her bedroom she was fast asleep,” Sammy said. “I thought maybe I had been so engrossed in what I was doing that I didn’t see her go back by.”
Then, day after day, strange things began to work their way into the Torres family’s life and Sammy began to realize it hadn’t been her daughter she’d seen in the television screen that first day – something was in her house.
“Things began to happen pretty regular,” Sammy said.
The cabinet under the bathroom sink randomly opened and slammed shut when no one was around, Sammy heard footsteps in the hallway when no one else was home, and everyone heard voices that didn’t belong to anyone in the family.
But the children experienced much more than Sammy and her husband.
“My eight-year-old son would tell me about a Hispanic girl who would go into his room and sit on his bed,” Sammy said. “I thought he was either dreaming or had an imaginary friend as some children do.”
The boy was adamant the girl in his room was real.
“He insisted that she was there and not just his imagination but he said that she would just disappear,” Sammy said. “He said she would be sitting on the bed or standing by the door one minute and then gone the next. My son said she was a ghost. I was pretty sure he was right.”
The experiences escalated. Family members would see something in the corner of their eyes that would dart across the hallway, they heard whispering and conversations although no one else was in the room
“When my two-year-old grandson would come to visit he would play hide and seek with someone only he could see,” she said. “He would stand in the doorway of my son’s room and tell his invisible playmate, ‘You can’t get me. You can’t find me.’ He would run, jump on the couch and get behind me and say, ‘she’s coming. She’s going to find me,’ as he was peeking around me and looking towards the bedroom.”
When Sammy asked her grandson who was going to find him, he would say, “the girl in Uncle’s bedroom.”
One day, Sammy saw the invisible entity play back.
“My grandson was sitting on the floor in the hallway playing with a ball,” she said. “He would roll the ball down the hall, the ball would stop and roll back to him as though someone had stopped it and rolled it back to him. This happened several times.”
Then there was the whistle.
“Sometimes late at night, usually between midnight and 1 a.m., we would hear the whistle of a train that sounded as though it were in the far-off distance,” she said. “There are no trains that run through our town or even near our town and hasn’t been for a very long time.”
Her husband, who seemed immune to the whistle, eventually heard it.
“Finally one night as we lay in bed talking we heard the faint far off sound of a train whistle blowing,” Sammy said. “My husband who loves trains said that it was the whistle of an old steam engine. He said those are not around anymore so there was no reason for that whistle to be heard. That was the last time we heard that train whistle.”
But the paranormal occurrences didn’t stop with the whistle, and they began to become more real to the entire family – Sammy and her husband saw the girl.
“We see the apparition of a young Hispanic girl with very long braided hair peek around the corner of the bedroom door and then disappear,” Sammy said.
In Part Two, the entities show themselves.
Copyright 2009 by Jason Offutt
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
When Sammy Torres and her family moved into the mobile home in 2004, they knew something was wrong. The former tenants had left in a hurry.
“The people who had owned it before had just up and left without taking any of their belongings,” she said. “They left their furniture, their appliances, photo albums with baby pictures and other family photos. They didn’t even take their clothes. I have tried to find anyone who may have known the people that lived here before to see if anyone knew anything about them or the reason they fled as they did.”
Neighbors don’t seem to know.
Unpacking boxes the first night Torres’ family stayed in the home, Sammy saw something she couldn’t explain.
“I was sitting on the floor in front of the television unpacking a box of DVDs and videos and putting them away,” she said. “The television was off and I saw on the blank screen a young girl with very long braided hair walk behind me from the direction of the bedroom towards the kitchen.”
Thinking it was her youngest daughter going into the kitchen, she kept unpacking the box – then she realized the girl never left the kitchen. She looked in the kitchen; no one was there.
“I got up from the floor and went to check on my daughter but when I poked my head inside her bedroom she was fast asleep,” Sammy said. “I thought maybe I had been so engrossed in what I was doing that I didn’t see her go back by.”
Then, day after day, strange things began to work their way into the Torres family’s life and Sammy began to realize it hadn’t been her daughter she’d seen in the television screen that first day – something was in her house.
“Things began to happen pretty regular,” Sammy said.
The cabinet under the bathroom sink randomly opened and slammed shut when no one was around, Sammy heard footsteps in the hallway when no one else was home, and everyone heard voices that didn’t belong to anyone in the family.
But the children experienced much more than Sammy and her husband.
“My eight-year-old son would tell me about a Hispanic girl who would go into his room and sit on his bed,” Sammy said. “I thought he was either dreaming or had an imaginary friend as some children do.”
The boy was adamant the girl in his room was real.
“He insisted that she was there and not just his imagination but he said that she would just disappear,” Sammy said. “He said she would be sitting on the bed or standing by the door one minute and then gone the next. My son said she was a ghost. I was pretty sure he was right.”
The experiences escalated. Family members would see something in the corner of their eyes that would dart across the hallway, they heard whispering and conversations although no one else was in the room
“When my two-year-old grandson would come to visit he would play hide and seek with someone only he could see,” she said. “He would stand in the doorway of my son’s room and tell his invisible playmate, ‘You can’t get me. You can’t find me.’ He would run, jump on the couch and get behind me and say, ‘she’s coming. She’s going to find me,’ as he was peeking around me and looking towards the bedroom.”
When Sammy asked her grandson who was going to find him, he would say, “the girl in Uncle’s bedroom.”
One day, Sammy saw the invisible entity play back.
“My grandson was sitting on the floor in the hallway playing with a ball,” she said. “He would roll the ball down the hall, the ball would stop and roll back to him as though someone had stopped it and rolled it back to him. This happened several times.”
Then there was the whistle.
“Sometimes late at night, usually between midnight and 1 a.m., we would hear the whistle of a train that sounded as though it were in the far-off distance,” she said. “There are no trains that run through our town or even near our town and hasn’t been for a very long time.”
Her husband, who seemed immune to the whistle, eventually heard it.
“Finally one night as we lay in bed talking we heard the faint far off sound of a train whistle blowing,” Sammy said. “My husband who loves trains said that it was the whistle of an old steam engine. He said those are not around anymore so there was no reason for that whistle to be heard. That was the last time we heard that train whistle.”
But the paranormal occurrences didn’t stop with the whistle, and they began to become more real to the entire family – Sammy and her husband saw the girl.
“We see the apparition of a young Hispanic girl with very long braided hair peek around the corner of the bedroom door and then disappear,” Sammy said.
In Part Two, the entities show themselves.
Copyright 2009 by Jason Offutt
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
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