Connie Stevens, of Clarinda, Iowa, died one afternoon. But that was years ago – she’s better now.
“In 1984 I had a hysterectomy and died,” she said. “They couldn’t revive me.”
Doctors eventually stroked Connie to life, but she’s never quite felt the same since. Connie said while she was gone, another spirit attached itself to her.
“When you have a near death experience and your soul leaves you, another one can come inside you,” Connie said. She believes a spirit, something she calls a ‘walk in,’ took hold of her body when she died.
“My body was so sore,” she said. “I felt like someone had taken a baseball bat and beat me with it. I said something to the doctor, ‘why am I so sore?’ The doctor said, ‘I have no explanation for that.’”
After that experience, Connie’s life – that of a farm wife and mother – drastically changed. She no longer liked the same food or music and was shocked at the things she now saw.
“Shortly after I got home I started seeing things,” she said. “I saw an old man leading an old pack mule. I saw Indians. Before that, I had seen none of this.”
No one around Connie believed she was seeing these spirits or remembering things in her life that had never happened, so she started a journal. In a few years she wrote 300 pages of a past life in Pine Valley, Colo.
She’d never been to Colorado – but the memories were very real.
Finally, Connie called directory assistance and asked to be connected to anyone in Pine Valley, Colo., “but Pine Valley, Colorado, doesn’t exist anymore,” Connie discovered. However, the city, now known as Pine, does. Information eventually connected her with a bookstore in Conifer, Colo., and a door into a life she’d never had was thrown open.
“My marriage ended not long after that,” she said. Connie moved to Colorado in 1986 to explore the past life of her ‘walk in.’
She discovered everything she “remembered” was true – even down to the geography.
“The main thing that really got to me was I knew Colorado,” she said. “I had always lived in Iowa but I could drive right to where I knew things were.”
After a hypnotic regression session with a professional in Denver, Connie was told that, yes, she was inhabited by a ‘walk in’ soul. Connie, however, was comforted by this.
“It’s made me a better person,” she said.
Since Connie moved back to Iowa from Colorado, she’s used the psychic gifts given to her by her ‘walk in’ to help others. She cleanses homes of negative spirits.
“I’ve always been successful in doing that,” she said.
People also ask her to interpret dreams and advise them on the afterlife, but she’s noticed these topics are more taboo in the Midwest.
“In Colorado … the people were so open minded with this you could hear alien abduction stories and ghost stories in the grocery store like you’re talking about buying a loaf of bread,” she said. Things aren’t like that for Connie in Iowa.
“My abilities bother some people,” she said. “But (I don’t) let that bother me. I don’t push it on anybody. If someone has something paranormal and wants me to help, I will.”
However, she said many people aren’t ready for the truth about the invisible world around them.
“I think there’s a lot out there we don’t know,” Connie said. “There’s a lot out there if we did know it would scare us to death.”
Copyright 2008 by Jason Offutt
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
The Axe Murder House of Villisca, Iowa
The people of Villisca, Iowa, population 1,344, are friendly to strangers. They wave, say “good morning,” and nod when you pass them on the street. But Villisca wasn’t always peaceful.
In 1912, the Moore Family and two children staying the night were killed by someone wielding an axe. The event almost crushed the friendliness of the town; the murders have never been solved.
Darwin and Martha Linn bought the axe murder house years ago when they became worried a vital piece of local history may be torn down. Since then, they’ve found they bought something besides the building – they bought ghosts.
“I haven’t been pushed or my hair hasn’t been pulled,” Darwin said, but he knows the spirits of the Moore family are still in the house.
Janet Arnold and Jennifer Sparks of the ghost hunting group Spirit Chasin’ Ladies of Kearney, Mo., have visited the axe murder house several times and are convinced it’s haunted.
“When Michelle (Daley, another member of the group) and I were there last year, we were asking a lot of questions and the attic door opened and closed a few times,” Jennifer said. “We didn’t go into the attic. I don’t like what I feel; I truly feel the killer is in the attic.”
The last time the Moore family was seen alive was at the annual Presbyterian Church Children’s Day, June 9, 1912. That night J.B. and Sarah Moore’s children invited friends Lena and Ina Stillinger to stay the night.
The next morning a neighbor was hanging laundry on the line and noticed the Moores hadn’t stirred so she called J.B.’s brother Ross. Ross later arrived to open the door and found his relatives butchered. The Moore family, J.B., 43, Sarah, 44, Herman, 11, Katherine, 9, Boyd, 7, Paul, 5, and the Stillinger sisters lay in their beds, their skulls crushed.
A number of people were suspects, from a drifter to a traveling preacher to a business rival of J.B.’s, but none were convicted of the murders. Maybe that’s why the spirits remain.
But the Linns didn’t realize there was something supernatural in the house until a paranormal investigator contacted them.
“I didn’t even know what a paranormal investigator was when one called in 1998,” Darwin said. “I told him to come down and look at the house.”
The night the investigator came to Villisca, he found about 80 locals sitting in lawn chairs in the yard of the small, two-story white house … waiting for him.
“I told everyone in the country,” Darwin said. “I even put an ad in the paper telling he was coming.”
The investigator gave all 80 people a tour of the house just to get them to go home so he could get to work.
Since then the house has become a tourist attraction, the summer of 2007 being one of the busiest Darwin has seen. Many people are just curious, but many others are there to try and find ghosts.
Cindy Howard gives tours at the house and she knows the ghosts are there.
“I just took a group on a tour from Omaha,” she said. After she led them up the narrow staircase to the Moore’s bedroom, someone opened the attic door and, “all of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe.”
Police thought the killer hid in the attic.
As Cindy raked the air for breath, someone on the tour shut the attic door and Cindy’s breathing returned to normal.
Ghosts thought to be in the house range from the Moore family to the Stillinger children to something big and dark in the attic many believe was the killer, although some psychics have said it was never human.
Tours of the axe murder house, 508 E. Second St., can be arraigned through Darwin Linn at The Olson Linn Museum, 323 E. Fourth St., 712-621-4291. Daytime tours are $10, and midnight lamplight tours, Sunday through Tuesday, are $22.
Copyright 2008 by Jason Offutt
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.
In 1912, the Moore Family and two children staying the night were killed by someone wielding an axe. The event almost crushed the friendliness of the town; the murders have never been solved.
Darwin and Martha Linn bought the axe murder house years ago when they became worried a vital piece of local history may be torn down. Since then, they’ve found they bought something besides the building – they bought ghosts.
“I haven’t been pushed or my hair hasn’t been pulled,” Darwin said, but he knows the spirits of the Moore family are still in the house.
Janet Arnold and Jennifer Sparks of the ghost hunting group Spirit Chasin’ Ladies of Kearney, Mo., have visited the axe murder house several times and are convinced it’s haunted.
“When Michelle (Daley, another member of the group) and I were there last year, we were asking a lot of questions and the attic door opened and closed a few times,” Jennifer said. “We didn’t go into the attic. I don’t like what I feel; I truly feel the killer is in the attic.”
The last time the Moore family was seen alive was at the annual Presbyterian Church Children’s Day, June 9, 1912. That night J.B. and Sarah Moore’s children invited friends Lena and Ina Stillinger to stay the night.
The next morning a neighbor was hanging laundry on the line and noticed the Moores hadn’t stirred so she called J.B.’s brother Ross. Ross later arrived to open the door and found his relatives butchered. The Moore family, J.B., 43, Sarah, 44, Herman, 11, Katherine, 9, Boyd, 7, Paul, 5, and the Stillinger sisters lay in their beds, their skulls crushed.
A number of people were suspects, from a drifter to a traveling preacher to a business rival of J.B.’s, but none were convicted of the murders. Maybe that’s why the spirits remain.
But the Linns didn’t realize there was something supernatural in the house until a paranormal investigator contacted them.
“I didn’t even know what a paranormal investigator was when one called in 1998,” Darwin said. “I told him to come down and look at the house.”
The night the investigator came to Villisca, he found about 80 locals sitting in lawn chairs in the yard of the small, two-story white house … waiting for him.
“I told everyone in the country,” Darwin said. “I even put an ad in the paper telling he was coming.”
The investigator gave all 80 people a tour of the house just to get them to go home so he could get to work.
Since then the house has become a tourist attraction, the summer of 2007 being one of the busiest Darwin has seen. Many people are just curious, but many others are there to try and find ghosts.
Cindy Howard gives tours at the house and she knows the ghosts are there.
“I just took a group on a tour from Omaha,” she said. After she led them up the narrow staircase to the Moore’s bedroom, someone opened the attic door and, “all of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe.”
Police thought the killer hid in the attic.
As Cindy raked the air for breath, someone on the tour shut the attic door and Cindy’s breathing returned to normal.
Ghosts thought to be in the house range from the Moore family to the Stillinger children to something big and dark in the attic many believe was the killer, although some psychics have said it was never human.
Tours of the axe murder house, 508 E. Second St., can be arraigned through Darwin Linn at The Olson Linn Museum, 323 E. Fourth St., 712-621-4291. Daytime tours are $10, and midnight lamplight tours, Sunday through Tuesday, are $22.
Copyright 2008 by Jason Offutt
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.
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