Paranormal Journalism

Week 8

2010-03-08T19:42:00.000-08:00

YES, EXTRATERRESTRIALS ARE HERE;

AND YES, NASA’S COVERING IT UP

By Micheal Clements

For decades and even centuries unidentified flying objects have been reported in the skies but it wasn’t until the race for the moon that man came close to the objects.
In a video interview Buzz Aldrin, the second man to step foot on the moon, said the astronauts saw something traveling along with them on their way to the moon.
“There was something out there that was close enough to be observed, and what could it be,” Aldrin said. “It could only be one thing if not the rocket.”
The S4B rocket, which helped propel them into space, was disengaged from the spacecraft after liftoff into space. The S4B is the third stage of the Saturn V rocket.
“Obviously the three of us were not going to blurt out, ‘hey, Houston we got something moving along side of us and we don’t know what it is’….we knew those transmissions would be heard by all sorts of people and who knows what somebody would of demanded that we turn back because of aliens or what other reasons…so we just cautiously asked Houston how far away is the S4B,” Aldrin said in the interview.
Houston’s space center answered back 6,000 nautical miles away.
“We really didn’t think we were looking at something that far away, so we decided that after a while watching it was time to go to sleep and not to talk about it anymore until we came back and did debriefing,” Aldrin said.

Several online un-credible sources document this as being true, however much other say it’s false.

One man who worked for NASA at the time, confirms the events and goes further to say that two UFOs followed Apollo 11 for several miles in space to the moon before vanishing.

Tony Smith, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, was a contract engineer for NASA during the Apollo years. Smith was stationed in Africa and dealt mainly with communication.

“I didn’t work for NASA, but I was a contract engineer so basically I did all the work,” Smith said. “NASA would not get anything done if it wasn’t for all the contract engineers like me because the rest is just a bunch of politics tossing paperwork back and forth.”

Smith now is a radio engineer. He once owned a technology company in California, then owned a radio station.

“I even owned a radio station but I don’t like to talk, I can do everything but talk because getting on air really scares me,” Smith said. “I used to be concerned with what I would say if I ever got on the topic of NASA, but now everything is so screwed up that I just don’t give a damn.”

While working at a radio station cluster, he came in contact with Cyndee Campbell, a midday disc jockey in St Joseph Mo.

“It’s really hard to get him to talk about what he did with NASA,” Campbell said. “We held an office pizza party over the summer where he was going to tell us UFO and alien stories but he just started talking about politics and screwed up he thinks the government is.”

While working for NASA, Smith had to sign confidentiality contracts, where he could not say anything about what he was doing or what they may have encountered.

“They made us sign contracts and said if we signed anything out of line that they would prosecute us, you know, put us in prison,” Smith said.

But that was 30 years ago, he said. Now Smith is more open to the topic.

Smith still has working equipment in space that he designed for NASA. Smith says that how far behind they are getting, when something he made three years ago is still in space and working.

“The man is a genius, he really is,” Campbell said. “He knows everything about how radio and stuff works and can walk anyone through a problem.”

Smith also has a wealth of knowledge regarding NASA from years of working for them.

“There was two UFOs that followed Apollo 11 to the moon, they followed them for almost a couple of day in space before disappearing,” Smith said.

But you won’t hear NASA saying a thing, he said.

“They won’t release anything and I think its because they are scared,” Smith said.

Some people question if man did go to the moon, and those claims, simply put are “bullshit,” Smith said.

“I know we went to the moon, I helped with the mission on the technical side,” Smith said. “Those people who say we have not just don’t have anything better to do, but with the way the government is running NASA, I can’t blame them for trying to call them out.”

Smith is a firm believer in aliens, too.

“I know aliens exist, the government and NASA know aliens exist, intelligent aliens, too,” Smith said. “I don’t know what kind of actual contact we have made with them but we will probably never know, the government won’t ever tell us.”

Smith hopes someday the truth can unfold about what is really out in space, but doubts anything well ever come out to the public and doubts that the society in the United States would believe much of what the government has to say.

“They are out there (aliens) and the government knows about it, but they won’t say a damn thing, they just keep it all shut up.”

----

JENNA’S PREDICTIONS

By MaryLouise Balano

Going out with my girl friends on Friday night has become routine. We do the exact same things at the exact same places and talk about the exact same people every Friday. But one Friday was especially “foreseen.”

My best friend Jenna is always having strange dreams about the future and claiming to have “seen this before” all the time. We laugh at her and take what she says with the grain of salt, but last Friday things got weird.

We were all sitting at the restaurant gossiping when Jenna got this weird look on her face and said I think I’m having déjà vu, “surprise, surprise” one of the girls said because we had heard this all before.

“No I’m not kidding” Jenna said. “I have been here before this exact time and place I feel like Tommy Joe is going to come through the door.”

Tommy Joe being one of our guy friends.

We all poked fun at her laughing about how we come there every week it no shocker she felt like she had been there before. It was about 20 minutes later when the door opened and in walked Tommy Joe all of us looked shocked but no one looked as baffled as Jenna. We questions if Jenna had known previously about Tommy showing up and wanted to mess with us, but they both were very convincing in telling us that they hadn’t talked for a few weeks.

This was not the only incident of Jenna calling things out before they happened that night, it was one of many. Another being when she said, “how funny would it be if the waiter dropped a drink on that girl dancing by herself?” It wasn’t at that exact moment but later in the night the dancing girl was sitting in a booth when all on the sudden the waiter reached for a glass knocking a drink on her and sending her screaming into the air. Its possible all the strange things that Jenna saw in her mind that came true were coincidences but one thing is for sure I’m taking Jenna’s “predictions” a little more seriously now.

----

THE GHOST OF ‘LITTLE TICO’

By Logan Campbell

On a night when you’re ready to get out of work and go home, you never think that there might be someone else in the room that wasn’t there earlier.

Courtney Campbell was working at Taco Tico and it had been a busy night. The crew was behind so they were in a hurry already to get done.

“I didn’t believe in the ghost that everyone was talking about,” Campbell said.

She had heard stories about a ghost that would sometimes make noises or sounds in the restaurant at night. She didn’t think that those noises were from something of the paranormal.

She was washing the dishes and the other worker was cleaning the food line. They were listening to the radio to pass the time so it wasn’t silent around the restaurant. They were both busy working when suddenly the radio turned off. Campbell was surprised and thought the plug in might have fallen out of the wall, but when she looked back it was still plugged in. She thought that it might have been the ghost so she tried to talk to it. Everyone at Taco Tico had a name for the ghost; they called it “Little Tico.”

“Turn that radio back on Little Tico,” Campbell said.

Nothing happened for a second. Then they both turned toward the radio and the radio suddenly turned on a continued with the same song they were listening to. They were both scared stiff after see this happen. Courtney said she even felt a cold spot after she said that.

People at Taco Tico think that the ghost might have been someone from the school that used to be across the street. The school has now been made into apartment complexes. There wasn’t much information about anyone that had been killed or died around the area, but the Taco Tico employees know that someone was there that night.

From that night on Campbell started to believe that there might be a ghost that appears while they are cleaning down the restaurant.

----

SECOND CHANCE

By Joel Epley

She was legally dead for three minutes when they started to detach all monitors. The heart monitor is always last, and it’s a good thing.

The 50-year-old patient had suffered a massive gastrointestinal or GI bleed during surgery. CPR was unsuccessful and the surgeons and nurses all thought they had lost her.

“She ended up coding,” Saint Luke’s Hospital RN Rebecca Maassen said. “When that happens, everyone goes on autopilot.”

Two and a half hours of CPR had been unsuccessful and the woman lay on the bed lifeless.

“The doctor said, ‘Call it,’ and everyone just let the failure wash over them. The worst feeling I’ve ever experienced,” Rebecca said. “The other nurse and I were putting all the monitors away and I heard her say, ‘Oh my God.’”

The room was silent with the melancholy feeling of loss when a distinct “beep” was heard from the heart monitor.

“The doctors rushed back in and they said she just woke up like she had been sleeping,” Rebecca said. “She woke up with a smile on her face.”

The patient described what she thought was a short dream.

Her mother, uncle and grandfather were all waiting and out of focus. They were telling the woman to come with them and her pain would be over. She began walking towards them when a giant arm grabbed her around the waist and told her, “Your husband and children still need you.”

“The doctors said it was one of those situations you can’t medically explain it and you just have go with it,” Rebecca said. “The lady had thought she was dreaming.”

After the excitement had calmed in the room and the woman was stable, Rebecca had another chance to talk to her about it.

She had explained exactly what happened in a way that nurses do without using all the medical terms and confusing jargon doctors use. The woman quietly listened with a gentle smile on her face and softly replied, “It’s true, my family does need me. I love them so much,” and she drifted off to sleep.

The woman was kept a few days for observation and then returned home to her family.

----

MIND YOUR STUDIES

By Jeremy Werner

Rachel was already out of her comfort zone; a dumpy motel in New Jersey and not visiting for fun or vacation. Rachel’s sister-in-law had died not too long ago and Rachel was paying her last respects. Rachel sat in bed reading a book on psychic abilities attempting to keep her mind off of the week’s events.

“I had been reading from Sylvia Browne right before going to sleep. She was talking about astral travel while sleeping and how people experience that,” Rachel said.

Mean time in Rapids City, S.D., Jolene was up late studying for an exam. After a few years in college she already had a routine down and was far from home. “What are you doing?” a voice called to Jolene.

Jolene freaked out because she was studying alone; no one else was in the room and the voice sounded like her mother, Rachel. This led Jolene to believe she might be dead and immediately called Rachel who was sound asleep until the ring of her phone woke her up.
“I don't remember going to visit her but thought it was funny that I had and I do believe I did,” Rachel says laughing.

----

THE PHANTOM GIRL IN THE HALL

By Jackie Walter

Iowa has been the site of much paranormal activity in its more than 200 year history. It is the home of the Villisca ax murder house, where a stranger murdered a family one Sunday afternoon in 1912. The Pottawattamie Jail is said to have employees and prisoners who still live there. So it’s no surprise that Clarinda Academy, a school for delinquent children is rumored to have regular haunts.

Underneath Clarinda, there are tunnels locals say were used for the Underground Railroad. Its long past also contains a stint as a mental institution before the academy formed in 1992.

Katie Harmon became a counselor at the Academy in summer 2009. One night, Katie traveled to the boy’s wing to make sure everyone accounted for and asleep in their beds. In the middle of her checks she noticed it was so quiet her footsteps were all she could hear clicking against the concrete floor. She stopped, sat on a hallway couch, and all sound stopped. Then she saw something out of the corner of her eye and when she turned to look, a figure was standing at the end of the hallway.

“She had long dark hair and she was dressed in some sort of nightgown,” Katie said. “Her hair covered her face, so I couldn’t really see what she looked like.”

Katie automatically assumed her eyes and mind were playing tricks on her, for it had been a long, stressful day, and the hallway was dark except for the moonlight coming in from the windows. So she looked away for a moment and turned back around to see if the girl was still standing there, or if it was all in her head.

“She was still there when I turned around,” Katie said. “She didn’t move or say anything, but she was definitely still there.”

Too scared to move, Katie turned her head once more and prayed the figure would be gone when she turned back. The third time, the girl had vanished by the time Katie got up from the couch.

“It was really, really scary. I hope that never happens again.”

----

WHEN GRANDMOTHER LEFT US

By Bethany Rowell

Julie Quick was there with her family the night her grandmother died. Quick and her two brothers, sister, aunt and cousin were staying in her mother’s house, knowing their loved one did not have much time left. After an emotional evening, Quick decided to get some rest.

“Before I fell asleep, I felt someone very lightly petting my hair. I opened my eyes and no one was there, but I still felt it,” Quick said, “It was a loving feeling. I sensed it was a female and she was there to take my grandmother home.”

Quick says she knows she was awake and thinking logically about what she was feeling. She rolled over to see if it was a breeze.

“After a short moment, I felt it again; light stroking on my head. It was so emotionally intense. I whispered out loud, ‘I feel you. I know you are here.’ It continued for another minute then stopped.”

Quick’s mother was in the room with her grandmother when she passed in the middle of the night. The rest of the family had fallen asleep in separate rooms and Quick’s mother had not woken anyone to tell them about her passing.

“My brothers and sister and I all woke instantly and met in the hall of this tiny house. We were sound asleep at this point, but all woke up at the same time and met my mom; all without a word or sound.”

Quick also learned of another story later on from her mother that had happened a few days prior to her grandmother’s passing. Quick said that, at the time, her mother thought her grandmother had been hallucinating, but after Quick shared her story, she thought differently.

“My mom said Nin kept smiling and holding her hand and saying ‘We’re all together.’ Nin was saying she could see her mom in the room with her mom and my mom.”

While this didn’t ease the pain of losing their family member, Quick was comforted by knowing someone was taking care of her grandmother.

Week 7

2010-02-10T20:55:00.001-08:00

A NEW HOME

By MaryLouise Balano

When you move into a previously owned home you have all kinds of potential problems. Did the previous owners take care of it? Is the house up to code? But no one really wonders if they are moving into a home that’s all ready being occupied.

Joanna Smith, 55 of Kansas City, Mo., was recently divorced with three young boys when she thought she found the perfect four bedroom home for a perfect price. No one had warned her that her new perfect home had an ugly history. Eleven years prior to the Smith’s moving in, a man hanged himself in the garage of the two-story, yellow house. Johanna and her boys were not aware of this when they moved in but soon realized they were not alone.

One day after school the three boys Sal, 13, Nick, 11, and Michael, 7, were playing basketball on the driveway when Michael started to scream and point to the garage. Sal and Nick looked to where Michael was pointing but saw nothing they ask what he was screaming at he said, “A man was hanging in from the ceiling.”

Scared, all three boys went inside and told their mom. Johanna ignored the boys’ story due to the fact that they always had “stories.” After a few weeks of being in the house Joanna began to feel “eerie, I couldn’t explain why but there was just something off, I thought I might have been coming down an illness or something but I just felt uneasy.”

It wasn’t until the first night Joanna spent the night alone in the house did she understand why she was feeling they way she was.

“The boys were with their dad and I was watching TV in the living room right above the garage when I heard a crash below me, I didn’t feel like heading downstairs at the time so I just let it go but as I was sitting there I began to hear and feel a scratching from the floor on my bare feet, like down was taking a rake and was going across the garage ceiling. I went down there and turned on the lights absolutely nothing was wrong with it and I couldn’t even explain the large crash I heard.”

Throughout the night Joanna heard many unexplained sounds that she was up all night scared. She finally called her Realtor and told her something was not right with the house and demanded an explanation. Her Realtor told her she would get back to her when she had answers.

Within those two days of waiting for the call from the Realtor, Joanna knew the house was haunted. Things in the kitchen would move around and fall of the counters. Her youngest Michael would wake up in the middle of the night screaming about a man in his room. Joanna had had enough and when the Realtor called her to tell her a man had committed suicide in the house. She packed up her sons and went to her mother’s and never went back into that house again.

She now lives in a smaller but less “active” house in Kansas City and will never forget her experience with the unknown.

----

PALM READER

By Joel Epley

Walking down the still hurricane mangled shoreline of Galveston, Texas the four girls couldn’t find a good reason not to get their palms read.

Liz Barnstead, 22, Nikki Hurt, 22, and their two friends had been drinking beer on the beach for a few hours now and decided to walk past all the mini bars, tattoo parlors and gift shops along the tourist strip.

The year was 2006 and it was the girls first ever spring break together. The town was still battered and awaiting repairs from Hurricane Rita.

“That little palm reading place was one of the only places open at the time,” Liz said. “There were tons of shops and stuff but they still weren’t fixed yet.”

The girls stumbled into the palm reader’s shop (they couldn’t remember the name) and Liz was eager to see what her future had in store.

“The lady was surprisingly tolerant of our drunk asses,” Liz said. “She started with a short little hand massage or something to get my blood going and I remember wanting to go to sleep.”

The woman began with where they were from, the Midwest. Not hard to tell considering their accents. Next she said it was their first trip together, two for two.

“When she said that I instantly began to sober up,” said Liz. “I starting paying attention because she was more or less reading my face and just holding my hand to look down every once in a while to think of something else to say.”

The woman began to make a couple of incorrect assumptions such as coming in an airplane, and meeting up with some guys, both false.

The woman then became frustrated and said she needed to realign their minds.

“That’s when I thought she was full of crap,” Nikki, Liz’s roommate said. “She was just buying time or something.”

By this time the other two girls had become bored and went next door to a tattoo parlor to browse for future regret.

The palm reader then began to talk about Liz and Nikki’s home in Saint Louis, Mo.

“She stared saying weird sentences that didn’t make sense under her breath. I was ready to leave,” Nikki said. “Then out of nowhere she said, ‘green’s no good.’”

The two girls had been arguing with Liz’s dad’s choice to paint the house green while they were away. Both disliked like that particular color green.

“All I was thinking was how hot my face got and how I had just wasted an afternoon of drinking, because I was suddenly sober,” Liz said. “She didn’t look at my face anymore and I was totally creeped out and wasn’t having fun anymore.”

The two watched straight-faced and pale to see what the reader was going to say next.

“The lady was biting her lip like she was confused,” Nikki said. “It was like she thought she was seeing it or hearing it or however they take it in wrong.”

The woman looked up confused and told the girls to watch out for bad “sparkplugs” in a questioning tone.

Liz pulled her hand away and the two left immediately. The reader was asking if something was wrong as they both exited without reply.

The two girls had just received two puppies from the same litter as early graduation presents. Nikki’s was named “Spark” and Liz’s named “Plug.”

“I know she was just trying to scare us with some bullshit about driving home and the sparkplug in the car or something but it was still too weird,” Liz said. “I called my dad and made him drive over to check on my dogs right then.”

“She was wrong about a bunch of stuff before that,” said Nikki. “I guess she just got lucky or something.”

The girls regrouped to tell their story and as it turns out the puppies were in good care. The rest of the trip went well but Nikki and Liz still get a weird feeling when talking about the palm reader in Galveston, Texas.

----

IT’S COMING RIGHT FOR US

By Jesse Shipp

The moon was full in the autumn sky, illuminating the Chariton Valley, U.S. 24 and the open farm land of Randolph County. As Trey Rexroat and Jason Keeven made their way across county lines, Jason saw something that made him roll around in the passenger seat as if he was a kid trying to escape his seatbelt.

Trey, of Keytesville, Mo., and Jason, of Salisbury, Mo., were cruising down the highway in Trey’s new, apple red Toyota Prius to Moberly, Mo., to meet up with Johnny Lazar, Jesse Kirkendoll and Travis Harvey at their house. Trey and Jason crossed over into Randolph County, making it 20 miles in; they come upon the city of Huntsville, home of the Westran Hornets.

The Toyota Prius pops over the last hill, the off-ramp and over-pass to Huntsville begins to rise from the horizon and runs over the long straight away that leads into Moberly. They start to ride parallel to the off-ramp, Jason, looking straight ahead, sees a greenish light coming at the car and he thought nothing of it until it continued coming at the car. As the light came closer Jason started to squirm and twist in his seat, Trey looks over at Jason, concerned and asks what’s wrong

“You don’t see that light, it’s coming right towards us,” Jason replies in a confused yet lively manner.

Trey, still confused, thought that Jason must be joking, so he just continued to concentrate on the road. The light still came closer, with no intention of stopping. As this light goes up and over the car, Trey looks over and in the blink of an eye Jason releases a worried “whoa,” ducks out of fear of hitting the light and looks behind him though the back window expecting to see this green light again. Jason looks over at Trey and questioned the odd light appearance, with Trey not seeing the light green light, Jason cannot confirm what he saw that night.

“I didn’t see anything and I was looking at the same space he was, he might of saw something, I don’t really know,” Trey said.

A while after the incident, Trey and Jason try to explain what Jason might have seen. The most logical idea that they could come up with was that it was light reflection from a mile marker or some sort of sign.

“I swear something was headed right towards us, It happened so fast, I guess it could have been anything really, but it was just strange because I’ve never really been scared like that before,” Jason said.

After many more times of traveling U.S. Highway 24, Jason has yet seen the greenish light again.

----

JUST ANOTHER HOME OWNER

By Jeremy Werner

History thrives at Loose Park in Kansas City where more than 150 years ago a part of the Battle for Westport during the American Civil War took place. Around the park are houses and landmark tourist traps that have history and age of its own. One house in particular still has a very fuzzy past and only general things are known about it from the owner. Stan has owned the house for almost two decades now and still does repairs on the old house, but still remembers the nights he spent in it.

“I had been there a couple of weeks,” Stan said. “I woke up sometime in the night, after being asleep and felt this presence in the hallway.”

Stan was a 100 percent sure something was in the hallway and the eerie feeling of that presence confined him to his bed for the moment. He wasn’t scared of an intruder or burglar, but something in him had told him it wasn’t any of those.

“Who’s there?” a terrified Stan yelled

No response and minutes later Stan would get out of bed to investigate. Everything was where it was suppose to be, nothing was moved and whatever was there was gone. No outline or bodily image had shown itself, but only left Stan with a little bit of fear of what was in his house. Luckily though he would never feel that presence again, but whatever was there would make itself known.

“The other experiences were noises – clanking noises – I could never get closer to the noise or tell where it came from in the house,” Stan said. “There was no pattern to them at all; they were always sporadic and random.”

His attic was made to be separated into four rooms in each corner of the house. During remodeling of the house two doors in particular would always open. He would eventually buy latches and make sure the doors were latched every night when he was done working for the day. That didn’t stop the doors from being wide open every morning or afternoon he headed back up to work on the attic.

Stan eventually accepted that his house could possibly be haunted, but that whatever was there had no malicious intent or brought about any truly bad feelings.

“Things started happening less and the more comfortable I got in the house,” he said.

A sunny afternoon to one of the largest and historic parks Stan turned to look back at the house for one quick second crossing the street and saw the image of a woman looking out from the attic window. His girlfriend had saw the same thing and asked if he had seen it.

“Yes,” Stan calmly said.

Stan is the third owner and the house was built in 1910. The original owner built the house with the intent to sell it to his daughter. The owner had only lived two years in the house before selling it to her where she would raise four sons. Outside of that the history is slim pickings in a historically-rich neighborhood. One thing we know is that whoever the fourth owner is won’t have to worry about anything serious. Maybe an eerie first few weeks and some noises that can’t be explained and doors that refuse to stay shut.

----

THE GREEN HEAD

By Jackie Walter

It was the hottest day of the summer in Okoboji, Iowa. Campers lined up to greet the approaching van. They day they had been waiting for all summer was finally here. The men stepped out of the van, found the area for the new pool and began digging. After the initial excitement had worn off, the campers dispersed and returned to their cabins. Work was steady, but slow, and the men were eager to finish quickly. So eager, in fact, that they almost missed it. One of the men felt his shovel hit much more than dirt. When he dug around the object and finally unearthed it, he discovered it was a human skull.

Camp Foster is known for its fun, the camaraderie and its history. Sioux Indians murdered an entire camp of settlers in 1857, leaving only one survivor. One family’s murder was especially brutal. The Sioux tribe murdered the infant and played tetherball with him. They scalped and raped the mother and daughter. They cut the father’s head off and destroyed his body. The family’s ghosts are rumored to haunt the camp in the areas where they were killed.

John Torten managed the grounds at Camp Foster for more than 25 years. He had really seen it all, with new campers coming in and out he was constantly walking back and forth between cabins through the woods at night. He became so good at it, he didn’t need a flashlight. One night, not too long after the instillation of the new pool, he was walking to fit a clogged toilet in the boy’s camp. Almost to his destination, he saw a light out of the corner of his eye. When he looked up, there was father Howe. However, it wasn’t all of father Howe. After a few seconds John realized: it was just his dismembered head.

The next day, finally able to form words, he told a seasoned and trustworthy camper about the previous night’s ordeals. He felt good about getting it off his chest and went about his day’s duties. The camper spread the news around the camp, and everyone was eager to talk to Mr. Torten about the floating head. Stories of “the green head” had been around the camp for years. That night, after telling of father Howe’s appearance, John went into a sudden cardiac arrest and died.

“The green head” is rumored to be seen at the intersection of three cabins at Camp Foster. The only person to have seen it in the last decade was Torten.

----

THE SPRIT FOLLOWS ME

By Bethany Rowell

It began three years ago. Jake Sinclair was 18 and living in Springhurst, Victoria, Australia with his parents. He planned to soon move in with his bandmates in Melbourne and continue working on his music career. Life was going well, but Jake was not expecting an unseen being to begin following him.

“I have a ghost that follows me. For some reason it never followed me to Melbourne, but when I’m at home or at a friend’s house in town, it will follow me there,” Jake, now 21, said.

His first experience with the entity occurred while he was in bed one night. The same activity repeats itself sporadically.

“It sometimes tucks my blankets up on me, it’s crazy,” he said. “It’s not like a scary thing now, but the first time it was scary as fuck. It’s kind of comforting in a way.”

Jake says that he will see the blankets move and feel them tighten around him. Along with being tucked in, he says the spirit will wander around the house.

“If it goes past a stack of papers, the papers will move in the wind. It can also seem to just fly through walls.”

Jake is unsure of why the activity started when it did or why it only follows him to certain locations.

“My only theory is that it’s my Nan from my mum’s side. I never met her and she never met me. The ‘tucking in thing’ makes me think it’s that, but I’ve got no clue.”

Jake isn’t the only member of his family who has experienced a ghost. His brother, Travis, was 20 when their grandfather passed away. Travis had been struggling with his dream of becoming a musician and, according to Jake, had only been able to sing in the shower. Soon after their grandfather passed, Travis woke one night to see the spirit standing at the end of his bed. He began to speak.

“Pop told my brother not to worry about what people think of him; Travis is very shy and self-conscious. He said Travis should let people hear him sing, so he did.”

Travis is now a multi-award winning artist in Australia with two albums. Jake is following in his footsteps and tours along with Travis as his guitarist. Jake does not believe that the spirit following him is their grandfather and has since moved back home to Springhurst.

Week 6

2010-01-27T18:09:00.001-08:00

LADY ON THE BALCONY

By Ashley Hartford

A father and son share similar sightings while staying at grandma’s house in Cameron, Mo. Northwest Missouri State University student Christian Grady and his father, Harry Grady, recall being spooked by much more than the creaky floors and squeaky stairs in his grandmother’s aging home.

“Her home is old,” Christian exclaims. “It used to be a nunnery.”

Sitting across from a Catholic Church and Catholic school, the three-story house has undergone remodeling in the years following the closing of the nunnery, mainly to remove the stairway to the balcony. However, the interior layout hasn’t changed much.

Walking up the stairs leads to a long hallway with bedrooms on each side.

“My father’s bedroom is at the end of the hallway,” Christian explains.

Looking from the top of the stairs to the end of the hall, Christian describes how a closed door and small window that stays “winterized with plastic” year-round opens to the stair-less balcony.

One winter night when Christian was 11, he began to view the balcony in a different light.

Shortly after midnight, Christian approached the stairway. After creeping up half the stairs, he felt a cold burst of air overtake him.

“It felt like I stepped outside,” he explains.

Suddenly, a bright glowing blue light lit up the dark hallway.

That’s when Christian heard a voice.

“She kept repeating ‘No, no, no, no,’” Christian says.

Frozen in place, Christian continued to listen carefully until he spotted an apparition.

“I saw the upper torso of a glowing figure outside the balcony window,” he says.

Shocked and scared at the sight, Christian ran back downstairs to tell his grandma. Deciding to investigate, the two climbed back up the stairs to see only a dimly lit, empty hallway. The figure had vanished.

“The air flow completely stopped,” Christian says.

The next morning, Christian shared the story with his dad, learning some insight on what exactly this apparition might be.

“My dad saw a similar figure by the balcony,” Christian explains. “He felt the coldness penetrating the house, so that’s why the windows and screens are covered in plastic.”

Christian says his dad told him a story of a Catholic woman getting locked outside in the winter. She attempted to get her sisters’ attention by knocking on the balcony door, but ended up dying in the cold.

Christian believes the figure is the spirited remains of this woman.

“The feeling has stuck with me,” Christian says, “like a bone-tingling chill.”

Even though Christian claims to be skeptical of the subject, he states that, “the thought of spirits lingering with unfinished business is intriguing.”

----

LIGHTS IN THE SKY

By Mary Balano

Victor Meca of Kansas City, Mo., saw an unidentified flying object in the sky on a summer night in June 2008 while he was out with his girlfriend Lauren. While they were driving back to Lauren’s house after dinner, Victor got lost on the dark roads that lead to Lauren’s farmhouse. Lauren’s father owned a large potion of property where they built their home so there were no other houses in a 10-mile radius and they found themselves in the middle of nowhere with the only light being from the car. Frustrated and annoyed Victor pulled over and tried to get some idea on where he was using his GPS, at that time Lauren was fixated on the sky and telling Victor to “look.” When he looked he saw something he could not grasp.

“It was a huge red light with four small yellow lights circling it in motion. ‘What the hell is that?’” Victor questioned; to which Lauren had no answer.

They both knew what they were seeing was not a plane however the sound it made was similar to what you would hear from a plane close by. They watched the lights for what seemed like 15 to 20 minutes and then all the sudden they just died out “like someone just flipped a switch and turned them off” Victor said.

Victor woke the next morning expecting something to be on the news, he thought that everyone would have seen what he saw, but nothing was ever mentioned about mysterious lights in the sky.

“If it wasn’t for Lauren seeing the exact same thing I would have thought I was going crazy because it just seemed like this would be a huge deal and all over the media,” Victor said.

Victor still to this day has no idea what him and Lauren saw in the sky that night, and probably will never know, but that experience completely changed his mind on earth being the only place for intelligent life.

----

SHADOW PEOPLE IN 3D

By Joel Epley

Still fidgeting with his three-year-old son’s 3D glasses, he realized that someone had finally sat in the otherwise empty movie theater.

Joseph Rehagen, 23, girlfriend, Allie Gunning, 23, and son Landon had just about settled in the back row of the enormous movie theater when Landon began to throw his 3D glasses around.

“I’m just glad we didn’t piss anybody off,” Joe said. “I hate being the guy with a crying baby in public.”

The three had sat in the back row on the last day showing of “Up” at AMC West Olive 16 in Creve Cour, Mo. a suburb of St. Louis.

“We walked in and there was nobody,” Allie said. “That’s why I wasn’t too worried if he (Landon) was going to start crying or not. It’s slightly less embarrassing when no one is around to hear it.”

As Joe kept his glasses on to show Landon that everything was OK, he noticed a man sitting in the front row of the theater.

“My first instinct was that I didn’t like this guy,” Joe said. “I only took one glance at him but I stereotyped him as the creepy guy going to see kids movies alone.”

The man sat hunched down in his seat with what appeared to be a skinny frame and long slick-back hair.

“I tried to mention it to Allie so we could trade creepo/pedophile jokes but Landon wouldn’t stop throwing those damn glasses,” Joe said. “I finally got him to calm down and the dude was gone.”

Joe mentioned the lone viewer in the front row but Allie hadn’t seen a thing.

“Dude, I was fixed on the previews. I had already dealt with Landon’s fuss all day,” she said. “I was watching the screen without my 3D glasses because they were giving me a headache and I didn’t see a thing.”

The three continued to watch the movie in 3D as Landon fell asleep in the first five minutes. The figure in the front row was not seen by either the rest of the film.

Joe still swears he saw a “shadowy” figure sitting in the front row of the theater. Allie on the other hand doesn’t believe what her non-3D eyes didn’t see for themselves.

After explaining to them the possibility of Shadow People, they were not amused and suggested we talk about something else.

----

A FEW ROOMMATES

By Jeremy Werner

Callahan dropped out of school before he graduated and realized how big of a mistake that was because a few of his co-workers were all going from a family-owned grocery store to working a warehouse for a nationwide company. He had finally decided to get his G.E.D. and was able to get a job that wasn’t stocking groceries at night.

“I was moving up the ladder and was going to stock for eight dollars more, “Callahan laughed, “finally could move out of my boss’s basement, too.”

Callahan lived in the basement of his boss’s rental house where his other co-workers lived. He slept in a cold damp basement on a mattress he picked up and “bulk item” trash pick-up day. His bathroom was a chipped toilet and smashed sink from a night of heavy drinking.

“I will never miss that place, but I had to move back.”

Callahan moved back after less than a month in a cozy new apartment. A low-income apartment where Callahan had everything to himself and no longer worried about roommates dumping failed food experiments in the sink to rot and fester throughout the week. The stocking job was at night and Callahan didn’t want to lose this job since it would be the first job he’s ever had that paid more than ten an hour.

“Sixteen dollars an hour changes someone like me fast…more money for drugs and alcohol.”

Callahan didn’t trust his neighbors after the first day he managed to witness a drug deal, a woman beating her child, teenagers throwing firecrackers at joggers, among other things.

”Every day when I’d go to bed I’d lock the door…and every afternoon I’d wake up the door would be unlocked,” Callahan said reassuringly. “I just kept passing it off as if I couldn’t remember if I locked it or not.”

After a few weeks Callahan came home from work, beginning to get use to his new schedule, already having a McDonald’s breakfast in hand and saw the woman who lived below him outside the door.

“Apparently she had been waiting for me, she wanted to know if I had the night off…apparently she heard people walking around my apartment all night and was only able to get a few hours of sleep.”

Callahan checked the door when he got to and saw it was locked. No one could have gotten in and most of his friends didn’t know where he had lived so they wouldn’t bum at his apartment or his other group of friends worked with him that night.

“Luckily I didn’t have that much to move,” Callahan laughs, “I’m also lucky my boss let me love back into his rent house basement.”

A few weeks later Callahan would move into another apartment and life went on.

“I spent enough nights watching bad horror movies…to know if something weird happens, get the fuck out quick.”

----

RALPH NEVER LEFT HOME

By Jackie Walter

Lindsay Irving is no stranger to paranormal activity. In her grandparent’s house growing up, the resident spirit “Ralph” would walk around the upstairs all night, and shake your bed to wake you up. He has always lived there and always will. Growing up with it in your grandparent’s house is one thing. That is a place she would visit for a few days-maybe a week tops- but eventually her family would leave and return home. Growing up with it her own house was another thing altogether.

When her grandparents died, they left Lindsay’s mother their beautiful farmhouse in Bedford, Iowa. This was always Lindsay’s dream growing up.

“I have always loved that house,” Lindsay said. “Ralph was just a part of it and for some reason, it didn’t scare me.”

As a 22-year-old girl, “Ralph” definitely has a different effect on Lindsay today. After they moved into the house, her mother bought a bell to put on the front door at an antique fair. For years, Lindsay thought the bell hung on the outside of the door. She rarely used the front door and when she did, she never paid attention to where the bell was hanging. Almost every day, the bell would ring.

“It would ring really loudly, kind of like someone was shaking it,” Lindsay said. “I just assumed it was the Iowa wind.”

Late one afternoon, Lindsay was moving a few things out of the house, preparing for college, when she noticed something odd. The bell was hanging on the inside of the door. Lindsay later found out that the bell had always hung on the inside of the door. When she asked about it ringing all the time, her mom simply replied, “Ralph.”

“Ralph is just another member of the family for my mom. She has lived with him all her life.”

Lindsay’s mom Joe has always believed that Ralph liked her more than the other members if the family. He would leave things in her shoes all the time, and she was the one he woke in the middle of the night. Before Lindsay was born, none of the other family members had any “Ralph” experiences.

----

NOISES IN THE ATTIC

By Bethany Rowell

It was November 1989 and the Rowell family was moving into their new house in the countryside of Missouri. The family had five members: Dave Rowell; his wife, Kelley McLaughlin; their six-month old daughter, Bethany; and Kelley’s twin 10-year-old sons, Chris and Adam Love. They were nestled 10 miles from the nearest cities of Kearney, Liberty, and Smithville with few other houses in the area.

For the first weeks, the family experienced strange occurrences, but attributed them to not being use to the house. Most of these incidents occurred in the attic and loft area on the second floor.

“I often thought that out of the corner of my eye I'd see someone up there, but there never was anyone there when I looked. There were always noises coming from the same area; we joked that there was someone living in the attic,” McLaughlin said.

Dave Rowell never saw anything, but does admit to hearing an out-of-place noise in the attic.

“There was a ‘clunking’ sound that we heard a few times. There was nothing up there that could make that noise; no furnace, no water heater and no way for an animal to get in. It sounded as if something was being dropped or banged on,” Rowell said.

Aside from the attic, the basement was also home to a phantom smell that led to the discovery of a serious problem within the house.

“When we moved in, I kept getting whiffs of cigarette smoke, not stale, old smoke, but like someone was smoking in the house. The basement was the worst place, but it was still only once in awhile that I smelled it. It was strong and then it was gone within seconds,” McLaughlin said.

After a few months, McLaughlin called the gas company, even though she wasn’t certain that it could be gas.

“The man came in and used his detector and told me that we had a lot of carbon monoxide in the house and I needed to get out. I said that I had been smelling it and he assured me that carbon monoxide has no smell. As it turns out, the vent pipe on the roof wasn't tall enough and the wind was pushing carbon monoxide from the furnace back into the house. I'm sure the pipe had been that way for many years.”

There have been many cases of ghosts providing warnings to those who are still alive for decades. This may be the case in this instance with carbon monoxide being an odorless and tasteless gas. Had McLaughlin not smelled the cigarette smoke, the results could have been deadly.

Months went by and the family adjusted to the noises and ignored the unexplainable happenings, but six months at the house hadn’t made it feel any more like a home. Chris Love, now 30, had his own unsettling experience while doing a daily task of retrieving the mail.

"I walked across the front yard to check the mailbox. On the return trip, I made most of the walk looking downward, flipping through the mail for that day. About 20 feet before I got to the door, I looked up and, upon seeing the house, had the almost-overwhelming feeling that this wasn't our house. It wasn't really a scary feeling per se, just the strange feeling that this house belonged to someone else, and wasn't really ours. It stuck with me for a few hours afterward, and eventually faded away, but I always remembered how odd it felt to truly feel like a stranger in a place where I'd felt very settled into before," Chris Love said.

With no information on anyone who had previously lived in the house dying, they went on with unanswered questions. Over time the activity got less noticeable and disappeared, but a lingering feeling of unease still hung around.

“It took years before the house felt like our home. The house always felt to me like I was living in someone else's house; never comfortable,” McLaughlin said.

----

WHISPERS IN THE HALLWAY

By Aaron Smithmier

Matthew Miser on Kansas City, Mo., is religious, but never expected contact when he began working at his local church. When Miser first started working at First Christian Church doing custodial work, most nights were pretty dull. He had his routine – vacuum the corridors and chapel, arrange the classrooms and put away various items in storage. It was that last task that changed the job for Miser.

“There is kind of this middle hallway thing where we stored stuff in between the first and second floors. That’s where I heard it. A whisper and then footsteps running away,” Miser said.

This isn’t a new occurrence by any means to Miser family, or to other members of the congregation. Both of Matt’s parents claim to have similar experiences around the church.

“We’ve all heard it; Matt was just the first one to say anything about it,” Becky Miser said. “It’s just something you don’t like to bring up in a house of God.”

----

THINGS JUST FIX THEMSELVES

By Jesse Shipp

It was a normal hot Missouri summer day. The sun was shining, beating down on the people who dare to be outside. Like most people on days like this, they are pool side, getting tans, reading books and swimming, much like how Stephanie and her friend Rachel were doing, until Rachel’s cousin came running outside.

Last year in the middle of July, Stephanie McDonald went over to her friend Rachel Brennan’s two story, brick home in University City, Mo., just outside of St. Louis, to hang out and to enjoy the day by Rachel’s pool.

Some time has passed; Stephanie and Rachel were lounging peacefully by the pool until Rachel’s cousin Allyssa came sprinting outside, screaming, to warn them and to get gather help because the dishwasher was overflowing and if they didn’t clean up the water in time, it would buckle the floor. Stephanie and Rachel look at each other confused and shocked and grab beach towels and rush inside. The floor is flooded with warm water; Stephanie and Rachel threw down their beach towels to sop up the water. Rachel’s brother, Derek Brennan and their cousins Amy, Jared and Brie, who were also in the house, came and helped.

The sopping and wringing out the towels went on for about 20 minutes and it was getting them nowhere.

“The dishwasher kept spitting out lots and lots of water, more than it could feasibly hold, we already shut it off when it started overflowing,” Stephanie said.

They opened the dishwasher, which was still gushing hot water, and see that it’s still trying to fill with water, even though it was off. Stephanie went to the basement to find the pipe that leads to the dishwasher and turned off the water supply. The water finally stopped gushing out of the dishwasher and they were finally able to clean up the water. After they were finished, Rachel called her uncle Rick to come look at the dishwasher. Rick found nothing wrong with the dishwasher, nothing wrong with the seals or anything that would jam it and keep it filling when off.

“We started to freak out because Rachel and her family always said that their house was haunted because things break for a period of time and then fix themselves,” Stephanie said.

They ran it again, the dishwasher ran fine. Ever since this incident, nothing like this has happened again.

“We did save the floor, nobody was hurt, we were just a little red for a while after,” Stephanie said.

----

NWMSU’S ROBERTA HALL

By Rob O’Doherty

Sisters for life and death. At least that’s what the women in Roberta Hall believe. Many sorority girls that have lived in the ill-fated hall on campus believe that there is a presence lurking within the walls. Years ago, the sorority hall caught fire and student Roberta Steele, became trapped inside the burning building and died from complications a year later.

“It started with noises. You could hear scratching, thumping and strange things at night,” local sorority girl Julie Newlin said. “I know we live in a building with a ton of sorority girls, but these weren’t like regular noises. They were eerie; something isn’t right when you hear scratching on your door at 3 a.m.”

Erin Smith, president of Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority thinks that Roberta isn’t a harmful spirit. Many of the sorority girls have actually claimed to have contacted Roberta through infamous games such as the Ouija board. Julie thinks that provoking the spirit of Roberta will only make her closer to her sisters she once had.

“Nobody deserves to die the way that she did,” Erin said. “I honestly think bringing her back into our lives in any way we can is the true spirit of sisterhood. I’m not sure what her intentions are, but all of the sisters living here definitely still feel the presence.”

Different tales are told about the history of Roberta Hall, and most of the girls living there rest assured that Roberta will always be with them. Sisters for life and death.

----

WHAT DID THE DOG SEE?

By Logan Campbell

Man’s best friend has always been a great protector of his master, but what if you couldn’t see what he was protecting you from.

I was playing with my dog around the house about a month after moving into my apartment. I was throwing one of his toys around the house, and we were playing fetch. I threw his toy into the corner of the living room and he ran toward it and suddenly stopped. He started to bark toward the spot where his toy was at, but he wouldn’t go near his toy. I was lying on the floor and he jumped up on my chest and continued to bark toward this spot.

I was freaked out because there was nothing in the corner of the room besides his toy. The part that I was most terrified about was the fact that my dog was acting like he was actually barking at someone sitting in the corner.

I tried to push the dog closer to the corner to see if he would go closer. He was pushing back on me as hard as he could so that he wouldn’t touch the corner. He wouldn’t stop barking, and it was as if someone snuck into the room when he wasn’t looking.

“Please leave this apartment,” my wife said.

My dog started watching something move toward the door and leave. He stopped barking and the entity seemed to have left the apartment.

I haven’t found any information that says there was any person that died in this apartment. But I have read that animals can sometimes sense when entities or spirits are present in the room.

I am still not sure if there was something in the apartment, but I really feel like there was. One thing is for sure, I don’t throw any of my dog’s toys into that corner of the room.

Week 5

2010-01-21T15:16:00.001-08:00

OUIJA BOARD ENCOUNTER

By Ashley Hartford

Some say playing with Ouija boards opens a door to “the other side.” But what if the door to the spirit world never fully closes? Does the invitation for outside forces to enter entail a full-access pass for spirits to wander our world at will? For Northwest student Brett Richey, solving these questions may be the start of explaining what happened on a freezing, winter night in Millikan Hall.

That night, a group of students two doors down from Richey’s room pulled out an Ouija board and began to call upon the spirit world. While Richey took no part in the paranormal activity, he soon became the central character in this game-from-beyond.

“I was roused 20 minutes prior to the experience in my sleep,” Richey explains, “because for some reason I felt something was in the room that wasn’t supposed to be.”

All of a sudden Richey’s bed became ice-cold, which he finds strange.

“Any student knows when you have the heaters on in the High Rises it’s hotter than hell,” he says.

Before this moment, Richey never had any contact with the paranormal. Suddenly, he was overtaken by an outside force.

“I felt a coldness on me,” Richey describes, “and then a pressure on my chest.”

At that time, Richey tried to sit up, but was locked in place.

“I was sitting just a few minutes before,” Richey says. “It was as if something was confining me to my bed.”

With no physical strength to fight the force, Richey says he did what anyone would do in this threatening situation.

“I started praying.”

While the prayer kept Richey’s mind free, his body remained trapped under the force for an uncomfortably long period of time. After 15 minutes, Richey was released and crawled from his loft to his desk where he quietly sat and read his Bible.

“I kept looking over my shoulder every second because I felt something still there,” he explains.

After a while, Richey felt the presence of the intruder fade away. Afraid to sleep on his loft, Richey made a bed on the floor.

“I cradled my bible to my chest and prayed for a short while,” he says, “before falling asleep.”

To this day, Richey does not know why the force attacked him. He is a firm believer of the paranormal; however, he believes we will never fully understand it.

----

A VISIT FROM GREAT-GRANDMA

By Michael Clements

A late-night light mysteriously turning on leaves a northwest Missouri man questioning what he saw.

Cody Schimming says it was the only time he ever saw a ghost in his life and he wasn’t scared at all.

It was in the middle of the night three years ago when Schimming was sleeping on a couch in his basement. He woke up to a light turning on without anyone nearby to turn it off on its own.

“I remember waking up and suddenly seeing a glow from the light,” Schimming said. “No one else was around but I did see something that wasn’t like anything I have ever saw.”

Schimming’s great-grandmother died when his mother was 13 years old. Schimming has seen photographs of her and says what he saw looked similar to the pictures.

“It was dark and gray shadow-like and it looked like her,” he said. “I never met her of course before but it looked just like her and swear it was her.”

Although Schimming did say he wasn’t sure of what he saw because he was sleeping.

“It may have just been my eyes playing tricks on me but I swear what I saw was her whether it was real or not,” he said.

Schimming said after he rubbed his eyes, the shadow like ghost disappeared when he looked back towards the light.

“After that I got up and turned the light off, it was a pull string type light and then I went back to sleep on the couch,” Schimming said. “I really didn’t think about it then because I was too tired but when I woke up the next day I was really freaked out about it.”

----

A GHOST’S LATE-NIGHT SNACK

By Logan Campbell

At night, even after you’ve checked the doors to make sure everything is locked and secured, strange things happen.

Sherry Winters had just put her kids to bed and made sure everything was ready for school and work in the morning. She had locked the doors and gotten ready for bed. When she was lying down to fall asleep she heard the sound of pots banging together into the kitchen.

She got up to see if her kids were cooking a late night snack or if someone had snuck into the house. When she walked into the dining room she saw someone at the stove, but she did not recognize him. She stood and starred at this figure as he appeared to cook on the stove. She said it was then she realized she could see through the figure.

Winter said she didn’t know what to do but watch. She didn’t want to disturb this figure and make him angry. She said the figure walked from the kitchen into the living room and sat on the couch. She was shocked to see such an event and was also scared at the time. Winters said the figure was around six feet tall and looked to be some kind of night worker.

Winters could not figure out who the figure appeared to be or if she even knew the previous owners. This was the first of a few encounters she has had with the man. She has been up late watching movies and has seen the man walking by to sit on the couch. She hasn’t said anything to him in fear of what might happen with the man. Winters’ children have also been up with her when the figure has been in the house.

“The figure is calm when he walks through the house,” Winters said “He has never tried to harm anyone, so I just let him be.”

Winters says she hasn’t tried to research who the previous owner of the home was, or who the man could be in the house. She just finds it interesting that she saw this man a few times in her house trying to eat and sit on the couch.

Now when she goes to bed at night and she hears the pots clanging around, she knows it is just a ghost trying to grab a bite to eat.

----

A DOOR SLAMS IN THE NIGHT

By Jesse Shipp

University of Missouri-St. Louis, more commonly known as, UMSL, a Jesuit school along the Mississippi river on an urban campus, started its prestigious history in 1957 with the purchase of the Bellerive Country Club and the 125 acres it sat on. At this time it was known as the “Normandy Junior College”. Six years later, due to the buyout from the University of Missouri System, it became the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Before this, the land the Bellerive Country Club was located on, it’s been reported that it was bought by John Baptiste Charles Lucas in 1803. Twenty-five years later, in 1828, John sold the land off to his son, Robert Lucas. During this time Robert’s daughter and her friend, on New Year’s Day, were ice skating on a pond that was on the land, the ice gave way and they both drowned. After the school became the University of Missouri-St. Louis, enrollment began to climb, so more dorms were needed. The pond the two girls drowned in was drained to build a 130,000-square-foot, suit-style residential hall, which is now know as Oak Hall.

In 2008, with leaves on the ground, days getting shorter and colder, two freshmen suitemates, Brittney Skinner and Madi Baer, decided to stay in their suite for the night instead of going out. Despite having their own rooms, Brittney decided to hang out in Madi’s room to watch TV with the door closed. After a while of watching TV and talking, Madi and Brittney heard a door slam. They gave each other concerned looks and went to go check it out, thinking another roommate had shut their door. They went to Brittany’s door, which was closed, although Brittney had left it open. When they opened the door they discovered that the shoe rack that Brittney hangs on the back of her door had been flung across the room.

“With the shoe rack, it’s just about impossible to shut the door without putting force into it,” Brittney said.

“It was just us two in the suite, we thought one of our roommates came back, but that wasn’t the case, something slammed my door, I don’t know what but something did,” Brittney said.

Both girls decided to pack up some of their things and go to a friend’s house; they didn’t come back to their suite for a week. When they returned, they didn’t experience anything else like that for the rest of the school year.

----

GHOST CAR IN THE GRAVEYARD

By Melissa Morkus

Numerous reports have been made over the years about paranormal activity happening in cemeteries. Seeing apparitions, orbs or hearing voices are common things that people experience in these particular locations.

Brian Wiemann, 22, has first hand had one of these paranormal experiences. One night Brian and two friends decided to head to the Blue Springs Cemetery located in Blue Springs, Mo. With them they brought a video camera to record any paranormal findings.

As Brain and his friends walked for a few minutes through the graveyard, they came across three tombstones places closely together. As they were about to read what was on the tombstones a red vintage car, estimated to be made in the 1950s startled them.

“I couldn’t hear a sound until the car pulled up right next to us,” Brian said.

Shocked by the sudden appearance of the vehicle, Brain and the two other males ran back to their car, still with the video camera capturing footage. Later that night, Brian looked through the video they captured and found something they had not noticed once before. Three orbs, very clear and noticeable, were visible in the footage they captured when they approached the three tombstones. The three orbs also appeared to follow Brain and his friends as they ran to their car.

Brian wanted to copy the tape for evidence of his paranormal experience, but the second time of viewing the tape, no footage was found.

“Everything had been cleared without any reasonable explanation,” Brian said.

Some consider ghosts to be a figment of the imagination; something fictional. But with so many reports and sightings of unexplainable findings, such as Brian’s, it’s hard not to at least consider the paranormal not being so abnormal after all.

2010-01-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

AN ANGEL IN HAWAII

By Ashley Hartford

In his youth, Dave Hardin’s tropical family trip to Hawaii introduced him to much more than just the sand and surf.

“I witnessed a lot of firsts,” Hardin shares.

While traveling the islands, Hardin enjoyed his first pig-roasting luau, drank his first can of guava juice, witnessed his first bird of paradise and even flipped open the cover of his first Playboy. But while any pair of nine-year-old eyes may call these experiences rare, few are likely to remember their tale as vividly as Hardin does.

While staying at the opulent Prince Hakia Hotel in Honolulu, Dave spotted a spectacular sight at the piano.

“The creator of Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four was in the lobby playing,” Hardin shares.

But getting Stan Lee’s autograph wasn’t the most unusual event that took place on the fourth day of their vacation. That afternoon the family drove to Hanama Bay on the south side of the island to enjoy coral reefs and tropical fishing on a sunken-in volcano. Right as the sun was setting, the group hopped in the car to head back to Honolulu.

“We became hopelessly lost and hungry,” Hardin tells, “so we decided to stop at a McDonald’s by the beach.”

After enjoying burgers and fries, the family headed back to their deserted car parked in a dark T-lot across the street.

“We were discussing directions and looking at a map under a dimly-lit yellow street lamp,” Hardin said.

All of a sudden, a nice looking Polynesian Hawaiian man approached the family.

“It was a comfortable feeling just looking at him,” Hardin shares.

Noticing their troubles, the man offered to help.

“He asked us to step over to his car to see better,” Hardin said.

But the family didn’t notice a car or headlights in the lot before.

“The headlights just turned on,” Hardin shares.

According to Dave, after a quick exchange the Hardin family received “really concise directions,” and turned to walk back to their car. Halfway back, Dave’s mom handed him five-dollars to tip the man.

“I turned around and his car wasn’t there,” Hardin explains. “We didn’t hear the engine or see the headlights,” leaving the entire family confused.

Dave ran back over to McDonald’s, but the mysterious man had completely disappeared.

“I never caught his name, but it was like he was completely prepared for this one specific moment,” Hardin explains.

The awe-struck family discussed the exchange the entire way back. They believe the man was an angel.

“He didn’t seem like a lost soul. He wasn’t familiar, but not foreign, just – right.” Hardin said.

The family may never know the truth of the night a man appeared and disappeared right in their moment of need, but Dave sums up the experience with a profound thought.

“We can’t explain the unexplainable,” Hardin shares. “We’re just grateful it happened.”

The man’s directions guided the family home perfectly.

----

A VISIT FROM BEYOND

By Doug Kimball

A lover ready to move on returns for one last farewell.

Pat Quinn says his recently deceased grandfather came back just to see his wife.

“He told us he lived a good life and was ready,” Quinn says.

It wasn’t three weeks later when Quinn’s grandmother was sleeping in her room when she woke up in the middle of the night. She looked over and could see her husband there in the room. Quinn says his grandmother “asked him what are you doing here and he didn’t reply, he didn’t show any emotion, but she said she could see him.” She add that he was there for about 15 seconds, just standing there watching her. He looked out into the hallway and he disappeared into thin air.

“She said it was almost like someone called him,” Quinn says.

Quinn says this isn’t the first time they have seen things like this at the house.

“We live right behind an old school graveyard, and my room is in the back of the house,” Quinn says, “you can see the graveyard from it.”

One night Quinn just happened to look out his window and saw an old woman standing there.

“She was watching my house,” Quinn says. “The woman was wearing raggy clothes and she was all white,” Quinn adds.

----

WHITE NOISE

By Jesse Shipp

Halloween came early this year for me and some other students of the Northwest Missouri State University Paranormal Journalism class. On a cold, overcast day, we traveled to a haunted house, which is considered by some to be one of the most haunted places in America, where the Moore family and two family friends were brutally murdered.

Upon arriving in the once booming town of Villisca, Iowa, driving down the streets, passing some old run down houses and narrow lanes, I could feel that there was heaviness in this town, the weather did help much. We arrived at our first destination, The Olson Linn Museum on the town square. Here we first met Darwin Linn, the owner of the Moore house, more commonly known as the Villisca Axe Murder house, and Johnny Houser, the paranormal guide and historian. Linn gave us a brief history of the town and the murders and then let us wonder around the museum. Upon display there were photo’s, newspapers and items from the Axe Murder house, such items that gave me the chills was a photo of a little girl in a window, that you can barely see and two axe’s which one of them is believed to be the murder weapon.

After viewing the museum, we all piled into our two white vans and followed Houser in his beaten up, maroon paint chipped Chevy Lumina to the Villisca Cemetery where the Moore family and the two Stillinger daughters were buried. Here Houser went into more detail about the town and the murders, it started to sprinkle which brought a somber mood.

We once again jumped into our white vans and follow Houser’s Lumina to our final destination, the axe murder house.

Upon entering the house, the class split off into groups, occupying every room. I felt heaviness and had a weird feeling when I entered the house. After experiencing some false alarm scares, I decided to go to one of the scariest rooms with the smallest door ever, the attic, with Karra Small. Entering the attic, I could smell the rain and dust. After a little while of sitting around in the dark and asking questions on the recorder, Aaron Smithmier entered the attic bearing a video camera and a Ouija board, quickly followed by Laura Boden, Doug Kimball, Ashley Hartford and Houser with his white box “white noise” scanner. Smithmier sets up the camera with Boden sets up the Ouija board. We all gather around the board and put our fingers on the movable piece. All of the flashlights but Smithmiers red head lamp were turned off and the questions begin; Smithmier starts off with the first question.

“Is there anybody in the room with us?” Smithmier said.

The Ouija board piece didn’t move and the white box reader scanned back and forth, after a moment the white box said “Adam.”

“Who is Adam,” Smithmier said.

The Ouija board piece didn’t move and the white box scanned, but nothing came out but static and the rain tapping on the roof. Smithmier tried to entice the any spirit/s to move the Ouija board piece to respond, nothing happened. I asked Houser if there was a history of an Adam, he said not that he knew of. Then I asked if new spirits can move into a place, Houser said they most certainly could. The next person to ask a question was Hartford.

“Is there anybody else in the room with use, other than Adam?” Hartford said.

Again, the Ouija board piece didn’t move, by this time we knew it wasn’t working, the white box scanned, this time the white box said Boyd, who was one of the youngest brothers.

At this moment in time I started to freak out, breathing heavily and was on the verge of leaving the attic. Smithmier asked another question.

“If there is somebody with us, are you male or female?” Smithmier said.

The whit box scanned and gave a whisper and said male.

At this point Smithmier decided that we should move the Ouija board to the children’s room. As people slowly got up, they turned their flashlights on and packed put the Ouija board. Houser and I were still sitting while everybody else slowly filed out of the attic; Smithmier was of the last people to leave. When he got to the door the white box scanner said “Aaron,” clear as day, Smithmier stopped in his tracks and asked if the white box scanner just said his name.

“Do you want me to stay?” Smithmier said.

Nothing but static came over the scanner, Smithmier proceeded out of the attic. At this time I was really freaked out but excited at the same time, it really got the adrenaline pumping.

“It was creepy at first when the white box said my name, but now I find it pretty cool,” Smithmier said.

The clock stroked nine p.m., it was time to leave. As we left the house it started to pour. Once again everybody piled into the white vans, passing some old run down houses and narrow lanes, I could still feel that there was heaviness in this town, the weather did help much.

----

TARKIO TREE LINE

By Joel Epley

Just before calling it a night in Tarkio, Mo. four unexplained lights disappeared then reappeared above the tree line.
A.J. Martin, 21, and his girlfriend Tara, 21, were at a bon fire last fall and enjoying their last beer when they noticed four lights above the tree line disappear.

“We weren’t really staring at those specific lights, we thought they were just stars,” said A.J.. “We probably would have never noticed them until they were just gone.”

The lights disappeared and grabbed A.J. and Tara’s full attention. They sat in silence trying to figure out what they just saw if anything at all.

“The sky just looked different all of the sudden,” Tara said. “It was the same patch of sky we were staring at all night, and it just changed.”

It wasn’t until the lights reappeared that the couple tried to involve the rest of the group. Trying to point out four specific lights in a clear country sky only raised disbelief among the rest of the group. A.J. and Tara sat for the rest of the evening convinced they saw and possibly still see a UFO.

People slowly left the party one by one until A.J., Tara, and three others sat around the fire to keep warm. Calling it a night the group began to pack up and walk to the cars. One last look at the sketchy patch of sky and the lights were gone once again. Throwing his chair in excitement, A.J. screamed to the rest of the group to take a look.

“They didn’t believe us at first and they still probably don’t,” he said. “But the rest of them looked at that part of the sky and all I got was a ‘yeah, the sky does look different now’.”

----

TOUCHES IN THE NIGHT

By Melissa Morkus

There have been many reports of paranormal activity occurring in the Midwest. The Villisca Axe Murder House, Lemp Mansion and the Lincoln Theater are all famous places in this region that are considered haunted. What about the small town of Maryville, Mo.?

Jake Koehn, 22, is a strong skeptic when it comes to ghosts and paranormal activity. Ever since moving into his new apartment in, Maryville, he’s experienced some strange phenomenon. Koehn has started to really consider the possibility of the existence of ghosts.

One night when he was sleeping, Koehn, was awaked by someone touching his shoulder.

“I woke up and turned on my back and immediately felt a shock sent through my body,” Koehn said.

After the shock, Koehn’s heart rate increased dramatically and it took him two hours to relax and finally fall back asleep. Coincidentally, Koehn’s roommate had a very similar experience that same week. He woke up because he felt a presence in the room. Before his eyes could open he felt a hand brush the side of his face. When he opened his eyes, no one was there.

Koehn and his roommates have also experienced seeing strange shadows on their ceiling and hallway. One night Koehn spoke of not being able to sleep and staring at his doorway where there was a shadow moving halfway like a pinwheel.

Being a skeptic, Koehn has tried numerous times to find some kind of explanation for these occurrences. Some of his theories have been just his mind playing tricks or just having nightmares and letting it affect his thinking. Is this apartment building haunted? Or is it just the mind playing tricks on itself?

----

A NIGHT AT WORKMAN CHAPEL

By Rob O’Doherty

Like every other random drunken hope of finding something besides graffiti on the ill-fated walls of Workman Chapel, this time around some men of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity were in for something other than the norm. After passing through the one-lane bridge and slowing down to read the gut wrenching religious signs, the tombstones began to rise from the left.

“We always go out to Workman’s Chapel in the hopes of finding something different,” Ryan Parkhurst said. “A lot of the time when I head out there, I don’t experience much, but this night was different for some reason. There was something different about the presence of the church. The hair on the back of my neck never stood up at Workman’s until that night.”

The feeling that the men got from the church that night was something they couldn’t explain until they got home that night. Of course, each time they make the trip out there, the men always follow tradition by parking their car under the twisted, rotting tree that hangs over the church-the very spot where the legend says people hung during the Civil War period.

“We didn’t hear anything unusual when we were parked under the tree. It was after we got back to campus and got out of the car when we discovered something that we’ll never forget,” Cody Meek said. “The back windshield had around three to four mud-pressed handprints against the fogged glass. The handprints looked like they belonged to small child.”

The men swore that there was no one else out there that night. They don’t know how to explain what had happened that night, all they know is that they take their trips out to Workman’s Chapel more seriously. It just goes to prove that even small town legends, such as Workman Chapel still have secrets hiding in its walls.

2009-12-11T08:06:00.000-08:00

GIANT BOOMERANG OVER NEW JERSEY

By Doug Kimball

What started out as a typical grandmother /granddaughter bonding evening kicks off with a scare from above.

Roughly 14 years ago Denise Gentile had just picked up her granddaughter, Kristin Masker, and the pair were on their way home to enjoy each others company.

The two were traveling east on Interstate 80 in New Jersey around 8:30 p.m., everything was going fine, no traffic, and it was a fairly clear night. Then Gentile spotted something in the sky. It looked to be “a huge boomerang, a fat boomerang, about the size of a football field,” Gentile says. It made no noise, was flying fairly close to the ground, she continued.

Her granddaughter also saw the object.

“She pointed out what she thought was a plane that was flying low. We continued to look at it and it was definitely not a plane it was in the shape of a boomerang and much bigger than a plane,” Masker says adding that it had “a large number of lights on it.”

The object followed them the rest of their trip on I-80, but didn’t stop there. It continued to follow them down Saddle River Road in Fairlawn, N.J. Gentile pulls her car in the driveway, object still over head.

“It was right over the house,” Gentile says, as the two stay in the car afraid to get out. After a while they make their way into the garage and head inside. “There was no noise, just over the house and still no noise,” Gentile explains, “We were both scared.”

“We looked out the back window and we could still see it, flying low and it seemed to be circling,” Masker says, “It was absolutely not a plane or helicopter or anything we had ever seen.”

The two stay by the back door and watch the flying object until is quietly leaves. Gentile still wonders why she didn’t grab a camera, or call her neighbor. It was late when they arrived home so the two were the only ones there. Later on when she asked her neighbors if they had seen anything strange they all replied that hadn’t seen anything too out of the ordinary, but weren’t looking for anything ether.
People started to think we were crazy and would laugh at us, Gentile says “But we know what we saw.”

----

UNEXPECTED RESIDENTS

By Rob O’Doherty

After finally yanking out the sold sign from the worm-infested dirt on Mulberry street, Tyler Hamblen and his roommates Justin and Derrick were pumped to spend their first night in the soon to be partied in college house. Everything was to be expected as far as the first night in a new house goes. After unpacking, eating, and having a few beers, the roommates decided to call the first night quits and head to bed. Around 2:30 a.m. Tyler awoke to the sound of his blender going off.

“At first I thought it was morning and someone was just making a smoothie or something, but after I had realized the time and the constant noise of it blending for a good minute, I decided to go see who was using it,” Tyler said. “The noise grew as I stumbled down the stairs and as soon as I was about 10 feet away from the kitchen, it shut off. I walked into the kitchen to realize the blender wasn’t even plugged in.”

Tyler knew what he heard but with it being so late and with no other roommates up to hear anything unusual going on, he went back to bed. The next morning, Rob and Justin told Tyler that they too had heard the blender going off, but thought that it was just one of their roommates using it. Tyler couldn’t explain what had happened the night before, but it was apparent that something out of the ordinary was going on.

Curious, Tyler started doing some research on the former residents of the house. Other college students had told Tyler that they too had experienced strange things in the kitchen area. Whether it was a blender going off, the stove turning on by itself, or cupboards wide open. Strange things still happen in the kitchen area, but Tyler and his roommates try not to believe too much into it, he says they tend to sleep better at night without worrying about it.

----

THE FURNITURE MOVES

By Jesse Shipp

After a long school week, finally done, it’s time to relax and have some fun. Like most high school students on a weekend, they head over to a friend’s house to stay the night, play video games, watch movies and play on the internet, among other things, much like how Stephanie McDonald did that winter evening. Like most people, Stephanie wasn’t expecting to see moving furniture.

Four years ago, when Stephanie was a sophomore at St. Dominic High School, went to her best friend’s house to have a girl’s night with Jessica Fangrow, the oldest, her sisters Brittney, 10, and Sierra Fangrow, who is 3, and their mom, Mrs. Frangrow. It was a cool Friday evening and everything was normal, for the most part. As it got later into the night, the girls decided to watch the movie “Constantine,” before they went to bed. One by one everybody went to sleep, starting with Jessica’s sisters and then their mom. As Mrs. Fangrow was strolling to her room, told Stephanie and Jessica to turn off the living room ceiling light and fan off before they go to sleep. A couple hour roll past, Jessica and Stephanie finally decide to get to sleep. Jessica, not being tall enough to reach the chain that dangles from the fan, she rolls the computer chair from the computer, a few feet away, under the ceiling fan and light. Jessica pulls the chain; it sways back and forth, hitting the light, making a clanging sound. Jessica rolls the chair back under the computer desk and hits the hay, along with Stephanie, on the cool living room floor.

The next morning, while everyone was doing their daily morning rituals, Jessica and Stephanie noticed that the computer chair was under the ceiling fan and light, they were both on.

“Jessica’s sisters didn’t do it, they sleep in the same room and their door creeks loud enough for their mom to hear and wake up, the mom didn’t do it either... jess and I stayed in the same room and neither of us got up in the night either...” Stephanie said.

Mrs. Fangrow makes her way into the living room and saw the same scene as her daughter and Stephanie see.

“We didn’t realize what had happened at first because we all thought someone else did it,” Stephanie said.

Mrs. Fangrow was upset, she yelled at and interrogated all the girls, and everyone pled their innocence. After the questioning, the girls realized that none of them could have done it.

“... We kinda freaked out after that...” Stephanie said.

The Fangrow family has reported that similar things like this have happened before, so after everyone was questioned everyone assumed it’s a ghost. They have looked into people who can contact spirits, but nothing has transpired.

----

THE CAR IN THE CEMETERY

By Melissa Morkus

As Brain and his friends walked for a few minutes through the graveyard, they came across three tombstones places closely together. As they were about to read what was on the tombstones they were suddenly startled by a red vintage car, estimated to be made in the 1950s.

“I couldn’t hear a sound until the car pulled up right next to us,” Brian said.

Brian wanted to copy the tape for evidence of his paranormal experience, but the second time of viewing the tape, no footage was found.

“Everything had been cleared without any reasonable explanation,” Brian said.

----

BEWARE THE LOST SPIRIT UPSTAIRS

By Kiley Swopes

Every summer, Mia and her cousins would visit her aunt’s farm in Iowa and look more into the haunted property that the house was built on.

Their investigations always started out in the barn and for some reason the horses that were kept in the barn always freaked out.

Every time they walk into the barn they can tell something is there with them. They have seen shadow people, white mists and glaring eyes. But, the barn is not the scariest part of the property.

Mia refuses to sleep in the guest bedroom unless someone else sleeps in there with her. The room has what the family calls a crawl space.

“It is a door that is raised about three feet off the ground and if you open it and look in, you feel lost in the darkness,” Mia said.

So they decided to spend the week in the room.

“My aunt told us that if we didn’t bother Michael he would not bother us,” Mia said. “I asked her who Michael was and she said she that he was the lost spirit that lived upstairs.”

Shortly after they fell asleep they felt breathing on their necks. The breaths then became light touches and those touches became heavier to the point where Mia woke up with bruises all over her torso.

The next night one of the cousins, Sarah was choking in her sleep. She had handprints on her neck. Mia told her aunt that Michael was mean but she would not believe her.

One night Mia’s aunt decided that an Ouija board would be a good idea. Mia was scared out of her mind as they sat around the kitchen table. No matter what they were not allowed to break the circle, which is kind of hard when, a kitchen knife flew out of a block of wood and missed her by mere inches.

They ended the board but Mia thinks the portal never closed. Every time she goes back there is always something bad that happens to someone in that house.

----

FOOTSTEPS IN THE APARTMENT

By Joel Epley

At this point the footsteps and muffled conversations had become annoying.

Cole McKinely, 23, had decided to stay in Columbia for the summer and get a job. He had just moved into the Grindstone Canyon Apartments in Columbia, Mo. For the past few weeks Cole had been hearing squeaking footsteps and the faint vibrations of conversations taking place in the apartment above his.

“I could mainly hear it above my kitchen and living room,” Cole said. “It never really bothered me until I stayed up late to finish a paper for my summer class.”

Cole waited until the next morning to go upstairs and say something to his upstairs neighbors. As he walked outside he was greeted with an attractive women holding a box full of random items.

“I had it all planned out in my head what I was going to say and her looks kind of made me forget,” he said.

Assuming it was her making all the noise these past few weeks, he asked if she was moving out and if she needed help.

“She kind of looked at me weird and said ‘can you take this upstairs for me?’” Cole said. “I carried this box full of weird books I’d never even heard of and asked how she knew the people upstairs. That’s when I got the ‘GO AWAY CREEPO’ look.”

Cole pretended like he had somewhere to be and said a friendly goodbye, getting an awkward one in return.

Two weeks later on the first of the month, Cole was dropping off his rent money and he decided to ask about the people living above him. His landlord said that two students (boyfriend/girlfriend) sharing the apartment had left after graduation mid-May and this new girl Kelly had just moved June 12th.

“My heart dropped and I asked him if he was sure that the previous couple had been out of there that early,” Cole said. “He was sure so I asked if he knew anything about them now, like if anything had happened to them recently but he didn’t know anything.”

The squeaky footsteps and conversations upstairs continued throughout the summer, but there was a new tenant after all.

“Dude, I still don’t know what I was hearing but it weirded me out a little bit,” he said.

He hasn’t said a word to the attractive girl living above him or asked if anything paranormal was happening upstairs for fear of coming off even weirder. They pretend not to notice each other when crossing paths.

“She seems kind of stuck up,” he says. “If there is something up there, let her deal with it,” he laughs.

----

THE STRANGE TOWN OF FREEMAN, Mo.

By Ashley Hartford

Calling all paranormal believers and skeptics of the subject: willing to test your views? Take a trip to Freeman, Mo. Previously known as Morristown during the Civil War battle, Freeman occupies roughly 500 people, at least in the human form. Add up all the apparitions, voices captured on tape and sites of mysterious activity and you’ll be surprised at how lively it is near this neck of the woods.

If you happen to drive in by Gravity Hill, you’ll experience a ride no theme park can offer. According to Northwest Journalism major Kylie Guier, if you park your car at the bottom and put it in neutral, it will travel back up the hill.

“Last time we got up to 30 mph,” Kylie says.

Locals believe a bus crashed on the railroad tracks leaving behind the ghosts of children to push the cars, but Guier isn’t so sure.

“Personally I think it’s just a freak thing.” Kylie admits, “It works every time.”

Putting Gravity Hill to the test may save you a couple bucks on gas, but unless the site tests for magnetic interference before slapping a ghost tale on the record, you can let the experience speak for itself.

Once you enter Freeman, however, you might not be able to explain the paranormal so easily.

Just a few houses down from Guier’s residence rests a lonely house that realtors had quite some trouble selling.

“It’s haunted by an old woman my grandma knew,” Kylie says. “She would throw phones at the men who came to look at the house.”

Kylie wanted to witness the house with her own eyes, so she and her mother contacted a family friend: the realtor.

“You could feel someone there as soon as you walked in,” Kylie says. “It would be super hot out and then freezing when you walked [through the door].”

This isn’t the only experience the mother and daughter have shared. Let me introduce you to a little boy they like to call, “Timmy.” Timmy has been spotted in the rearview mirror by Mrs. Guier, as well as playing outside, in the basement, the living room and Kylie’s brother’s room; and he is noted for being mischievous.

“Once he tugged on my ponytail,” Kylie says.

Kylie isn’t spooked by these experiences, but sometimes feels annoyed when he turns the faucets on or turns the volume all the way up on the TV and then just shuts it off.

But like any pesky brother, Kylie laughs, “[we] talk about him like he’s part of the family.

Timmy seems to be enjoying himself as well. One day Kylie’s sister and a friend were laughing and recording themselves, but when they played back the tape they picked up an unfamiliar voice.

“He was laughing with them and said, ‘this is fun,’” Kylie shares.

At first Kylie wasn’t sure of the boy the family kept seeing, recalling only quick flashes recognizing his hair. About a month ago, however, she witnessed a detailed view.

After asking her brother to shut the TV off, Kylie spotted the legs of the boy in the reflection.

“I saw the old style Capri type pants with the stockings that boys would wear,” Kylie says, “and the old shoes with buckles.”

Kylie has no problem taking about the paranormal, finding most experiences to be playful. She notes that since moving in the house a few years ago, her mother and her have become extremely interested in supernatural shows.

“I’ve learned a lot about it,” Kylie admits, but the dark side scares her.

“People that play around with the occult and do not know what they are doing freak me out.”

Kylie Guier is a journalism major at Northwest Missouri State University.

2009-11-27T12:20:00.001-08:00

THE ‘OLDER COUPLE’ IN OUR HOUSE

By Kiley Swopes

Seven-year-old Ben lived in an old two-story house in Holton, Kan., with his mother, Susan, and father, Rick. When they first moved in Ben told his parents a few nights later that there was an old couple in the house with them, but his parents never believed him.

One night Susan went to check on him while he was sleeping, but she discovered that he was gone. In a panic, she went downstairs and noticed the front door was unlocked and standing open.

She immediately called the police and the search for the little boy began.

Hours later they found him at a local park swinging all by himself.

Both the police and his parents asked him why he was there and how he knew how to get out of the house and to the house.

“I was talking to the older couple,” Ben said. “They told me I would have a lot of fun there and showed me how to unlock the door and walk to the park.”

A few weeks later a great nephew of the older couple, Martin, came into town for a class reunion.

He had not seen the old house in years so he decided to stop by and see if it was different. His sightseeing drew attention to Susan and Rick, so the three began to talk.

Susan and Rick told Martin about Ben seeing an older couple in the house and gave a description of how Ben described them.

“The little boy described my family members to a T,” Martin said.

Years ago, Martin’s great aunt had died in the house and both Martin and the current family living there believe that is why the house is haunted.

----

THE SPIRITS IN VILLISCA NEED TO MOVE ON

By Karra Small

It was snowing as Bryan and his seven friends pulled up to the house. Upon arriving in Villisca around three o’clock that afternoon they had taken a tour of the house, been told all of its stories, and had signed all of the liability waivers, but no consent form could prepare them for the experience that would happen that night.

The group brought many pieces of equipment with them including a digital voice recorder, pendulum, digital camera, black mirror, which is used to see the past, present, and future, and a Ouija board, which Bryan, a practicing Wiccan priest cleansed himself.

“We really didn’t find much on the EVPs,” he said. “The Ouija board was what was really interesting.”

An avid Ouija user, Bryan, like many people, wanted to use this tool at Villisca. After the ghost hunt yielded less than exciting results, the group decided to give Bryan’s board a shot.

The whole group of them wanted to use the board, but had to take turns of about four at a time.

“You could feel the connection on the board,” he said. “Some people had good connections, some did not and the board would stop when Stacie would touch it.”

As the night went on, Bryan, who had his eyes closed the whole time, got one pulled over on him.

“They did something that I would have never wanted to do,” he said,” which is let me be on the board alone.”

He stated that from what he was told, his movement on the board sped up and then dramatically slowed down. From what he can remember (Bryan was in a trance) he felt like he was talking to a child and when the board changed pace, the child was getting scolded by a parent for talking to a stranger.

The dramatic change in pace frightened his cousin, Dani, to pull him out of his trance and away from the board.

Bryan, a firm believer in the spiritual realm, is OK with the trance wiping out most of his memory from that Ouija session.

“I don’t want to know what happened,” he said. “Because the less I know, the more secure I feel.”

Despite the initial search not turning up any overwhelming evidence, there were a few unexplained happenings. Dallas, a friend who claimed to have a connection to the spirit world would sit in a room for thirty minutes at a time, but avoided the attic. “He didn’t stay up there very long,” Bryan said. Another friend described a bone- chilling cold.

One photo Bryan took of the pantry had a shadowy human figure in it, but of course Bryan discounts this piece of evidence, because he wasn’t positive if there was a window in the pantry that would allow for light or reflections to be lit in.

Perhaps the most mysterious occurrence the group experienced, besides the Ouija board of course, was the mist in the attic.

“There was a huge mist that settled up there, almost like a fog,” he explained. “I thought it was from the kerosene lamps that we blew out after we had finished our tour, but it didn’t have any smell to it and I don’t know why if it was just a draft or something, it would have only settled in that one part of the house.”

Despite the somewhat uneventful night at Villisca, Bryan is a believer that spirits remain there.

“I do believe that there is something there,” he said. “I do not believe it to be bad, I do not believe it to be good. It’s just there. Whatever is there needs resolution,” he said. “If it’s people who were hurt there, they need to move on.”

----

THE HAUNTING OF ROBERTA HALL

By Jesse Shipp

Among the things that Northwest Missouri State University is known for, such as its historic football team, trees, being one of the first electronic campuses and it infamous wind, the haunted female dormitory, Roberta Hall, is along there with them.

Roberta Hall got its name after the tragic accident that involved a female resident named Roberta Steele. In 1951 a gasoline storage tanker behind what is now known as Roberta Hall exploded, injuring her and many or her fellow female residents. Roberta was critically hurt and died of her injuries about a year later.

Roberta Hall is not the only haunted building on the Northwest campus, but it gets more recognition because more chilling stories come out of this building than the rest. These stories include Roberta trying to climb into bed with a resident, moving objects, turning up and down the volume on audio devices and playing the piano in the basement of Roberta Hall. Mollie Hotchkiss, a current Northwest student, resided in the building her junior year, where she encountered Roberta for the first time.

“I only believed few of the stories, sometimes not even the whole thing, I believe Roberta does haunt the building, but only for fun, not to harm anyone,” Hotchkiss said.

It was early January, the dead of winter, Mollie starts her day off by taking a warm shower, the kind that steams up the bathroom instantly because of how cold it is. Coming back into her room to get ready she draped the aqua towel over her closet door and this is where it hanged all day. That night when Mollie came back, she returned to her room alone. Mollie was the Student Assistant on the third floor, so she got a room to herself.

“The building felt empty, but nothing out of the ordinary,” Hotchkiss said.

Mollie jumped into her bed late that night. The clock struck Midnight and she was still awake, waiting to fall asleep. Mollie was lying on her side, looking at the green and blue towel that she draped over the closet door earlier that day, she rolled over and now Mollie’s back was facing the closet.

“I felt a little weird, so I turned back over and the towel was moved, I thought I was crazy so I closed my eyes and when I opened them the towel was back,” Hotchkiss said.

A few days later after Mollie got her bearings and being on edge after the encounter; she finally realized that it was Roberta who was messing with her. Mollie only told her closest friends and family members of the encounter because she didn’t want strangers to think that she has gone crazy.

“I think it was strange, but cool that she chose to pick on me, ha-ha,” Hotchkiss said.

This is just one of many encounters that female residents have at Roberta Hall. Even though none one is harmed during the encounters, residents are still weary of her presence to this day, but some find it cool to be visited by Roberta, like Mollie.

----

THE GHOSTS OF CLARINDA ACADEMY

By Melissa Morkus

Numerous reports have been made about paranormal activity at Clarinda Academy in Iowa. Clarinda Academy is a residential foster home for delinquent males.

Keaton Alexander, 22, was working one snowy night at the academy with his friend Brice when they saw four terrified students come out of there room.

“My first reaction is that they were trying to escape, but instead they just stood there,” Keaton said.

When Keaton asked the boys what the problem was, they told him there was someone outside their window. This wouldn’t seem too strange if they weren’t on the third floor. Brice tried to tell the boys that one of them probably just had a nightmare and was just trying to scare the others. The students refused to go back in their rooms until someone would check it out. Keaton and Brice checked the window and nothing was there.

They gave the boys the clear and headed back to the hall they were monitoring. Not more than 10 minutes later the boys came out screaming that the man at the window was back. Keaton and Brice searched the window again. After not finding anything for the second time they agreed to let the boys sleep in the foyer with them. In the morning the boys still would not go in the room until someone checked the window. What wasn’t clear last night but visible now was a single set of footprints leaving the building straight down from the window.

After seeing the footprints, Keaton and Brice were startled but lied to the boys saying there’s nothing to worry about.

“I informed the staff so we could search the area to figure out how the footprints got there,” Keaton said.

No one could explain the set of footprints or where they came from.

----

THE CRYING CHILD

By Stratton King

Old houses have a history of making you feel uncomfortable. Houses can settle and creak but they are also popular amongst paranormal sightings and reports.

Meghan “Sis” Shultz was house sitting for her friend Melissa Srawly in her 100-year-old St. Louis home.

“I was alone in the house and standing in the kitchen when I heard a small boy cry out ‘Mommy’ from the top of the stairs. I went upstairs and looked for the source of the scream but I never found anything,” Sis said.

After Melissa returned from her trip, Sis asked if she had every experienced something similar.

“Melissa told me when she was living there as a child she would hear crying and sometimes see what looked like a young boy,” Sis said.

Sis returned to Melissa’s house three years later to babysit Melissa’s nieces.

“I was standing in the hallway at the top of the stairs when I heard a kid crying. The girls had been fighting all night so I thought they had hurt each other but it wasn’t either of them. The sound seemed to be coming from the nursery down the hall. The crying got louder the closer I got to the nursery but once I entered the room the crying stopped,” Sis said.

Melissa and Sis are not the only ones who have had paranormal experiences in the home. Melissa’s nieces have told their parents they have heard and seen a small boy crying upstairs.

----

MS. HESS

By Rob O’Doherty

On 421 W. Seventh St. in Maryville, Mo., there is a house that may have an extra resident lurking in the walls. Alex Bryant, lives at this house on West 7th and reports a number of strange occurrences each year. Alex’s parents bought the house around six years ago when his sister Veronica first started school at Northwest. They kept the house in the family for Alex after his freshman year.

Alex witnesses a number of strange occurrences all the time, the disturbance in which he calls, Ms. Hess. Looking back to who owned the house before they Bryant’s purchase, they found out that a woman named Ms. Hess lived there for a number of years before passing away a few years before Veronica first moved in. Alex calls the spirit Ms. Hess because he still gets her mail at the house frequently. He doesn’t believe it to be anyone else and given the history of the past resident, Alex put the dots together and decided that the activity in the house from the former resident was the best explanation.

Alex and his sister Veronica have witnessed a number of strange things such as radios turning on by themselves, strange noises, slamming doors, and his dog Scout barking at what seems to be just an average corner in the wall. While not seeing a full body aspiration or experiencing any hard evidence, Alex is still convinced that he has an extra resident living with him. He believes she’s not a bad spirit and if something ever gets misplaced or a strange noise is heard, Alex is always the first to blame it on his former resident Ms. Hess.

----

FOOTSTEPS IN THE WATER

By Joel Epley

We talked golf, girls and booze until a previous float trip came up and I saw the mood drain from Riley’s face.

He controlled the conversation with his hilariously simple viewpoints and contagious laugh. With an almost permanent ear-to-ear grin, Riley, 22, has a hard time not enjoying a conversation. He broke eye contact and his hands crept into his pockets. I had found a seemingly impossible remedy for wiping a smile off Riley’s face.

“Dude…I don’t believe in that kind of stuff, but something was there,” he said. “It’s almost like I was forced to pay attention. I’ve never been that receptive of my surroundings.”

At the Huzzah Valley Resort, two hours southwest of St. Louis, Riley was on his second float trip of the 2008 summer.

Riley and two friends began to walk to the creek about 150 feet from the campsite. Beers in hand they sat on the trunk of a fallen tree anchored to the bottom of the creek. During the conversation the ambient sounds of frogs, cicadas, and flowing water played in the background until a foreign noise grabbed everyone’s attention.

“We were sitting there and it sounded like someone down the creek from just started walking into the water,” he said. “They weren’t stepping though. The were just wading and not picking up their feet.”

“We just froze to see if we knew the person,” he said. “The wooshes or whatever were two legs! Not like a deer or anything.”

Trying to figure out what was making the noises Riley and his friends sat in silence.

“I couldn’t stop listening if I tried. I didn’t even breathe because I was so focused,” he said.

As the wading sounds came closer Riley noticed the frog noises in between them and the wading sound had stopped. Looking down the creek, none of them saw anything.

“Those noises were close enough to be able to see somebody,” he said. “So I just threw a beer can at it and took off,” Riley said, laughing.

When Riley and his friends returned to the campsite they noticed everyone was sleeping and accounted for.

“We still don’t know what it was but now I’m just kind of curious instead of scared. It kind of pisses me off.”

Riley did not attend their annual float trip this summer.

----

THERE WAS SOMETHING IN THE TREE

By Danny Thompson

It’s a warm night in mid July. Brett Johnson and some of his friends are playing flashlight tag in the woods behind the Methodist church in Bonner Springs, Kan. For them, the night was nothing out of the ordinary.

“We had been playing for hours. Just a bunch of kids having fun,” Johnson recalls.

But something wasn’t right. According to Johnson, around this old oak tree there was a cold unpleasant feeling.

“It was weird. I would run to the tree and climb up it and I just felt uncomfortable. And I’m not one for superstition, but I think there was something there with me. Though, I was younger then so I didn’t know what it could be,” Johnson said.

As Johnson grew up, he began to research a possible conclusion to what it may have been.

“My only conclusion was that there was an unsettled spirit around that specific tree. I personally think that it was a shadow person. It didn’t physically do anything to me, but I know it was disturbed by my presence so eventually something may have happened,” Johnson said.

Johnson has since revisited the tree, but nothing else has ever happened.

Paranormal Journalism -- Week 2

2009-11-16T06:55:00.000-08:00

AIR GUITAR

By Joel Epley

Still groggy from a five-hour drive, she didn’t bother to ask why her brother was playing his guitar at four in the morning.

Carly McAdams, 25, had just gotten off work and drove the five hours from Chicago to her brother’s apartment in St. Louis. She arrived around one a.m. and wanted to rest for a family reunion the next day.

“I walked in the door, gave him a hug, and went straight to bed,” she said. “I was so tired I didn’t even bring my bags in.”

Carly was sleeping in the bedroom while her brother slept on the couch in the living room. Around four o’clock in the morning, she was woken up by the faint strumming of a guitar in the living room.

The guitar was a Fender Stratocaster with a 3-color sunburst rosewood finish, and it hadn’t been touched in over two months.

“When I walked in and gave my brother a hug, I didn’t even notice he had a cast on his hand,” she said. “I think he was drunk and punched a wall or something.”

The strumming had no particular rhythm and wasn’t from any song she had ever heard.

“It sounded like a cat or something was brushing against the neck of the guitar,” she said. “It wasn’t like it was power cords or a G or something.”

Carly walked into the living to get her brother to stop playing only to find him sound asleep on the couch. The guitar was in its stand in the corner of the living room.

“I was too tired to be freaked out. I just turned around and went back to bed,” she said. “I thought I was just hearing things.”

Moments before closing her eyes to sleep again, she heard the guitar noises again. Convinced it was her brother messing with her she shut the door to silence the noises and slept throughout the night.

The next morning Carly teased her brother about his failed attempt to scare her throughout the night. When she told him about the noises, his face turned white and the smile ran away from his face.

“I’m selling that thing,” said her brother Patrick McAdams, 27. “I heard the same thing the other night when I got up to go to the bathroom,” he said. “I haven’t played it in over a year and I think it’s mad at me.”

Three days later Patrick sold the Guitar on eBay for 800 dollars.

“It was a sweet guitar but I had kind of been losing interest in it anyways,” said Patrick. “I racked up a nice little bar tab that night as well.”

Since selling the guitar there have been no more mysterious strumming sounds throughout the night. Carly still refuses to sleep at her brothers apartment when she is in town.

----

THE OUIJA DOESN’T ALWAYS PLAY NICE

By Rob O’Doherty

Her parents had just left for the night, the pizza money was on the counter and the movie selection sat on the television in the basement. Lisa and her friend Abby we’re going to spend the night alone while her parents were out for a Halloween party. After the pizza was gone and the credits started rolling from The Exorcist, boredom set in between the two friends.

Lisa started thinking about what they could do to pay respect to the holiday and also about what they could get away with since her parents were going to be out for the night. The clock struck 11 p.m. and Lisa had an idea. She told Abby that there use to be a Ouija board in the game closet. Lisa hadn’t seen it in years and didn’t know if it was still there, but she told Abby she remembered seeing it when they first moved in. It was left behind from the people who use to live in the house. The door to the game closet swung open and the two friends began to dig.

“Once we finally found it, we opened it up and the amount of dust from this thing literally covered both our faces,” Lisa said. “It wasn’t your typical Mattel game either. It looked like it had been handed down for a while. It was really old and looked like an antique.”

The two friends cleared the table and placed their fingers on the center object. Both ended up swearing that they wouldn’t freak each other out by moving anything. After a few questions being asked and getting nothing in response, the friends got bored and leaped back onto the couch. After talking for a few minutes, Abby’s eyes began to get big and her jaw started dropping slowly. The board began trembling a bit and the center object flew off the board and slammed against the wall.

“We both ran out of the house crying,” Abby said. “I’ve never been so scared in my life. We didn’t know what we were messing with and we had no possible explanation for what had happened. People to this day don’t believe us, but Lisa and I know what we saw, we just aren’t sure what we experienced.”

The two friends have never played with another Ouija board again. To this day they still remember that specific Halloween night and keep trying to piece together a logical explanation of what could have happened. They have no explanation of the events that took place. As for the Ouija board, Lisa says her parents wouldn’t throw it out. It still lies in the bottom of the dusty closet where it possibly could be waiting for someone to play with it again.

----

GRANDPA’S JUST SAYING GOODBYE

By Melissa Morkus

Many ghost stories are meant to scare people, but then some of these experiences have a different purpose. What if the purpose of these spirits isn’t to just scare people, but to simply say goodbye?

Born and raised in the Philippines, Russell Canobas, 23, has had one of these experiences. One night, Russell was awakened by someone standing besides his bed. Relieved when he saw that it was just his grandfather, he laid back down. He could feel his grandfather softly pat his head as he fell back to sleep. Later that night he awoke again and could see out his window of what seemed to be his grandfather standing in front of the house. As he looked at the figure, he could see a hand waving.

“I felt like he was trying to say goodbye, but I was confused why he was doing that,” Russell said.

The next morning, Russell was told by his family that his grandfather had passed away in his home the evening before. His grandfather was never actually at Russell’s home, but Russell believes his spirit was. Maybe this was a way for his grandfather to finally say goodbye to his grandson.

“The experience I had almost made it easier for me to deal with my grandfather’s death,” Russell said.

Sometimes a spirit just needs to say goodbye to the ones they love.

----

WALK, DON’T RUN THROUGH THE GRAVEYARD

By Jesse Shipp

On Halloween, going to a cemetery is relatively common and one of the top things to do to get scared, sometimes people go voluntarily or they are dared to go. seven years ago on Halloween night, as a tradition, Tara Smith and her friends gathered to play games and watch movies. After the fun was over she was asked by Trey Rexroat and Hollie Lyons for a ride back to their homes in Keytesville and Glasgow. All three jumped into the 1996 turquoise Plymouth Voyager mini-van and was headed to Hollies’ home in Glasgow.

Right before Hollie’s home is a cemetery next to a Lutheran Church. Even though Hollie lives close to this cemetery, she has never been in it and so Hollie asks to stop so they can around the cemetery. After a few reluctant looks from Trey and Tara they both comply with Hollie’s begging. They pull up in the cemetery; Hollie jumps out while Tara and Trey sit in the van. As Hollie moved ahead she noticed that they stayed in the van and begs for them to come out. Tara turns off the van and leaves the headlights on to make the experience less creepy. Since it was a breezy night, Trey and Tara crossed their arms to keep warm as they climbed out of the van.

“The van headlights turned off and on three times, they didn’t dim; they were turned off and on every four or so seconds it seemed like, the van has never done anything like that before, that’s fucking creepy,” Smith said.

Hollie kept going deeper into the cemetery, Tara and Trey stayed next to the van and the van did it again.

After about 15 minutes or so, Hollie came back and they all hurried into the van and took off to Hollie’s house and then to Trey’s. On the way back home Tara was listening to country music on the radio.

“A mile after I dropped Trey off, it got awkwardly silent,” Smith said.

It just went silent, the radio stopped, Tara went to turn it up and something behind her yelled out “NO,” real loud. Tara stopped the van, turned on all the lights to see if anybody was there, which there wasn’t.

The following day Tara asked her parents about problems with the van. They said that they have never experienced anything wrong with the van. Bill, her dad, said that if it was a shortage in the wires then the lights would be doing that all the time, which they haven’t. According to Tara the van has never done anything like that again.

----

HER LAUGH WAS YELLOW, WITH BUTTERFLIES

By Karra Small

Most people with vision problems, myself included, actually had bad eyesight a lot longer than they realized. They think they’re vision, blurry road signs and all is natural. Heather Talpers, a current Truman State University nursing student was no different. But Heather’s sight issues are much more intriguing than your average person with less than 20/20 vision.

Heather has synesthesia, a condition where a person’s brain interprets or even sometimes mixes the five senses. There are a few different types of this phenomenon, but Heather has lexical synesthesia, mostly dealing with letters and numbers.

“I never really realized that what I was experiencing was not normal, I just thought that everyone saw colors like I did” Heather said. “When I was in kindergarten I was at KFC with my dad and I just kept trying to describe how the box was different colors, but he just thought I was making it up or something.”

The stories of her synesthesic youth don’t end there.

“I remember this one time in first grade when the teachers showed this video about the numbers and I got really upset because I didn’t feel like they were being portrayed right,” she continued. Heather’s numbers, unlike ours, have not only color, but also gender and personality.

It wasn’t until the beginning of high school that Heather actually realized that something unconventional was going on.

“One day we were in math class and I kept telling my friends that the problem on the board was ugly and none of them understood what I was talking about” she said.

Frustrated, Heather blogged on her Zenga, telling about what had happened in class that afternoon. A friend later commented on the blog saying that she had read a book about synesthesia and implied that that sounded a lot like what Heather was going through.

Upon learning this news, Heather started researching the topic and realized that this indeed was what she was experiencing.

And Heather can do a lot more than just see normal colors with letters. A dog’s bark, for example, is a grainy red descending into the air. Sweat is a sharp neon green shaped like chicken wire. The water in the shower also has color. Julie, a mutual friend of ours has a laugh that “ was yellow, with butterflies.”

People also have colors associated with them.

“I remember being in elementary school and wanting to be friends with all the blue kids and I would shy away from the red ones” Heather stated.

Although she sees colors around people, she has to know them personally first, and admits that if she saw a stranger on the street she would have no clue what their color was.

Some paranormal researchers might say that these encounters sound like auras, but Heather insists that a person’s color has nothing to do with their personality.

“My best friend is red. I hate red, but that’s her color” she said.

But with every gift, there is a downside. “I have a really hard time concentrating, especially with math,” she commented.

Unfortunately, Heather’s abilities are fading with age, which is common for people with synesthesia, but don’t think Heather isn’t grateful.

“I consider it a blessing” she says.

----

THE GHOST OF ROBERTA HALL

By Bethany Rowell

Roberta Hall on the Northwest Missouri State University campus has been a hot spot for paranormal activity for decades. The dormitory was named after Roberta Steel, a student who attended the school in the 1950s. In 1951, an explosion of a gasoline tank located behind the hall caused a piece of steel to fly into the building, setting it on fire. Roberta was one of the critically injured students and passed away a year later due to complications from her injuries. Roberta is said to haunt the dormitory which is now specifically for sorority members.

Brooke Mansfield has lived in Roberta Hall for over a year and has had her share of ghostly experiences. Mansfield, an active member of Alpha Sigma Alpha, lives on the north end of the hall on the second floor. Both her and her roommate, Danielle, have encountered numerous unexplained happenings around the hall and attribute them to Roberta.

“On just about an every other week basis she flickers my desk light and knocks over Danielle’s books on her desk. Neither of us will be sitting there or anywhere near the desks when it happens,” Mansfield said.

While the occasional flickering light does not bother either girl, Roberta has done a few things that have made both feel uncomfortable.

“One night my roommate and I were sitting in our room just working on homework, doing whatever, and we hear this crashing noise in the bathroom. We go in there and the bowls on our rack had been thrown to the other side of the room and they were all face up in a line.”

Mansfield says Roberta has turned on their shower in the middle of the night while they were sleeping and has heard many stories about girls getting pushed out of their own beds. Another story entails a girl witnessing her window blinds open and close rapidly on their own. Roberta is also known to move things around rooms.

“We have also had incidents of Roberta messing with things in our room while we are gone. My roommate and I always lock our door and we were both gone at the time. We came back and my roommate’s container of puppy chow had been tipped over sitting directly in the middle of the floor. It was left sitting upright on the coffee table about four feet away.”

The activity does not stop Mansfield from living in Roberta Hall since it never appears threatening. The presence has been reported on each floor, but has never been seen. Roberta Steel may have left this world physically, but her spirit seems to live on within her old residence hall.

----

RED EYES IN THE NIGHT

By Danny Thompson

It was the night of the Halloween dance at Clark Middle School, located in Bonner Springs, Kan. A group of students, Brett Johnson, Willie Wilson, Cassity Mitchell, Jarred Harrington, Sara Stephens, Christina Delladio, and Justin Moulin, had been preparing for this evening for weeks. All of them went to the dance as the gang from Gilligan’s Island.

“I had a lot of fun being the millionaire’s wife,” Mitchell said, recalling the evening eight years later.

After every dance, it was custom for someone in the group to have a post-dance party. This time around, it was Mitchell’s turn. It had been a typical evening for them, but the event that was to follow was anything but typical.

“We all decided to go outside and play tag in the field. It was a crystal clear night with no wind, and a full glowing moon. As we sprinted to through the field, all of us saw what looked like human-shaped shadows walking. There were two of them. We all stopped in our tracks to get a better look. Then, one looked at me, or, what I assumed was it looking at me. It had red beady eyes. We all screamed and ran back to house,” Mitchell said.

To this day, Mitchell still isn’t sure about what exactly was with them in the field that night.

----

THE DARK FIGURE IN THE DOORWAY

By Logan Campbell

Every little child’s nightmare is to look up and see a figure in their room that wasn’t there before.

When Kasi Stoner was 14 years old she went to bed like any other night. She laid down in her bed in her parent’s Maryville house. She felt like something wasn’t right in her room so she opened her eyes. She quickly pulled the blankets over her head from the sight of a dark figure in her doorway. She peeked out to see if the figure was still there or if it had moved away. The figure looked like an older man who leaned against the doorway like the cowboy cut-out in people’s yards. She pulled the covers back over her head because she was scared that it might be a burglar. She fell asleep and woke up the next morning and the figure was gone.

The next night, Kasi layed down in bed and right before she was asleep she looked over to her doorway and saw this manly figure again. She was petrified.

“I pulled the blankets over my head because I didn’t know what else to do,” Stoner said.

She looked up to see the figure still in the doorway.

The next few nights Kasi saw the same figure each night in the doorway to her room. She finally mustered up the courage to run down and tell her parents what she was seeing. When she told her mom about the dark figure she said that she had already seen the figure in her daughter’s room. The only thing her mom could think it would be is a demon spirit sitting in her room.

“The figure would just sit in the doorway and not move at all,” Kasi said.

She said the figure would not move toward her or prevent her from leaving because she was able to go tell her mom in the night.

Stoner’s parents didn’t do any research on the house to find out if there was one of the previous owners that was haunting the house. Instead they didn’t feel comfortable living in the house anymore and moved out within a couple of years to a different house in Maryville. They didn’t know what the shadow figure could have been but they didn’t want to stay around to find out.

Kasi said once she talked with her mom about the shadow figure, she stayed in her parent’s room from then on. They didn’t want anything to happen one night with what they thought was a demon spirit.

----

SPLASHES IN THE NIGHT

By Stratton King

Holland, Mich. is no stranger to paranormal activity, from half-lizard/half-woman creatures on Lake Macatawa to urban legends of a suicide apparition hotspot on the Chicago and West Michigan Railway.

Tom and Meghan “Sis” Shultz have been visiting Holland every summer for their entire lives. Every night is a new adventure walking along the beach between Macatawa Lake and Lake Michigan. This past summer they were attending their annual family vacation but this time had some strange experiences one night on the beach.

“It was a clear night, full moon and perfect visibility. My sister and I were hanging out at the beach around two in the morning when we heard a person, almost like a small child running through the water on the beach. We were the only people on the beach and at one point there was the sound of a big splash as if someone through a big rock or jumped into the water,” Tom said.

Tom and Sis tried to find the source of the noises but were unsuccessful.

“We walked towards the where the noises were coming from but whenever we got closer, it would change positions and all the sudden be behind us, we would turn around and it would flip sides again,” Sis said.

The experiences scared the hell out of both of them.

“It was really creepy, this strange feeling of not being alone when in fact we were all alone,” said Sis.

While telling the story of what happened, Tom was still confused by the experience and at first even had trouble explaining what had happened.
----

THE VILLISCA AXE MURDER HOUSE

By Kiley Swopes

Before last week I had never had a paranormal experience. I had never seen a UFO, Bigfoot, been abducted by aliens or had ghosts come into my house. The most I could possibly say had ever happen was a street light has gone out a time a time or two as I drove by, but I just assumed the light had burnt out.

Going into the Axe Murder House in Villisca, Iowa, I was close-minded. I thought all day that nothing was going to happen. I admit I am afraid of the dark, so I was more afraid of not having electricity than seeing a ghost or hearing the dead speak.

When we got there we received a tour of the house, and heard the story of how and where the killings took place. The tour guide showed us the exact locations of original axe marks from 1912, where the most activity from the ghost is, and the rooms where set up the same as they were when the people were killed.

We walked around for an hour or so and then finally I settled down in the kid’s room with a group of students to see if we could get the spirit of the children who were killed to come out and “play.”

Hours went by and nothing had happened to me. But of course others in the class were experiencing things like getting EVPs, feeling people touching them, seeing shadow people. But me, nothing. But I just felt like I was talking to myself.

There was about an hour and a half left in our stay and Aaron brought an Ouija Board along with us. He had tried it in the living room and attic while I was sitting in the children’s room.

When he came into the children’s room he had asked if anyone wanted to do it. Since I never had before and nothing else was happening to me I thought why not. So I did.

I was so unsure how they worked so Aaron described to me on how light to touch to device. I practice the placement of my fingers on his hands to make sure I did not push too hard or too soft. Then Melissa and I used the board.

We first introduced ourselves and I asked all the questions. Our first few questions were, Is there anyone in here? How old are you? Are you a boy or girl? Are you here? Are you with us? Then we said what is your name?

The device started moving. Very slowly and hesitant, but it was moving.

As it moved I thought to myself, “I am not the one moving this thing.”

I very lightly lifted my fingers off the device just a little to prove to myself mainly that it wasn’t me. As I placed them back on it I stared at Melissa’s finger’s to see if she was pushing it.

Her fingers were shaking so bad because she was so cold. They kept lifting off the device.

She wasn’t pushing it.

The device traveled very slow to the letter “R” and then stopped.

The room fell instantly started asking what letter it went to and everyone started asking questions, did you move it Melissa? Did you move it Kiley? Who is here? Is it the Reverend? Some is here aren’t they? Are you mad we are here? Do you want us to leave?

At that point we had no more activity on the Ouija Board. We tried a few more questions but then we signed out.

Today, I still wonder how the Ouija Board moved and it still creeps me out. Was it really the Reverend in the room with us?

2009-10-09T10:17:00.000-07:00

WELCOME TO PARANORMAL JOURNALISM

By Jason Offutt, Instructor

In 2008, during the Stephenville, Texas, UFO flap, a thought popped into my head. If reporters are supposed to be unbiased, fairly intelligent people, don’t you think they wouldn’t use the term “little green men” or otherwise make people look like idiots if they’ve seen something strange in the sky?

But reporters do this – a lot. As an 18-year newspaper veteran, it’s kind of embarrassing.

I teach journalism at Northwest Missouri State University. So I had an idea. What if I proposed a reporting class that focused on the paranormal? The students would report on stories about ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot and Shadow People with all the seriousness of covering a car accident or investigating government corruption. Observation, interviews with witnesses, opinions of experts … yeah, that might be fun.

I looked around a bit and didn’t find evidence of any such class existing – anywhere. I talked with a few colleagues and a bunch of students, and decided if the university didn’t laugh me off to a bar somewhere, I’d teach this class. I proposed it, it went through the right channels, and here we are.

The twenty-two students in the class have been more than enthusiastic and, by turning in weekly stories of paranormal activity – mostly from people they know, local legends, tales from back home, and some personal experiences – they have proven a point of mine. The paranormal is all around us. You just have to look for it.

Welcome. I’m glad you’re here. Below are the first week of stories my students submitted. To the right of the stories are pictures of the student reporters who brought them to you. If you have a story you’d like to tell the reporters, please do, at: ParanormalJournalism@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading.

Oh, by the way, a physics professor, a physical chemistry professor, and I also received a grant to buy a time machine, but I’m sure you’ll read about that in the weeks to come.

----

IT FELT LIKE SOMEBODY ELSE'S HOUSE

By Bethany Rowell

It was November 1989 and the Rowell family was moving into their new house in the countryside of Missouri. The family had five members:Dave Rowell; his wife, Kelley McLaughlin; their six-month old daughter, Bethany; and Kelley’s twin 10-year-old sons, Chris and Adam Love. They were nestled 10 miles from the nearest cities of Kearney, Liberty, and Smithville with few other houses in the area.

For the first weeks, the family experienced strange occurrences, but attributed them to not being use to the house. Most of these incidents occurred in the attic and loft area on the second floor.

“I often thought that out of the corner of my eye I'd see someone up there, but there never was anyone there when I looked. There were always noises coming from the same area; we joked that there was someone living in the attic,” McLaughlin said.

Dave Rowell never saw anything, but does admit to hearing an out-of-place noise in the attic.

“There was a ‘clunking’ sound that we heard a few times. There was nothing up there that could make that noise; no furnace, no water heater and no way for an animal to get in. It sounded as if something was being dropped or banged on,” Rowell said.

Aside from the attic, the basement was also home to a phantom smell that led to the discovery of a serious problem within the house.

“When we moved in, I kept getting whiffs of cigarette smoke, not stale, old smoke, but like someone was smoking in the house. The basement was the worst place, but it was still only once in awhile that I smelled it. It was strong and then it was gone within seconds,” McLaughlin said.

After a few months, McLaughlin called the gas company, even though she wasn’t certain that it could be gas.

“The man came in and used his detector and told me that we had a lot of carbon monoxide in the house and I needed to get out. I said that I had been smelling it and he assured me that carbon monoxide has no smell. As it turns out, the vent pipe on the roof wasn't tall enough and the wind was pushing carbon monoxide from the furnace back into the house. I'm sure the pipe had been that way for many years.”

There have been many cases of ghosts providing warnings to those who are still alive for decades. This may be the case in this instance with carbon monoxide being an odorless and tasteless gas. Had McLaughlin not smelled the cigarette smoke, the results could have been deadly.

Months went by and the family adjusted to the noises and ignored the unexplainable happenings, but six months at the house hadn’t made it feel any more like a home. Chris Love, now 30, had his own unsettling experience while doing a daily task of retrieving the mail.

"I walked across the front yard to check the mailbox. On the return trip, I made most of the walk looking downward, flipping through the mail for that day. About 20 feet before I got to the door, I looked up and, upon seeing the house, had the almost-overwhelming feeling that this wasn't our house. It wasn't really a scary feeling per se, just the strange feeling that this house belonged to someone else, and wasn't really ours. It stuck with me for a few hours afterward, and eventually faded away, but I always remembered how odd it felt to truly feel like a stranger in a place where I'd felt very settled into before," Chris Love said.

With no information on anyone who had previously lived in the house dying, they went on with unanswered questions. Over time the activity got less noticeable and disappeared, but a lingering feeling of unease still hung around.

“It took years before the house felt like our home. The house always felt to me like I was living in someone else's house; never comfortable,” McLaughlin said.

----

PRESSURE POINTS

By Rob O’Doherty

As the sound of Derrick’s voice became hollow and the cold sweat from his hands sliding back and forth became more aggravating, he began telling about the twisted and reoccurring dreams he had been having the last few years. Things started happening in Derrick’s dreams when he was around nine years old. One night, he woke up and felt paralyzed, lying on his stomach with his face down in the drenched pillow.

“It wasn’t like anything I had ever experience before,” Derrick said. “I couldn’t move and I could barely breathe. I felt like someone was watching me suffer. I had that feeling that someone was standing right beside me, but I just couldn’t see them. All of the sudden I heard the deepest voice I had ever heard say, let’s get him. I didn’t know what to do. The only thing left that I could think of was to scream for God, so I yelled for Jesus.”

Derrick said that once he yelled as loud as he could, he heard the sound of an earthquake. He claims that it was as if the floor was caving in beneath him. He then says he heard the same deep voice say “let’s get out of here.” To this day, Derrick says that he has had at least five more instances of the same recurring dream.

“It freaks me out because I have no clue what it means,” said Derrick. “I honestly don’t know if it’s a sign or if something is trying to warn me, but it freaks the hell out of me.”

With each recurring dream, Derrick says he wakes up in the same paralyzed state as the last time. He can’t move, he can barely breathe and he isn’t sure what’s going to happen if the next time he has the dream; the ending doesn’t come out the same.

----

THE NOISE ON THE ROOF

By Stratton King

The drive to Workman’s Chapel is a long curvy road in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. The road goes for a few miles before you turn off of the paved Route FF and onto the bumpy gravel that passes by the Chapel. This is when the butterflies in your stomach start flying.

My two friends, Joe Quigley and Heather “Hef” Flinn, and I had been curious about the Chapel but had never actually visited the supposedly haunted place. It was an overcast night which made visibility low but when we drove up to the property, the gravestones were all too recognizable.

“The place was super creepy,” Hef said.

Creepy indeed, but that was not enough to scare us away. We got out of the car and strolled around the graveyard and walked inside to the Chapel, attempting to come in contact with anything paranormal; nothing.

Before we decided to leave, we parked under the legendary tree next to the Chapel that is said to have been the sight of a hanging. As soon as we parked and turned off the car, unexplained things happened.

“Almost immediately I felt light headed. I felt like something was cutting of the circulation to my brain. The sides of my head were pounding but as soon as we drove away, and I wasn’t under the tree anymore, it went away,” Joe said.

Coinciding with Joe’s experience, Hef said she heard a strange tapping noise on the roof of the car that didn’t sound like anything else we had heard on the roof that night.

----

THE GHOST OF BENEDICTINE COLLEGE

By Danny Thompson

It was a humid Tuesday night when Sarah Rieker, a Benedictine College freshman, was on her way back to her dorm room in Ferrell Hall when she saw something she didn’t expect—a ghost.

About 150 years ago, monks built Benedictine College on the bluffs overlooking the Missouri River in Atchison, Kan. It is said that one of the monk’s spirit can be found lurking around Ferrell Hall watching and protecting the school it helped build.

It has been four years since Rieker’s encounter, but she remembers it vividly.

“It was a typical evening, hot and muggy, but suddenly it got cold as I walked up to the door. It felt great at first, no lie,” Rieker recalls. Though, what happened next completely baffles her.

“I heard a slight whistle, or a wind gust. I still don’t know what made me turn around. But as I turned my head, I saw, in the corner of my eye, what I thought to be, a monk walking towards me. By the time my head turned to get a better look, it was gone,” Rieker said.

Although Rieker knew about the college’s reputation of being haunted, she never thought she would have an encounter.

As for Rieker, “At least now I’ll have an interesting story to tell at a campfire.”

----

CHASED BY ORBS

By Melissa Morkus

Numerous reports have been made over the years about paranormal activity happening in cemeteries. Seeing apparitions, orbs or hearing voices are common things that people experience in these particular locations.

Brian Wiemann, 22, has first hand had one of these paranormal experiences. One night Brian and two friends decided to head to the Blue Springs Cemetery located in Blue Springs, Mo. With them they brought a video camera to record any paranormal findings.

As Brian and his friends walked for a few minutes through the graveyard, they came across three tombstones places closely together. As they were about to read what was on the tombstones they were suddenly startled by a red vintage car, estimated to be made in the 1950s.

“I couldn’t hear a sound until the car pulled up right next to us,” Brian said.

Shocked by the sudden appearance of the vehicle, Brian and the two other males ran back to their car, still with the video camera capturing footage. Later that night, Brian looked through the video they captured and found something they had not noticed once before. Three orbs, very clear and noticeable, were visible in the footage they captured when they approached the three tombstones. The three orbs also appeared to follow Brian and his friends as they ran to their car.

Brian wanted to copy the tape for evidence of his paranormal experience, but the second time of viewing the tape, no footage was found.

“Everything had been cleared without any reasonable explanation,” Brian said.

Some consider ghosts to be a figment of the imagination; something fictional. But with so many reports and sightings of unexplainable findings, such as Brian’s, it’s hard not to at least consider the paranormal not being so abnormal after all.

----

THE NIGHT WORKER

By Logan Campbell

At night after you’ve checked the doors to make sure everything is locked and secured. For some people there are stranger things that happen once their door is locked.

Sherry Winters had just put her kids and made sure that everything was ready for school and work in the morning. She had locked the doors and gotten ready for bed. When she was lying down to fall asleep she heard the sound of pot banging together into the kitchen.

She got up to see if her kids were cooking a late night snack or if someone had snuck in the house. When she walked into the dining room she saw someone at the stove, but she did not recognize them. She stood and starred at this figure as they appeared to be cooking on the stove.

She said it was then she realized that she could see through the figure. Winter said she didn’t know what to do but watch. She didn’t want to disturb this figure and make him angry. She said the figure walked from the kitchen into the living room and sat on the couch. She was shocked to see such an event and was also scared at the time. Winters said the figure was around six feet tall and looked to be some kind of night worker.

Winters could not figure out who the figure appeared to be or if she even knew the previous owners. This was the first of a few encounters she has had with the man. She has been up late watching movies and has seen the man walking by to sit on the couch. She hasn’t said anything to him in fear of what might happen with the man. Winters children have also been up with her when the figure has been in the house.

“The figure is calm when he walks through the house,” Winters said “He has never tried to harm anyone, so I just let him be.”

Winters says she hasn’t tried to research who the previous owner of the home was, or who the man could be in the house. She just finds it interesting that she saw this man a few times in her house trying to eat and sit on the couch.

Now when she goes to bed at night and she hears the pots clanging around, she knows it is just a ghost trying to grab a bite to eat.

----

YOU WILL DO AS MOMMA SAYS

By Karra Small

What is it about Ouija boards that entice us so? Is it adolescent naïveté? The unanswerable question of whether or not you are communicating with a dead spirit? Or, like Darrelle Duym were you just dragged along for the ride?

Anyone who has older siblings can relate to the urge to be accepted by them. That’s why Darrelle didn’t object to their games in the basement.

According to Darrelle, her older sisters, Desiree, 15 and Deirdre, 14, along with a friend, Shannon, 14, decided that it would be fun to play with the old original Parker Bros. Ouija board they found buried in the closet.

“It started out as just a game”, she said, “but as time went on we found ourselves playing with it more and more.”

Eventually the foursome found themselves in the basement every day after school. It was all fun and games until what seemed harmless revealed a dark side.

“I started to notice a change in the way the board moved,” Darrelle mentioned. Then they made contact.

“You can convince yourself that it’s just a game up to a certain point but when we all have our hands on the floor and the pointer starts moving by itself you know something else is going on.”

A short time after the unexplained movement an entity called “Mamma” came to visit.

“We were in the middle of a conversation when, Mamma interrupted us,” she continued. “We asked if it was still the spirit we were talking to and it said ‘NO Mamma.’ And as the weeks went on, Mamma became more persistent.

Instead of the Ouija players asking Mamma questions, Mamma did the talking.

“She kept asking where her daughter was and she was demanding. It was never a question either,” Darrelle said,” She would always say tell me this or tell me that.”

According to Darrelle Mamma had asked for information like what day, month , and year it was along with the names and some information about all the girls.

“You couldn’t lie to her either,” she mentioned,” Whenever my sisters would lie to her the board would just keep saying no or it would say you’re lying to me.”

Although Mamma wanted information about the present, she was not willing to reveal anything about herself. She never once mentioned her actual name or anything about herself. She never even mentioned the name of the daughter she was searching for.

When I asked Darrelle if there was anything in particular that equated to Mamma being around, she described the feeling that your skin would crawl when she was down there. She also claimed that you could sense when Mamma got agitated.

Shannon, apparently did something to anger Mamma. One afternoon, still perplexed by curiosity, the girls, again, headed down stairs for another regular Ouija session, when the board went haywire.

“It just kept saying No, and then out of nowhere Shannon’s face snapped sideways.”

A few seconds later Shannon had red marks on her face in the shape of fingerprints.

“After that we cleaned the eye of the Ouija board”, she said, which is supposed to cleanse the spirits,” and put it on the top shelf of the closet.”

Darrelle has had other paranormal experiences, but does not attribute them to Mamma or the Ouija board. Every so often when Darrelle’s mother was cooking something an unattended fillet knife would leap out of the sink and onto the floor. And, although it is a common horror movie ploy, Darrelle has also experienced electronic devices turning themselves off and on, even when they are unplugged. But don’t worry about Mamma coming back to haunt the girls. She remains in the closet to this day.

----

ELK HORN GRANDMA

By Joel Epley

She shuffled and dealt another boring card game. There are no winners or losers; at this point it’s just trying to stay awake in Grandpa’s spare bedroom.

Heather Becker, 22, York Neb. was 12 years old when her grandmother died in Elk Horn, Iowa. As a young girl she would spend weekends at her grandparents ranch-style three-bedroom home with acreage.

“Every time we went, my sister and I would get the same shitty guestroom,” Heather said. “Two beds, rainbow wallpaper, stuffed animals, the works.”

Heather was 19 when her parents decided that they all spend the weekend at their grandpa’s house to help him prepare for a garage sale that weekend.

After a long day Heather and her sister got ready for bed in the same guestroom they had for years. As she began to nod off, Heather’s sister Becky mumbled, “Get off, going to bed.”

“It was during those moments right before sleep when you can barely tell if you’re awake or dreaming, so I brushed it off,” Heather said. “A few moments later, could’ve been minutes or seconds I don’t know, Becky gasps really loud and flings the covers all over the floor.”

Heather watches Becky abruptly sit up in her bed then slowly walk over to climb in bed with her.

“She (Becky) felt really soft pressure on the side of her bed and thought it was me trying to sit next to her,” Heather said. “She told me to ‘get off’ but I thought she was kidding or talking in her sleep or something.”

When the weight on the side of the bed became heavier Becky saw Heather was still in bed on the other side of the room. Both made an immediate connection to when their grandma would read to them as children.

“She would sit on the edge of the bed and read until we went to sleep,” she said. “Just classic grandma stuff.”

Feeling almost guilty for thinking their dead grandmother was still roaming the house, both sisters decided it would be in bad taste to try and explain this event to the rest of the family.

Two months later Heather and her sister are spending Thanksgiving night in the same guestroom.

“Becky refused to sleep in that bed so I had to,” Heather said. “I wasn’t even scared at first.”

Already uneasy and too wired to go to sleep Heather lay in bed staring at the ceiling until the same slight pressure pushed on the bed beside her. Frozen with a combination of fear and denial she felt the light weight slightly shift and Heather screamed and jumped out of bed.

When her mother came rushing into the room asking what was wrong, Becky replied “spider on the ceiling.”

Now every visit to grandpa’s house is an excuse to polish card-shuffling skills.

“We just play cards until everyone goes to sleep so we can sleep on the couch,” Heather said. “We get so bored but it’s better than sleeping with ‘spiders’.”

Neither of the sisters have set foot in the guestroom with rainbows and stuffed animals ever since.

----

WALK, DON’T RUN THROUGH THE GRAVEYARD

By Jesse Shipp

On Halloween, going to a cemetery is relatively common and one of the top things to do to get scared, sometimes people go voluntarily or they are dared to go. seven years ago on Halloween night, as a tradition, Tara Smith and her friends gathered to play games and watch movies. After the fun was over she was asked by Trey Rexroat and Hollie Lyons for a ride back to their homes in Keytesville and Glasgow. All three jumped into the 1996 turquoise Plymouth Voyager mini-van and was headed to Hollies’ home in Glasgow.

Right before Hollie’s home is a cemetery next to a Lutheran Church. Even though Hollie lives close to this cemetery, she has never been in it and so Hollie asks to stop so they can around the cemetery. After a few reluctant looks from Trey and Tara they both comply with Hollie’s begging. They pull up in the cemetery; Hollie jumps out while Tara and Trey sit in the van. As Hollie moved ahead she noticed that they stayed in the van and begs for them to come out. Tara turns off the van and leaves the headlights on to make the experience less creepy. Since it was a breezy night, Trey and Tara crossed their arms to keep warm as they climbed out of the van.

“The van headlights turned off and on three times, they didn’t dim; they were turned off and on every four or so seconds it seemed like, the van has never done anything like that before, that’s fucking creepy,” Smith said.

Hollie kept going deeper into the cemetery, Tara and Trey stayed next to the van and the van did it again.

After about 15 minutes or so, Hollie came back and they all hurried into the van and took off to Hollie’s house and then to Trey’s. On the way back home Tara was listening to country music on the radio.

“A mile after I dropped Trey off, it got awkwardly silent,” Smith said.

It just went silent, the radio stopped, Tara went to turn it up and something behind her yelled out “NO,” real loud. Tara stopped the van, turned on all the lights to see if anybody was there, which there wasn’t.

The following day Tara asked her parents about problems with the van. They said that they have never experienced anything wrong with the van. Bill, her dad, said that if it was a shortage in the wires then the lights would be doing that all the time, which they haven’t. According to Tara the van has never done anything like that again.
----

The Reverend in the Room

By Kiley Swopes

Before last week I had never had a paranormal experience. I had never seen a UFO, Bigfoot, been abducted by aliens or had ghosts come into my house. The most I could possibly say had ever happen was a street light has gone out a time a time or two as I drove by, but I just assumed the light had burnt out.

Going into the Axe Murder House in Villisca, Iowa, I was close-minded. I thought all day that nothing was going to happen. I admit I am afraid of the dark, so I was more afraid of not having electricity than seeing a ghost or hearing the dead speak.

When we got there we received a tour of the house, and heard the story of how and where the killings took place. The tour guide showed us the exact locations of original axe marks from 1912, where the most activity from the ghost is, and the rooms where set up the same as they were when the people were killed.

We walked around for an hour or so and then finally I settled down in the kid’s room with a group of students to see if we could get the spirit of the children who were killed to come out and “play.”

Hours went by and nothing had happened to me. But of course others in the class were experiencing things like getting EVPs, feeling people touching them, seeing shadow people. But me, nothing. But I just felt like I was talking to myself.

There was about an hour and a half left in our stay and Aaron brought an Ouija Board along with us. He had tried it in the living room and attic while I was sitting in the children’s room.

When he came into the children’s room he had asked if anyone wanted to do it. Since I never had before and nothing else was happening to me I thought why not. So I did.

I was so unsure how they worked so Aaron described to me on how light to touch to device. I practice the placement of my fingers on his hands to make sure I did not push too hard or too soft. Then Melissa and I used the board.

We first introduced ourselves and I asked all the questions. Our first few questions were, Is there anyone in here? How old are you? Are you a boy or girl? Are you here? Are you with us? Then we said what is your name?

The device started moving. Very slowly and hesitant, but it was moving.

As it moved I thought to myself, “I am not the one moving this thing.”

I very lightly lifted my fingers off the device just a little to prove to myself mainly that it wasn’t me. As I placed them back on it I stared at Melissa’s finger’s to see if she was pushing it.

Her fingers were shaking so bad because she was so cold. They kept lifting off the device.

She wasn’t pushing it.

The device traveled very slow to the letter “R” and then stopped.

The room fell instantly started asking what letter it went to and everyone started asking questions, did you move it Melissa? Did you move it Kiley? Who is here? Is it the Reverend? Some is here aren’t they? Are you mad we are here? Do you want us to leave?

At that point we had no more activity on the Ouija Board. We tried a few more questions but then we signed out.

Today, I still wonder how the Ouija Board moved and it still creeps me out. Was it really the Reverend in the room with us?