Trouble over a Haunted House?

[Daniel Bishop, the Storyteller]

I just had a "chat" with the owner of a "haunted house." The house is legendary in this area as being haunted and has been for over 60 years. I have just started telling stories about the place when the owner (the grandchildren of the builder) came up to me and told me off, he said that it wasn’t funny anymore. A short time latter they printed an article in the local paper about the house, seem they are renovating it into a reception hall. In the article they Completely Abolished the haunting legends. Countered each story and “proved” it to be a normal house. This sadden and disgusted me at the same time. In the article, they told how the stories began in a creative writing class, how the stories were just the imagination of a 16 year old girl with an assignment. They told the readers that there were no hidden doors or tunnels, no one die in the place, and no one is buried in the walls. It was like someone disproving Johnny Appleseed, or saying that the Alamo was just another battle in a pointless war. There were 2 good ghost stories in this valley, and now for fear (of what I don’t know) we’re down to 1. I live in a ghost story vacuum and I need air. Tell me some of your local legends so I can live vicariously through you.
Thanks
Daniel Bishop, the Storyteller

[Marilyn A. Hudson]

Many people buying property are fearful such tales drive away customers, however, the popularity of alleged haunted places seems to disprove that old adage these days. Businesses find they need as many feeders into diverse pockets as possible! Higlight those local legends! Milk that ghost cow!!

Here is one for you:

There was an old house that wore its macbre robes with derelict honor. Crackling leaves would gather around its foundations each fall, spreading out a wide autumn skirt. The cloudy windows gave hints of once majestic rooms closed and forgotten.

Each year new children were initiated into the story of the house. The old woman whose love had died and she withered like the roses in her garden until she joined her soulmate. Yet, she loved the house too much to truly leave. It was said on moonless nights the brave could go to the front door and see a ghosty figure gracefully descend the staircase...

So, one autumn evening, as a chill wind stirred the leaves, a group of children watched as one of their own made her way up the walk, up the stairs (oh, how they creaked and groaned) and across the porch to the door. Peering in, turning to look at her friends, and peering in once more she waited....

Finally, there at the top of the stairs....milky white, indistinct, it swayed down the stairs...paused and then came toward the door....

Heart pounding, breathing in deep gulps, the visitor would stumble back, falling down the stairs and charging down the walk.
Running, screaming, the other children all hurried to their homes where the secret would wait huddled in their minds and their dreams.

"It was only headlights of a car coming down the street!" would say one scoffer.

"Sheer nonsense." Agreed others.

Yet, the new inductee in the world of childhood secrets new better. She was looked at with new respect. Older boys and girls - those she had once looked at with admiration and awe - would look at her solemnly and then dip their head. They were all members of a secret club...

The house still stands there....new leaves spread out across the yellow lawn....the door awaits....walk up the path, climb the steps....and look inside....

If you dare.

[Tammy Wilson]

I've run into that a couple of times, too. Some people just don't want the stigma and sometimes they get inundated with gawkers they would rather not deal with. But what they ought to do is embrace their haunted history and make it work for them. And guess what? They don't own the story - you do, so you can tell it all you want, really. We have a local house that had some touchy history so I'm careful about who I tell it to. At first I thought about not telling it at all, but then I thought, touchy or not - it happened and everyone knows it happened so there's no real point in leaving it out. Here it is:

THE SMITH HOUSE
By Tammy Wilson
In 1984, one of the grizzliest murders in Enid’s history occurred. A prominent businessman, Mr. Smith, who was also known to be homosexual, was attacked and brutally murdered in his home.
On the evening of the murder, he had two young male guests with him. They were in the bedroom watching a movie when someone rang the doorbell. Mr. Smith went to answer the door. When he opened it, he was rushed by two men and stabbed repeatedly in the entryway of his home.
One of the attackers went to tend to the other two men. As one of the guests was trying frantically to get out of the doors that lead outside from the bedroom, he was accosted and also brutally stabbed. The police later discovered three inches of a filet knife broken off in the man’s brain, yet the murderer had continued stabbing him even after the blow to the brain had already killed him.
During the melee, the third man seemed to have disappeared. The two cold blooded killers searched the house and could not locate him anywhere. What they didn’t know was that in the bedroom, near the back wall, was a very small cabinet that was not easily seen and the man had quietly slipped into it. He stayed there, sweating and terrified, and could hear his assailants looking for him, asking each other where he could have gone. He stayed silent, cooped in a tiny cabinet for some five or six hours.
The next morning, when he was confident he was alone, he left his cramped hiding place and called the police. The police arrived and witnessed one of the most brutal scenes in Enid’s history. The light colored carpet now oozed crimson. They of course questioned the third man – they found it hard to believe with all the blood and mess that he had gone unscathed. He told them he had hidden in the cabinet to escape the predators. They wanted to see it, so he showed them. They immediately disbelieved it – it was both incredibly narrow and not very tall. The cabinet is still in the house and I have personally seen it and I could not fathom how a grown man, small or not, could have gotten in it. The police asked him how he could have possibly gotten in there let alone hide for so long. He placed his foot on the small table near the cabinet and boosted himself into the small space once again. Sure enough, they were able to later find a foot print in the back of the cabinet, corroborating the man’s story.
After thirteen hours at the bloody crime scene, the police had no hard evidence against anyone, though they had an idea of who it was. There were some people in the park adjacent to the house that were able to give physical descriptions of the attackers and the car they arrived in. It was not lost on the police that the attackers were seen wearing gloves yet parked a yellow Camaro right in front of the house. Without actual evidence, though, it would be difficult to close the case.
Upon going through the house, the police found a closet full of explicit videos and realized the movie that had been playing on a constant loop in the bedroom at the time of the murders was one of them. When they noticed the movie, the medical examiner made a comment that one of the acts was “medically impossible” and there were pictures found as well, though no one outside of the police department has ever seen them.
In any event, the investigator decided the best way to get to the killer would be to find a woman they were close to – the best way to get to a man, after all, is through a woman. They located someone they knew to be friendly with the suspect and they approached her. She agreed to help them and began calling, visiting, and talking at length with the suspect, all the while with the police listening. Over the weeks she spoke with him, he confessed to her that he’d killed a man in California. He had been hitchhiking and a man picked him up. The driver made a sexual advance toward him, so he beat him in the head with a wrench until he was dead and left his body in the trees. He killed another man in Georgia, leaving the body to rot in the swamp. But he never spoke of the Enid murders.
The woman eventually decided to leave the state, but when she did, she happened to take the investigator’s tape recorder with her. They had no way to reach her or get her back, so the investigator approached her sister and told her that if the woman did not return to Oklahoma, he would have to file embezzlement charges against her for taking his tape recorder. Not wanting trouble with the police, the informant returned to Oklahoma. They reminded her that she’d agreed to help them and they expected her to do just that. She said, “OK, let’s do this,” and they once again set out to get a confession out of the suspect.
Some days later, the woman contacted the police to let them know he wanted to take her out to the Gloss Mountains, a remote range of mesas out in northwestern Oklahoma. They devised a plan to follow and listen, worried that her safety might be in jeopardy – out in the middle of nowhere, not many close places for the police to conceal themselves and get to her in time if anything untoward were to happen. During the trek to the Gloss Mountains, the suspect spilled his guts about the Enid murders and the police were able to get the entire thing on tape, thanks to the informant. They arrested him based on this confession and he was later sentenced to life in prison, where he remains.
The man never testified in Oklahoma about the second man involved in the killings, who had moved on to Texas. He met a woman who had an ex-boyfriend who owned a jewelry store and she thought they could rob it. They went to his house to confront him and demand loot. The killer had fashioned a ten pound Samurai sword and when the store owner turned on him, he split him from the shoulder to the navel and ran the sword through the store owner’s brain when he fell to the ground.
His partner from the Enid mess later testified as to his involvement in the Oklahoma murders when the second man went to trial in Texas for the slaying of the jewelry store owner. The police were able to obtain the transcripts of that trial and wanted to use them to bring action against the second man in Oklahoma, but the victim’s family was not interested in opening up old wounds or having to deal with such a high profile case anymore. It was over for them and that’s how they wanted it to stay. Even though the second man was never brought to trial in Oklahoma, he was eventually executed in Texas.
Something I have always found particularly odd about this story is that there is only one person left that can tell us what happened that night and he is in prison. His defense attorney passed away, the third man that hid in the cabinet passed away, and the second man involved in the killings has been executed.
After the murders, the family of the victim took over the house and eventually lived there for several years until another family bought it. A few years ago, I was contacted by a teenaged boy that told me, “I think my house is haunted.” We began to talk about the things that were happening at his house and why he would think it was haunted. His mom worked out of town and was gone a lot and his father no longer lived in the house, so the boy was there on his own quite often. His house was the house where all his friends would crash and they eventually started a band and would also practice there. There was never a shortage of teen boys in the house and several of them told me stories of seeing someone in the kitchen and no one being there when they would go to investigate, noises, the general haunted house stories.
As they continued to fill me in on the happenings at the house, they told me what disturbed them most was they would often times be awakened by someone playing with their hair or touching their faces.
When I asked where this house was located so I could do the historical research, he said to me, “Oh, you probably know the house – it’s the Smith house.” Aha – things were starting to make sense…

Disclaimer: The above story is true and the facts are accurate. I was able to interview the police investigator that worked this case. I knew the occupant of the house and was able to tour the house with the investigator. This story has been one told in my hometown since it happened when I was a child, so it was of course fascinating for me to be able to actually learn about it from the people that knew the most about it. I have, however, changed the name of the victim and not mentioned the names of the murderers. People in my town will know the story anyway, but I wanted to respect the family and not bring attention to the criminal or danger upon myself by putting his name in a book.

[David Bullock]

I don't blame the owner for getting upset. Lots of urban legends have in many ways hurt innocent people. I have a friend who is a tremendous artist who enjoys painting old houses. He always gets permission from the owner first. I know first hand what a haunting story can do to the sale price of a house. I was haunted from the get go in a brand new house that I was a renter in. Two other renters left because of the hauntings and I not believing in ghosts stayed until the ghost drove me out on a darkest of all nights. See my interpretation of the haunting at http://slimsgold.com/owlwoman.htm