Ghosts In The Attic

NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — What happens when you ask ordinary people to tell you their own personal ghost stories?

Surprisingly, some of them do.

These tales were gathered at an Oct. 17 event - in broad daylight - at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale and through other sources. We take no stand on their veracity. But we can report with all certainty that today is Halloween.

Ghost At The Gregg House

David Wright, FAYETTEVILLE

I know what I saw. And I know it wasn’t alcohol-induced!

It was 1982, and I was in graduate school at the University of Arkansas. I found an apartment in the Gregg House, a big antebellum mansion, which was at that time broken into four apartments in the main house. It wasn’t more than $100 a month back then, which was right in my price range!

My apartment was a big parlor with a marble fireplace and a floor-to-ceiling window that faced the street. I had my bed back in the corner, looking toward the window onto Gregg.

On this particular night, it was late, and there was a full moon. I was dead asleep, but I woke up for some reason. I had a cat named Cheetos, who had seven toes on each foot, and Cheetos was just staring toward that window. It’s weird when an animal reacts that way. I thought somebody must be there, and somebody was.

There was a young girl in antebellum dress looking out the window. I could only see the back of her. When I realized what I was seeing, I screamed like a girl, and that vision disappeared. I turned on every light in the house!

Two months later, I woke up again, and this time, I knew why I was waking up. Cheetos was on point at the end of the bed, and there she was, looking out that window. I could see her in the moonlight, and this time, I tried so hard not to move - not out of fear but because I didn’t want to scare “it.” I must have watched that spectre for at least 15 minutes. She had ribbons down her back and puffed sleeves - dressed of the period.

Just the same as the last time, when something happened in the room, that spectre started turning toward me like she was going to say something, and as she turned, she faded away.

I know Ida Gregg, Lafayette Gregg’s only daughter, died in that house, but this was a little girl. I don’t know who it was.

Miss Sawyer Steps Up

William Mayes Flanagan FAYETTEVILLE

This happened in the spring of 1975, when I was living at the People’s Inn, a 25-room house where Roller Wilson’s studio is now on Mountain Street. It was four stories in back and three in front, populated by hippies and students, each with a single room, and we had a community kitchen on the first floor.

I have to admit, I hadn’t had much sleep in the last three or four days. I was an art student, living on coffee and cigarettes.

It must have been about 2 or 3 in the morning, and I was matting watercolors on the kitchen table. I needed something from my room on the top floor, and I started up the back stairs - the servants’ stairs - really quietly because I didn’t want to wake anybody.

Even moving quietly, the stairs went “creak-creakcreak” - and then behind me, I heard “creak-creak-creak.” I stopped, and it stopped. I took three more steps, and behind me, “creak-creak-creak.”

I thought it was one of those cute little halter-top hippie girls playing a joke on me, and I was fine with that, so I was pretty close to the top of the stairs when I stopped and turned around. There was no place to hide - and there was no one there. Then I saw this little bit of vapor and the shape of a female hand on the bannister.

This was the location where Sophia Sawyer ran the Fayetteville Female Seminary back in the 1840s. Maybe it was one of her teachers. A lot of strange things happened in that house.

Dad Is Watching

Matt Slinkard BELLA VISTA

My wife Heidi and I were going to move to Washington, and we were borrowing her dad’s old 1977 Ford pickup until we could get back on our feet.

The truck didn’t have a working radio, and I have to have music when I drive, so I was putting a new stereo in the truck outside her mom’s house.

You know that feeling you have when somebody’s watching you? I kept thinking Heidi or her mom had come out to check on me - I sawa shadow on the far side of the truck and someone even bumped my leg - but nobody was ever there. I just thought they’d left without saying anything.

Well, I got the stereo hooked up, and of course I had to show my wife I’d done it. I set it to a rock ’n’ roll station and went in to get her.

When I turned it on, it was set to the country-western station her dad listened to.

I guess he was just keeping an eye on his truck.

Oh No, Don’t Go!

Jonna Bryant FAYETTEVILLE

I was an actor with a local play company doing rehearsals at Mount Sequoyah before moving into the theater. We rehearsed in a house that was originally built for the chancellor of Mount Sequoyah, a retreat established by the Methodist Assembly back in the early 1900s. I was totally unaware of any strange happenings or anything out of the ordinary until we were leaving for the last time.

That night, we were waiting on Kevin, our director, to lock up the house. Kevin pulled the door shut and went to lock it. As he was getting ready to insert the key, the door fl ew open. We all jumped and laughed, and Kevin attempted to pull the door shut again. But this time there seemed to be something trying to hold the door open. It took him pulling on the knob with both hands to get it to close. Again, before he could get it locked, the door came open again. This time Matt tried to close the door with the same difficulty. Matt yelled, “Let go!” and was nearly knocked off his feet as the resistance disappeared.

Needless to say, we were all quite shaken. Then I noticed a glowing shape passing in front of the windows. I looked behind me to see if I was seeing the reflection of headlights or something. I didn’t see anything that could be causing it. I turned back around and saw that it was definitely coming from behind the glass and not “off ” the glass like a reflection would. Just as I was about to say “Look at that,” one of the girls standing next to me saw it and screamed. It disappeared almost immediately, but a couple of others said they saw it, too.

My daughter, 12 at the time, had gone with me to our fi rst rehearsal there. She wanted to go explore the house. About 10 minutes later, she came and asked if we could leave. She stayed right next to me and kept asking if we could go. I didn’t give it much thought other than she usually liked going to my rehearsals, but she never wanted to go with me after that.

I never told her about the incident our last night at the house, but about a month later she asked if I would be going back to that house anymore. I told her “No, the play is over.” Then I asked her why. She told me that when she was exploring the house she heard a woman crying upstairs. I asked her why she’d never told me and she said, “I’m just a kid, you wouldn’t believe me.”

Swinging At Crescent

Bill Ott EUREKA SPRINGS

Ghost stories abound around the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, but Bill Ott, director of marketing and communications, has one of his own:

Folks were here filming the ghost story show that appeared on the Biography channel about a month ago, and they were in the morgue when the cameraman noticed a green orb go dashing across his viewfi nder. We went back down there after the ghost tour was over, and they asked the ghost to give them some kind of sign if he was there.

There’s a piece of steel about 3/8-inch thick, beveled on one side and squared off on the other side, that hangs on a nail on the wall and has been hanging there since I’ve been with hotel - 13 years now. It was used to install carpet. Suddenly, it started swinging back and forth in about a 6- to 8-inch arc. And it kept swinging for more than an hour.

The only reason it stopped was that I misstepped and touched it and stopped it.

Midnight Ride

Rick Marshall SPRINGDALE

Rick Marshall is founder of Paranormal Ozarks Investigations. He says Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park is one of the most active places he’s visited:

This story is interesting because it goes over two different years and two diff erent investigations. It started in 2008 - May, I believe; it was a little bit chilly. We were near the Borden House, an area where some of the most intense fighting occurred, and we heard a “cloppity-cloppity-clop” horse sound. We started moving in the direction of where we heard the sound, and we met up with other investigators who had also heard it. We didn’t fi nd anyone who wasn’t supposed to be there, but you can hear the “cloppity-cloppity-clop” on our voice recorders.

Fast-forward to a year and a couple of months later in 2009. A different team was investigating and also heard a horse sound and saw a shadow moving across the field. We have tried to think of everything from deer to sounds down on the bridge, but it’s still an unexplained story to this day.

Where’s Jim?

Laurie Marshall SPRINGDALE

We were doing a training (of new Paranormal Ozarks Investigations members) at my mom’s home - the family home, where my granddad died and my mother had lived whileshe was suffering from brain cancer. I had never heard of any experiences there.

We were upstairs where my aunts’ and uncles’ bedrooms were, and I was showing our team each of the rooms, saying, “This was my Aunt Karen’s room,” and so forth. Somebody asked me whose room this was, and I said it was my Uncle Jim’s. But when we listened to the audiotape, before that question was asked by our team member, you can hear another voice say, “Where’s Jim?”

The Play’s The Thing

D. Andrew Gibbs FAYETTEVILLE

While he was alive, University of Arkansas professor George R. Kernodle was a fixture in his beloved University Theatre. Some people believe he still is. D. Andrew Gibbs, chairman of the UA drama department, hedges his bets:

George Kernodle’s presence prevails in University Theatre. He had an impact on a lot of students and productions since 1952, and certainly some of those wordsspoken to actors, designers and colleagues are imprinted invisibly on the walls of the theater. He was a softspokenman, so one had to listen carefully to hear his wisdom. His spirit lives on and I, for one, listen carefully.