Hauntings from the World Beyond

[KANACKI]

Hello Headless

Thanks for the stories I have been enjoying them.

 I have been lazy as late as I have been renovating 2 houses at the same time at present. Old Kanacki is worn out. I think I have about another 3 months to be finished.

I have been devolving a 9 novel book series. I have not had to the time to finish just yet either.

It will give me more time to get back into it. And posting ghost stories cannot let you have all the fun.

Cheers and merry christmas Kanacki

[Headless2]

THE HAUNTED ARMY SURPLUS STORE

When Mr A.M Sharp took over the Lancashire, England, army surplus store on that Monday morning in the spring of 1952, he was still puzzled by the former owner's odd behaviour and the weird story that he had told as he handed over the keys on the previous Friday. The man had actually seemed reluctant to allow Sharp to take ownership of the store, not because of any regrets about selling the place, but because he seemed to fear for Sharp's well-being.

His story had been strange. He told Sharp that as he readied the store for new ownership, he had heard peculiar noises coming from the upper floor. It had seemed as though someone were walking around up there, and the longer the fellow walked, the bigger and heavier he became. By late afternoon, the footsteps sounded as if they were those of a giant. The man was certain that there was no one upstairs and that there had been no one up there all day. When it came time for him to catch the evening train, he realized that he had left his coat on the upper floor. He started for the stairway, then as a particularly violent bump sounded from above, he bolted and left the store on the run.

Sharp was bewildered by the man's story. He had known him for several years and was aware that he was an ex-commando who had taken part in some of the bloodiest campaigns of World War II. It was indeed difficult to imagine the man running from some silly bumps on the floor. Obviously the poor fellow was breaking up. It was a good thing he had decided to retire.

Sharp was soon to learn, however, that whatever his friend had heard clomping around in the upper room, it could hardly be written off so lightly as a case of nerves. He later told journalists that it was shortly after he had taken over the store and was working late one evening that he heard distinctly the steady tread of footsteps on the floor above. He knew that there was no one but himself in the shop. He ran out of the store to see if there was anybody about next door. The place was deserted.

Sharp was determined to find out what was going on, and he started to run up the stairs. As he reached the third step, his legs seemed suddenly to freeze. He looked up and sensed, more than saw, a figure walking along the small passageway at the top of the stairs. At this point, Sharp admitted that he was really frightened.

The next morning when Sharp opened up the surplus store, he was dismayed to find that several shelves of army ankle-boots, which had been carefully stacked the previous afternoon, had been scattered about the shop. His first thought was that a burglar had broken into the shop and, finding only a few coins in the cash register, had decided to express his disappointment with an act of vandalism.

Sharp checked the back door and all the windows, but he could discover no way by which an intruder might have gained entrance to the store. It wasn't until he discovered the boots dumped about the floor on the next morning that Sharp began to connect the mysterious noises on the upper floor with the senseless violation of the shelves. The pattern was repeated on several mornings, until Sharp could plan on his picking up the scattered boots as a matter of course.

One night, when he stayed after the closing hour to catch up on some book work, Sharp was startled to feel the pressure of a hand on his shoulder. He spun around on his chair, but there was no one there, only the sound of retreating footsteps.

Eventually, rumors of strange goings-on in the army surplus store began to reach the ears of inquisitive journalists. With the permission of Sharp, some reporters from the Lancashire Evening Post decided to conduct an evening's vigil in the shop. One reporter assured Sharp that there was a perfectly normal explanation for the seemingly odd occurrences and that they would have the cause of his "walking boots" ready for simple explanation on the following morning.

One of the journalists carefully inspected the upper rooms and found them to be completely empty. Because of his reluctance to enter the area after dark, Sharp had long since ceased using the area for storage. The reporters were also careful to test the rooms for loose boards, noisy shutters, or gnawing rats.

Throughout the evening, the journalists heard a great variety of sounds, especially heavy bumping and thumping sounds. At other times, there were noises like metal scraping the floor. It was just after midnight when they seemed to hear the sound of a chain being rattled across the floor. By this time, the journalists were all quite nervous. They had become convinced that they were not hearing rats and mice, nor the antics of some jokester.

Shortly after midnight, most of the journalists left the noisy upper floor for the comparative quiet of the shop area. With the coming of dawn and the cessation of the activity, the reporters made another inspection of the storage rooms. They were amazed to discover a long chain lying in one corner of a room. They all agreed that there had been no chain in any of the storage rooms when they made their first inspection. Upon opening a closet door, a reporter called the attention of his fellow journalists to a broken, three-legged chair that they had previously noted as hanging from one of a series of wall pegs. It now dangled from one of the other pegs on the closet wall.

Each of the journalists accused the other of having crept upstairs and moved it. While they were arguing over which one had played ghost, Sharp arrived and put the clincher on their debate. He swore that when he had left that previous evening, there had been no chair at all in the upper floor. Nor, he insisted, had he ever seen that particular chair before in his life. When the journalists left the army surplus store that morning, they had to confess that rather than solving any mystery, they had merely complicated it.

Although the ghost that inhabited the upper floor had contented itself with producing mild amusements for the journalists during their overnight stay, by the next morning it had reverted to raising havoc with Sharp's merchandise. The harried shopkeeper opened his door that next day to find boxes emptied of their contents, army boots strewn about the shop, shirts unpinned and draped across shelves, and trouser legs tied together in knots.

Frank Spencer, a British clairvoyant, paid a visit to the haunted army store and later told reporters that he had seen a number of entities inhabiting the building. Each of these entities had wailed of an injustice or a great sorrow that kept it earthbound. Investigation later revealed that the surplus store had been built on the site of an ancient jail. An unused section of the basement was found to be paved with flagstones and contained an old room that may very well have been an old cell.

When last interviewed in the spring of 1952, Sharp was less concerned about who or what was causing the disturbance in his store than he was with why they insisted upon making such a terrible mess of his surplus store.

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HAUNTED HOMESTEAD RESTAURANT

Alpha Paynter operated a boarding house in the cabin that later became the Homestead Restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida. Alpha devoted her life to the place, and when she died in 1962, she was buried in the yard behind the building. According to many of those who have patronized the place in recent years, Alpha Paynter has never left the Homestead and remains its protector.

Steve Macri, a former owner of the Homestead, admitted to Michele Newbern Gillis of the Jacksonville Daily Record (September 22, 2002) that in the 26 years that he ran the place, there were many things that he could not explain. In October 2001, just before he closed, there were a rash of complaints from women who claimed that an invisible someone was touching them on the shoulders. Macri also mentioned the newly hired dishwasher from out of town who asked who the lady in the long dress was who was watching him from the top of the stairs. A young employee, who was shooting hoops during his break, ran back in the restaurant screaming that he had seen a woman in the backyard half in and half out of the ground.

A new ownership team, which includes Kathy Johansen, whose family owned the Homestead until 1975, reopened the restaurant in September 2002. Although Johansen said that she had never seen the ghost of Alpha, she knew that over the years that her father owned the restaurant, many customers and employees had claimed to have seen her.

Contractors working alone in the building after hours complain of being touched from behind. Many have left and never returned to complete their work. According to tradition, Alpha's spirit appears most often in mirrors in various rooms in the restaurant. Many patrons have reported seeing her leaning over the fireplace in the center room.

[Headless2]

TOLBOOTH THEATRE GHOSTS

Employees at the Tolbooth Theatre in Stirling, Scotland, have refused to work in a place that is haunted. In the restaurant portion of the building, a former jail that underwent a multimillion pound renovation in 2002, staff members have witnessed wine glasses become airborne and door handles turn themselves. This was the section in the old jail where prisoners awaiting execution were once held, many employees rationalized that there should be little wonder why restless and angry ghosts should inhabit the area.

Operations assistant James Wigglesworth told reporter James Hamilton that although the building had totally changed since it was a jail, there were still things that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Late at night, Wigglesworth said, one could hear things being dragged across the floor of what used to be the cell area upstairs. The bar staff regularly reported wine glasses dashing themselves to the floor, and a ticket seller quit her job when she saw the ghost of man walk across the room.

The owners of the theatre hoped they had found the reason for the disturbances when they found the skeleton of a convicted murderer under the concrete floor of the former prison entrance. According to old prison records, the remains were those of Alan Mair, who was hanged outside the Tolbooth in 1843. Mair was given a Christian burial in January 2002. The respect paid to Mair's bones did not alleviate the haunting phenomena. The manifestations continued to plague the staff of the theater and the restaurant of the remodeled Tolbooth. And the hauntings even stretched beyond the confines of the building.

The postman on his regular route stopped by the Tolbooth, and spotting a man he assumed was an actor fully dressed in eighteenth-century costume, he gave a cheery hello. He was terrified when the man returned his salutation with a resounding, "And good morning to you, sir," then disappeared.

In order to placate the nervous staff at the Tolbooth, the owners have promised an exorcism, but parapsychologist Dr. Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire doubted that the rites would do any good. Theaters attract ghostly experiences, he said, and when they were placed in buildings that were former jails, there would be great expectations of ghostly events.

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SHAWSHANK PRISON

The old Ohio State Reformatory at Mansfield, Ohio, made Famous by the motion picture based on Stephen King's novella, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, is said to be haunted by the ghosts of inmates and guards alike, all of whom seem to be seeking some kind of spiritual redemption and peace.

When the reformatory was constructed in 1886, the architect Levi T. Scofield intended his Romanesque-Gothic design to be one that would uplift, inspire, and overpower people. It was Scofield's intent to build a prison that would fulfill the ideals of the mid-nineteenth century, to teach the incarcerated individuals a skill, instill within them a fear of God, and return them to society as contributing citizens.

The prison has the largest freestanding steel cellblock in the United States, with cells stacked six tiers high, 593 cells designed for 1,200 inmates. The idealistic precepts held by the architect and the wardens were realized in the early days of the reformatory's existence. Historical records indicate that more than 65 percent of the inmates did not return to its cells. But as the early ideals of reformation faded, recidivism rose, and eventually prisoners were crammed four to a cell that had been designed for two.

The state of Ohio abandoned the old reformatory in 1990. In 1995 the Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society convinced the state to rehabilitate the sprawling, castle-like prison. In 1999 the society was permitted to purchase the reformatory and 17 acres for one dollar.

After the motion picture The Shawshank Redemption was released in 1994, the reformatory became popular both with movie fans and with ghost hunters. Among just a few of the restless spirits reported in the Ohio State Reformatory are the following:

#1 The inmate in Cell 17, who killed himself by dousing himself with lighter fluid then lighting up his own body.

#2 The inmate in Cell 35, who had his head crushed when someone slammed a steel door shut on him.

#3 The inmate who had his throat cut with a straight edge razor in the barbershop.

#4 The wife of warden Arthur Glattke, who died under suspicious circumstances in 1950.

#5 Arthur Glattke himself, whose spirit has been seen in numerous spots in the reformatory.   Urban

#6 Wilford, a guard who was killed during a prison break attempt in 1926.

Writing in the October 13, 2002, issue of the Detroit Free Press, travel writer Gerry Volgenau described the spirit manifestations of the reformatory:

"Ghostly images appear. Faces emerge in the shadows.... Visitors hear voices, sometimes singing.... Most unnerving of all, people say they've been touched: a flick to the ear, a finger poke in the shoulder, a push from behind, an ankle grabbed on the stairwell. And ... they were utterly alone. Or were they?”