Americans see ghosts in different ways.
On one hand, when we talk about seances we realize they are irrational, but we still get that light-as-a-feather-stiff-as-a-board, pajama party feeling. That's embarrassing. It's as if you were seriously trying to recount stories of the paranormal, and there was a band of scientists behind you shaking their heads and making notes on their clipboards.
On the other hand, everyone has a good-luck ritual used to guarantee good performance on an exam. Ouija boards still hold an undefinable mystique whenever they're unveiled at parties. Psychic advice phonelines are everywhere. Many people have experienced, either first- or secondhand, events that they would deem paranormal.
In Missouri there has been a strong tradition of ghost lore, but until now it has been channeled through word-of-mouth or distorted rumors. However, STIR magazine has collected some of the more famous local accounts just for you. Enjoy!
The Ghost of Senior Hall
This is the story of Sarah June Wheeler, a Civil War-era, Stephens College student who lived in Senior Hall.
According to The National Directory of Haunted Places, Isaac Johnson was a rebel soldier in Union territory who had escaped from a Union prison. Fleeing his captors, Isaac sought refuge in Senior Hall -- specifically, Sarah's room. Taking pity on him, Sarah hid him in her closet for a period of weeks and smuggled him food. Eventually she fell in love with the soldier.
However, her refugee was betrayed by another student, and Isaac was shot by a firing squad. Sarah, in despair, looped the bell cord in the bell tower around her neck and jumped off the tower. Ever since, there have been sightings of Sarah and Isaac in the bell tower, particularly at midnight on Halloween.
Jack LaZebnick, a former Stephens College instructor, includes the story in his book about haunted Midwestern areas; but most Stephens College students have only heard about it as an urban legend.
Amber Lewis, a Stephens College freshman, says the story's popularity fluctuates.
"It's just kind of rumored; someone finds out about it and then it surges on campus and dies again," Lewis says.
Ghost Lights
Sometimes supernatural places are all about geometry. The Celts believed in "ley lines," invisible lines of positive or negative energy that supposedly form a grid criss-crossing the globe. Constructs, like Stonehenge, supposedly gain their mystic energy by being located on the ley lines.
One imaginary triangle, extending from near Joplin, Mo., to Columbus, Kan., and then to Miami, Okla., has been the source of regularly reported ghostlights for more than 100 years. The lights have sometimes been described as balls and sometimes as golden-colored diamonds with hollow centers. They have been known to bounce, float through buildings, shatter and then re-form but disappear when people chase them.
According to one legend, these lights are the ghosts of a pair of Indian lovers who committed suicide together. Because the young warrior was unable to support his love the way her father demanded, they eloped.
The young lady was the daughter of the chief of the tribe who sent a war party after the couple. Knowing they would be caught and punished, they leapt to their deaths from a bluff near Spring River.
Rob Wair, an MU freshman, says that once, as a child, his father took him to see the ghostlights in Neosho, which is near Joplin.
"We were in a car and we got out and waited and finally, out in the field there was a light like a flame but not really," Wair says. "It looked like an aurora borealis. I was little and got scared and decided it was time to go."
Todd Stites, also an MU freshman, had a similar but more pronounced experience. Stites says when he was visiting a friend who lives near Neosho, they went with a group to see the ghostlights.
"My friend had been drinking a little and he goes into the edge of the forest," Stites says. "I started walking over to him to tell him we should hit the road when he and I hear a little child's voice and it goes, ╘Wanna play?' This red light just kind of blinked on and starts getting brighter. We were the last car to take off and when we left the area was glowing red."
The Chautaqua Center
The Chautaqua Center in Columbia, a self-described center for "alternative education," is also a center for new-age activity. Members hold classes and regularly engage in divination, channeling and other behaviors aimed at reaching the supernatural.
People have reported an old woman in the basement area. Though rarely seen, her presence has been felt. Lights have turned on or off at odd moments, and doors have opened for no apparent reason.
Lynda Pluschke, a Chautaqua Center resident, has felt the presence of the old woman and ascribes it to channeling.
"Channeling is basically going into an hypnosis-facilitated trance," Pluschke says. "You go into different levels of consciousness and at different levels, you can inquire different levels of information from different spirit guides. I think that by doing that sort of thing on a regular basis, it kind of attracts spirits."
Pluschke says ghosts can get trapped in a home or building.
"Then the lights will flicker for no reason and an electrician will come out and nothing will be wrong, or a phone will always ring two times and you'll answer and no one's there," she says.
What's going on?
It's difficult to find a satisfying explanation for ghost stories.
Many people have a hard time offering explanations as to why some people return after death as ghosts while others do not.
For Pluschke, ghosts simply are spirits which have not completed their journey to the "light."
"It isn't physically incarnated and it's not in the spirit world," she says. "From what I understand, if a person dies suddenly and violently and doesn't really comprehend the fact that he's dead or if he clings to something because he still has a strong attachment to it or if he still has a duty to fulfill, (he becomes a ghost)."
This story originally appeared in the March 1996 issue.
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