Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

I am a 36 year old mother of two, and Sunday school teacher. I have had many strange experiences in my lifetime. Please allow me to point out that some of my stories are also included (with some fictional embellishments) in a children’s book I am in the process of trying to get published (Any Literary agents out there? J), but there are no embellishments in these stories. I am telling them just as I remember them.

Old Church House:

When I was a kid we would have a huge Family reunion in the Ozark Mountains of North West Arkansas (I am from SW AR.) every year. This is something we looked forward to all year since some of our favorite cousins would be there. As we got older my middle sister and I would bring friends with us.

Breezeway

One thing we always had fun doing was visiting a local cemetery that dated back to the Civil War. Beside the cemetery was a old Church that had also been used as a School House. It was very old and most of the windows were boarded up. Of course we HAD to check it out. We had always been curious but had never in all these years attempted to go inside. Now for you to understand the story you have to understand the layout of the Church House. It was wide with a breezeway running between the front and back doors. (We entered through the back as not to be seen) As one enters the back doors on the left hand side is a Sanctuary that runs the full length of the breezeway with two or three (can’t remember for sure) sets of doors leading in. On the right hand side are several rooms that were once used as class rooms (I assume). Each room had a door that led from the breezeway, but they were also all connected from within, meaning that you could walk from one room to the next without having to go back into the breezeway.

Old Haunted Church School House in the Ozarks

Anyway, we entered and looked around. Even though it was bright and sunny outside it was pitch black inside due to the boarded up windows. Now you have to understand that there were about 10 of us and we were a little leery of the old floor, as it was giving way in some places. We slowly made our way to the sanctuary laughing and scaring each other.

Old Haunted Church School House into the Sanctuary

The floor was littered with beer cans and junk food wrappers, obviously left from some kids having a party. There was also graffiti on the walls (very disrespectful). We kind of split up and began to explore (actually I was hiding my eyes, we even have a picture of it!) and one of my cousins hollered for us to “come here”, so we went into one of the classrooms. There was a little light in this room because a small piece of the boards had been removed from one of the windows. Someone pointed out how much cooler it was in one corner of the room and we started kind of playing around and walking through the cool spot, getting goose bumps, when I looked up and screamed! I saw a dismembered head floating in mid air! Everyone screamed and then started laughing. The head actually belonged to one of our friends and wasn’t dismembered at all, he was just standing in the next room looking at us through a hole in the wall.

Old Haunted Church School House

Old Haunted Church School House Zoom

After we settled down we really got to checking out the cold spot and got a little freaked out, thinking we were hearing things. Finally we decided to leave and went back out the way we came. As we were coming around the building someone hollered for the rest of us to look and in the window (the small spot that was free of boards), at the bottom corner was movement! This was the same window in the room with the cold spot! We looked as a small pale hand seemed to be waving friendly-like and we all are positive that just beyond the hand we could make out a tiny, equally pale face smiling out at us! Needless to say we took off pretty quick!

I also have a good story about the Cemetery that was next to the Church, but I’ll save that for another time.

A Couple of years ago we were back in the area and I wanted to take my kids to see the cemetery and Old Church house, since they had never been there. It was just as I remembered it, except a little more run down and rotted over the years. We also took some younger cousins and my baby sister who had been too young at the time to be involved in the previous adventure. It was broad daylight and a lot of the windows were missing so it was much brighter and not so scary. We also did not get to investigate much since the floor was VERY rotten.

One funny thing did happen though: My cousin Heather put a hand to her head and said, ominously, “I sense someone named ’Dan’ has been here.” My cousin Shae (Who should have been born blonde! I can say that because I WAS born blonde) said, “Whoa, how do you know that?!” My husband then said, pointing to some graffiti behind Shae, “Because it says so right there!” We all busted out laughing when we saw the spray painted message ‘DAN WUZ HERE!’ Thanks for letting me share my story.

As I said, I have other stories and if this one is well received I will submit more.

Written by Wendy Rathburn, Copyright 2009