Fort Scott, Kansas

by Keith
(Fort Scott,KS,United States)

West First St House, Fort Scott, Kansas

From 1991 to 1993 we rented a house near Happy Hollow that made non-believers of ghosts believe. We even had things witnessed by people who were visiting at the time; a few of them refused to come over after their experience!

Things started to happen the day we moved in when every light we turned on blew up. I naturally thought there was a problem with the wiring but our landlord said most of it was rewired when he bought it so it shouldn't be happening, especially not through the entire house. So we spent our first night using oil lamps and candles. Next day I replaced all the bulbs with new ones but when we turned on the lights they all blew again! This time we had flashlights but we went without proper lighting for the second night. We bought more new bulbs the next day with alot of griping about how this better not happen again. This time however, only certain rooms blew.

Since most of the house was now properly lit, we started exploring. Upstairs my son found a short door leading to a low room under the eves and another door next to it which at first we couldn't open. I finally managed to open it with a pry bar and discovered a staircase going down. It was pitch dark and of course the switch didn't work. We grabbed a flashlight and started down the steps but as soon as we would get about a third of the way down, the flashlight would go off! This was a new flashlight with new batteries. After a few tries with the same thing happening everytime, we got scared and quit for the day.
Next day, the kids were still trying to figure out the where the mystery staircase led to so finally my son who was in the 2nd grade, took the flashlight and ran down the stairs. As before, when he got a third of the way down, the flashlight turned off but he kept going all the way down to a landing which then turned left and went further down. He yelled the whole way down and the whole way back up but he made it. Of course the light came back on when he passed the on/off spot. We were really impressed with his bravery but the staircase just ended in the dark so everyone lost interest in it and we closed it back up. We did use the little room upstairs for some toy storage and the kids tried playing in there but they just felt very uncomfortable in it.

Then things started to get worse, or maybe I should say more noticeable and in about a month or less we knew we were not alone in the house.

Upstairs at the very back of the house next to the boy's room and at the end of a long, narrow hallway was a bathroom. That bathroom felt very uncomfortable to be in, especially when taking a shower. The feeling someone was in there with you was so unnerving that most of the time the door was left open when we were using it.

My son was put in the boy's room, which opened onto a double-decker sleeping porch. We managed to stop the light blowing in the bedroom but the one on the porch continued to blow. One day after my son kept bugging me about it, I put in a new bulb. We turn on the switch and it blows. I put in another and it blows again. Finally, I put in a third one, switch it on and nothing happens so I leave the room when my son tells me to come back. I saw the cord hanging halfway between the bulb and the ceiling burn completely through. The whole light with part of the cord falls to the floor, whilst the cord that is still attached to the ceiling stops burning even though the switch is still turned on. My son looked at me and said, "I guess it doesn't want a light out here." I told him it was probably just old wiring but he took all his bedlinens, made a pallet outside our room and never slept in his room again.
Since there were often kids running around upstairs, I didn't notice this until mine were gone all day and I was home alone in the house. While I was downstairs in the laundry room, I heard what sounded like a couple of kids running all over upstairs. In the center of the upstairs was a large room people said was a ballroom so there was plenty of running room up there. My first thought was my two youngest children had snuck back in and hid until I went downstairs and were now running around. So I quietly crept up the stairs to catch them but when I got up there the room was empty. I went through all the rooms, looked in closets, etc to make sure no one was there but found nobody. I went back downstairs to finish the laundry and the noise started up again. This went on all day. That's when I finally let myself believe something else really was in the house.

Before it was just a feeling of being watched and the hair standing up on the back of my neck that perhaps could be explained away as imagined or bad wiring, but this? There's no way I was going to tell my kids that Mom thinks the house is haunted, so I kept quiet about it. Yet everyday as soon as the kids left for school and I would go downstairs, the running around would begin. It was like kids chasing each other only I never heard any laughter or saw anyone. After a while I noticed they were not only running through the upstairs but also started running up and down the stairs themselves. This was actually better because I thought I could maybe catch them easier but I still couldn't. It would always stop the minute I would look around the door. I don't know when my kids decided the house was haunted because I didn't say too much. My middle daughter was the least bothered by it. She would sleep and play in her room with the door closed while the 'ghost kids' would be running around up there. When anyone else went upstairs the running around would stop.
Then I started hearing different footsteps upstairs and on the stairs. They were much heavier and slower and when these would start the 'kids', as I began calling them, seemed to run to the back of the house upstairs and stop. It was like they were running away and hiding while this other person was around and it gave me a really bad feeling. This other presence just seemed 'bad'. I could cope with the 'kids' because they seemed harmless and playful but not this other one. I can't explain why but we all felt this spirit to be a man and he would throw heavy metal objects around, one night breaking a full length mirror in my daughter's room. He appeared like what we could only describe as a black 'blob'. The first time I saw him was late one night in my son's bedroom but never told anyone about it until my daughter said she had seen something similar about a week later. She was with her friend at the time, after which he refused to come in the house again.

It wasn't long before we noticed another presence in the house, this staying pretty much downstairs. This one liked to mess with the music equipment but seemed to have some problems working it. It didn't like my son's hard rock music and would turn it off. If it was bluegrass, country, classical, etc, the music stayed on until we turned it off. One morning just after the kids left for school, my mom called and my son had left his rock music playing in the music room. The phone was in the doorway between the kitchen and the TV/dining room and I had an old wooden radio sitting on top of the TV. As I turned to hang up the phone, not only did the rock music stop and the old radio began playing country music, but also the radio had been turned at an angle for better reception! This happened in an instant, so fast that it really upset me. I called my mom back right away and told her what had happened. She quickly suggested someone else was in the house but I told her I could see all the doorways from where I was standing and there was nobody else there. I hung up the phone, got my coat and went for a long walk.

On another occasion, my husband and his friend were in the music room playing their guitars. After a couple of hours they came through to the other room and started watching TV. About half way through the TV program, the tape player in the music room comes on loud. Thinking our son has gone back there, we holler at him to turn it off. It goes off for a minute or so then comes back on. We holler at him again to quit messing with the tape player and it goes off. A couple of minutes later it comes back on and we holler at him yet again to turn it off. The next thing we know, my son walks in from the opposite room and asks why everyone is hollering at him. We all jump up and run back to the empty music room just in time to witness the buttons on the tape player push themselves off then on and then off again. The friend who was there said, "Oh they just do that, don't they?". I said, "Yeah right, tape players always push their own buttons." He left really quickly and didn't come back for a while.