Media Credit: Phil Jarrett
Media Credit: Phil Jarrett
Some people in Kirksville believe this house, located on Osteopathy Street is haunted.
The only unfriendly ghosts Kirksville residents are likely to find are on the racks of the seasonal aisle at Wal-Mart.
Jason Offutt, author of the book "Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to the Show-Me-State's Most Spirited Spots," said that when it comes to ghosts, people don't really have reason to be afraid.
"Ghosts are generally manifestations and can't interact with people very much," Offutt said. "Out of all the interviews I did, the worst thing a ghost did to somebody was play with their hair."
Offutt said there are two primary reasons ghosts reportedly haunt houses: They had either a good or a bad experience there.
"[Sometimes a ghost] built the house, absolutely loved the house and either [had] pleasant or very bad memories in the house, and when they died they just didn't want to leave," he said.
Another explanation Offutt gave is that ghosts could be reliving the same experience repeatedly.
"A lot of ghostly entities are reported being seen at the same time doing the exact same things nights or days or weeks," he said. "This might just be an imprint in time that's replaying itself over and over again like it's on a VCR."
Hazel Putnam lives in a Kirksville house rumored to be haunted by the ghosts of two former residents who died there. In 1957, a man killed his bride after just three months of marriage, then turned the gun on himself, according to a Kirksville Daily Express article from that year.
Curriculum librarian Elaine Doak said she was told that a student who formerly lived in the house conducted research about the murder-suicide after she reportedly saw a ghost.
But Putnam said she never has seen or heard any ghosts in the house and hasn't heard any complaints from her former tenants.
"There was a murder upstairs, but there was never any haunting," she said. " ... Ghosts are hocus-pocus. I'm not a bit scared of them because I don't think they exist."
Putnam said her religious beliefs do not allow for the existence of ghosts.
"I can't see how they could exist when God's in charge of things," she said. "He wouldn't have things like ghosts hopping around."
Sophomore Jacob Wasson, a resident of Grim Hall, hasn't ruled out the possibility of the existence of ghosts.
Wasson said he knows of at least two ghosts who haunt Grim.
"The better-known one is probably Charlotte, who resides in one of the fourth-floor lounges," Wasson said. "I've never personally witnessed anything, but I know people who say that they have."
Wasson said the second ghost is of a young boy.
"I've heard about ... a little boy who is said to be seen by the water fountain on [the first] floor, and he'll run to the end of the hall, and ... he'll jump like he's going to jump down the whole flight of stairs," he said. "When you look [down the stairs], he's not there."
Although Wasson said he has never made direct contact with either of these ghosts, he said he had an unexplainable experience while living in Grim.
"There was one time last year when somehow one of my roommate's blankets ended up on my bed from across the room in the middle of the night," he said. "I just woke up, and it was there, and we were both asleep. No one knew how it got there."
Wasson said the possibility of ghosts living in Grim doesn't bother him.
"I'm not afraid of them in the sense that I think they'll actually do me any harm," he said. "I don't think that they're dangerous."
Offutt said there are a few ways to address a ghost.
"I've interviewed a number of people who told the entities that they feel were haunting their house that 'this is my house now, just leave me alone,'" Offutt said. "From that point on, they've been left alone."
Another method of controlling the spirit population is to ask for help from a psychic or a priest, he said.
"There are also people who have burned sage in their house and gotten a priest to come in," Offutt said. "Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't."
He said people should be wary about hiring someone who claims to be a psychic to rid their house of ghosts.
"If they say that they're a psychic, they see dead people, they've been abducted by aliens, they've been to Bigfoot's house and have given JFK a backrub in the last few weeks, then they're probably full of bull," he said.
Offutt said that for those looking for a solution to their ongoing ghost problem, the best thing to do is just deal with it.
"My advice would be to just live with it or move elsewhere," he said.
Although she's a nonbeliever, Putnam said that if she ever saw a ghost, she would be prepared.
"There's no ghosts that I know of, and if there was, I'd slit his throat," she said.
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