#weird oklahoma

[whitepolaris]

Picher, Oklahoma: Poison City

The West is littered with ghost towns. Formerly bustling communities went belly-up when the local industry, usually mining or drilling, dried up, leaving no money and no reason for anyone to stay. In Oklahoma, places like Ingalls, Boggy Depot, and Provine, among dozens of others, offer little more than a few scattered buildings, perhaps a cemetery, and a handful of fading memories.

A tour these old communities can be an exciting and enjoyable adventure into urban exploration. It's an entirely different experience, however, to see a ghost town in the making. Picher (pronounced "pisher"), tucked away in the northeastern corner of the state, is a community in the spasmodic throes of death, just a few rattled breaths from the end. A town that just a few decades ago buzzed with the activity of twenty thousand Oklahomans now houses just a few hundred. Its main street is lined with vacant businesses, and the outer walls of unoccupied buildings display notices marking them as "condemned."

A pass through its tranquil streets reveals the reason why. Picher is a town literally poisoned by its own success. What might appear at first to be gravelly hills are actually massive piles of contaminated chat, the polluted remains from years of lead and zinc mining. The tainted mounds, some measuring as much as a hundred feet high, fill nearly every available space between homes and businesses.

And where there aren't piles, there are sinkholes. The abandoned tunnels that crisscross just feet beneath Picher's sod are collapsing, opening up cavities large enough to ingest entire houses. In 1967, a single collapse swallowed nine homes in a single gulp. A hundred more, according to a study performed in 2006, are in eminent danger of the same fate. Residents report a daily rumbling beneath the earth. Cave-ins have become such a hazard that the highway into town has been closed to heavy trucks and the city park has been fenced off lest the ground consume Picher's few remaining children.

Lead-contaminated dust blows through town, breathed in by the residents who have yet to move away. Nearby Tar Creek runs orange with acidic water seeping from the mines. The ponds that dot the landscape glimmer with a strange, blue-green hue. Before anyone knew better, the enormous chat piles were used for sledding, biking, and picnicking. In the 1990s, a frightening study revealed elevated levels of lead in the blood of Picher's schoolchildren. It's been called "one of the worst environmental nightmares in the country."

The mines closed in the 1970, and soon thereafter Picher and about forty surrounding acres were recognized by the U.S. government as a toxic hazard. The area, cleanup of which has proceeded at the pace of nauseated snail, remains one of the oldest and largest Superfund sites in the nation. Recent property buyouts, however, have helped in moving many of the remaining residents out of harm's way.

As if to drive another nail into Picher's coffin, a devastating tornado tore through the town on May 10, 2008. There were six confirmed deaths and at least 150 injured. Twenty blocks of the town suffered extensive damage with houses and businesses destroyed or flattened. The twister continued eastward, passing just north of Quapaw and Peoria before crossing Interstate 44 into Missouri. This was the deadliest tornado in Oklahoma since the South Oklahoma City tornado of May 3, 1999, which killed thirty-six. The federal government determined that there would be no aid given to rebuild homes, but the buyouts would continue as previously scheduled and people would be assisted in relocation.

When Picher held a parade in the spring of 2008 in honor of the town's nineteenth birthday, only about eight hundred people were left. Save for a few predictable holdouts who refuse to leave their homes on account of a little "harmless" tangerine-colored drinking water, that number is destined to reach zero before long.

[whitepolaris]

Wheelock Mission and Academy

In 1832, Reverend Alfred Wright and his wife Harriet, missionaries to Native Americans in Mississippi, followed the Choctaws on the Trail of Tears in their forced migration to the Oklahoma Territory. When they arrived, they set up a new missionary operation in what is now Millerton, in the southeast corner of the state.

Reverand Wright held services under an oak tree, preaching from behind a wooden barrel until he could construct a proper church. meanwhile, Harriet Wright established a small day school for the Choctaw children, which eventually grew into a boarding school for girls. The boys were moved to their academy at Clear Creek.

After suffering a fire in 1869, Wheelock Academy was rebuilt in 1882, but eventually shut down in 1955. Since then, the buildings have been allowed to deteriorate despite several endeavors to save them.

Today, efforts to resuscitate the Wheelock structures continue, but caretakers have made little progress. Pushmataha Hall, the academy's dormitory and centerpiece, is a sad version of what it once was, its wooden façade warped, peeling, and covered with dead ivy. The Art and Domestic Science cottages, where girls learned crafts and homemaking skills, had deteriorated so badly by 1980 that they had to be demolished, leaving only their stone chimneys, which now stick up from the ground like triple sore thumbs. The laundry building is gone, as well, save for its foundation and a conspicuous row of rusting, open-air washbasins. What's left has been declared one of the eleven most endangered historical sites in the United States.

Most of the properties are fenced off, but they are not without their appeal, not only for photographers, but especially for myth hounds. Storytellers relay tales of mistreatment of students by academy instructors, beating them for misconduct, sometimes so brutally that the thrashings proved fatal. Many girls, they say, were buried secretly on school grounds. At one point, an unidentified man allegedly forced his way into the dormitory and brutally slaughtered several girls.

Visitors claim to have witnessed apparitions among the buildings, notably those of former students peeking out from windows and dancing in the moonlight. Phantom adults have reportedly appeared as well, and have been assumed to be former teachers and groundskeeper, who sometime run off unwanted trespassers

Down a dirt road to the west stands Reverend Wright's former Rock Church, completed in 1846. It's fared better over the years, having been restored in the 1970s, and stands today as one of the oldest church buildings in Oklahoma. It, too, has its stories. Legend says one of the former preachers hanged himself from the enormous tree behind the church and can be seen at night still swinging from one of the branches. (Some say it's Reverend Wright himself, who's buried in the adjacent cemetery, but history says he died of failing health due to bursitis and a chronic heart condition.) Plus, once a year-on Halloween, according to many-the surrounding trees ooze blood.

If you're an aspiring ghost chaser or urban explorer, Wheelock Academy would be a good place to start. With a museum onsite, curators are available to provide information and personal tours.

[whitepolaris]

Clay Hall

Looking like some sort of flat-pack, self-assembled building for a do-it-yourself university, the defunct Clay Hall on Enid's Lakeview Drive appears almost as if it's never been used. Even though it's been vacant for decades, the structure's drab brick walls are surprisingly devoid of graffiti and its windows remain meticulously sealed with cream-painted plywood, giving it a look of soulless catatonia.

Despite the stale odor of lifelessness wafting up from the grated cellar windows, many visitors have reported figures deftly moving about the building's corners, sometimes motioning witness to follow. Others describe unusual sounds coming from the basement. The rattle of keys, the reverberations of unidentified objects crashing to the floor, and a strange sound like that of metal being twisted all emanate from below, despite there being no apparent point of access. Some have ever heard the sound of a piano playing, occasionally accompanied by singing.

Formerly part of Phillips University, Clay Hall served as a women's dormitory until it was closed around the 1980s. Shortly thereafter, thanks to continuing financial trouble, the entire school suffered the same fate. The property was then bought up by Northern Oklahoma College, and although it now serves as a satellite campus for NOC, sources report that mold, lead paint, and asbestos prevent the old dorm from being utilized along with the rest of the property grounds.

A security guard we found patrolling the area said he hadn't witnessed much of anything around Clay Hall, but he's "seen some pretty weird stuff" nonetheless. Although he had been working there only a few months, he'd encountered the same mysterious figure on more than one occasion skulking around in some of the building's old fallout shelters. He described the figure as an older man, maybe in his sixties, with short, gray hair, sporting a beard and glasses. At first, the guard thought he might be a vagrant, but he didn't appear down on his luck. "It was weird," he told me. "He always had [the same] gray suit on."

The mysterious gentleman was usually seen in the basement of the old science building where, according to the guard, they used to keep cadavers for teaching purposes. "It was basically a morgue down there. They had a freezer area for them. . . . You go down there and you get a weird feeling. It's just someplace you don't want to be in." Oddly, the whole place is locked up, so there's no reason the guard should have seen anyone else moving about down there at all.

Still, the old man appears to get around. A maintenance worker once reported seeing the same gray-haired chap in the darkness basement of a neighboring building. The men both turned a corner at the same time, startling the handyman so badly he fell to the ground. When he looked up, the old man had vanished.

[whitepolaris]

Camp Scott

Just off State Road 82, southeast of Locust Grove, a locked and rusted gate marks the threshold to a dark patch of woods that, though long neglected, has never been forgotten. It's the former site of Camp Scott, a several-hundred-acre forest that, for nearly fifty years, served as a summer campsite for young Girl Scouts looking to meet new friends and maybe share a few tips on how to read a compass or start a campfire.

Then, on a rain-soaked morning in 1977, camp counselors discovered the bodies of three of their scouts lying together beneath a large tree. The girls had been dragged for more than a hundred yards from their text, gagged and bound with electrical tape, sexually assaulted, and beaten to death. As law enforcement officers descended on the scene, the surviving campers were immediately evacuated and the camp sealed up.

More than thirty years later, remnants of Camp Scott still stand. Various buildings, though suffering from weather and age, remain almost completely intact. Screen fabric still clings to the former picnic area, now swallowed by weeds and saplings. A large swimming pool, now empty of anything but the occasional rainwater, reflects the sun with a blinding glare. Down a tangential path sits a large red barn, once a spot for preteen girls to play hide-and-seek.

Largest among Camp Scott's ruins is the main hall, its resilient brick shell standing out among the trees. Little remains there, save for corroded appliances, a rotten couch, and a couple of old wagons that years may have carried a scout or two on a midnight hayride. Although the walls show virtually no age, the building's doors have recently suffered enough decay to provide little resistance against the elements, exposing the hall's interior to the slow destructive forces of wind and rain. Smaller, yet more poignant, a wooden kiosk just yards away marks what was probably the camp's bulletin board, which once displayed the hand-typed leaflets announcing meal times and a list of the day's activities, a meeting place for scouts to convene each morning to plan their day and trade stories.

And this is how the campsite has remained for more than three decades, shut down since the day Lori Lee Farmer, age eight, Michele, age nine, and Doris Denise Milner, age ten, were found dead. A dark atmosphere yet looms over the site, an unsettling mood that has never been lifted by justice. To this day, the slayings remain mysteries.

Though one man was tried for the murders-a convicted rapist and escaped convict named Gene Leroy Hart-he was acquired of the crimes. Many believe he was indeed the girls' killer, but despite several increasingly sophisticated DNA tests over the years, nothing has ever been proven. Moreover, Hart died years ago of an apparent heart attack while completing a previous sentence, leaving us with unanswered questions. As far as anyone knows, the guilty party may still be out there. And so, the murders continue to weigh heavily on the slain girls' families and upon the residents of Mayes County.

As for the Camp Scott property itself, it now lies in private hands and is leased to both resident caretakers who enthusiastically guard against trespassers as well as to hunters who take advantage of the overgrowth in their search for game. So, although it appears Camp Scott will remain a tangible record of this disturbing tragedy for some time to come, it's a decidedly treacherous place for any would-be explorers looking to witness the scene for themselves.

[whitepolaris]

All Aboard the Train to Nowhere

Whistling in the wind and acquiring a lovely orange patina sits a unique abandonment out behind Guthrie's old Santa Fe depot. Formerly part of the Dodge City Ford and Bucklin Railroad, three train cars, which date to around the 1930s, sits forsaken and forlorn.

The cars were originally part of a plan to establish an excursion train between Guthrie and Fairmont, and possibly as far as Enid, but since the cars found their way to Guthrie around the year 2000, they've just been sitting there, growing more and more dilapidated.

The adjacent depot itself, which was completed in 1903, has been better luck. It had been sitting vacant since 1979, but has since been completely refurbished and now houses a model-train museum, as well as a diner that serves some of the best burgers in the region. It was one of three historic depots to receive state funds in the hope of creating the longest excursion-train route in the United States.

Due to unending difficulties, however, the rail tour has yet to materialize. The Oklahoma Transportation Department deeded the necessary line for the project, but some $600,000 was still needed to restore it and the four flood-damaged bridges along the way. Additionally, there was mass disagreement on how far the train should go, not to mention the problem of where the engine would come from and who exactly would operate the thing.

And then there are those cars, which themselves have become part of an FBI fraud investigation. In 2007, the Oklahoman reported that a state senator acquired the $300,000 necessary to purchase a train, shortly after which he announced that-lucky day!-he had found one to buy. After the sale was complete, evidence surfaced that the train belonged to a company in which the senator had used taxpayer money to sell off his own train.

So, more than fifteen years after the idea was originally floated, the plan has come to a screeching halt. A passenger coach, one of the reported seven cars that were originally acquired, has since been sold to a museum in Oklahoma City for restoration, but three-a lounge car, a dining car, and a power-generating car-remain next to the Guthrie depot.

[whitepolaris]

Logan County Memorial Hospital

Located just north of Oklahoma City in Guthrie is the Logan County Memorial Hospital. Construction began in 1927 under the name of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Oklahoma. In 1931 the hospital was sold, initiating a series of name changes and owners. In 1972, the doors to the hospital closed and was soon overrun with local teenagers looking for a place to party. Soon after, reports of paranormal activity started to surface, Included were apparitions on the third floor, strange sounds, and a feeling of doom that looms over any visitor, which becomes stronger when anyone dares take a picture.

In the fall of 2007, I visited the hospital along with fellow team members of a local paranormal group to investigate the premises. We entered the hospital in the lunchroom area of the old hospital. Open adjusting to my surroundings, I went from floor to floor. While walking through the hallway of the third floor, I watched what appeared to be a form move from a door and into a room. Open entering the room, I noticed that it was an odd bathroom with what seemed to be a cot shoved in one stall. The room, I discovered, was once used for doctors to rest when not treating patients.

I felt my head being drawn to a window which had only a little of the original glass left in the wood. I soon felt my shirt being pulled-not lightly. It felt as if I were being yanked towards the window. When I got close, I felt a cold wind start to swirl around my body. The pulling ceased, but a very warm sensation started up my arm. Oddly, the hotter my arm became the colder the wind would feel around the rest of my body. When it all seemed to stop, I escaped back into the hall.

There, I stopped a shadowy figure looming around a wall, and it watched me until I shined my flashlight in its direction. Dropping the light, I gave chase, thinking that someone had entered the hospital without permission and was trying to scare or harm me in some way. When I reached the area where the figure was standing. I rounded a curve only to run into awall.

A few days later after the investigation I spoke with the building's caretaker and discovered that the feeling I experienced of wind wrapping my body is not uncommon. It's actually associated in some way with a little boy that supposedly died there choking on a piece of wood.

The third floor does seem to be the hottest spot as far as activity is concerned. Observers from the outside have seen figures moving between the windows on that floor on more than one occasion, although they sometimes point to the second floor, as well, where other team members have themselves heard footsteps with no apparent source.

Unfortunately, access to the hospital is highly restricted, and it's pretty well sealed up. However, investigators have rigged the building with video cameras and microphones, and keep the property under continuous surveillance in an effort to capture any activity as it happens. Plus, they've made the video feed accessible live on the Web at www.researchwebcam.net, where the curious can investigate from the safety of their own homes. -Charles Carter

[whitepolaris]

My Little Haunted Hospital on the Prairie.

There used to be this old, abandoned hospital here in Oklahoma City. It was built in the late 1800s, and it was the original Mercy Hospital. It was abandoned in the 1960s and a new Mercy was built. The old building was very frightening. All the windows were knocked out, and even in the daytime the inside was pitch-black. All one had to do was walk past it to get a whiff of its musty, hospitally, old-building smell. Anyway, last summer me and my friend Jeff were out wandering the streets like good little delinquents, and we ended up near the hospital. We had the brilliant idea to go inside and explore. We crawled through a one-square-foot hole in the fence, and got in the actual building the incinerator room.

The moment we got inside, I nearly crapped my pants. The place was full of debris, and the smell sent chills up my spine. It smelled like a doctor's office from hell. Old, musty, and SCARY. Just being inside the place gave me this weird threatening feeling and I wanted to scream. I felt like I was going insane the whole time we were in there. I think maybe they kept some mental patients in there when it was still in use.

We started out in the basement, where we found this underground room that was flooded with this white water, and I swear I saw shapes moving around in it. While we were down there staring at the water, this icy-cold breeze started blowing on us. It was strange because it was the middle of summer, and it had been hot down there just a second ago, and this place, having been abandoned for over thirty years, had no air-conditioning. It felt like we were sitting in front of an open freezer!

We got the hell out of the basement. We made our way up, and there were these endless corridors with rooms on either side. We went in some of the rooms, and the old, smashed-up toilets all had shit in them. We wandered around for at least an hour, trying to find the X-ray room and the morgue. We didn't find either, though I think that flooded room was probably the morgue. We found the cafeteria and the old triage and medicine dispensing area. By the way, the whole time we were in there, we kept hearing sounds, like someone on another floor or something. There were these geometric paintings on the walls. I swear the whole damn place was something out of a horror movie. I was waiting for a crazy, syringe-wielding dead doctor to jump out at me.

There was all kinds of graffiti all over the place. We eventually wandered into a room where we found a bunch of unopened cans of food. We decided to get out of there then, since the bum who owned those cans would probably be back soon, and would not be too happy to find a couple of kids messing with his dinner. Anyway, we crawled back out and went home for the night. I've been back there a couple of times, once last Thanksgiving, and found February they tore it down, all except the parking garage and the incinerator's chimney. That place was scary as all hell, and I'm gonna miss it. -Kristy Cox

[whitepolaris]

The Island

The Island is like a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Cut off from the rest of the world, it's an easy reminder of what life will be like once the human race has eradicated itself and the earth is starting over from scratch. Only traces of civilization remain and even the most durable of structures are quickly succumbing to the deceptively powerful tenacity of foliage.

Often referred to by the locals as simply "the ghost town," this enormous patch of land lies just west of Guthrie's downtown district, entirely isolated by a cutoff of Cottonwood Creek. Although many otherwise up-to-dare maps will hoodwink you into thinking you can still get there via Perkins Avenue or Ninth Street, access to the old neighborhood, at least by car, has long been impossible thanks to the scrubbing power of floodwaters. The bridges are gone. Only by crossing a ruddy, and often dangerous, tributary on foot can one penetrate the Island's borders.

It's hard to believe the place was once inhabited, and very recently. The streets have now been virtually swallowed up by nature. Only short, random patches of asphalt remain visible, bleeding up through the soil. To find the roadways, you have to pay attention to the tree line. If you're lucky, you might spot part of an old fence or maybe a fire hydrant for orientation.

The Island has been populated at various times in recent history, but without exhaustive research, it's hard to tell just when and for how long. Due to its geography. Guthrie is highly susceptible to flooding, which often divides the town in two, sometimes multiple times in a single year. It's this tendency toward deluge that's wiped out civilization on the Island on more than one occasion.

According to some locals, the last exodus was in the mid-1990s. Unrelenting rains drove the Cottonwood Far above flood stage, damaging roads and bridges, and destroying homes along the flood zone. Ever since, this area of southwestern Guthrie has remained conspicuously deslote.

TVs and refrigerators lie everywhere. Kitchen appliances poke out through buckled walls. Bottles, furniture, and toys cover the ground. Here are old mailbox, there's a child's wading pool.

To the east, majestic stone ruins tower above the trees. Although, it's most likely a former church, the local youth now refer to it as the Castle, a place where pagans supposedly practice clandestine rituals, leaving behind occult symbols on the walls and foundation.

Farther into the Island's interior, residential buildings barely remain standing. One house, it's floor verging on collapse, is strewn with shoes. Scattered sheds lean in Burtonesque fashion, their corrugated roofs slowly corroding. Back in the street, the odd manhole threatens to swallow adventurers in a single gulp.

Sadly, this isn't the first time the area has looked like this. The remains that lie here today are a fresh reminder of an event that occurred a hundred years earlier, when a devastating swell overtook the Cottonwood valley in 1897. According to reports, a mile-wide wall of water six to eight feet high swept through Guthrie, destroying about 650 homes, damaging farms, bridges, and railways, and leaving some two thousand residents homeless. The New York Times reported on many of those who lost their lives:

A woman with a babe in her arms desperately tried to steady herself in a treetop, calling the while for help. She grew weak and the baby slipped into the water and was drowned. . . . A woman wading from home with a baby on her head was seen was seen to go under, and a man swimming the channel to reach four women and a baby in a tree was carried down stream. Two women and a child were carried away on a bridge further down stream, and one man and two women, in plain sight of shore, were on a house roof when it went to pieces. They all perished.

Though today's ruins are a feeble testament to the 1897 disaster, one can't help but be reminded of the disturbing aftermath that must have resulted a century ago. The homes, the clothes, and the myriad personal items that litter the ground tell a patchy story of those who once lived here. Standing in the isolation of the Island, between the horn blasts of the nearby train line, you can almost hear them.