Ghost haunts court: Vision of 1930s-era judge creeps out clerk

[Story]

By Jonathan Clark
Herald/Review

Published on Wednesday, May 16, 2007
BISBEE — Kelly Jarrell, a file clerk at Cochise County Superior Court, had gone to the top floor of the courthouse to retrieve a file from a storage area when she got the surprise of her life.

After collecting the documents from an old jail cell — the top two floors of the courthouse, now a storage area, once served as the county jail — Jarrell stepped into a passageway and saw something that made her scream.
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Kelly Jarrell, a file clerk at Cochise County Superior Court, talks about her ghostly encounter with Judge Ross. (Jonathan Clark-Herald/Review)
“I turned to my right and there was this, well, I call it a form,” Jarrell said.

The form appeared to be that of a man whom Jarrell described as “grandfatherly,” dressed in black and seated on a chair staring straight ahead.

Jarrell dashed down two flights of stairs and locked the door at the bottom with a chain, although, as she realized later, if the form she had just seen was, as she suspected, a ghost, a chained door would do nothing to contain it.

She ran to courthouse security officer Hector Blaine and told him what she had just seen.

“Tell me I’m not the only one!” she pleaded with him.

She wasn’t. Paranormal phenomena have been regular occurrences for years at the 75-year-old courthouse. Lights and elevators have been known to turn on and off without explanation, courthouse employees have reported hearing footsteps in deserted hallways, and security personnel have spotted a black-robed figure whisking out of the Division 2 courtroom.

“I’ve felt him,” said Blaine, a 14-year veteran of courthouse security. “I’ve opened the door to Division 2 and seen a shadow rushing out.”

The “him” that Blaine refers to is John Wilson Ross, a judge at the Superior Court from 1931 to 1943. While some attribute courthouse spookings to the spirits of former prisoners at the old jail, most say that it is Ross, the first judge to serve at the Bisbee courthouse after it was constructed in 1931, who haunts its hallways.

http://www.svherald.com/articles/2007/05/16/news/doc464aa40fd228f717287054.txt

 

[Dagwood]

Jarrell stepped into a passageway and saw something that made her scream.
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Yeah, I've had the same reaction to some of the advertisement's I've seen.

 

[Story]

Yeah, I've had the same reaction to some of the advertisement's I've seen.

Give it up for Dagwood, folks - he'll be in town all week! Try the chicken and remember to tip your wait staff.

 

[Midnight Palace]

I find this really interesting!! My girlfriend's mother's house was haunted. They've seen a man in a suit on numerous occasions, who would just stare and smile. Her sister once saw the ghost of a woman dressed in Victorian clothing standing by the fireplace. She was only seen once.

 

[Story]

My girlfriend's mother's house was haunted.

This in Philly?

 

[Midnight Palace]

This in Philly?

Yep, in the Mt. Airy/Chestnut Hill section

 

[Zemke Fan]

In MOSCOW (former USSR) there was a boy...

... who confessed the other day: "I see RED people." He was immediately sent East on the trans-Siberian railway.

 

[Story]

... who confessed the other day: "I see RED people." He was immediately sent East on the trans-Siberian railway.

 

[jamespowers]

Ok let's keep this thing going like you did with the sword to a gun fight news. Any other stories?

Regards,

J

 

[Dagwood]

Can you imagine spending enternity wandering around your work site?

 

[jamespowers]

Can you imagine spending enternity wandering around your work site?

Geez, I don't want to even think about it. :eusa_doh:

 

[Story]

Ok let's keep this thing going like you did with the sword to a gun fight news. Any other stories?

[Ominous reverb voice] Be careful what you wish for, Mister Powers....[/Ominous reverb voice]

When dorm is gone, will haunted past remain?

By KIM GILLILAND
Record Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 16, 2007

HICKORY -- The incident in 1976 left an indelible mark on the psyche of Don Miller, former Lenoir-Rhyne College security guard.

Miller’s job then was to ensure Highland Hall, a three-story structure built in 1906, was safe and secure. Instead, Miller says he saw a file cabinet and lamps flying around a room on the third floor. He claims the lights would flicker on, even when the breaker box was turned off.
“It was a nasty ghost,” he said.
Miller, later director of housing for 20 years, left the building, never to return to that floor again.
The building is being demolished because the college no longer needs the building in its long-range plans. The board of trustees approved the demolition at a March meeting.
Gary Broyhill is the college Web master. He and the school’s media librarian, Kevin Karrs, wandered over to Highland Hall on Tuesday to watch the heavy machinery take down a part of the college’s history.
He also knew of the brick building’s ghostly past.
“This building, more than any other, had a history of ghostly tales,” he said. “Supposedly, you didn’t want to go to the third floor alone. It’s a little creepy in there. It just had that creepy vibe to it.”
The building also had character. The heat would run nonstop during the winter. The floors creaked. The halls were a maze of narrow stairways and passages.
Rand Brandes, professor of English, kept a third-floor office in Highland Hall for about four years. He often worked late at night, but says he never saw a ghost.
“I always felt a positive energy coming out of its past as a dormitory, all of that undergraduate excitement and enthusiasm,” he said. “Third floor of Highland was always very peaceful, a great place to concentrate and write. It had a karma that I found centering.”
Still, Brandes acknowledges a creepiness to the building, even though the offices were full of light.
“There were some pretty scary critters running around, though,” he said.
What will become of the “ghosts” of Highland Hall once the building comes down?
“There’s not many places for any ghosts to go anymore,” Miller said. “They might fly over to P.E. Monroe Auditorium. He (Monroe) wanders over there a lot. That’s about the only building left of the originals.”
http://www.hickoryrecord.com/servle...DR_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173351222127

 

[Story]

and from Lovecraftian New England

Paranormal group tours old village haunts
Cape Cod Times
May 13, 2007

Do you believe in ghosts? Are you a fan of the Travel Channel's British TV show "Most Haunted" or other programs about the paranormal? Whether you're a ghost hunter or a down-to-earth local history buff, the Cape and Islands Paranormal Research Society has a tour for you.

Join society members as they lead a series of four different walks of Barnstable that may give you a different perspective on this quiet harborside village. Tours are already underway — they began May 1 — and will run through Oct. 30. All start at 7 p.m. Here's what you can choose from:

The haunted history tour is a minimum two-hour walk of Barnstable Village's haunted locations, including Crocker Tavern, The Old Jail, Cobb's Hill Cemetery, The Barnstable House and more, and provides historical commentary, including how Barnstable contributed to the start of the Revolutionary War. It is offered nightly throughout the season, except on the evenings when the following tours are led.

If you are more interested in the historical aspects of the village than in its ghostly inhabitants, the society's history tour will turn the clock back to Colonial days with tales of patriotic men, the campaign against the king and how the people of Barnstable defended themselves from a British war ship. This walk is offered the first Monday of each month.

If you really have your heart set on seeing a ghost, than your best opportunity may be the society's Ghost Hunting Tour, on the second Friday of each month. A team from the society will teach participants how to investigate haunted locations as they visit such places as a cemetery and an "old building."

And there's something for everyone in the society's Haunted History Dinner Tour, which combines history and ghosts with stories told by your guide over dinner at The Barnstable Tavern (said to have its own ghostly aberrations). The dates of this tour are still "up in the air," so to speak, so you'll have to call the number below for the schedule.

Tickets for all the walks are $15 adults, $8 ages 6 to 13, and free to children under age 6. They may be obtained, along with more information, by calling 508-224-7321 or visiting www.caiprs.com.

 

[The Lonely Navigator]

There seems to be an infinite amount of paranormal news and information...

I tend to be the type that says in the end, "We don't have all the answers." and leave it at that.

I have had the "unusual" happen, lived with it and dealt with it, as it comes in the form of "coincidences" in my own life.

I find the quotes from "What the Bleep Do We Know" site: http://www.whatthebleep.com/quotes/ the best way, for me to, deal with the "unseen"...some of the quotes:

"The visible world is the invisible organization of energy." - Physicist Heinz Pagels

"The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired." - Stephen W. Hawking

Prien

 

[Story]

http://www.star-telegram.com/279/story/109471.html

May 21

Sre Liev, Cambodia - Pheng Chea says the ghost came to him in a dream.

The spirit of the victim of the Khmer Rouge regime showed a gold necklace to the 29-year-old peasant, and told him to dig it out from her grave.

He found the gold near a big tree stump in one of Cambodia's many "killing fields," the mass graves where the Khmer Rouge dumped victims during its rule from 1975 to 1979. Pheng Chea sold it for $240, which he used to buy his first cow. At a recent Buddhist ceremony, he offered a bowl of rice noodles to the ghost of his lucky dream and asked for her forgiveness.

"I thanked the spirit for giving me the gold," Pheng Chea said.

 

[jamespowers]

http://www.star-telegram.com/279/story/109471.html

May 21

Sre Liev, Cambodia - Pheng Chea says the ghost came to him in a dream.

The spirit of the victim of the Khmer Rouge regime showed a gold necklace to the 29-year-old peasant, and told him to dig it out from her grave.

He found the gold near a big tree stump in one of Cambodia's many "killing fields," the mass graves where the Khmer Rouge dumped victims during its rule from 1975 to 1979. Pheng Chea sold it for $240, which he used to buy his first cow. At a recent Buddhist ceremony, he offered a bowl of rice noodles to the ghost of his lucky dream and asked for her forgiveness.

"I thanked the spirit for giving me the gold," Pheng Chea said.

I need a few ghosts like that in my dreams.

 

[RondoHatton]

get yer lightsabers elsewhere

Can you imagine spending enternity wandering around your work site?

- It felt like I WAS doing just that ('till they traded the old guy for a kid at two-thirds the rate)!

 

[MrNewportCustom]

Barnstable

This reminded me of a Groucho Marx line from Monkey Business; "If you look at it, it's a barn. If you smell it, it's a stable."

Can you imagine spending enternity wandering around your work site?

For making me even think about that possibility, Dagwood, consider yourself shunned . . . until your next post.


Lee
______________________

"Get away! Get away! Get away you noxious vapor!" - New York Ratso (speaking to Kinky Friedman's cat.)

 

[ScionPI2005]

Can you imagine spending enternity wandering around your work site?

I guess that depends. Maybe the judge did not have a family; and perhaps his work was the only thing that kept him going in life. I've heard that supposedly if this is the case, that can be a main reason for why a spirit hangs around a certain location.

 

[Story]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/natio...s-and-a-whistle/2007/05/26/1179601737359.html

PROFESSIONAL ghost hunters have conducted a seance and collected video footage during an overnight search of the Old Treasury building in Spring Street. The members of Ghost Hunters of Australia have been investigating claims by employees, including a former curator, that the place is haunted.

The claims go back 80 years and are part of Melbourne folklore. Today they endure as a weird form of office gossip.

After "freaking out" one night — he ran down the stairs and out of the building, the ghost following — former catering official Eric Lely decided to raise the issue at a staff meeting.

"At first no one wanted to talk about it. It was like I opened a can of worms because everyone felt the same way," Mr Lely told The Sunday Age.

A couple of his workmates were "big tall men like rugby players" and they also told of "shooting down" the stairs because they felt someone coming after them.

Others told of the feeling that somebody was looking over their shoulder, somebody flitting past the open doorway.

Cleaners talk about their mops and buckets being moved about. Strange noises, tappings on shoulders, whistling in the stairwell, heavy footsteps — everything but the rattling of chains and floating white sheets.