September 12, 2024 • 44 mins
Welcome to My Haunted Life podcast, hosted by Angela Hartshorn. In this episode, Angela takes you on a chilling journey to the Fort Smith Museum of History in Arkansas. Discover the eerie tales of the Warehouse Worker, the Lady in the Window, and the unsettling energy of Judge Isaac Parker's courtroom. Angela shares her personal experiences, intriguing EVP sessions, and a candid interview with the museum employee. Get ready for a spooky exploration of one of the oldest museums in Arkansas. Grab your tea, lock your doors, and join us for a haunting adventure!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello, goblins and ghouls, and welcome to my Haunted Life podcast.
I'm your host, Angela Hartshorn, and on the next couple of episodes,
I'm taking you to Fort Smith, Arkansas, to explore some of its darker history.
And it gets pretty dark. Starting off with the very intriguing,
(00:24):
Fort Smith Museum of History that has a little bit of controversy behind the hauntings.
Music.
Hello, my Darklings. How is everyone doing today?
(00:47):
I hope it's great and wonderful because you are are also great and wonderful,
and you freaking deserve it.
Damn it, you deserve a great day. A little bit of housekeeping here.
When this comes out, I'll be getting ready for the Santa Fe Renaissance Festival this weekend.
I am losing my mind.
(01:09):
If you are in the Santa Fe area for the weekend, come and say hi. Tell me a ghost story.
I freaking love hearing people's spooky stories.
I might even ask you to be on the podcast.
You never know. I always get the best stories from the locals.
And New Mexico has so much high strangeness. It's insane. I freaking love it.
(01:35):
I was just discussing this with a friend who hates driving through New Mexico
because they have seen some really weird shit that scared them to completely
avoid driving through the state at night.
I usually don't get a lot of time to do much exploring down there for this show in particular.
(01:57):
It's busy season and the Ren Fairs take a lot out of me usually the Hubs and
I do a hot springs trip but this year we're saving up for more Seattle adventures
in October so yeah come by and tell
me your stories and tell me where to visit.
Cause I always, you know, like
(02:18):
to hear them anyways, last I heard tickets were sold out for Saturday.
I heard Sunday as well, but I'm not a hundred percent sure.
Cause I haven't checked Sunday, but I have a very reliable source that says
(02:39):
so. So just double check before you come.
As soon as I get back from the show, I have a witchcrafting class at Kronk Art
and Curiosities to teach you how to make your own witch teas.
This is going to be such a fun class.
(03:01):
And there's probably five million ways to make your own tea.
I'm just teaching you the way I do it. so make sure to check out cronkartco.com
to sign up if you are in the Colorado Springs area it is an in-person situation,
(03:21):
the next show is Denver Oddities and Curiosities September 28th and 29th which is my birthday weekend,
which reminds me I really need to start planning my
birthday weekend and honestly as
much as I love staying up there being able to hang out
(03:41):
sleeping in my own bed has become so nice so we'll see what happens if you can't
make it out to the shows this fall make sure to check out the website heart
and horn store.com for updates and I have a bunch of new stuff coming out for autumn Equinox.
(04:02):
I'm so freaking excited.
I'm excited to have them done. Well, keep an eye out over there.
I have some really cool podcast bookkeeping, not just personal stuff this time. What?
So I'm going to be posting this in the group very shortly, but I have an upcoming interview,
(04:30):
with a very nice gentleman who knows a lot about Ouija boards.
And these are always the favorites. So I'm definitely putting it out there to the group.
Put your Ouija board questions in. More details to come there.
But I'm really excited because I'm going to have a podcast coming up where I interview...
(04:55):
Oh, and I'm geeking out about this one. on.
Also, still working on the details.
It sounds like it. I mean, it's pretty official.
I don't have my plane tickets yet, but I will be going to New York this October.
(05:20):
It's going to be a whirlwind. Like, leave Friday.
No, leave Thursday.
And then come home Saturday morning in time for another class at Kronk.
But I have been
(05:43):
invited to co-host the premiere of an upcoming paranormal documentary called
It's Coming with my friend Tanya Brown from the Witch Daily podcast.
The Witch Daily Show podcast.
(06:05):
So, look for those details. Those are going to be posted really quick.
Still trying to figure everything out, but I'm so freaking excited.
We've been talking about this back and forth, and the fact that it's actually
working out still is so exciting.
But yeah, those are coming out. keep an eye out
(06:27):
for that because it sounds
like the plan is for our audiences to be able to ask questions to the family
in the movie and it's about this family who's been possessed or has
(06:49):
been dealing with demons in their house.
It's insane. And we're going to be able to actually, you guys are going to be
able to ask questions through us to them.
So I'm really, I'm so stoked.
Official details will be coming out more, but I just wanted to give you guys
a heads up on it because I'm really, really freaking excited about this one. It's going to be so cool.
(07:16):
I thought spooky season was busy beforehand.
It's even more insane now.
Let me tell you. All right. I think that's it for housekeeping.
I think this is enough housekeeping.
I try to keep it under 10 minutes, and I don't want to talk about housekeeping anymore.
So on this week's episode, I am taking you to the Fort Smith Museum of History
(07:42):
in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
It is supposedly known for its hauntings, but those hauntings might not be what
you think as I found out later.
For this podcast I try to take you on the journey I did.
So let's get into it shall we? Grab yourself a cup of tea, make sure the doors
(08:06):
are locked and the bayonets are close by. I have a story to tell you.
Music.
The Fort Smith Museum of History might just be one of the coolest freaking museums I have ever been in.
It's your classic brown brick warehouse. It's much taller than the buildings
(08:30):
around it and it's literally painted on its side.
Like it has a sign that tells you very large what this building is.
The museum website's description states,
The museum was established in 1910 as the Old Commissary Museum with the purpose
(08:54):
of saving the city's oldest building from demolition,
the 1930s Commissary Building to the second Fort Smith.
This is, like, right across the street.
For decades, what is now the Fort Smith Museum of History was housed in that building.
That building is now part of the National, the Fort Smith National Historic Site.
(09:20):
In the late 1970s, the FSMH moved to the Atkinson-Williams Hardware Warehouse.
Over the span of more than a century, the Fort Smith Museum of History's collection
has grown to approximately 50,000 artifacts chronicling the city's and surrounding region's history.
(09:47):
We strive to care, share, and preserve the collection, as well as the Atchison
Williams Warehouse, our largest artifact,
which houses the museum, which I thought was a cute way of putting it.
Constructed in 1906, the building is one of the only remaining warehouse structures
(10:11):
in the Down House Warehouse District of that era.
Williams Hardware, and later Spear Hardware, occupied the structure through the late 1960s.
The Fort Smith Museum of History, a 501c3 non-profit institute,
has occupied the warehouse since 1979 when the building was listed on the National
(10:37):
Registry of Historic Places.
So there you go it is
uh technically in the other building
it was founded in 1910 it just
moved over so it is the oldest continually operating
museum in the state of arkansas one of the coolest things about the museum is
(11:00):
how much of it was locally donated like when they say that they're really about
chronicling the city and surrounding region's history. They freaking mean it.
Like, a lot of the World War stuff came from families that, like,
donated grandpa's journals and uniforms and whatever else he had laying around.
(11:24):
And there's then, like, a little excerpt about him.
There's lots of little things like that. A lot of local stories made it into
the Museum, which it felt like a very local history.
I thought that was really cool.
I'm used to it being like hundreds of years before. This is like, maybe not hundreds.
(11:46):
I'm in Colorado, for God's sakes.
But like, I don't know. It was just cozy feeling, if that makes sense.
The third floor is probably the coolest. It's a miniature representation of
Old Fort Smith's Main Street.
And by miniature, I mean like eight foot by eight foot recreated storefronts
(12:10):
that you can walk into and see what would be in the shop. It's freaking adorable.
It's really, really an ingenious way of preserving the history of the area.
It's cool. The vibes of this place were not negative, but you knew you were being watched.
Like, there's an old feeling around.
(12:34):
That feeling of knowing that someone was just around the corner,
but when you go around the corner, there was no one there.
We went during the week
me and the husband and it was
just the two of us the front desk man and maybe a few others and that was for
(12:55):
the most part all there was because we went during the week there was it was
dead so I don't know it made the feelings of being watched even stronger,
I don't know. It was it was a little strange.
I kept waiting to run into somebody who was reading stuff. You just get that
(13:16):
feeling when someone else is around.
Almost never happened. Like I think we were there and then like maybe two or
I think it was like a group of three came in after us. And that was honestly about it.
It was hard to tell if at times I was hearing footsteps or if it was pipes in a different room.
(13:36):
I wasn't even sure when I felt like I was being watched if maybe it was just
like old building with bad electrical grounding.
You know, EMFs, that kind of feeling. It was that. It was kind of confusing energy-wise.
Was it haunted or was it bad EMFs creeping me out? I really had an issue.
(14:00):
It didn't help that there's a whole room of antique creepy dolls.
Y'all know how I feel about that.
Luckily, I had picked up Haunted Fort Smith and Van Buren by Bud Steed,
and these are the stories he reports from the museum.
(14:20):
The Warehouse Worker Often seen around the rear of the History Museum building,
the spirit, which is sometimes referred to as the Warehouse Worker and at other
times as the Loafer, two names that seem a bit contradictory,
is sometimes seen going through the motions of working at some task or another.
(14:44):
Yet, at other times, it's simply lounging on the ground, leaning back against
something that doesn't seem to be there.
At first, I thought that perhaps there were two different spirits being mentioned,
but after comparing the descriptions of him from several different accounts,
(15:05):
it would appear that it is the same man.
Said to be a tall, thin man in his late 20s or early 30s and dressed in the
work clothes of someone from the 30s or 40s, he is seen only briefly before
disappearing. hearing.
As far as I have been able to determine, no one has ever had an interaction with him.
(15:30):
Anyone who has ever seen him and tried to approach him or call out to him have
stated that he doesn't seem to want to interact. He just disappears.
At first, I thought maybe he was just simply a residual type of haunting.
I've run across this phenomenon quite a few times.
(15:55):
However, where a residual haunting has no awareness, this alleged spirit seems to be aware.
On several of the accounts, he will raise his head from his task or turn to
look at whoever ever called out to him before disappearing.
This would suggest to me that he is aware and intelligent.
(16:20):
He just doesn't want to be messed with. I mean, I can relate to that, let's be honest.
But I'm still bothered by the fact that he seems to be going about some unseen
tasks during the times when he is seen working.
By the accounts that I've heard, he seems to be bent over as if working on something
(16:41):
doing the same task again and again before disappearing no one has ever seen what he is working on.
While I've heard the story about the worker from several different people over
the years, I have no reason to doubt what they saw or think they saw.
(17:03):
For me, the verdict is still out on this one.
While I don't know anything about the paranormal, and you should be extremely
careful of those who claim they do, this story contains elements of both a residual
and intelligent haunting,
and I've never run across an accurate story that had both.
(17:26):
I'm afraid that in this case, I have to leave it up to you to decide if you
think it is a true ghost sighting or just an urban legend.
I thought that was a very interesting sidebar, because I'm like,
there's a lot of Irish stories like that immediately. daily.
(17:50):
Anyways, going back to Bud's writing, The Lady in the Window.
Another alleged spirit sighting is that of the lady in the window,
usually seen in the evenings and early morning hours, either before the museum
opens or right after everyone has gone home.
(18:11):
The image of a woman in a high-collar dress with her hair piled neatly on top
of her head in a bun, is seen standing on the second-floor window looking out at the street.
She has been described as...
Being a middle-aged woman, rather good-looking from a distance,
and seems to be watching out the window.
(18:36):
Whether she is simply watching people and traffic go by, or if she is watching
for someone is unknown, as is who she might actually be.
She can be seen from outside moving from window to window sometimes,
(18:56):
as if she's been walking around the second floor, pausing from time to time to look out the window.
Since the place used to be a hardware and a warehouse, it would seem unlikely
that a woman might have spent a lot of time there.
Not impossible, but unlikely. So my thoughts are that she could quite possibly
(19:21):
be attached to some artifact that the museum has in its possession.
Several people have heard a woman's voice, soft and low, on the second floor,
as well as sounds of a soft humming and singing.
While there is no way to tell for certain, it could be the same woman.
(19:43):
While two female spirits occupying the same building might not be that strange
to occupying the second floor of what used to be a hardware and warehouse is a little odd.
The sound of quick footsteps as if someone were walking in a hurry are heard
(20:04):
on the second floor as well.
Not loud thumping footsteps that might be made by a man in heavy work boots,
but more of a light, fast step, which makes me think again of a woman seen looking out the window.
I've also not heard of a woman being seen looking out the window on any other
(20:28):
floor other than the second,
which leads me to wonder if she might be limited in her wandering to just that floor for some reason.
Interestingly, I have had one person who saw her looking out the window claim
that she responded to him waving at her to him waving at her by waving back.
(20:54):
All of the other accounts claim that she doesn't seem to to pay attention to
anything in particular and doesn't respond at all if someone waves at her.
Maybe she just liked the look of the young man whom she waved at.
(21:16):
So I thought that was kind of interesting.
Slightly. I don't want to say like.
Sexist, but a little old school. Honestly, if you hear me running through a
hallway, it does not sound nice and feminine in any way, shape, or form.
But, you know, the boots probably don't help, but still.
(21:40):
I just thought that was interesting. He continues,
Strangely enough, for a museum filled with historical artifacts,
artifacts you would think that there would be dozens of paranormal accounts
associated with the place but it doesn't seem to be the case.
A lot of people I spoke to were quick to tell me that there was a lot of activity
(22:02):
in the building but when pressed for details there just wasn't a lot of information
given past the usual type of voices touching and hair pulling stories that everyone tells.
Honestly, this is kind of what I encountered too. I thought that was interesting when he said that.
I was like, yeah, that's what I got. I'm going into that in a little bit.
(22:27):
He continues, I wasn't able to come across anyone other than Adrian and Tina
Scalf who witnessed anything really cool inside the old building.
I couldn't find anyone who had seen an apparition inside the building,
saw shadows or strange lights moving about the room or anything else that was
(22:51):
unique or especially interesting.
What Adrian and Tina saw was a human-shaped shadow that seemed to be watching
them all the time from about 12 feet away.
That's way too freaking close for me. It would move when they moved,
always keeping a distance between them.
(23:11):
They also captured a few good EVPs in
the room with the doll exhibit because of course they freaking
did it in the doll exhibit they were
getting intelligent responses to questions asked about the dolls which was pretty
impressive but for the most part for a place as cool as the Fort Smith Museum
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of History with its working soda soda fountain, and tons of artifacts.
There just weren't a lot of interesting ghost stories associated with the place.
So we went during the day, again, when there weren't a lot of people there.
I was kind of surprised that they didn't have that many reports of hauntings.
(24:04):
And it was pretty quiet, like I said, energy-wise.
I felt my chest tighten, and I got a little heated near the section devoted
to the Sisters of Mercy, which is funny now that my throat gets all goofied again. in.
The Catholic nuns. But let's be honest, it's me. That kind of makes sense.
(24:25):
And of course, I got creeped out with the dog collection.
But that's about it. On the first floor, I got the most overwhelming energy
stopping off on the second floor elevator.
I couldn't speak. I got really dizzy, like full lightheadedness.
(24:46):
I felt for an instant that I was going to black out. it just like overwhelmed
me. It was a little surprising.
My husband was very confused about what the hell was happening.
It hit really hard and quick. And then I took a couple steps from the initial
point of interaction and it was gone. I was fine. That was it.
(25:07):
So I don't know. Weird rush. Who knows?
I walked around the exhibits, walked through the place that I had had first felt it.
I was wondering if there was maybe a heating vent and I just like started to overheat.
But I do have issues with that. So I was like, maybe, maybe it's that.
Or since, you know, it's an old building with lots of artifacts on display.
(25:33):
Maybe there's some weird old wiring throwing off, some weird EMF.
I really need to travel with my little EMF detectors.
Connectors but it had passed and I couldn't find it again so I wasn't sure what that was about,
since there was no one else on the floor with us or so I thought I decided to
(25:55):
try a quick EBP session to see if anyone was around all right hanging out in
the Fort Smith History Museum museum,
and we're the only one upstairs, so we're taking advantage of doing some EVPs.
(26:16):
There's music coming from somewhere, but I can't tell if it's outside or what.
The only ones upstairs are me and Jordan. You might hear extra sets of footsteps for that reason. in?
Is there anyone here that would like to say anything to us?
(26:37):
Is there anyone connected to any of the artifacts here?
Are you from Fort Smith?
I know, I keep walking around. Those footsteps are definitely Jordan.
See all the tools, bub? No, they would let you in if you asked.
Do you see that? I like the sign that says tools by Village Flaxsmith.
(27:03):
I'm hearing other people coming up. Damn.
So, did you hear anything? I know, it's disappointingly short. worked.
We had people come up the elevator and I didn't want to contaminate anything.
Now, the only thing that I couldn't explain is the weird mechanical buzzing
noise that comes and goes in recording.
(27:26):
I don't remember hearing it in person because I think I would have paid attention to it.
It's pretty obvious. My best guess is maybe an overhead light,
but sadly we didn't listen to the recording until after we had left,
so I can't say for sure, but my guess is old light.
(27:47):
We walked around the loop of the museum's second floor, and we're just about
to the elevator again, and I started to feel that weird energy again.
Not as strong, but all that fun chest tightening feeling, that arm numbing sensation.
We were in the really adorable on the air section where they rebuilt an old
(28:12):
radio station from like the early 60s.
My husband could have spent freaking hours in there, which it was really cool,
but there's lots of old cameras and equipment.
It would make sense that, you know, something EMF-wise is off.
I felt really pulled to the section.
(28:36):
To the next one, which ended up being the hanging judge, Judge Isaac Parker's
actual courtroom setup.
It was eerie to say the least, and I will be going into the history of the hanging
judge and a lot more in the next big episode.
We're going to do a creepy, spooky snippet next week and then after,
(28:57):
but I'll go into that kind of thing.
But just to give you a little bit of backstory.
I got this quick snippet from Wikipedia just to give you an idea of what we're working with here.
In 21 years on the federal bench, Judge Parker tried 13,490 cases.
(29:21):
In more than 8,500 of these cases, the defendant either pled guilty or was convicted at trial.
So his courtroom room was rather busy, to say the least.
So it makes sense that there would be some weird energy around it.
And again, we're going to go into that because there's so much.
(29:42):
It's insane. It is so insane. It is honestly a really lovely little museum,
but I desperately wanted to talk to someone about the hauntings.
There was a very nice gentleman named Calvin working the front desk desk when
I went to ask about the hauntings.
I walked up to him and told him I had a silly question and asked him outright
(30:06):
if the building was haunted.
He just had this whole vibe of, oh no, one of these again.
He sighed and leaned back in his chair, got nice and comfortable.
It almost felt like.
When you would disappoint your teacher as a kid, and they were about to tell you why.
(30:28):
But that ended up not being the case. Calvin was quite lovely.
He proceeded to tell me that he doesn't believe in that stuff.
And yes, the building is haunted.
I was very confused, and he could tell. He explained that he might not be sensitive
enough to it to have his own experiences or however it works,
(30:50):
but he himself has had two experiences in the museum that he cannot explain.
He let me record him while he told the stories. We were talking about accents
when the recording starts.
Oh, that's fair.
That's fair. My husband's grandfather is from here, So that's why I'm like, we get out here.
(31:16):
I get it. So sorry, sorry, sorry. Okay. You said orbs? Okay.
I've seen orbs that are moving way too fast to be dust particles on video cameras
that we've got in the building.
I'll have to, you know, I guess I'm going to have to say that's something other than dust floating.
But I don't believe in all that. Okay.
(31:40):
But we had a ghost hunter in here one time, and he had a camera deal set up,
and he was pointed at that cash register over there. That one? Yeah. Okay.
And on this screen that he had on this camera thing, there was an outline kind
(32:01):
of like in the Predator movie.
Oh, yeah. Like the heat signature. There was like a heat signature of a human
figure standing right next to that cash register. Really?
So a guy comes in the front door. I'm sitting here. He needs to go to the gift shop. So I get up.
He and I walk around the edge of that red car going to the gift shop.
(32:23):
When we come back out, he leaves. I said, come here, man.
They took me over there, and I watch it. And this signature is still standing there. Wow.
And when we walk into the range of that camera as we go around this car,
we've got the same heat signatures on the two of us walking around there as
the one standing there. And there's nothing there.
(32:45):
Wow. Because that's a significant heat signature then. Yes. Wow.
So that's the only two things that I've experienced yet.
There's other people with a herd and scene, people in the building on the upper floors.
I mean, that's all I got. I had to ask. And there's like a haunted something downstairs?
(33:10):
It's a haunted house, though? We used to do a haunted house downstairs.
Because I remember seeing that when I was like Googling. It's like a nerd.
We used to have a haunted house at Halloween.
We quit doing that. We do a trolley ride now and tell stories about.
About stuff that happens in town.
I mean, there was a guy that murdered his mother, cut her head off and put it
(33:34):
in church up at the head of the avenue back in 1958.
Wow. And there's other stuff like that that's happened around town.
There's some buildings down in the historic district.
Supposedly, you can see people standing up there that aren't there,
the upper windows and so forth.
So we don't have the haunted house thing anymore. more of it.
(33:56):
No, it doesn't sound like you need it.
Yeah. And so I think the trolley ride sounds amazing.
There is a book that we used to have in the gift shop about haunted Portsmouth
and Van Buren or something to that effect.
I think I bought that online. And the guy, the guy that wrote that apparently didn't ask questions.
He just wrote stuff because he told all kinds of stuff that he didn't get anything
(34:19):
that we would have told him out of here.
And he put a whole a lot of stories about this building that I don't know where he got his information.
I was surprised how much there was. That's actually one of the reasons why we
stopped in, because I did a digital buy real quick last night,
and I was like, oh, okay, so this is interesting. Okay.
(34:40):
Yeah. So, like I say, he wrote stuff in there, so I don't know whether the rest
of the stuff he wrote made sense.
Somewhat made up, because he made some stuff up about a year. Interesting.
Yeah, that's the stuff I love. Thank you. I love hearing that part.
He got one right out of what was in here. But other, I guess,
(35:03):
because I don't, like I say, I don't believe in that business.
I just, I'm not tuned in, I guess. I don't know. Not yet. I mean,
what do you think he got right?
There was one story that he wrote in there. I don't even remember which one
it is now, but that one has been talked about before in here.
(35:26):
Because I cheated and was like scanning real quick right before we got in here.
I know there's one like a factory worker that shows up and then a lady in a
brown dress or something.
Maybe. I know there's a little girl supposedly upstairs somewhere that two or
(35:48):
three different people have seen in here.
That is not in the book, unless I didn't read it very well. Yeah. Well, you don't have to.
He missed all the stories that we knew about except one he didn't put in the
book, and the three or four other stories he put in there we never heard of before.
Wow. I don't know where he got his information. Huh.
That makes me wonder about the rest of his book, too. Yeah, no,
(36:11):
that makes me, because we want to go over to the one next door,
National Park. Yes, National Park.
We want to go there next. And what he wrote on that was a lot.
Yeah, and I don't know how much of that might be correct either.
Like I say, he had some stuff in there. We were kind of shocked.
(36:31):
Huh. Because we've never heard any of those stories except one of them. No, good to know.
Well, thank you so much. What is your name? My name's Calvin.
Hi, Calvin. Calvin Evans. Where are you from in Colorado?
Technically Manitou Springs. It's west of Colorado Springs.
I'm kind of familiar with the area a little bit. My brother lives in Colorado Springs.
(36:52):
Oh, okay. Perfect. Yeah. I like how we go across the country and find people
that kind of know where we live every time.
It makes me giggle. But no, thank you so much. I'm going to be honest.
I'm a bit disappointed to hear about my little book. I feel like those books
are, they usually have the best information.
(37:12):
So I was a little downtrodden about doing an episode on the museum.
So I really wanted to find something worthwhile.
Than the cash register story. I found this article from KSFM Channel 5 News
from 2012 that I wish I had before I met my new friend Calvin.
(37:36):
The article reads as followed.
Located in the 1907 Atchison Williams Warehouse building, the museum hosts more
than 35,000 artifacts in its collection.
Standing four stories tall, many employees say they remain fearful of the museum's third floor.
(37:59):
The third floor is an employees-only section full of old historic artifacts
and is barred off from the public, perhaps with good reason.
Lisa Garmlich, Garmlick, the Fort Smith Museum's executive director,
(38:21):
says many of the museum's haunting tales come from that part of the building.
Garmlick says one of her most frightening experiences happened one day as she
arrived on the third floor.
And remember, this is the freaking executive director of the museum.
(38:42):
We got off the elevator and heard a...
Voice, plain as day, like a child running and yelling.
Playing is what it sounded like, and I even walked from the elevator back to
the back here and said, who's up here?
(39:05):
And I hear the voice jump from that corner to this corner, so I came over here
and there was nothing here, says Gremlik.
The third floor is also home to an old voodoo doll that many are frightened of.
That's because every time they've attempted to take a picture of it,
(39:27):
the museum employees say a light covers it up, preventing it from being seen.
The third floor isn't the only spooky area, though.
Other paranormal investigators report getting sudden cold chill in the museum's basement.
On the second floor, some have also said they've seen a child's face out of the corner of their eye.
(39:53):
The second floor is also home to the old furniture from Fort Smith's hanging
judge, Judge Isaac Parker.
In this area, many have reported suddenly hearing the slam of a gavel when no one is around.
Gramlich says many ghost legends show spirits have attached themselves onto
(40:16):
old items and possessions.
If that's true, with more than 35,000 items in the Fort Smith's museum collection,
there are bound to be at least a few ghosts lurking around the building.
Am always surprised when someone like the executive director of the History
(40:41):
Museum is willing to come forward and talk about the haunted history of a place.
That's so freaking cool.
There is something so legitimizing about it.
Apparently, the Fort Smith Museum of History is really open to fun stuff like
that, too, because they used to hold a haunted house in the basement called
(41:04):
the Blood on the Border Haunted House every October.
You can see the remnant of a creepy cloth over the stairs leading to the basement.
When you use the stairs instead of the elevator.
My buddy Calvin says they aren't doing that anymore.
But instead they do a murder and mayhem trolley ride.
(41:27):
Where you ride around on a trolley hearing stories of the dark history of Fort
Smith. which just sounds freaking amazing.
Calvin told me that that's where the real stories are.
Remember him mentioning the
story of the guy that cut his mom's head off and left it at the church?
(41:51):
Don't worry, I found that story, and it's going to be the spooky snippet next week.
And it's It's interesting.
I desperately want to go on a trolley ride. So that whole thing just sounds
freaking amazing, and I love it.
(42:12):
So if anyone is in the Fort Smith area and has gone or will be going, please let me know.
I'm really freaking curious. And, you know, go visit the museum and see if you
get any spooky feelings. Bye.
Music.
(42:41):
To everyone out there listening today. My Haunted Life podcast is written,
researched, produced, edited, and hosted by me, Angela Hartshorn.
All of my sources will be...
Let's be honest, I post everything on the Patreon. It works the best.
So make sure to subscribe to the Patreon.
(43:03):
You can do that for as little as $2 a month.
Technically, I think you can join for free and just get like the free content,
which most of it is, let's be honest.
But if you want to support the show, you can do it for $2 a month.
I always appreciate everyone.
(43:26):
And if you have any information, maybe you did the trolley ride.
I would love to hear about the trolley ride. Oh, my God.
Uh email me at my
haunted life podcast at gmail.com or
write me on facebook instagram tiktok the
youtube whatever while you're there
(43:48):
please like and follow and comment it always makes my freaking day and yeah
again don't forget the podcast group there's so much stuff that's going to be
going on with Ouija board discussions and freaking,
you know, the,
(44:11):
paranormal documentary coming up.
All that information is going to be in there. It's going to be amazing.
Don't forget to check it out.
And that's it for this week. My dears, I hope you have a wonderful week and
until next time stay spooky.
(44:34):
Music.
Hello, goblins and ghouls, and welcome to my Haunted Life podcast.
I'm your host, Angela Hartshorn, and on the next couple of episodes,
I'm taking you to Fort Smith, Arkansas, to explore some of its darker history.
And it gets pretty dark. Starting off with the very intriguing,
(00:24):
Fort Smith Museum of History that has a little bit of controversy behind the hauntings.
Music.
Hello, my Darklings. How is everyone doing today?
(00:47):
I hope it's great and wonderful because you are are also great and wonderful,
and you freaking deserve it.
Damn it, you deserve a great day. A little bit of housekeeping here.
When this comes out, I'll be getting ready for the Santa Fe Renaissance Festival this weekend.
I am losing my mind.
(01:09):
If you are in the Santa Fe area for the weekend, come and say hi. Tell me a ghost story.
I freaking love hearing people's spooky stories.
I might even ask you to be on the podcast.
You never know. I always get the best stories from the locals.
And New Mexico has so much high strangeness. It's insane. I freaking love it.
(01:35):
I was just discussing this with a friend who hates driving through New Mexico
because they have seen some really weird shit that scared them to completely
avoid driving through the state at night.
I usually don't get a lot of time to do much exploring down there for this show in particular.
(01:57):
It's busy season and the Ren Fairs take a lot out of me usually the Hubs and
I do a hot springs trip but this year we're saving up for more Seattle adventures
in October so yeah come by and tell
me your stories and tell me where to visit.
Cause I always, you know, like
(02:18):
to hear them anyways, last I heard tickets were sold out for Saturday.
I heard Sunday as well, but I'm not a hundred percent sure.
Cause I haven't checked Sunday, but I have a very reliable source that says
(02:39):
so. So just double check before you come.
As soon as I get back from the show, I have a witchcrafting class at Kronk Art
and Curiosities to teach you how to make your own witch teas.
This is going to be such a fun class.
(03:01):
And there's probably five million ways to make your own tea.
I'm just teaching you the way I do it. so make sure to check out cronkartco.com
to sign up if you are in the Colorado Springs area it is an in-person situation,
(03:21):
the next show is Denver Oddities and Curiosities September 28th and 29th which is my birthday weekend,
which reminds me I really need to start planning my
birthday weekend and honestly as
much as I love staying up there being able to hang out
(03:41):
sleeping in my own bed has become so nice so we'll see what happens if you can't
make it out to the shows this fall make sure to check out the website heart
and horn store.com for updates and I have a bunch of new stuff coming out for autumn Equinox.
(04:02):
I'm so freaking excited.
I'm excited to have them done. Well, keep an eye out over there.
I have some really cool podcast bookkeeping, not just personal stuff this time. What?
So I'm going to be posting this in the group very shortly, but I have an upcoming interview,
(04:30):
with a very nice gentleman who knows a lot about Ouija boards.
And these are always the favorites. So I'm definitely putting it out there to the group.
Put your Ouija board questions in. More details to come there.
But I'm really excited because I'm going to have a podcast coming up where I interview...
(04:55):
Oh, and I'm geeking out about this one. on.
Also, still working on the details.
It sounds like it. I mean, it's pretty official.
I don't have my plane tickets yet, but I will be going to New York this October.
(05:20):
It's going to be a whirlwind. Like, leave Friday.
No, leave Thursday.
And then come home Saturday morning in time for another class at Kronk.
But I have been
(05:43):
invited to co-host the premiere of an upcoming paranormal documentary called
It's Coming with my friend Tanya Brown from the Witch Daily podcast.
The Witch Daily Show podcast.
(06:05):
So, look for those details. Those are going to be posted really quick.
Still trying to figure everything out, but I'm so freaking excited.
We've been talking about this back and forth, and the fact that it's actually
working out still is so exciting.
But yeah, those are coming out. keep an eye out
(06:27):
for that because it sounds
like the plan is for our audiences to be able to ask questions to the family
in the movie and it's about this family who's been possessed or has
(06:49):
been dealing with demons in their house.
It's insane. And we're going to be able to actually, you guys are going to be
able to ask questions through us to them.
So I'm really, I'm so stoked.
Official details will be coming out more, but I just wanted to give you guys
a heads up on it because I'm really, really freaking excited about this one. It's going to be so cool.
(07:16):
I thought spooky season was busy beforehand.
It's even more insane now.
Let me tell you. All right. I think that's it for housekeeping.
I think this is enough housekeeping.
I try to keep it under 10 minutes, and I don't want to talk about housekeeping anymore.
So on this week's episode, I am taking you to the Fort Smith Museum of History
(07:42):
in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
It is supposedly known for its hauntings, but those hauntings might not be what
you think as I found out later.
For this podcast I try to take you on the journey I did.
So let's get into it shall we? Grab yourself a cup of tea, make sure the doors
(08:06):
are locked and the bayonets are close by. I have a story to tell you.
Music.
The Fort Smith Museum of History might just be one of the coolest freaking museums I have ever been in.
It's your classic brown brick warehouse. It's much taller than the buildings
(08:30):
around it and it's literally painted on its side.
Like it has a sign that tells you very large what this building is.
The museum website's description states,
The museum was established in 1910 as the Old Commissary Museum with the purpose
(08:54):
of saving the city's oldest building from demolition,
the 1930s Commissary Building to the second Fort Smith.
This is, like, right across the street.
For decades, what is now the Fort Smith Museum of History was housed in that building.
That building is now part of the National, the Fort Smith National Historic Site.
(09:20):
In the late 1970s, the FSMH moved to the Atkinson-Williams Hardware Warehouse.
Over the span of more than a century, the Fort Smith Museum of History's collection
has grown to approximately 50,000 artifacts chronicling the city's and surrounding region's history.
(09:47):
We strive to care, share, and preserve the collection, as well as the Atchison
Williams Warehouse, our largest artifact,
which houses the museum, which I thought was a cute way of putting it.
Constructed in 1906, the building is one of the only remaining warehouse structures
(10:11):
in the Down House Warehouse District of that era.
Williams Hardware, and later Spear Hardware, occupied the structure through the late 1960s.
The Fort Smith Museum of History, a 501c3 non-profit institute,
has occupied the warehouse since 1979 when the building was listed on the National
(10:37):
Registry of Historic Places.
So there you go it is
uh technically in the other building
it was founded in 1910 it just
moved over so it is the oldest continually operating
museum in the state of arkansas one of the coolest things about the museum is
(11:00):
how much of it was locally donated like when they say that they're really about
chronicling the city and surrounding region's history. They freaking mean it.
Like, a lot of the World War stuff came from families that, like,
donated grandpa's journals and uniforms and whatever else he had laying around.
(11:24):
And there's then, like, a little excerpt about him.
There's lots of little things like that. A lot of local stories made it into
the Museum, which it felt like a very local history.
I thought that was really cool.
I'm used to it being like hundreds of years before. This is like, maybe not hundreds.
(11:46):
I'm in Colorado, for God's sakes.
But like, I don't know. It was just cozy feeling, if that makes sense.
The third floor is probably the coolest. It's a miniature representation of
Old Fort Smith's Main Street.
And by miniature, I mean like eight foot by eight foot recreated storefronts
(12:10):
that you can walk into and see what would be in the shop. It's freaking adorable.
It's really, really an ingenious way of preserving the history of the area.
It's cool. The vibes of this place were not negative, but you knew you were being watched.
Like, there's an old feeling around.
(12:34):
That feeling of knowing that someone was just around the corner,
but when you go around the corner, there was no one there.
We went during the week
me and the husband and it was
just the two of us the front desk man and maybe a few others and that was for
(12:55):
the most part all there was because we went during the week there was it was
dead so I don't know it made the feelings of being watched even stronger,
I don't know. It was it was a little strange.
I kept waiting to run into somebody who was reading stuff. You just get that
(13:16):
feeling when someone else is around.
Almost never happened. Like I think we were there and then like maybe two or
I think it was like a group of three came in after us. And that was honestly about it.
It was hard to tell if at times I was hearing footsteps or if it was pipes in a different room.
(13:36):
I wasn't even sure when I felt like I was being watched if maybe it was just
like old building with bad electrical grounding.
You know, EMFs, that kind of feeling. It was that. It was kind of confusing energy-wise.
Was it haunted or was it bad EMFs creeping me out? I really had an issue.
(14:00):
It didn't help that there's a whole room of antique creepy dolls.
Y'all know how I feel about that.
Luckily, I had picked up Haunted Fort Smith and Van Buren by Bud Steed,
and these are the stories he reports from the museum.
(14:20):
The Warehouse Worker Often seen around the rear of the History Museum building,
the spirit, which is sometimes referred to as the Warehouse Worker and at other
times as the Loafer, two names that seem a bit contradictory,
is sometimes seen going through the motions of working at some task or another.
(14:44):
Yet, at other times, it's simply lounging on the ground, leaning back against
something that doesn't seem to be there.
At first, I thought that perhaps there were two different spirits being mentioned,
but after comparing the descriptions of him from several different accounts,
(15:05):
it would appear that it is the same man.
Said to be a tall, thin man in his late 20s or early 30s and dressed in the
work clothes of someone from the 30s or 40s, he is seen only briefly before
disappearing. hearing.
As far as I have been able to determine, no one has ever had an interaction with him.
(15:30):
Anyone who has ever seen him and tried to approach him or call out to him have
stated that he doesn't seem to want to interact. He just disappears.
At first, I thought maybe he was just simply a residual type of haunting.
I've run across this phenomenon quite a few times.
(15:55):
However, where a residual haunting has no awareness, this alleged spirit seems to be aware.
On several of the accounts, he will raise his head from his task or turn to
look at whoever ever called out to him before disappearing.
This would suggest to me that he is aware and intelligent.
(16:20):
He just doesn't want to be messed with. I mean, I can relate to that, let's be honest.
But I'm still bothered by the fact that he seems to be going about some unseen
tasks during the times when he is seen working.
By the accounts that I've heard, he seems to be bent over as if working on something
(16:41):
doing the same task again and again before disappearing no one has ever seen what he is working on.
While I've heard the story about the worker from several different people over
the years, I have no reason to doubt what they saw or think they saw.
(17:03):
For me, the verdict is still out on this one.
While I don't know anything about the paranormal, and you should be extremely
careful of those who claim they do, this story contains elements of both a residual
and intelligent haunting,
and I've never run across an accurate story that had both.
(17:26):
I'm afraid that in this case, I have to leave it up to you to decide if you
think it is a true ghost sighting or just an urban legend.
I thought that was a very interesting sidebar, because I'm like,
there's a lot of Irish stories like that immediately. daily.
(17:50):
Anyways, going back to Bud's writing, The Lady in the Window.
Another alleged spirit sighting is that of the lady in the window,
usually seen in the evenings and early morning hours, either before the museum
opens or right after everyone has gone home.
(18:11):
The image of a woman in a high-collar dress with her hair piled neatly on top
of her head in a bun, is seen standing on the second-floor window looking out at the street.
She has been described as...
Being a middle-aged woman, rather good-looking from a distance,
and seems to be watching out the window.
(18:36):
Whether she is simply watching people and traffic go by, or if she is watching
for someone is unknown, as is who she might actually be.
She can be seen from outside moving from window to window sometimes,
(18:56):
as if she's been walking around the second floor, pausing from time to time to look out the window.
Since the place used to be a hardware and a warehouse, it would seem unlikely
that a woman might have spent a lot of time there.
Not impossible, but unlikely. So my thoughts are that she could quite possibly
(19:21):
be attached to some artifact that the museum has in its possession.
Several people have heard a woman's voice, soft and low, on the second floor,
as well as sounds of a soft humming and singing.
While there is no way to tell for certain, it could be the same woman.
(19:43):
While two female spirits occupying the same building might not be that strange
to occupying the second floor of what used to be a hardware and warehouse is a little odd.
The sound of quick footsteps as if someone were walking in a hurry are heard
(20:04):
on the second floor as well.
Not loud thumping footsteps that might be made by a man in heavy work boots,
but more of a light, fast step, which makes me think again of a woman seen looking out the window.
I've also not heard of a woman being seen looking out the window on any other
(20:28):
floor other than the second,
which leads me to wonder if she might be limited in her wandering to just that floor for some reason.
Interestingly, I have had one person who saw her looking out the window claim
that she responded to him waving at her to him waving at her by waving back.
(20:54):
All of the other accounts claim that she doesn't seem to to pay attention to
anything in particular and doesn't respond at all if someone waves at her.
Maybe she just liked the look of the young man whom she waved at.
(21:16):
So I thought that was kind of interesting.
Slightly. I don't want to say like.
Sexist, but a little old school. Honestly, if you hear me running through a
hallway, it does not sound nice and feminine in any way, shape, or form.
But, you know, the boots probably don't help, but still.
(21:40):
I just thought that was interesting. He continues,
Strangely enough, for a museum filled with historical artifacts,
artifacts you would think that there would be dozens of paranormal accounts
associated with the place but it doesn't seem to be the case.
A lot of people I spoke to were quick to tell me that there was a lot of activity
(22:02):
in the building but when pressed for details there just wasn't a lot of information
given past the usual type of voices touching and hair pulling stories that everyone tells.
Honestly, this is kind of what I encountered too. I thought that was interesting when he said that.
I was like, yeah, that's what I got. I'm going into that in a little bit.
(22:27):
He continues, I wasn't able to come across anyone other than Adrian and Tina
Scalf who witnessed anything really cool inside the old building.
I couldn't find anyone who had seen an apparition inside the building,
saw shadows or strange lights moving about the room or anything else that was
(22:51):
unique or especially interesting.
What Adrian and Tina saw was a human-shaped shadow that seemed to be watching
them all the time from about 12 feet away.
That's way too freaking close for me. It would move when they moved,
always keeping a distance between them.
(23:11):
They also captured a few good EVPs in
the room with the doll exhibit because of course they freaking
did it in the doll exhibit they were
getting intelligent responses to questions asked about the dolls which was pretty
impressive but for the most part for a place as cool as the Fort Smith Museum
(23:36):
of History with its working soda soda fountain, and tons of artifacts.
There just weren't a lot of interesting ghost stories associated with the place.
So we went during the day, again, when there weren't a lot of people there.
I was kind of surprised that they didn't have that many reports of hauntings.
(24:04):
And it was pretty quiet, like I said, energy-wise.
I felt my chest tighten, and I got a little heated near the section devoted
to the Sisters of Mercy, which is funny now that my throat gets all goofied again. in.
The Catholic nuns. But let's be honest, it's me. That kind of makes sense.
(24:25):
And of course, I got creeped out with the dog collection.
But that's about it. On the first floor, I got the most overwhelming energy
stopping off on the second floor elevator.
I couldn't speak. I got really dizzy, like full lightheadedness.
(24:46):
I felt for an instant that I was going to black out. it just like overwhelmed
me. It was a little surprising.
My husband was very confused about what the hell was happening.
It hit really hard and quick. And then I took a couple steps from the initial
point of interaction and it was gone. I was fine. That was it.
(25:07):
So I don't know. Weird rush. Who knows?
I walked around the exhibits, walked through the place that I had had first felt it.
I was wondering if there was maybe a heating vent and I just like started to overheat.
But I do have issues with that. So I was like, maybe, maybe it's that.
Or since, you know, it's an old building with lots of artifacts on display.
(25:33):
Maybe there's some weird old wiring throwing off, some weird EMF.
I really need to travel with my little EMF detectors.
Connectors but it had passed and I couldn't find it again so I wasn't sure what that was about,
since there was no one else on the floor with us or so I thought I decided to
(25:55):
try a quick EBP session to see if anyone was around all right hanging out in
the Fort Smith History Museum museum,
and we're the only one upstairs, so we're taking advantage of doing some EVPs.
(26:16):
There's music coming from somewhere, but I can't tell if it's outside or what.
The only ones upstairs are me and Jordan. You might hear extra sets of footsteps for that reason. in?
Is there anyone here that would like to say anything to us?
(26:37):
Is there anyone connected to any of the artifacts here?
Are you from Fort Smith?
I know, I keep walking around. Those footsteps are definitely Jordan.
See all the tools, bub? No, they would let you in if you asked.
Do you see that? I like the sign that says tools by Village Flaxsmith.
(27:03):
I'm hearing other people coming up. Damn.
So, did you hear anything? I know, it's disappointingly short. worked.
We had people come up the elevator and I didn't want to contaminate anything.
Now, the only thing that I couldn't explain is the weird mechanical buzzing
noise that comes and goes in recording.
(27:26):
I don't remember hearing it in person because I think I would have paid attention to it.
It's pretty obvious. My best guess is maybe an overhead light,
but sadly we didn't listen to the recording until after we had left,
so I can't say for sure, but my guess is old light.
(27:47):
We walked around the loop of the museum's second floor, and we're just about
to the elevator again, and I started to feel that weird energy again.
Not as strong, but all that fun chest tightening feeling, that arm numbing sensation.
We were in the really adorable on the air section where they rebuilt an old
(28:12):
radio station from like the early 60s.
My husband could have spent freaking hours in there, which it was really cool,
but there's lots of old cameras and equipment.
It would make sense that, you know, something EMF-wise is off.
I felt really pulled to the section.
(28:36):
To the next one, which ended up being the hanging judge, Judge Isaac Parker's
actual courtroom setup.
It was eerie to say the least, and I will be going into the history of the hanging
judge and a lot more in the next big episode.
We're going to do a creepy, spooky snippet next week and then after,
(28:57):
but I'll go into that kind of thing.
But just to give you a little bit of backstory.
I got this quick snippet from Wikipedia just to give you an idea of what we're working with here.
In 21 years on the federal bench, Judge Parker tried 13,490 cases.
(29:21):
In more than 8,500 of these cases, the defendant either pled guilty or was convicted at trial.
So his courtroom room was rather busy, to say the least.
So it makes sense that there would be some weird energy around it.
And again, we're going to go into that because there's so much.
(29:42):
It's insane. It is so insane. It is honestly a really lovely little museum,
but I desperately wanted to talk to someone about the hauntings.
There was a very nice gentleman named Calvin working the front desk desk when
I went to ask about the hauntings.
I walked up to him and told him I had a silly question and asked him outright
(30:06):
if the building was haunted.
He just had this whole vibe of, oh no, one of these again.
He sighed and leaned back in his chair, got nice and comfortable.
It almost felt like.
When you would disappoint your teacher as a kid, and they were about to tell you why.
(30:28):
But that ended up not being the case. Calvin was quite lovely.
He proceeded to tell me that he doesn't believe in that stuff.
And yes, the building is haunted.
I was very confused, and he could tell. He explained that he might not be sensitive
enough to it to have his own experiences or however it works,
(30:50):
but he himself has had two experiences in the museum that he cannot explain.
He let me record him while he told the stories. We were talking about accents
when the recording starts.
Oh, that's fair.
That's fair. My husband's grandfather is from here, So that's why I'm like, we get out here.
(31:16):
I get it. So sorry, sorry, sorry. Okay. You said orbs? Okay.
I've seen orbs that are moving way too fast to be dust particles on video cameras
that we've got in the building.
I'll have to, you know, I guess I'm going to have to say that's something other than dust floating.
But I don't believe in all that. Okay.
(31:40):
But we had a ghost hunter in here one time, and he had a camera deal set up,
and he was pointed at that cash register over there. That one? Yeah. Okay.
And on this screen that he had on this camera thing, there was an outline kind
(32:01):
of like in the Predator movie.
Oh, yeah. Like the heat signature. There was like a heat signature of a human
figure standing right next to that cash register. Really?
So a guy comes in the front door. I'm sitting here. He needs to go to the gift shop. So I get up.
He and I walk around the edge of that red car going to the gift shop.
(32:23):
When we come back out, he leaves. I said, come here, man.
They took me over there, and I watch it. And this signature is still standing there. Wow.
And when we walk into the range of that camera as we go around this car,
we've got the same heat signatures on the two of us walking around there as
the one standing there. And there's nothing there.
(32:45):
Wow. Because that's a significant heat signature then. Yes. Wow.
So that's the only two things that I've experienced yet.
There's other people with a herd and scene, people in the building on the upper floors.
I mean, that's all I got. I had to ask. And there's like a haunted something downstairs?
(33:10):
It's a haunted house, though? We used to do a haunted house downstairs.
Because I remember seeing that when I was like Googling. It's like a nerd.
We used to have a haunted house at Halloween.
We quit doing that. We do a trolley ride now and tell stories about.
About stuff that happens in town.
I mean, there was a guy that murdered his mother, cut her head off and put it
(33:34):
in church up at the head of the avenue back in 1958.
Wow. And there's other stuff like that that's happened around town.
There's some buildings down in the historic district.
Supposedly, you can see people standing up there that aren't there,
the upper windows and so forth.
So we don't have the haunted house thing anymore. more of it.
(33:56):
No, it doesn't sound like you need it.
Yeah. And so I think the trolley ride sounds amazing.
There is a book that we used to have in the gift shop about haunted Portsmouth
and Van Buren or something to that effect.
I think I bought that online. And the guy, the guy that wrote that apparently didn't ask questions.
He just wrote stuff because he told all kinds of stuff that he didn't get anything
(34:19):
that we would have told him out of here.
And he put a whole a lot of stories about this building that I don't know where he got his information.
I was surprised how much there was. That's actually one of the reasons why we
stopped in, because I did a digital buy real quick last night,
and I was like, oh, okay, so this is interesting. Okay.
(34:40):
Yeah. So, like I say, he wrote stuff in there, so I don't know whether the rest
of the stuff he wrote made sense.
Somewhat made up, because he made some stuff up about a year. Interesting.
Yeah, that's the stuff I love. Thank you. I love hearing that part.
He got one right out of what was in here. But other, I guess,
(35:03):
because I don't, like I say, I don't believe in that business.
I just, I'm not tuned in, I guess. I don't know. Not yet. I mean,
what do you think he got right?
There was one story that he wrote in there. I don't even remember which one
it is now, but that one has been talked about before in here.
(35:26):
Because I cheated and was like scanning real quick right before we got in here.
I know there's one like a factory worker that shows up and then a lady in a
brown dress or something.
Maybe. I know there's a little girl supposedly upstairs somewhere that two or
(35:48):
three different people have seen in here.
That is not in the book, unless I didn't read it very well. Yeah. Well, you don't have to.
He missed all the stories that we knew about except one he didn't put in the
book, and the three or four other stories he put in there we never heard of before.
Wow. I don't know where he got his information. Huh.
That makes me wonder about the rest of his book, too. Yeah, no,
(36:11):
that makes me, because we want to go over to the one next door,
National Park. Yes, National Park.
We want to go there next. And what he wrote on that was a lot.
Yeah, and I don't know how much of that might be correct either.
Like I say, he had some stuff in there. We were kind of shocked.
(36:31):
Huh. Because we've never heard any of those stories except one of them. No, good to know.
Well, thank you so much. What is your name? My name's Calvin.
Hi, Calvin. Calvin Evans. Where are you from in Colorado?
Technically Manitou Springs. It's west of Colorado Springs.
I'm kind of familiar with the area a little bit. My brother lives in Colorado Springs.
(36:52):
Oh, okay. Perfect. Yeah. I like how we go across the country and find people
that kind of know where we live every time.
It makes me giggle. But no, thank you so much. I'm going to be honest.
I'm a bit disappointed to hear about my little book. I feel like those books
are, they usually have the best information.
(37:12):
So I was a little downtrodden about doing an episode on the museum.
So I really wanted to find something worthwhile.
Than the cash register story. I found this article from KSFM Channel 5 News
from 2012 that I wish I had before I met my new friend Calvin.
(37:36):
The article reads as followed.
Located in the 1907 Atchison Williams Warehouse building, the museum hosts more
than 35,000 artifacts in its collection.
Standing four stories tall, many employees say they remain fearful of the museum's third floor.
(37:59):
The third floor is an employees-only section full of old historic artifacts
and is barred off from the public, perhaps with good reason.
Lisa Garmlich, Garmlick, the Fort Smith Museum's executive director,
(38:21):
says many of the museum's haunting tales come from that part of the building.
Garmlick says one of her most frightening experiences happened one day as she
arrived on the third floor.
And remember, this is the freaking executive director of the museum.
(38:42):
We got off the elevator and heard a...
Voice, plain as day, like a child running and yelling.
Playing is what it sounded like, and I even walked from the elevator back to
the back here and said, who's up here?
(39:05):
And I hear the voice jump from that corner to this corner, so I came over here
and there was nothing here, says Gremlik.
The third floor is also home to an old voodoo doll that many are frightened of.
That's because every time they've attempted to take a picture of it,
(39:27):
the museum employees say a light covers it up, preventing it from being seen.
The third floor isn't the only spooky area, though.
Other paranormal investigators report getting sudden cold chill in the museum's basement.
On the second floor, some have also said they've seen a child's face out of the corner of their eye.
(39:53):
The second floor is also home to the old furniture from Fort Smith's hanging
judge, Judge Isaac Parker.
In this area, many have reported suddenly hearing the slam of a gavel when no one is around.
Gramlich says many ghost legends show spirits have attached themselves onto
(40:16):
old items and possessions.
If that's true, with more than 35,000 items in the Fort Smith's museum collection,
there are bound to be at least a few ghosts lurking around the building.
Am always surprised when someone like the executive director of the History
(40:41):
Museum is willing to come forward and talk about the haunted history of a place.
That's so freaking cool.
There is something so legitimizing about it.
Apparently, the Fort Smith Museum of History is really open to fun stuff like
that, too, because they used to hold a haunted house in the basement called
(41:04):
the Blood on the Border Haunted House every October.
You can see the remnant of a creepy cloth over the stairs leading to the basement.
When you use the stairs instead of the elevator.
My buddy Calvin says they aren't doing that anymore.
But instead they do a murder and mayhem trolley ride.
(41:27):
Where you ride around on a trolley hearing stories of the dark history of Fort
Smith. which just sounds freaking amazing.
Calvin told me that that's where the real stories are.
Remember him mentioning the
story of the guy that cut his mom's head off and left it at the church?
(41:51):
Don't worry, I found that story, and it's going to be the spooky snippet next week.
And it's It's interesting.
I desperately want to go on a trolley ride. So that whole thing just sounds
freaking amazing, and I love it.
(42:12):
So if anyone is in the Fort Smith area and has gone or will be going, please let me know.
I'm really freaking curious. And, you know, go visit the museum and see if you
get any spooky feelings. Bye.
Music.
(42:41):
To everyone out there listening today. My Haunted Life podcast is written,
researched, produced, edited, and hosted by me, Angela Hartshorn.
All of my sources will be...
Let's be honest, I post everything on the Patreon. It works the best.
So make sure to subscribe to the Patreon.
(43:03):
You can do that for as little as $2 a month.
Technically, I think you can join for free and just get like the free content,
which most of it is, let's be honest.
But if you want to support the show, you can do it for $2 a month.
I always appreciate everyone.
(43:26):
And if you have any information, maybe you did the trolley ride.
I would love to hear about the trolley ride. Oh, my God.
Uh email me at my
haunted life podcast at gmail.com or
write me on facebook instagram tiktok the
youtube whatever while you're there
(43:48):
please like and follow and comment it always makes my freaking day and yeah
again don't forget the podcast group there's so much stuff that's going to be
going on with Ouija board discussions and freaking,
you know, the,
(44:11):
paranormal documentary coming up.
All that information is going to be in there. It's going to be amazing.
Don't forget to check it out.
And that's it for this week. My dears, I hope you have a wonderful week and
until next time stay spooky.
(44:34):
Music.
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