by Susan S.

s frightening as the IRS, more hair-

raising than your first invitation to

join AARP, even scarier (almost)

than current prices at the gas

pumps, are the many ghoulish stories

told and retold during the Halloween

season each year. For more than a

century Kansans have joined in the

autumn fun of pulling pranks,

dressing in silly or creepy cos-

tumes, and feeling our hearts

race and our throats clutch at

oft-told ghost stories. Many of

us remember the first time we

heard such tales as “The Man

with the Golden Arm” or “The

Tell-Tale Heart,” or how weak

our knees felt as we carried

our trick-or-treat bags

along familiar streets on

Halloween night, when the

wind blew through the

tall, dark evergreens on

Gruesome ghouls and grislyghosts,

Wretched souls and cursedhosts.

Vampires bite and villains creep,Demons scream and shadows

sleep.Blood runs cold in every man,Fog rolls in and coffins slam.

Mortals quake and full moon rise,

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Kansas history that resides in the TwilightZone.

ow do you know, when someone is dressed upon Halloween, whether it’s a costume or thereal thing? A number of trick-or-treaters at FortLeavenworth in years past couldn’t tell the dif-ference. They’ve reported that, in their travels

from house to house, they’ve been stopped bya young woman in frontier dress who is obvi-ously distressed and looking for something. Shelifts her old-fashioned oil lantern and searchesthe faces of the children. “Ethan? Mary?” sheasks them as she gathers her shawl around her-self. But when she realizes that these are nother children, her face falls in disappointment,and she turns and moves on, still calling for heryoungsters as she fades into the distant dark-ness.

This woman, say locals, is Catherine Sutler,a frontier mother who came to Fort Leaven-

the corner, and we all paused to discuss

what really happened to those two elderly

sisters who used to live alone in the house

on top of the hill.Fear— done safely— is all part of the good

fun of being young. This year, as shorter daysand cooler nights come upon us, the KansasState Historical Society has turned its thoughtsto a delightfully scary exhibit entitled HauntedHistory, which runs through Halloween. It’sfilled with all the strange and frightful historicalitems we’ve collected over the years, includingmasks andcostumes,butchers’saws and acrib crypt, amortician’sembalmingmachine andtable, surgi-cal kits andbloodlettingtools, Draculaand vampireparapherna-lia, and evena Ouijaboard, whichmust neverever beburned; if itis, it willscream, andanyone hear-ing thescream will then have only thirty-six hours tolive!

But of course you’ll need some preparationfor this exhibit, and what better way to tapinto terror than to uncover some of our state’sown unexplained stories? Kansas has plenty ofthem. In 1997 author Lisa Hefner Heitz gath-

ered her favorites in a collection she enti-tled Haunted Kansas: Ghost Stories andOther Eerie Tales. With thanks to her forpulling these spine-tinglers together into

one place, let’s take a look at the side of

worth with herhusband,Hiram, in1880 to visitrelatives. TheSutlers possi-bly were ontheir way tothe WestCoast to set-tle in Oregonand plannedto stay alongthe MissouriRiver for onlya short time.The family setup camp, andthe parents,providing suf-ficient warningto stay awayfrom steep bluffs and the rapidly flowing river,sent their children to collect wood for the fire.Time passed, and realizing the children shouldhave returned, the parents set out to find them.But Ethan and Mary seemed to have disap-peared. Soon residents of the fort joined thesearch, looking late into the evenings with theiroil lamps, calling to the children, and huntingalong the banks of the river. The town called offthe search after three days, but the distraughtparents continued to look for their children,postponing their plans to move west. Daysturned into weeks and then to months, and bywinter Hiram had given up hope. Catherine, how-ever, had now become a familiar figure in town,calling for her children as she searched with herlamp well past dark through the snow and bittercold. The elements soon took their toll on her.The heartbroken mother contracted pneumoniaand died. Bereft, Hiram buried his wife at thefort, then packed up the rest of his belongingsand returned to the family’s Indiana hometown.

This story, surprisingly, had a fairly happyending. In the spring, when a group of FoxIndians passing through the area broughtwith them Ethan and Mary Sutler. The chil-dren had indeed ignored the warnings about

the river the previous autumn and had attempt-ed to gather driftwood along the banks. Theyfell in and were carried downstream, where thetribe members had found them and cared forthem until the Indians returned to the FortLeavenworth vicinity. Hiram received word thatthe children were alive, and the family was re-united.

Catherine’s spirit, however, never learnedthat the children were safe. She continues tosearch for them to this day, and according toHeitz, “She has been seen floating over the golfcourse and walking through the National Ceme-tery, her lantern light dipping behind the tomb-stones” as she searches and calls out “Ethan?Mary?”

esidents of Valley Center, north of Wichita,show little surprise when folks report to themthe sound of a baby crying, late at night, by the109th Street Bridge over Jester Creek. Thissound, along with other mournful noises,

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unidentifiable white shapes floating aroundthe vicinity, sudden rushes of cold air overthe river, or stalling car engines on the

bridge, even rainclouds that refuse to dampenthe bridge’s planks, all of these incidents canbe responded to with a knowing nod and thename “Theorosa.”

Time has offered up several different storiesregarding the eerie occurrences in this location,but a few facts seem to remain constant. Atone time a woman named Theorosa (a whitewoman with a baby, or possibly a Native Ameri-can woman with an illegitimate white baby) hadcause to drown her child in the waters of JesterCreek. Some say she performed the dastardlydeed out of guilt or shame; others say she pos-sibly was avictim her-self. Butwhatever thereason, shealso lost herown life inthe rushingwaters, andto this dayher spirithaunts thebridge and itssurroundingarea. She isknown tostudentstoday, eventhough thebridge, oncea site of in-tense “party-ing” by teenagers, burned in 1974 and again in1976 after it had been rebuilt. Folks driving inthe area claim to have heard the moaning orseen the strange lights and wispy white figuresfloating above the water around the banks andin the adjacent fields, running, scratching, wail-

ing, and weeping. Lean over the bridge and callto Theorosa, claim to be her baby, and wait tosee if she rises.

Do you dare?ccording to Lisa Hefner Heitz, Atchison holdsthe distinction of being the most haunted townin Kansas. One residence on Seventh Street ishome to one of the town’s many ghosts, al-though this spirit does not peer out of windows,float through doorways, moan or whisper, orplay with locked doors. Instead its activity isconfined to an unusually large wooden antiquetrunk with a secured metal latch, purchased at ayard sale from a residence in Kansas City andused to decorate a spare bedroom.

The family that purchased the trunk was de-cidedly well pleased with it and felt it addednicely to their decor. But one day, as familymembers sat downstairs, they heard distinctscraping and thumping sounds in the room over-head, as if a heavy piece of furniture were being

dragged from its place. They hurried up thestairs and found that the trunk had indeed beenrepositioned in the center of the room, and anextremely sweet smell, unfamiliar to all of them,filled the room. They lifted the heavy trunk lid,examined the inside, and looked around the

decided to check out the contents of the oldtrunk in the attic. She lifted the heavy trunk lidand peered into the dark interior, but unfortu-nately a piece of her wedding dress caught thechain guard and brought the massive lid downon her head. Knocked unconscious, she col-lapsed into the trunk, where the lid slammedshut on her and locked tightly. The trunk be-came the young bride’s tomb; her familysearched high and low for her and finally deter-mined that she had decided not to go throughwith the wedding and had run away.

Years later, someone in the family (perhapsthe mother, perhaps a housekeeper) wasstraightening up in the attic and, seeing thetrunk, decided to peek inside. There she discov-ered the skeleton of the young woman, stilldressed for her special day.

Although the family removed her body, itseems her spirit still works hard to escape itsheavy tomb.

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room, but they couldoffer no reasonableexplanation for therearrangement of thepiece. Shrugging,they pushed the fur-niture back into itsprevious position andthought little moreabout it. . . . Until,that is, a few monthslater, when the sameevent occurred, andagain on investigat-ing, the family foundthe trunk moved tothe center of thefloor and surrounded,once again, by a dif-ferent but equallysweet fragrance inthe air. The trunkwas pushed back into place, and after that,each time the movements happened, they nolonger raised any questions among the familymembers, who decided that the spirit whohaunts this trunk apparently has different ideasabout decorating. The only change they made

to the piece of furniture was that, afterabout a year, it was moved to the home ofone of the sons, who was newly married.He returned the piece to the Seventh

Street home shortly thereafter at the requestof his new wife, who was becoming increasingdisturbed that the trunk had kept up the sameodd movements in its new location.

At this, the family grew curious about theorigins of the piece. They returned to the homewhere they had purchased the trunk, spokewith the family there, and discovered that thechest indeed had an interesting history. Origi-nally, it had belonged to a wealthy family whostored it in their attic. This couple had a daugh-ter who, on her wedding day, was busily gather-ing up items for the big ceremony. Dressed inher fine lace gown and nearly ready for the pro-cession, she decided that she still lacked“something old” to go with the “somethingnew, something borrowed, something blue.” She

dowel rod on the stage floor, never could beexplained.

So who was this strange sprite? Accordingto a conversation with a Ouija board in 1993,the ghost identified himself as Earl Van DornBrown, the only child of the theatre’s builderand first owner, Colonel Napoleon BonaparteBrown, and his wife, Katherine. Brown, awealthy banker with medical and later law de-grees, arrived in Concordia in 1876 and immedi-ately became a well-known figure to the towns-people. In 1905 he decided to help upgrade thedowntown area by generously donating for anopera house. His son, the dashingly handsomeEarl, a wild-spirited man who was lovedthroughout the town, served as the architect,design engineer, and foreman for the structure,which opened in September 1907.

For three proud years the Brown Grand of-fered Concordia some of the finest in fine arts,with everything from opera singers to educa-tors, musicians to church lecturers. But then,on June 1, 1910, Colonel Brown passed away,followed sixteen months later by the death ofEarl from complications related to gallstone

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he time waslate one au-tumnevening in1992.SusanSutton,presi-

dent ofConcordia’s Brown

Grand Theatre, watched fromone of the house seats as students from a

community college theatrical group scurriedabout doing their various jobs for the evening’splay rehearsal. As Susan watched the stage,she became aware of the student across theaisle from her looking at the balcony with a per-plexed expression. She followed his gaze and,much to her surprise, saw there, silhouetted ina window above them, a man in an old-fash-ioned coat, hands in his pockets, and top hatset sharply atop his head. The two in the audi-ence watched him for a moment, then lookedat each other in astonishment. When theygazed back up, the figure had disappeared. Nor-mally in a theatre setting a costumed individualmight not seem like such an unusual event, ex-cept that in the Brown Grand, the only accessto the area where the man had been standingwas through a latched door that could only be

Lawrence resident SUE NOVAK has haunted the halls of theKansas State Historical Society since 1993. Her articles havemysteriously appeared in many past issues of Kansas Heritage.

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