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It had been a stormy fall day, raining intermittently beneath an overcast sky, and Austin and I were running late as we drove over the Bull Shoals Dam, the lake to our right and the river to our left both blanketed in an obscuring fog. We parked in front of the Mountain Village 1890 entrance and gift shop, housed in a train depot built in 1903 as part of the Missouri Pacific Railroad Line in nearby Pyatt. As soon as we emerged from our car we became wet and chilled in the evening drizzle. Our guide, paranormal investigator William “Bill” Fleming, was standing waiting for us, a dark silhouette. When we drew close enough for introductions, I saw that he was wearing all black attire, including combat boots and a tactical vest and belt, with pouches and a dump bag. Most of his gear, he told me, was flashlights and batteries, but he also carried basic survival items such as a first-aid kit, a lighter, a knife, a radio for maintaining contact with his team, sound and video recorders and an EMF meter.
By the light of a lantern, Bill led us through the fence and over railroad tracks to a large clearing. There, about a dozen historic Ozark buildings from in the 1800s had been relocated in the 1960s to Bull Shoals to create Mountain Village. Bill explained that the structures, hand-built and lived in for entire lifetimes and through the Civil War, were essentially saturated in life experiences and memories of their inhabitants, which causes an abundance of supernatural activity to emanate from them. The stormy conditions seemed suitably spooky to me and I asked about their impact on a ghost hunt as Austin snapped photos in the disappearing vestiges of daylight. Bill said the weather actually masks sounds and phenomena while at the same time potentially causing misleading sounds or movements.
With this in mind, we began our tour, starting at the oldest building, the 1830s Martin House, built by European settlers in an obscure and densely wooded neck of Jasper. The family’s 8-year-old daughter, Amanda, is one of the most active ghosts in the village. Her laughter has been heard and toys left for her by visitors are seen disturbed and played with; on one all-night hunt, a group of people witnessed her tossing a ball, and she has appeared in photographs taken in the house. Fleming told us on one tour, on a hot day, a guest felt a sudden telltale “cold spot” as she manifested and touched the man, then held Bill’s hand before giving him a hug and vanishing.
As Bill related this, I heard a sound like a small cry.
“What was that?” I looked around the dark dwelling nervously, taking in the old nightgowns and garments hung from the walls.
“It was probably my boots; they squeak sometimes,” came Bill’s anticlimactic response.
Another time, a loud crack caused me to jump, and Bill explained that it was probably an acorn on the store’s tin roof. He ignored, too, the snapping of twigs in the woods and the movement caused among leaves from rainfall or scurrying animals. As a guide, he easily could have capitalized on the slightest noise that caused his guests fear, but instead he was honest about natural occurrences, concerned with the integrity of the supernatural. From what he shared with me, he had witnessed so much supernatural activity, interacting with ghosts since the age of three, that he didn’t need or want to fluff events up. His specialty is violent entities, and he had experienced altercations with ghosts that had apparently left him fearless. This last trait was perhaps not what I would have expected from a guide—I would have assumed a guide should act slightly tense and affected in order to drive the fear of the tour guests, who, after all, attend the tour in order to be spooked.
We continued to an old-fashioned bank, the last wooden bank in Arkansas before the state government required banks to move to less flammable structures. It was of particular interest to me since I work for a bank, but Fleming said that apart from a wooden doorstop being moved occasionally while the building was locked up, the bank was actually a “dead spot” on the tour for its lack of supernatural activity—that is, until we stepped outside. In the courtyard in front of the bank, many visitors have seen a fully corporeal ghost dressed like a saloon girl with a red dress, gloves and matching hat that causes her to be known as the Lady in Red. She glides past the bank, looking as solid as a living human being, ignoring her surroundings, and then disappears.
At the rear of the bank is the office where a traveling doctor, Dr. Timothy Tuttle, saw patients when he wasn’t making house calls. “We’ve had little activity here,” Bill answered in response to my question as I gazed at the ancient medical tools from a time when many people died from infections resulting from poor sanitary practices. “However, when we first began investigating this room, we took photographs of the doctor’s tools. When we reviewed the photos later, in one photo of the succession, the tools were covered in blood.”
My heart pounded as we hurried to the next stop, the general store. Counters and shelves lined both walls, with an icebox in the center and postal office at the rear. The shelves were stocked with tidy arrangements of old-fashioned dishes, canned goods, bags of provisions, dried herbs and strange bottles. Bill turned the lights on to allow a better look and I felt a strange sensation creep over me at the realization that, with the lights on inside, we were easily visible to anyone outside. That’s when Bill said, “If you feel like you’re being watched, it’s because the store owner George Nelson keeps a close eye on this place.”
We visited also a small hot box jail cell from Calico Rock. Rowdy prisoners were forced into the metal cubicle that grew oppressively hot in direct sunlight. Bill told us of local children who had spent the night in the box. “They heard knocking and banging on the walls.” We passed a small rustic cabin, where a blue orb had been sighted. We walked through the home of a Confederate Colonel who had lost two wives in childbirth and whose property had been destroyed by Yankee troops. Visitors frequently report feeling cold spots and hearing voices and footsteps around the house. Patrolling outside, a ghost known as the Night Watchman has been seen making rounds with a dimmed lantern.
“Do you ever have pranksters out here?” Austin asked.
The answer was: not of the living variety. “A ghost called Stompy likes to tail visitors, who will hear his footsteps behind their own but turn around and find no one there. You can hear footsteps running up behind you but not see anyone, then hear them run away again. He likes to pull hair, too.”
I was immediately tempted to tug on Austin’s long curly auburn hair, but resisted the immature urge. I felt subdued, that it was ill advisable to joke in this place. We came to a stop in front of the blacksmith’s shop. “The blacksmith was the man you’d come to see for shoes, nails, wagon wheels, whatever. He was also the last man you’d come to see,” Bill said as he illuminated the side of the shop where coffins were made. This building felt different from the others we had visited, and Austin agreed. The blacksmith shop had a noticeably different scent from the other structures that couldn’t entirely be explained by the furnace that hadn’t been used in years.
“Phantom smells are a common occurrence here,” Bill explained. Horse manure, though there are no horses, as well as pipe tobacco and vanilla cling to the air at times. “We’ve overheard conversations coming from this building, and we’ve had sightings of uniformed men.”
We concluded the tour by approaching a very traditional looking church building, white with a steeple and bell, relocated from Blue Eye, Missouri. Apparently, the denizens of Blue Eye tried to remain neutral during the Civil War. That decision resulted in their being raided by Northern and Southern troops as well as vigilante groups. “Their situation was so bad, they hid out in the caves during the day and came out at night to pray.” A loud thunk sounded from the house nearest the church. “Sounded like a knock,” Austin said. “Or a door slamming,” Bill replied.
Entering the church and seating ourselves in the pews, Bill shared with us some of the occurrences in the church. It’s the area, along with the store and Martin House, with the most activity. The pacing footsteps of a pastor delivering a sermon, a sobbing woman, a hand grasping from the sinner’s pew, figures in front of windows, the tuning of a banjo and disrespectful teenagers flung by an unseen force together against a wall are only a few of the events, some of which were caught on film and many of which were witnessed by a tour group. The pacing footsteps were recorded by Bill’s camera that he set up as he began investigating the building. “As the steps grow closer and closer to the camera, the focus adjusts—because someone is standing in front of the camera, interrupting the infrared sensor,” he said.
Through the church windows, lightning illuminated the grounds in wild flashes of bright light. Bill offered a final specter to haunt us as we prepared to leave: “The last time I was out here with a group during a storm, when the lightning struck we could see a woman all in white standing near the church. She was looking straight at us, aware of our presence.”
Bill showed us to the exit. We hadn’t visited the Bull Shoals Caverns, which Bill described as a long tunnel-like cave instead of the large chamber-like spaces of the Mystic Caverns. They have their own historic and supernatural significance and are part of many overnight tours. We didn’t experience any supernatural phenomena. But our evening was nonetheless enjoyably spooky as well as pleasantly educational for the history and culture we had examined. All the structures are native to the Ozarks and have been preserved as they would have appeared during the Civil War era during which all were in use. The Jordan House is even furnished with the possessions and artifacts of the original inhabitant, Confederate Colonel and Justice of the Peace William Jordan, thanks to the involvement of his great-grandchildren.
Visit Mountain Village
The month of October holds many exciting opportunities to take a haunted tour or camp overnight in the cave. More hourlong haunted tours will begin at nightfall Oct. 20-23, 26-28, and 30-31. Another all-night experience will be held Oct. 29. If you’re uncomfortable with touring at night, the village is open for tours Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Join William Fleming, experienced paranormal investigator, as he shares the stories of the structures and dearly departed denizens. And maybe encounter something supernatural yourself.
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