Ready to get spooked out? These tours reveal the supernatural side of Kansas.
The Wichita Eagle
September 22, 2006
She believes. I'm skeptical. We think that makes a good combination. Beth Cooper takes visitors to the Charles Curtis Memorial Cemetery and talks about the Tuxedo Man. He's a shadowy figure who has been known to appear on misty occasions wearing a tuxedo and top hat and standing by a tree. Digital photos of him are said to disappear within hours of being taken. In Rochester Cemetery, a few miles away, unidentified screeching supposedly can be heard. At a former train station, the ghost of a 10-year-old boy, killed by a train, is said to be seen in reflections of a door's window. Welcome to Ghost Tours of Topeka, a wild and crazy mix of history, mystery, gossip and stand-up comedy.
Topeka is one of an increasing number of towns and cities, including Wichita, that have ghostly tours. For $10 or $12.50, depending on how close you are to Halloween, you can go on Topeka's ghostly 90-minute tour. 'We've had people from California, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Nebraska,' said Cooper's sister Cathy Ramirez, who also runs the tours. A ghostly business Ghost tours are becoming so popular that many tours are already sold out for this fall. 'They are very popular,' said Stan Lawson, marketing director for the Atchison Area Chamber of Commerce. And almost any town has a story to tell -- and a ghost to go with it: ** Atchison, nicknamed the 'Most Haunted Town in Kansas,' has offered haunted trolley tours each fall for the past decade. ** Wichita has a downtown walking tour of ghostly haunts. ** Fort Scott has a 'Believe it or Not' ghost trolley tour. ** The Caldwell Historical Society's sixth annual evening cemetery tour, 'Angels on the Plains,' features stories of six previous residents of Caldwell as told by their descendants or by re-enactors. ** Fort Riley's annual ghost tour introduces visitors to Gen. George Custer's ghost. 'It is a reason to get a little spooky,' said Marci Penner, director of the Kansas Sampler Foundation, which promotes rural communities. It's also a way to bring in tourists, show off the uniqueness of a community and provide entertainment, she said. 'It is just something to push the envelope a little further out,' she said. 'The tours are fun and something different. They are a reason to enjoy the fall.' Smorgasbord of ghosts Tammy Weihe, founder of the Paranormal Institute in Wichita, conducts ghost tours in the city. She said they have become so popular that she'll be conducting them again in the spring. 'I grew up in a haunted house, and I'm always trying to find more stories,' she said. 'Downtown Wichita is a smorgasbord of ghosts.' Her tour includes a stop at the Carey House Square, at the southeast corner of Douglas and Emporia, where the ghost of a prostitute is said to haunt the building.
In Topeka, there are stories about the Capitol building and the men who fell from scaffolding while building it. Others tell of a suicide and of workers who refused to leave their post, even after they died. Ramirez is haunted by the picture of Capitol librarian Louise McNeal. She loved her job so much that she came to work every day, even in retirement. Ramirez believes McNeal still comes to work, decades after her death. Her proof? A clock has fallen off the wall in the library, books have flown off shelves and the Capitol's elevators are notorious for starting and stopping for no known reason, she said. 'We are like the good cop, bad cop,' Cooper said of herself and Ramirez. 'She believes. I'm skeptical. We think that makes a good combination.' The tours in Topeka focus on downtown and the north part of the city, where years ago some colorful characters passed through on the Oregon Trail. 'What is it they say -- 10 bodies for every mile of the 2,000-mile trail?' Cooper said.
Tours can include dinner with a ghost in a local restaurant, visits to former mortuaries and treks through local cemeteries. The Senate Suites, a hotel in Topeka, is said to be haunted by a man in boxer shorts and a woman in a nightgown, Cooper and Ramirez said. People who spend the night there have reported the contents of their luggage strewn about their rooms and a dark presence pressing down on them. On the tour, Devin Cooper, Beth Cooper's daughter, takes digital pictures at each of the trolley stops. She's looking for orbs, ghostly apparitions that appear in photos. Are they pictures of the photographer's thumb, dust, reflections of light... or ghosts? Devin Cooper thinks the latter. 'Red ones are angry, green are happy,' she said. Fear, belief, skepticism Beth Cooper was inspired to do the ghost tours in Topeka after going on ghost tours in Chicago, Albuquerque and Portland. 'I thought, we've got ghosts right here,' she said. This is the second year the two sisters have offered tours. At the rate attendance is growing, Cooper said, she hope to host tours in communities such as Lawrence, Leavenworth and Ottawa. Ghost stories come to the sisters by word of mouth and by spending hours doing research in local libraries.
They learned that at Union Pacific's Overland Station, built in 1927, a ghost -- perhaps that of a 10-year-old boy killed by a passing train -- is said to be seen in the reflections of pictures people take of the outside doors. During a tour this week in Topeka, the faces of people showed a mix of reactions -- fear, belief, skepticism -- to the sights and stories. Some wanted to talk about their own ghostly experiences. 'We went to Rochester Cemetery, and a handprint appeared on the window and we heard screeching,' said Robyn Feyh, a hostess and waitress at the Celtic Fox, a restaurant where the tours begin. A well-told legend is that a woman referred to as the Albino Woman and her white pit bull spent nights roaming Rochester Cemetery searching for victims to murder. Some things are discounted on the tour: Don't bother asking whether the stone remains of a church and a graveyard in the town of Stull are one of the Seven Gates of Hell. 'It's an urban myth started by college students in the 1970s,' Cooper said. 'We don't believe there is any truth to it.' At the Topeka Cemetery, the city's oldest, the trolley stopped and 13 visitors were invited to step off and enjoy the quiet of the dark, cloud-covered spot. 'In this cemetery, 35,000 people and 2,500 pets are buried,' Ramirez said. 'The Indian Black Hawk was the first murder victim to be buried in this cemetery.' Digital cameras flashed at a mausoleum that has the number 96 carved into its stone.
Photos supposedly show the faces of two women staring back instead of the numbers. 'No matter what time of the day or night,' Ramirez said, 'those numbers show women's faces in the pictures.' Everyone stared at the numbers. In the distance, a train whistle cut through the night. Tourists quickly reboarded the trolley.
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