I think everyone enjoys a mystery. The following story was told to me by a northeast childhood friend of mine and took place not very far at all from my stomping grounds at 3rd and H Street NE. True or not true, I don’t know… you be the judge.
“Butch, this story took place in the late 1940’s or early 1950’s…it has been told to me by my mother many, many times – never changes. We lived in the NE part of Ardmore and one day when my Mom was out watering her flowers a neighbor from down the street stopped by. He asked her if she believed in “ghosts” or “haunted places”. She told him that she had been told “ghost stories” all her life and even though she couldn’t prove it, believed that there were places which were haunted.
He told her that the reason he asked is that on a recent evening just about twilight, he was walking back home from town. He was walking on the sidewalk which was across the street from our house. There was a fence line that separated the two houses directly across the street, with the fencing supported by large pipes. Mr. “W” told my mother that just before he got to the corner fence-pipe which was by the street, a glowing yellow ball-shaped object floated out of the pipe and drifted straight in front of him, crossed the street, and went over to the abandoned well which was in the west side of our yard. He said that when the object got to the well, it seemed to go down into it and disappeared. He told my Mom that he had never experienced anything like that before and wondered if she had seen anything like that herself. She told him that she had lived there for quite some time and had never seen anything like he had just described. He also told her that there used to be a small house that sat right over the top of that well. It apparently was a one-room structure, and had a trap door in the floor which could be lifted allowing the occupant(s) to get water.
The story went that the man who lived there liked to play cards and gamble. One night he and another man got into an argument while playing a card game. Mr. W. said that he had been told that one man killed the other and dumped his body in the well. My family had also heard that same story years before. During the drought in the 1950’s, when everyone in town was having water wells dug so that they could water their lawn and trees, our dad cleaned out that old well, and put a cover and pump on it so he could water our garden, etc. He cleaned it out real good and discovered that the well was actually being fed by an underground spring and that at one time, it appeared that the course of the spring had changed and the well itself was not very reliable.
The point I am making from this is that my dad did not find any human skeletal remains when he cleaned out the well, so the story may have been just that – “a story”. Nevertheless, as a child, I always steered clear of the well, especially when it got close to sundown – always afraid of what I might see. As a matter of fact, even as an adult, I got an eerie feeling if I came close to the well after dark. Power of suggestion? Too many ghost stories in my head lingering from my childhood? Who knows! All I know is this, I don’t think you could pay me to camp out by the well…call me a coward if you want, but that’s the way I feel about the “old well”. Chalk this up as another Oklahoma ghost story.” -your old northeast friend
Here are photos I took in 2002 of the above mentioned old water well and pipes in northeast Ardmore.
Thanks to others helping, we’ve done quite well since August 1st finding Oklahomas with unclaimed insurance at the State Treasurers Office in OKC. Here is the link to my unclaimed property list I maintain. CLICK/TAP HERE
I took the picture below in 1999 of the old Stolfa Hardware store’s scales.
I have over 400 Oklahoma bell photos on my website. I have several here at home, but these two I own, plus some other nice handbells.
HAM Talk by KC5JVT via Echolink
The Boredom Breaker Net runs from 12 noon to 2pm daily for licensed HAMs.
From this week’s Mailbag
On September 27, 1915, an explosion in Ardmore, Oklahoma killed 43 people including my great uncle William Stallcup and his 7 year-old son, Samuel. -Charles Stallcup
https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=AR009
And then, someone wrote a song about it!
https://gateway.okhistory.org/…/metadc163…/m1/1/med_res
Butch, I saw Steve Millers comment in T&T. He was curious about about a “swimming hole” in Oklahoma City. I believe he is referring to Twilight Beach, rather than Spring Lake. Twilight Beach was located on the SW corner of Hammond and NW 54th st in Warr Acres,Ok. The polio hole was actually known locally as “Polio Plunge”. Twilight Beach was originally a small pond which was expanded and deepened.. Sand was hauled in and made a natural pool( no concrete). It was fed by an artesian well which made a fountain in the center of the pool.It was not treated water such as most pools, thus the Polio name. It was closed in the late 1960’s if I recall correctly. The actual physical location of the pool is vacant, but just a few dozen feet away are apartment structures. -Jim Wilmoth
Butch, I remember growing up there would be a Southern Gospel singing about once a year at the Civic Center. Do you remember that? I remember The Happy Goodman Family was always there.
Below is from my newsletter archives dated
August 7, 1999 – Issue 120
A 1908 photo of the “north addition” of Frederick, Oklahoma.
In October 1930 Alton Edgar, a Marshall county farmer, had been missing for several days. Law enforcement officials had been unable to find the missing man. An Ada, Oklahoma Negro mystic by the name of Ed Kelley finally showed searchers where the body could be found. I have always wondered what happened to this Mr. Kelley, what he did in following years, and where he was buried. Maybe someone in the Ada area will do some research. He must have been a remarkable man with an unexplainable gift
Just a few miles southwest of Tulsa is Kiefer, Oklahoma. This is a photo of Kiefer and it’s oils wells in 1909.
At noon Monday, January 14, 1974 a southbound Amtrak passenger train jumped the track at the depot here in Ardmore. Myself and Bill Lewis were on duty at the ambulance service. When we arrived at the depot, several of the cars were off the track and tilting at a 45 degree angle toward to east. The cars would have completely fell over on their side, except they were held in this precarious position by those cars that were still upright on the rails. The thing I remember most working that accident was how everything was leaning so when we were inside the cars, that both myself and Bill Lewis developed equilibrium problems. Weird. We had to break windows out of the passenger cars and extricate the victims on spineboards out the windows to waiting rescuers. This is a pic of some of those helping with the rescue, include District Attorney Investigator Wayne Warthen, City Electrician James Blalock, and Respiratory Therapist Bill Allen of the Ardmore Adventist Hospital. Also there was my co-worker Joe Pack of the ambulance service, but on this day he was working part-time at the Ardmore Hospital in Respiratory Therapy and responded with a second ambulance.
To err is human, to forgive divine. -Alexander Pope’s 1711 poem An Essay on Criticism
Butch and Jill Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma
580-490-6823
