A Moment in Time

"Kansas Spirits Create Spooky Tales"

October 1997
By Rebecca Martin

A monthly series from the Kansas Historical Society

A summer storm brewed on a July morning in 1878 as a group of railroad section men hurriedly got their handcar onto the tracks. They hoped to beat the storm to nearby Edwardsville, a small town just west of Kansas City. Their car hadn't gone very far when the men saw what appeared to be a locomotive barreling around the curve ahead.

Quickly moving their car off the track, the men soon realized what they saw was not a locomotive after all. The phantom issued a great deal of smoke as it sped down the track towards them, and from its center they could see flashes of what appeared to be a headlight. Suddenly veering off the track, the ghostly locomotive circled a pile of cordwood before heading into a thick wood nearby.

A dozen frightened men witnessed this incident, described in the Atchison Globe on August 7, 1878. The authorities never discovered what caused the apparition.

Does this story make your spine tingle? Is your hair standing on end? Most of us love a good ghost story, particularly this time of year. Although we most often associate Halloween with ghosts, mysterious events have happened year-round in Kansas. Here are just a few of the state's more famous ghost stories. You can look for others on the bookshelves of the Kansas Historical Society in Topeka or your local library.

White Woman Creek winds through Greeley, Wichita, and Scott Counties in western Kansas. It gets its name--and its ghostly legend--from an old story full of love, betrayal, and violence.

Many years ago a group of Cheyennes attacked a western settlement in retaliation for an earlier raid on their camp by white men. The Cheyennes recaptured their stolen goods and also claimed twelve whites--ten men and two women. As time passed, the white women decided to stay with the tribe and married Cheyenne men. Most of the white men also were accepted and remained with the Cheyennes.

Among the white men, however, was one person eager to leave. After many months with the tribe he was able to steal a horse and travel to Fort Wallace. There he convinced the army that the remaining whites were being held against their will. In the ensuing attack the head of the tribe, his white wife, and their infant son were killed, but not before the wife had slain the white man who had betrayed them.

The Kansas stream where the Cheyenne village once stood is known today as White Woman Creek after the tribe leader's white wife. Many people claim to have seen her ghostly figure and heard her singing along its banks.

A more recent haunting happened on the campus of Kansas State University in Manhattan, where drama students and professors claim to have had ghostly encounters in the campus theater. On one spooky occasion, the crew took a break after unloading chairs into the theater for a performance later that day. Hearing a disturbance inside, they rushed back to find all the chairs set up with programs on the seats--a task that normally took them half an hour.

On another occasion, two students who had been working on the theater's sound system turned off the machine and locked up. Suddenly, music began playing inside the building. The students used their key to re-enter the theater, turned off the machine, and relocked the door. The music began playing again. This happened four more times. The students inspected the building for someone playing a practical joke, but found no one.

During the ghost's most active period in the late 1960s, many theater students claimed to have had a variety of ghostly encounters, including hearing heavy footsteps, witnessing objects move in mid-air, and having impish tricks played on them.

One of Topeka's best-known ghost stories has its roots in the life of a strange albino woman who wandered her north Topeka neighborhood at night and glared at children on their way to school during the day. After the friendless woman died in 1963 residents began reporting a glowing white female figure walking in the area after dark.

Often the sightings were near Rochester Cemetery where the woman was buried. Several employees of the nearby Goodyear Tire Factory claimed to see her regularly, and some neighbors saw the apparition as often as once a week.

The Rochester Cemetery's caretaker and his wife had a close encounter with the ghost late one night in 1968. As they pulled their car into the driveway they saw a figure scurrying among the gravestones. Thinking it a child playing a prank, they aimed the car's headlights at the figure, which was then kneeling before a grave. When the caretaker got out of the car, the ghostly figure stood up and glared angrily at him and walked deeper into the cemetery. The caretaker was so upset he called the police but the officers found nothing.

The ghost's route was so regular that one resident began watching for it as it strolled across his lawn on clear nights. Eventually, he claimed, the figure began to pause and gaze at his house as though it wished to speak to him. It began to pass closer and closer to the house until one night it stood at his children's bedroom window and watched them as they slept. The man was badly scared, but the apparition never harmed his children.

Many other ghost stories are part of Kansas folklore. For other Kansas ghost stories and legends check out Haunted Heartland by Beth Scott and Michael Norman and Kansas Folklore by William E. Koch and S.J. Sackett. These books can be found in your local library or at the Kansas Historical Society. Kansas newspapers contain numerous stories associated with Halloween. The Society holds a nearly comprehensive collection of the state's newspapers many of which can be borrowed through interlibrary loan. For more information call the Library and Archives research room at 785-272-8681, ext. 117. The Kansas Historical Society is located at 6425 SW Sixth Avenue, Topeka, KS 66615; 785-272-8681; TTY 785-272-8683