Photo By Monica Wood | Nora Kimball stands in the phone booth where she saw a shadowy figure stand and then...... read more read more
Subscribe
‘Tis the season for all things spooky, frightening and hair-raising. The Patriot Club on Fort Sill has had its share of apparitions and unexplained happenings, according to staff members there.
Danny Mayberry, head chef at the Patriot Club for the last 17 years, said he has heard and seen some spine-tingling things during his time in the club.
“Several years ago, my former boss, Mike Borden, and I were installing the big ice machine back in the kitchen one evening. There were a couple of gentlemen from the Oklahoma City company helping to install the machine, when one of them asked where the restrooms were located. We told him where the bathroom was and we just kept on working. He comes back from the bathroom and asked, ‘who’s that guy in the bathroom in uniform?’
“Mike and I looked at each other because we knew there was no one in the club – it wasn’t even open,” said Mayberry. “The guy went on to describe a Soldier in a Confederate uniform standing in the restroom. He thought it was just a regular person dressed up. Mike and I both started working faster because we wanted to get out of there. It wasn’t good – it was creepy!”
Mayberry went on to describe another unexplained occurrence at the club when he was in the kitchen cooking and he heard music and what sounded like a party.
“I heard women laughing and glasses clinking and piano music like you would hear in the 1920s,” he said. “It sounded like it was coming from upstairs in the Artillery Room so I went up the stairs from the kitchen and there was nothing. The lights were out and there wasn’t anything going on up there.”
Mayberry said he got out of the building that night, but the spooky occurrences don’t really scare him.
“I’m pretty sure they are not evil. They seem to be having a good time in the club. I’m sure it depends on the building you’re in though, I mean a hospital or jail might have some miserable ghosts.”
Mayberry said there is also a playful ghost in the old building - one that likes to move things and open and close doors. That playful ghost has also been felt by Ashley Lucky, the Patriot Club caterer for the last three years.
“There are the usual things like doors opening by themselves – I mean fully closed like my office door, and I’ll be here by myself and the door opens by itself. One time, there were some guys from the Directorate of Public Works here walking through the ballroom. They had a new guy with them and one of the chairs around a table just fell backwards by itself. No one was near it. That new guy said it was haunted and left and he never came back.”
Lucky describes a recent event that convinced her there was something paranormal in the club.
“Last week we were in the Quads and Dusters Room and I was walking around a pillar in the middle of the room when suddenly something pulls me back by the hair in my bun. There’s nothing hanging from the ceiling and there were several other ladies in the room with me who saw me yanked back by my hair. It actually pulled some of my hair out of the bun and I had to take it down to fix it again.”
And, that’s not the only encounter she’s had.
“A co-worker and I had to come in at 7 a.m. to prepare for a change of command ceremony and as we walked by the stairs close to the front door, we could see a light floating there – a ball of light – and it was still dark outside so there’s no way something could be shining through the upstairs windows that could have reflected like that.”
Like Mayberry, Lucky has experienced paranormal activities like the sounds of a party going on when the club was empty and locked up; she has experienced things mysteriously moving from one place to another; lights flickering when the bulb had been recently changed and the feeling of cold air moving by her that made the hair on her arms stand up.
Nora Kimball, a bartender in the Jack Daniels Lounge for almost a year, also had a couple of unexplained encounters to talk about.
“Did Danny tell you about the footprint in the flour? Danny came into work and finds flour spilled on the kitchen floor. There was one bare footprint in the flour. He asked another coworker if she did it, but she laughed and told him she wouldn’t be walking barefoot in the kitchen at work. They thought it was because Fort Sill was built on an Indian burial ground,” said Kimball. “A couple of days later, I was wiping down the tables and chairs in the lounge. And on the middle table there’s a bare footprint on one of the chairs and another bare footprint on top of the table – right in the middle – and no more footprints after that.”
Kimball used to live on the Old Post Quadrangle and had many paranormal experiences living in the housing which dates back to the 1870s. However, her best story from the Patriot Club happened two or three days after she started working there.
“I was standing at the doors to the lounge that faces the front door to the club. I was talking to my manager, and in the telephone booth, I see what looked like a regular dude stand up. And then he kind of turned a little shadowy, walked out through the front glass doors and, of course, the glass doors never moved,” said Kimball.
The phone booth is built into the wall near the front doors of the club and looks like a closet or small room with a glass door on it. It usually is not lit but it does have a light in it.
“He was relatively shadowy, and because it was dark in the phone booth when he stood up, I was like, ‘Oh I didn’t realize somebody was in there.’ It struck me as weird and then I realized, ‘Oh, he’s not a real person,’” said Kimball.
Even in a place as happy as the Patriot Club, where people go to party and have fun, there are things we might feel or catch a glimpse of out of the corner of our eye. The lesson here is to always watch out for anything unusual or that makes your hair stand on end because, after all, it’s Halloween.
| Date Taken: | 10.28.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 10.28.2022 16:43 |
| Story ID: | 432245 |
| Location: | FORT SILL, OKLAHOMA, US |
| Web Views: | 487 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Patriot Hauntings, by Monica Wood, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
