A Southern Indiana Haunting That Will Chill You

In Madison, Indiana, Doretta Johnson and her family moved into a 4,100-square-foot dwelling in 1987.  There was a large main house along with a motel wing on two acres of land.  The asking price was $59,900.  For the late 1980s, that was unbelievably cheap.  Soon after moving in, they discovered the reason:  the property was haunted by something paranormal--and terrifying.

At first, there were just a series of strange events.  Fresh paint bubbled and ran down walls.  New wallpaper would not stick.  A fireplace stain returned shortly after it had been sandblasted clean.  These incidents could have been ordinarily explained readily enough.

Then much more bizarre and threatening things happened.  Objects levitated.  Shadowy apparitions abounded.  Writing mysteriously appeared on walls.  Horrifying noises clamored about.  Spontaneous fires erupted.  Family members were violently attacked, both physically and psychologically.  It must have been unimaginably scary.

Along with Jim Henderson, Doretta Johnson published a book in 1995 describing her family's suffering from malicious unseen forces.  Our book trailer below elaborates.

MPL Book Trailer #691

The People in the Attic, by Doretta Johnson with Jim Henderson

 

Full-blown haunted house tales like this are unusual but not altogether rare.  Since the mid-1960s, paranormal investigation has been popularized (and sensationalized) by nonfiction accounts, novels, movies, and television programs (especially since 1987, when the Johnson haunting started).  People are becoming less reticent in sharing their ghostly encounters.  What was once relegated to folklore has become somewhat respectable in certain parapsychological circles.  Academics as well as ordinary folks seriously examine such cases.  Spiritualists have been experts in the field for over 150 years.

Assuming the authors to be trustworthy--I have no reason to think otherwise--this haunted house tale is truly chilling.  You may not believe that it happened--in which case, consider it a striking work of horror fiction--but for those more open-minded, there is at least something going on here that invites careful study.  Of course, more than 30 years have passed since these events purportedly transpired, so perhaps it is too late for further investigation.  Such cases are not uncommon, however, and opportunities for "ghost hunters" to examine the paranormal close-up will doubtlessly present themselves now and in the future.  For myself, I would not have wanted to have experienced what Doretta Johnson's family lived through, whatever the cause.  But, from the safety of my armchair, it makes a marvelously spooky read.

Ghostly Hoosier Haunts (Video Series)

 

If you like real ghost stories and paranormal phenomena, watch our new video series, "Ghostly Hoosier Haunts, by Cauli Le Chat" now showing on the MPL YouTube Channel.  Learn more from our brochure.

Here are the videos uploaded so far:

Ghostly Hoosier Haunts, Episode One

Shelf Doll

(Click Above to Play)

 

Ghostly Hoosier Haunts, Episode Two

Pioneer Spirit

(Click Above to Play)

 

 

Ghostly Hoosier Haunts, Episode Three

Haunting at Sycamore Lake

(Click Above to Play)

 

 Ghostly Hoosier Haunts, Episode Four

Library Haunting, Part One

(Click Above to Play)

 

 Ghostly Hoosier Haunts, Episode Five

Library Haunting, Part Two

(Click Above to Play)

 

Ghostly Hoosier Haunts, Episode Six

Library Haunting, Part Three

(Click Above to Play)

 

Ghostly Hoosier Haunts, Episode Seven

Taking a Stepp into the Unknown

(Click Above to Play)

 

Spooky Hoosier Books, Part BOO --er-- Two

We continue with our recommendations for ghostly tales from Hoosierland.  (See our previous post, too.)

Hoosier folklorist Tom Baker has published several haunted books, including the ever-popular Indiana Ghost Folklore (Arglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2009).  Baker includes stories from across the state, and besides ghosts and haunted placed, he includes werewolves and other monsters, lucid dreams, spirit possession, witches, and other supernatural offerings.  This is folklore, so the cases aren't presented as factual events; rather, they are legends that have grown over time in particular places or surrounding specific circumstances.  Did they actually happen?  That's beside the point.  In folklore, the legend is everything.  Baker deftly delivers riveting yarns that will fascinate readers.  Check it out from an Evergreen Indiana (E.I.) library near you (if you're a cardholder, that is).

 

When I was a student at Indiana University, its folklore department was recognized as the best in the world, or so I was informed by a folklore major who had travelled from Israel to study there.  I had (and have) no reason to doubt the academic strength of the I.U. folklore department, as I discovered first-hand when I read Linda Dégh's classic treatise, Indiana Folklore:  A Reader (Bloomington, IN:  Indiana University Press, 1980), available to checkout from Evergreen Indiana.  It is a scholastic masterpiece.  The book includes a superb cross-section of Hoosier folklore, but for our purposes, its accounts of magic, horror, ghosts, and haunted places make this an essential read for anyone interested in the supernatural.  After reading it, I regretted not having taken any undergraduate folklore courses at I.U.  I even reflected that it would have been a more interesting major for me than the one in which I earned my bachelor degree (I won't tell tales out-of-school, so to speak, which means I won't divulge what my major was.  Anyway, I'm old now, and it's possible I've forgotten.  Since my B.A., or, as I.U. shows it, my A.B., theoretically helped me gain admission to a top I.U. graduate program, from which I earned a doctorate, I don't have too many regrets.)

 

 

Speaking of Indiana University (Bloomington), Kat Klockow compiled a collection of ghost stories from Monroe County (and elsewhere in Indiana) that focuses upon I.U.  Like most good folklore, the tales include horror (the "McNutt hatchet man," for instance) as well as more traditional supernatural activities, ghosts, or haunted places.  A few of these I had heard as a student over forty years ago, but most were new to me.  They'll raise the hair on your neck, I'll wager.  Evergreen Indiana cardholders can checkout a copy.

Mark Marimen is a prolific writer of Hoosier hauntings, and his books explore the gamut of Indiana-related supernatural stories.  They remain some of the most popular books on the subject at Mooresville Public Library.  If you're an Evergreen Indiana cardholder, you'll have a field day checking them out and reading them.

 

Nicole R. Kobrowski has written several haunted Indiana books, of which her Encyclopedia of Haunted Indiana (Westfield, Indiana : Unseenpress, 1st edition, 2008--see also the updated 2017 edition) gathers statewide stories of the macabre, organized by location.   See the Evergreen Indiana catalog for a listing of Kobrowski's titles available to checkout.

 

Another popular author of Indiana hauntings is Wanda Lou Willis, whose Haunted Hoosier Trails (Cincinnati, Ohio : Clerisy Press, 2002) and More Haunted Hoosier Trails (Cincinnati, Ohio : Emmis Books, 2004) are perennial favorites for ghost aficionados.  Find these titles here in Evergreen Indiana.

Edrick Thay's Ghost Stories of Indiana (Edmonton, AB, Canada : Ghost House Books, 2001) includes a wide range of haunted places (houses, public places, universities, historical landmarks, bridges and tunnels, cemeteries, and legendary ghouls).  Evergreen Indiana cardholders can check it out here.

Tom Baker and Jonathan Tichenal teamed-up to present hauntings from Indianapolis (and other Hoosier locales) in another excellent survey of the supernatural.  E. I. Cardholders can  check it out.

I was born and raised in Lafayette, Indiana, but I hadn't heard of most of these haunted tales compiled by Dorothy Salvo Davis and W. C. Madden in Haunted Lafayette (Charleston, SC : Haunted America, 2009).  Recognizing the locations helped bring to life the scary stories from Tippecanoe County (and nearby).  Find it here in E.I.

 

 

  

S. E. Schlosser retells several supernatural stories in Spooky Indiana (Guilford, CT : Globe Pequot Press, 2012).  Schlosser garnishes these folklore favorites with some spine-tingling spice.  Find it here in E.I.

 

 

K. T. MacRorie's Hoosier Hauntings (Grand Rapids, MI : Thunder Bay Press, 1997) is an earlier compilation of supernatural and paranormal tales that will send shivers down readers' backs.  It's here in E.I.

 

There are many, many more spooky Indiana books out there, but these will get you started.  Others are easily found in your libraries' catalogs or local (or online) booksellers.  Let's end on a terrible pun:  Put the BOO in books this Halloween season.  There's nothing quite as invigorating as a good ghost story, especially when so many may be found in your own state.

 

The Robb Hill Poltergeist

Three years ago, I blogged about a poltergeist living in a house near Robb Hill Road, just west of Centerton (and a few miles south of Mooresville), in Morgan County, Indiana.  Yesterday, I made a short video highlighting the case.

Shelf Doll:  A Real-Life Poltergeist Experience

(Mooresville Moments #13)

by Mooresville Public Library

Is Mooresville Public Library Haunted?

During the summer of 2012, professional paranormal investigators discovered some strange happenings throughout the building. The group (Hoosier Ghost Investigators [HGI]) encountered spontaneous psychokinetic (PK) activity, electronic voice phenomena (EVP), anomalous sounds, electromagnetic (EM) disturbances, and sudden temperature changes.

We've got a handout that explains HGI's paranormal discoveries along with a map showing locations of such activities. Click the links below to see the handout or watch our videos:

Haunted Library Handout

Ghostly Hoosier Haunts Episodes 4-6:  Library Haunting

Considerable paranormal activity occurred in the library basement. EM interference appeared to disrupt a flashlight's beam without mechanically altering the on/off switch. (The flashlight was fully functional and otherwise operated perfectly.) The team captured some video using somebody's cell phone (to view, click these hyperlinks:  005, 006, 007; or click the video players below).

The flashlight's flickering appeared to answer "yes" and "no" questions posed by the investigators.  Two alleged communicating entities identified themselves.  One claimed to be the grandmother of one of the participants, and another claimed to be a former Mooresville library director.  Some identifying information was provided.  While some of the EM flashlight interference seemed intelligently driven, more experiments would need to be conducted to replicate these results if they are to be more than simply suggestive of paranormality.

 

There was audible knocking on tables and walls throughout the building without anyone present causing the noises. Apparently, EVP was recorded on the team’s audio devices—voices that could be heard on playback that were not heard while the recordings were being made (i.e., in addition to conversations recorded of people present, there were voices recorded saying things that nobody present had said), and there was nothing previously recorded on the devices that could have “bled” through.  The spontaneous PK movement in the Indiana Room, when a book moved by itself from a tightly-packed bookshelf to land five feet away on the floor, was impressive. Was any of this done by disembodied spirits? There is insufficient evidence from which to draw a conclusion, but, certainly, something paranormal appeared to be happening.

Paranormal Activities in 2013-2014:  The MPL maintenance staff have observed strange phenomena at night after the library has closed.  These include: (1) computers spontaneously turning themselves on and off, without any ordinary explanation (i.e., the computers had no automatic command settings to turn on or off, and no one present activated them)--these computers stayed on only long enough to display an image of a woman dressed in black; (2) a woman's voice singing from mid-air in the Grand Hall, when nobody (other than maintenance staff) was physically present in the building, and no electronic devices were operating that could play a recording or receive a radio, television, or Internet transmission; (3) doors opening and closing by themselves; and (4) objects placed in one location mysteriously appearing in other locations without being moved by anyone present.

Most recently (December 1, 2014), the library's youth services page saw a little girl (age approximately 10 years) near the youth biography section of the youth services department.  The girl was wearing an old-fashioned jumper (based upon the page's description, it was of the type worn over 50 years ago).  The girl was sitting on the floor.  The page informed her that she would need to move to a table nearby, as floor-sitting was not allowed (for safety reasons). The girl did not speak but stared intently at the page.  The page then wheeled her book cart to the youth services information desk, and, upon looking back to see if the girl had moved, the page was surprised to see that the girl was gone. The page looked throughout the youth services area, but the girl was not found.  To have exited youth services, the girl would have had to have walked directly in front of the YS information desk. Neither library staff nor patrons in the area saw the girl leave.  "It was as if she just disappeared," said the page.

Let's move from psychical science to folklore. Haunted places as folklore become part of a society's legendary collective storytelling. As stories passing through the cultural consciousness, they are interesting without the need for veridical evidence. As such, we may speculate freely about possible causes. Some of the purportedly spiritualistic communications secured in the library basement appeared to come from disembodied entities identifying themselves as former MPL director Bonita Marley (1906-2002) and Mooresville school teacher and librarian Marian Adams (1920-2000). Although this has not been verified as genuine spiritual interchange (from a parapsychological standpoint), it makes for great folklore stories.

Visit the Library to see if anything paranormal happens to you. Anything's possible. If you're interested in paranormal books, watch our book trailer playlists. We've got one for nonfiction and another for fiction.

To learn more about the paranormal, please visit The Psi Encyclopedia.

Come Closer to Paranormal Terror

Local author Aldo Gonzalez has written an autobiographical book about his house haunting experience.  Our book trailer elaborates.

MPL Book Trailer #307
The Feeders at Night
by Aldo Gonzalez

The book will soon be available to checkout from our Evergreen Indiana catalog.  Copies may be purchased from Amazon.com and the author's Facebook page.