Spooky stuff happens here too

Tomorrow evening, children will put on their costumes and go from house to house as they enjoy the Halloween tradition of trick or treating. They will travel up one neighborhood and down another as they make their rounds. The youngsters might even enjoy the thrills at the Haunted Mill, located in one section of the old Marion Manufacturing plant.
But I wonder if many folks will realize that they are near some places that could actually be haunted. Marion has many ghostly tales, some well known and some not so well known.
Local psychic Angela Moore recently gave a talk about local apparitions at the Open Hands Natural Healing Center. I was not able to attend that event but Angela has shared with me some of the weird tales about Marion, including the one about a local restaurant that many believe to be haunted. But she knows of many other haunted places around here.
The first office she rented was located in a converted motel. Moore's office consisted of two rooms located at the top of the stairs over a health food store. When she moved in, the folks who ran the health food store warned Moore that her office might be haunted because they had sensed some kind of presence there.
"The presence was so strong that one of the workers had researched the history of the building and found that a traveling salesman had been murdered there some years before," wrote Moore.
The stairway up to the office was L shaped, and a light switch was located at the foot of the stairs and another at the top. One evening after turning off the light switch at the top of the stairs, Moore walked midway down the stairs when she was surprised to hear the switch click on behind her. She saw the stairs lit up again.
"After glancing behind me and seeing no one, I hurried from the building, leaving lights on and door unlocked," she wrote.
Another day, Moore was in her office working on her computer. She happened to look up from her desk and saw the transparent figure of a man walking up the stairs. The ghostly figure then completely faded from view just as quickly and silently as he had appeared.
One night, Moore, her friend Kim and her dog Baby returned to the office after conducting a paranormal investigation for some folks in a nearby mountain town. It was a cold and rainy night and the damp night air chilled them to the bone. When they got to the building, the two women and the canine went upstairs to the waiting room, closed the door and turned on a heater so they could get warm.
"As the three of us huddled there to get warm, we suddenly became aware of the sound of footsteps on the stairway," wrote Moore. "Our mouths dropped open and we looked at each other in fear. We were both certain that we had firmly locked the outside door at the bottom of the stairs before entering the office. The steps continued their slow ascent.
"Baby became alert and looked through the crack in the door while Kim and I remained frozen in place. Suddenly, our fear increased greatly as the sound of a gentle whistling of a tune began just beyond our door at the top of the stairs. It was a mere seven notes, but was loud and clear enough to send chills up our spine. We got up our courage and gently opened the door, and Baby went through it, evidently intent on conducting a paranormal investigation of her own. When she did not sound an alarm, we opened the door more widely and saw that, without a doubt, no one was there at all – at least not anyone of this world."
Moore has also told me about a truck stop in this area that seems to be haunted. One night, Moore felt compelled to go there and get something to eat, which she says is odd for her because it was 9 p.m. and she rarely goes out that late. When she sat down at the truck stop, the owner came out and told her to come back to the kitchen. Moore said as soon as she came into the truck stop, the lights started flickering in the back room.
When she went to the back, Moore said she felt the presence of a woman's ghost.
"While I was there another time, I felt a spirit of a man," she wrote. "I felt he belonged in a truck. I felt he was sort of trapped or maybe just not ready to move on. I was then told by someone that there was a truck driver who inadvertently killed himself in his truck in the parking lot."
So while you are out enjoying Halloween festivities, keep in mind the spirits of those who have gone before. They could still be around, whether we realize it or not.