Where have all the spectres gone? No new ghost stories or paranormal events have been reported for quite awhile. That’s a shame for quite a few readers seem to enjoy reading about them. I know I do. As I have said before had I been there with the witnesses of these apparitions or events I don’t know if my experience would have been the same as theirs. I do know that these are sober reasonable people who honestly believe they saw what they described to me.
I encourage anyone out there that knows of or has had a paranormal experience to get in touch with me. Halloween is a good time to resurrect some of the reports that I have published here in the past.
The first one I posted was five years ago shortly after I had left the Maplewood Patch website and joined Doug Miner here at 40 South News.
7 Foot Maplewood Spectre Grew 3 Feet in 6 Blocks
You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down or Remember James Sutton
Wait a Minute. I recognize That Ghost!
And there was one other post about ghosts…sort of.
The Ghosts That Haunt 2541 Big Bend
I had one other email that for whatever reason I never followed up on. A woman who worked in the building at the southeast corner of Sutton and Manchester wondered if I had any information about a ghost (or possibly more than one) that inhabited that building. I didn’t. Apparently she and possibly a coworker had seen an apparition, a male if I remember correctly.
Hopefully having another look at these will inspire some of our psychically sensitive types to come forward. This is a shamefully small number of ghosts for a creative town like ours to harbor.
Happy Halloween to you all. Doug
I love ghost stories. I’ve experienced a couple of things but not in Maplewood.
Patty, since I just reread the comments from the earlier posts, I think you may have hinted at them there. You have had paranormal experiences. Cool. Thanks for your comment.
Do you happen to know the history of the land prior to it becoming Maplewood?
Sure, Denise. Most of the land that is now Maplewood was once part of two large farms that belonged to two families, the Suttons and the Rannells. Both families held slaves. You might start with this link (https://40southnews.com/series/doug-houser/ ) and you can work your way backwards through five years worth of my blog posts. 209 to date on this site. There are another 100 or so floating around in the ether that was formerly the Maplewood Patch website and prior to that the Facebook page of the City of Maplewood. And I have a book available at our Chamber of Commerce for 20 bucks that I produced with co-author, Joyce Cheney for our 100th anniversary in 2008. Also I have another book of Maplewood History that I hope I’ll be done with with fairly soon that right now is 170 pages long compared with the first books 134 or so. Watch this site for the news of its release. Thank you for your question.
Thanks for the info, Doug! I live on Yale and know there was once a trolley that was in operation there. Just curious about the history of the neighborhood and hoping there’s nothing malevolent!
Doug clicked on one of your stories about the homes on Big Bend and remember agreeing that the homes, although approved for the renovations do not look very appealing. I do think that both are now businesses and not residences but am not sure that is right. I suspect that one way to look at it is a business maybe needed some wall space for a more business look than a residence and was allowed?
The other thing is thank goodness those buildings and several more weren’t torn down and another strip of stores put in there. Many of us drive so fast by that location that we don’t realize how many of the homes have been converted to businesses along there. I have to wonder if those building owners aren’t approached regularly asking if they want to sell and are being offered a good price so they could build a strip of stores there. Whoever would do that would have to get almost everything from the Quicktrip to the North to make it profitable.
Mark, I agree that even in their remuddled condition they are better than many modern buildings that might have replaced them. Be thankful for small things, I suppose. Thanks for your comments.