Soldier shares Sill ghost experiences

I’ll start off by saying that I’ve always skeptical of ghosts and ghost stories, and I still am. But, I’ll admit there are far more things in this world that I cannot explain than things I can. I put the following events into the latter category.

Both of these accounts are 100 percent true, to the best of my recollection (they happened some 18 years ago), and not embellished in any way. Both happenings occurred on Fort Sill, Okla. when I was a young lieutenant living in Academic Heights.

Out of consideration to the young families who live in the quarters now, I will not share the exact addressed where these phenomena occurred.

My first unexplainable encounter happened around six months after we moved into our place. My family left the day prior for a long weekend trip to grandma and grandpa’s house. Our faithful beagle, Ulysses, and I were the only two living souls in the house and had settled into bed around 10:30 p.m. It was a cool, fall night. All the windows were shut and the bedroom door was completely closed, as is my routine when I go to bed.

If you’ve never been in Academic Heights, they were erected in the mid-20th Century when buildings were made to last. At that time, all of the exterior and interior doors were made of solid wood, making them extremely heavy. The knobs and latches were all brass, and they looked original from the time the building was made.

I was reading for around 20 minutes and Ulysses was curled up in his usual spot at the foot of the bed sleeping. Out of nowhere, Ulysses jolted awake and started growling at the door. The hair on his back was standing straight up and his gaze laser-focused on the door. He was growling and showing his teeth, posed as mean looking as I’d ever seen him. I hadn’t heard any noises as we occasionally did living in a four-plex. And anyway, Ulysses was used to those sounds.

This was different. He was scared.

In an attempt to calm him down and keep him from disturbing our neighbors I reached down to pet him. When I touched his back leg he startled and then looked at me. Then back at the door. Then back at me, in a "Can’t you see it?" kind of way. Maybe 10 or 15 seconds elapsed with us locked in that tense cycle. Ulysses could not be comforted or deterred from growling intensely at the door.

Just as I was beginning to wonder if I had locked both doors, I heard the latch click and watched the door knob turn. Then the door between the bedroom and the hallway swung open to about a 45-degree angle.

That was enough for Ulysses. He lost it. In an instant all of his bravado vanished as he leapt off the opposite side of the bed to hide underneath. I instinctively reached for a small aluminum bat I kept by the side of the bed and started yelling at whoever, or whatever had just opened my door.

Over the next 30 minutes, I checked and rechecked the entire apartment turning on all the lights and triple-checking the door locks. I could not find any evidence that anyone else had been in the house. When I felt safe again, (and after my heart stopped racing) logic took over and I tried for the next hour to replicate the door going from being latched shut to opening, to no avail.

Something wanted in or out of my room or wanted me to know it was there.

Because my kids were little, I did not tell them what happened so that they wouldn’t be frightened. I told my wife, but I am not sure she totally believed me. We lived in those quarters for another few years, but neither Ulysses nor I ever saw or heard anything we could not explain again.

LUNCH-TIME GHOST

The second spooky encounter did not happen in my quarters or to me directly, but it did happen around the same time as my personal experience and in the same neighborhood of Academic Heights.

As families living on post tend to do, my family became very close to several other families in our neighborhood. This was during the Operation Iraqi Freedom I-III time frame. For several consecutive years, at least a few dads were always deployed.

When you were gone, you knew your family would be watched out for by friends on the block. And when you were home, you watched out for other families. I still love that about on-post living. Anyway, my oldest daughter, who was about four years old at the time, made friends with a girl her age who lived in quarters across the street.

The girls roamed the neighborhood all summer and fall, to the park and back, and in and out of both houses, often eating lunch at whichever house they happened to occupy when they were hungry. At the age of four, the world is still magical. Every new playtime comes with dragons to be slain and unicorns to befriend. It was not uncommon to hear the girls singing with fairy choirs or whispering secrets to animals who always whispered back.

The strange occurrences started innocently enough at lunchtime.

My daughter’s friend started asking for a lunch for her new friend (not my daughter). At first, the adults assumed this request was for a stuffed animal or another make-believe friend. Depending on how far whichever mom was feeding the girls that day had to stretch the macaroni and cheese or soup and sandwiches, this new friend might have gotten a plate, or not. For a week or two, this lunch plan placated the girls.

That all changed one day when the girls’ friend did not get a lunch plate. My daughter’s friend was visibly upset. When her mother asked her what was the matter she said, "Zoey is mad at you, mommy, because you didn’t feed her today."

"Who is Zoey?" her mom asked. "She’s my friend and she’s hungry," replied the little girl.

Trying to defuse the situation and thinking that Zoey must be a stuffed animal, her mother asked to see Zoey.

"Mommy, she’s standing right in the hallway, right there. Can’t you see her?" asked the girl now as equally puzzled as her mother.

"No, I can’t see her," her mother replied very confused.

"She has long blonde hair and she’s wearing a long white dress, like always," said the girl.

For fun, my friend showed her daughter photos of girls wearing white dressing gowns from the early 1900s.

"That looks just like the dress Zoey wears," her daughter told her.

"Okay," her mom said as calmly as possible. "Tell Zoey it’s time to go home. Her mommy will feed her when she gets there."

The girls went to tell Zoey it was time to go home, and after that day they did not mention her again.