FORT SILL, Oka. (Oct. 30, 2014) -- As Halloween draws near, many people are getting ready to celebrate a night of trick-or-treating, costumes and spooky tales.
For hundreds of years, stories of ghosts and ghostly hauntings have been told time and time again, captivating young and old audiences alike.
Rich in history and culture, Fort Sill is no stranger to voices from the beyond, eerie images of distorted and shadowy figures and unexplained encounters. Sometimes even the most skeptical of us can't explain away the strange phenomenon.
Many houses and buildings on post are reputed to be haunted. The incidents passed from neighbor to neighbor. Doors opening and closing when no one was around, objects falling off shelves or being "thrown" across the room, or even the sound of horses galloping past an open window. They are usually harmless incidents, occurring and ending without much more than a good startle.
But for one family, their haunting became more than pranks and moving objects, it became frightening. So while most families prepare for a night of frights and fun, the Button family prepares to move out of a house that no longer welcomes them.
The incidents began the day Brittani Button settled in the house with the help of her mother.
"My mom and I moved all my stuff in here, my husband was deployed, and we made the bed, laid down the sheets and we saw footsteps across the covers, like a cat. At nighttime, I would hear it purring next to my head," said Button. "It would lay at my feet, I could feel it kneading my legs."
Button learned to accept this ghost cat and grew accustomed to sharing her new house.
Soon, other unexplained events began to occur. Things she couldn't brush off as being just a lost lonely cat. The pranks started innocently enough.
"It would keep opening and closing the bathroom door. I would shut it, feel it click, turn around and then I would hear it open. I would shut it and it would open, so I yelled at it to stop," she said. "I heard it laugh, even my neighbor heard it laugh. Then he slammed the door in my face. Later my neighbor asked me if I'd been babysitting a little boy that night. " She said it was one thing for the spirit to mess with her, but then it began to pull pranks on her daughters. Moving objects, chairs sliding across the room, were one thing, but these pranks soon became mean.
During dinner one night, Button's daughter was sitting at her little table in her child-size chair. Button looked over just in time to see the chair go flying out from under her daughter and land across the room. Thankfully her daughter was not injured. Other times, her younger daughter will play with someone that is not there.
"You'll watch her, she'll be laughing and giggling like someone is playing with her, and all of a sudden she'll be pushed, like someone pushes her into the wall," said Button.
Both her daughters have said they see the boy.
Button made the decision to move due to many factors, but she knew she was making the right choice after a particularly unnerving incident on evening while she was packing.
"I had dropped some papers and they slid under my bed, I was in the midst of packing, so I didn't stop to pick them all up. I got to the edge of my bed, and I heard what was like a piece of paper being crumpled. I looked down and it was like something was trying to scramble over the paper toward my feet," Button said. "So I jumped backward and the bed skirt flipped up. I hauled out of my room, I could hear footsteps chasing me. I grabbed the kids and ran out of the house until my friend arrived to check the house."
While it's easy to try and dismiss a story told by one family, Button's story is far from unique.
Amy Rivas, a former resident on post, also experienced activity that couldn't be explained away by the mundane.
"At first we didn't notice anything, but after a while it was the little things," Rivas said. "Doors would open and close by themselves, diaper wipe containers would fly across the room, and our dog would stare for hours at a corner in our newborn's room."
Even after these incidents became more frequent, Rivas would try to ignore it.
"My four year old started complaining he was scared of a shadow man, he would refuse to stay in his room," she said. "One night after I put him to bed, I saw a little child running through the house as I was in the kitchen. I thought it was my son, but when I went to find him, he was sleeping soundly and snoring."
The activity worsened when Rivas experienced something pulling on her pony tail as she folded laundry one day.
"That's when I was really starting to freak out because it seems like the activity was getting worse and less able to blame non-paranormal things," said Rivas. Events such as these continued through the day they moved.
Whether you believe or not, it's hard to ignore the increasing dread felt when you don't feel welcome in your own home. So next time ask yourself when something falls from the counter in your kitchen, a door closes on it's own, or you feel something watching you from the dark corner of your room ... are you really alone? Or do you share your home with one of the many ghosts of Fort Sill's past.
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