Phantoms and Monsters

The Little People Are Watching
An Unseen Force in the Old Elementary School
Monster Sighting In New Orleans City Park
Fortune-Teller, Daughter Killed Over Prediction

Posted: 11 Feb 2010 02:31 PM PST

The following account is from the summer of 2003 in Rough River State Park, Kentucky. There were 2 known sources of this story, Paranormal About.com and a paragraph printed in a Louisville, KY newspaper a few days after the incident. I came across a thread post from a person who states they were privy to this event. There have been a few details added from the original report:

June 24th 2003 - mid-afternoon: The witness was on a weekend canoeing trip for rest and relaxation in an remote area of Rough River State Park. He was strangely queasy and anxious for some unknown reason. for some unknown reason, he felt like he had something to fear. Heeding these sensations, he was extremely cautious on the river. After several miles he paddled the canoe to the riverbank and tied it off to a tree. He got out to explore the area. Looking 8-10 ft downstream he spotted what looked like the top of a gray clay jar peeking out of the water.

His first thoughts were that he might have found a native people's artifact. He started down the bank toward the creek which was extremely slippery with mud. He stopped just short of the water and very close to the old earthenware pot. It was more like a clay crock and he soon realized that it probably wasn't very old. He poked at it and noticed there were small handprints on it. He thought it could had been raccoon prints but they were more like little human handprints, about an inch wide.

He tried to pry the thing loose using a stick but suddenly heard a noise. He heard what sounded like children laughing in the distance. The sound was coming from downstream. When he managed to pull the crock jar out of the mud, something let out a scream. It sounded like a little girl, very high pitched and loud. Not knowing what to do he grabbed the jar and began to scramble up the muddy bank. Glancing back, he thought he saw something move along the creek. He stopped and sat at the top of the bank for a moment looking at the jar, trying to comprehend the handprints.

After a few minutes, he laid the crock down, got up and walked along the creek stopping every once in a while to peek through the bushes to see if anybody was there. At one point, he looked over the bank he noticed two little people standing about 1 foot tall. They had pale skins, little brown leather pants held up by suspenders, no shirts and little pointy hats made of what looked like leather. They had leather foot coverings that went up past the ankle. Their hair was reddish color and their eyes blue. Their hands were only about an inch wide. They knew he was watching but they continued their task of pulling some kind of wooded stump down the muddy creek bank with long leather ropes or strings. These little men were surprisingly clean, for the work they were doing. He then heard a thump back where he first had gone in the creek. He looked back and there were three more of the little men, exactly like the first two. They had pushed the crock jar back down the bank. They were all laughing, high-pitched laughter, like a bunch of kids. He then heard a loud snap and they were all gone. Their footprints were plainly visible in the mud, but they were gone along with the crock jar and the wooded stump. They had vanished in a split second.

He walked around in an attempt to pick up a trail but to no avail. He continued his trip with no other incidents.

An Unseen Force in the Old Elementary School

Posted: 11 Feb 2010 11:22 AM PST

A reader forwarded the following story that was given to them by the original witness who is a retired local constable and personal friend:

While on routine patrol one evening several years ago, I arrived at an old elementary school building that was used for storage by the county. The windows had been boarded up and all of the doors nailed shut with the exception of two doors. The main reason that I was there was to check the old cafeteria which was pressed into service as a training center for the fire department.

As I drove to the rear of the building, I stopped my cruiser and exited my vehicle in order to perform hand checks on the doors. As I looked toward the main building, I observed the second floor door standing open. I drew my service sidearm and proceeded up the fire escape to investigate.

The fire escape was heavily rusted and made quite a bit of noise. I stopped at midpoint on my ascent and looked closely at the open door. I noticed that the door had actually been shattered and that approximately one fifth of the door remained nailed to the door frame. I backed down the fire escape and took up a defensive position on the ground and called for back up.

My back up arrived approximately 10 minutes later and we proceeded up the fire escape and entered the building. All of the classroom doors were open and we heard nothing. We noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

We searched the rear and side classrooms and then began to walk forward toward the front classroom when that door suddenly slammed shut with such force that I expected it to go through to the other side. My partner and I both froze as we heard a shambling on the other side of the door retreating from the entrance to the classroom.

We looked at each other and my partner mouthed "Let's get the f--k out of here." I agreed and we withdrew to out cruisers and called for K-9 for a live subject extraction. In the meantime, we set up a perimeter on the building.

K-9 arrived and we briefed the officer on the night's events. He and his dog proceeded up the fire escape. As the K-9 officer reached the open door he called in to the building and announced his presence. He instructed anyone inside to come out or he would send the dog in for them. After he repeated his warning three times, he released his dog and entered the building. When the K-9 officer and the dog exited the building some minutes later he said that there was nobody inside.

My backup and I looked at each other in amazement. The classroom door had been slammed in our face and we had heard the footsteps retreating from the door. Since we had set up the perimeter, there was no way that building was empty.

When I went inside to check the front classroom that had given us the trouble, only the dogs paw prints and the footprints of the officer was visible in the dust on the floor.

As time went by there would be more incidents at this location. Such as a newly installed steel door, padlocked in its frame laying six feet from the cinder block wall where it was once installed. There was no mark on the door except where it was scratched from sliding across the asphalt. Subsequently, three steel doors installed ended up in the same condition. The force used was always extreme and the damage was always from inside, heading outside.

The school was in the process of being transformed into a cultural arts center for the county and a series of strange incidents occurred on site. The final incident occurred over a year later when the construction was nearly complete. I was training a new officer when, as I was driving alongside the school I noticed a silhouette in a first floor window. I hit my alley light and illuminated the window, but the silhouette remained black. The building materials stacked behind it was lit as was the ladder in the background, but the figure remained dark.

I accelerated to the rear of the building and exited the cruiser and entered the school with my trainee in tow. We both witnessed the figure and we both saw that it was not illuminated when everything else in the room had been, but our search turned up nothing.

Several officers involved in these incidents were reluctant to return to the building and some even flat out refused to ever return. Since the completion of construction and the new usage of the building, there have been no further incidents. To this day I don't really know what was in that building or if it will ever return.

Monster Sighting In New Orleans City Park

Posted: 11 Feb 2010 10:03 AM PST

hauntedamericatours - In the early morning hours of Sunday, February 7, 2010, a tractor driver who had worked the Caesar parade route in Metairie was heading home to his apartment in the Lake Terrace section of New Orleans when he decided to take a detour through City Park.

While driving down Harrison Avenue, approximately half way between the renovated New Orleans Police Department Mounted Unit horse stables and Scout Island, in the vicinity of the infamous Mona Lisa Drive, the man was startled to see a dark form lurch out of the shadows and approach the road.

The witness slowed his vehicle for a better look. The dark form ran along the treeline for several minutes, moving in and out of the misty and shadows under the oaks. The driver now came to a complete stop and observed what he described as a "troll" or a "gill man" dart across the Harrison Avenue turnaround, making its way toward Scout Island and the overgrowth of the abandoned City Park East Golf Course.

According to the witness, the creature had dark or black skin covered in masses of "skin or fins" that looked like algae growing all over its body. It seemed to have gills or matted hair that looked like gills on its face and head; two yellow eyes leered out from under a prominent forehead. Apparently aware of the man's presence, once it had crossed the road, it stopped and looked back at the man who said it then opened its mouth in a growl, revealing a set of massive fangs and a lolling tongue that looked, according to the man, "too big for its mouth." It lifted up a clawed hand as if to wave the man off, the driver clearly observed long claws at the fingertips in the ambient light, and then it turned, lurching off into the shadows of Scout Island.

The witness did not report his strange experience to the police because he assumed they would not believe him and since the "gill man," "troll," or whatever it was had not hurt him, he didn't feel it was necessary to bring unwelcome scrutiny upon himself. When he joined a group of fellow tractor drivers for parade routes early the next morning, he told a friend what had happened. His friend put him in touch with Haunted America Tours.

Here at Haunted America Tours the staff has long been aware of legends regarding ghosts and creatures lurking in the placed environment of the New Orleans City Park. The "urban legend" surrounding the Park's Mona Lisa Drive is one example.

According to some reports there is an older legend, popular among the Allipoosa Indians who lived along nearby Bayou St. John in the colonial days of New Orleans, concerning a foul, ghoul-like creature inhabiting the woody tracts and marshy areas along the bayou shore. Descriptions of the creature by the Allipoosa, and accounts from slaves who worked on the Allard Plantation, which comprised all the acres that later became City Park, match the account provided by the tractor driver this past weekend.

Haunted America Tours spoke to a Mid-City resident who lives in the City Park Avenue area and who claims to be a descendent of the Allipoosa tribe, and he confirmed that recently there have been numerous strange occurrences in City Park.

The resident, who asked not to be identified, suggested that the recent sightings might be connected to the numerous film projects that have used City Park and its surrounding areas as locations and backdrops for shooting. Some of these projects, he said, have supernatural or paranormal storylines, and it is his opinion that this activity has "stirred up" the spirits of the land – from the ghosts of Allard plantation slaves and long-dead Indians, to more modern phantoms. City Park, he said, has many, many guardians.

A member of the Haunted America Tours staff discussed an interesting footnote to this story: On a recent visit to the Popp's Fountain area in City Park, she noticed that some of the heavy iron bars in the security fence now surrounding the fountain had been bent and broken, as if by tremendous force. The interesting thing, other than the fact that the black, wrought iron would be impossible to break without the aid of machinery or welding equipment, is that the breaks appeared to have occurred from the inside out.

NOTE: Well, I'm going to consider the source on this one. BTW, the sketch is priceless...Lon

Fortune-Teller, Daughter Killed Over Prediction

Posted: 11 Feb 2010 09:22 AM PST

ocregister - A Westminster, CA fortune-teller and her daughter were brutally murdered by a client because the fortune-teller wasn't able to grant a wish, a prosecutor told jurors today.

Tanya Nelson – who is standing trial for the killings of Ha "Jade" Smith and her college-aged daughter, Anita Vo – was upset at losing her lover and blamed Smith, Senior Deputy District Attorney Sonia Balleste said.

"For some reason, this defendant believed in fortune-telling,'' Balleste said.

The fortune-teller wrote a letter to Nelson and apologized for not being able to change anything, Balleste said. That letter was found in Nelson's home.

Nelson, 45, of North Carolina was angered that the fortune-teller wasn't able to change reality, and decided to travel to Orange County to kill her, Balleste said.

"Somehow, it's all Ha Smith's fault,'' Balleste said.

Jurors listened to closing arguments today in the death penalty trial of Nelson – who is accused of persuading her accomplice Phillipe Zamora to take part in the murders by promising to fix him up with gay sex partners.

Nelson is charged with two counts of murder plus the special circumstances of committing multiple murders, murders for financial gain, and murders during the commission of robbery, burglary and by lying in wait.

If convicted, she could get the death penalty.

The bodies of Smith and 23-year-old Vo were found repeatedly stabbed and – for an unknown reason – covered with white paint inside their home on April 21, 2005.

Their home was also ransacked, with Nelson stealing credit cards, cell phones, jewelry and designer luggage, according to Balleste.

Nelson also took a pair of diamond earrings – worth $35,000 – off Smith's dead body, the prosecutor said. She also used Smith's luggage to travel.

"That is the nerve of this defendant,'' said the prosecutor, glancing over at Nelson. The defendant seemed composed, and took notes during closing statements.

Zamora, who pleaded guilty last year to two counts of first-degree murder with a potential sentence of 50 years to life in prison, was the prosecution's key witness against Nelson. He testified Feb. 1 that Nelson wanted Smith dead because she was angry about her fortune.
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