Posted on 10/05/2004 7:48:14 PM PDT by CurlyBill
BY MELANIE BENNETT
Staff Writer
A Russell County fifth-grader is convinced bones found in her home last weekend belong to a mysterious friend who told her about being chopped up years ago.
Investigators have few clues about how and when the bones got inside insulation under the living room floor of the mobile home on Jowers Road, near East Alabama Motor Speedway.
The 10-year-old, Stephanie Ogden, and her family have lived in the home since 1998. Her great-grandparents, John and Marion Stewart, own the home.
The bones were found Saturday as the Ogdens, who are renovating the home, pulled up boards in the living room floor. Russell County Sheriff's Lt. Heath Taylor said an initial analysis shows the bones are from the pelvis and leg of a child at least 10 years old, and the child has been dead at least 10 years.
Another bone was found Sunday, Marion Stewart said. The area where the bones were found had duct tape over the insulation, Stewart said.
"There's an odor there that doesn't belong," Stewart said.
The bones probably don't have enough marrow to do DNA tests, Taylor said. Because the trailer has been moved several times between Georgia and Alabama, investigators now are faced with the daunting task of trying to track down missing children from a wide area in two states.
Taylor said gnaw marks on the bones may indicate a rodent placed them inside the insulation. Dirt and plant material on the bones indicate they were outside at one time, Taylor said.
Stephanie said a black girl in a white dress started visiting her room when she was about 5 years old. The girl was friendly, but she told Stephanie a horrible story.
"She told me that somebody put her in the floor," Stephanie said. "She said he had a mask on, and that he chopped her up. She didn't know who the person was, because he had a mask on."
Stephanie, a fifth-grader at Dixie Elementary School, now thinks that the bones that were found in her home belong to her playmate.
"It's possible because that girl was a ghost," Stephanie said Monday. "Nobody knows about them."
Marion Stewart said Stephanie used to tell her family about the visitor, but the adults always dismissed the stories as being an imaginative child's fabrication based partly on horror movies. Stewart said Stephanie used to always ask for two glasses of soda when she would play outside -- one glass for her and one for her friend.
Stewart said the weekend's grisly discoveries have convinced her that her great-granddaughter's playmate is actually a tormented soul seeking peace.
"I'm not a psychic, and I don't believe in some of that stuff," Stewart said. "But I believe this is a soul who has not been put to rest."
Taylor said detectives can't base their work on ghost stories.
"Do you have any idea how hard it is to investigate a ghost?" he said Monday.
Investigators are looking through databases of missing children to find any links to the trailer's location, but Taylor doesn't hold out much hope of solving the case.
"It's just one of those cases where there's just not a lot to go on," he said.
http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=52701
Lived in a trailer park. Lived in Georgia and Alabama.
Interesting? suspected serial killer jailed in Alabama may provide Douglas County authorities with a break in their investigation into the murders of two women, 11Alive News learned Friday.
Douglas County sheriff’s deputies are now in Mobile, Ala., questioned 31-year-old Jeremy Jones in the murders of 38-year-old Tina Mayberry and 16-year-old Amanda Grenwell today.
Grenwell’s body was found earlier this year along a Douglas County road. The suspect at one time lived in the same trailer park as Grenwell.
The other victim was found stabbed to death on Halloween night 2002 in front of Gipson’s restaurant and lounge. Jones was apparently a regular there.
Any possible link between this Georgia serial killer and this case?
I want him to channel who Pat Gray's been asking him to. :)
LOL. A good one, indeed.
Bet Selkie sleeps above the covers. Four FEET above the covers.
My wife and I stayed overnight in the home of my uncle's deceased mother-in-law. My wife (who likes to glance at the time when she wakes up in the middle of the night) woke me up in the middle of the night to ask why the digital alarm clock previously on the nightstand was tucked securely under my pillow (and under my head). We took the hint and were out in 10 minutes.
"She told me that somebody put her in the floor," Stephanie said. "She said he had a mask on, and that he chopped her up. She didn't know who the person was, because he had a mask on."
Wow!
This serial killer currently under investigation covered the same territory - Alabama and Georgia. The path from Douglas County to Mobile.
Jacob Marley, Patron Ghost of Christmas Eve
Ghosty ping.
Yes I do. That was a sick story.
Last I checked it was still in its box.
Had a friend who had a similar problem with money. An old woman owned the house before his stepfather bought it, and she apparently hung herself in the attic. We used to hear footsteps walking around up there, and sometimes, if you looked through the access hole in the ceiling, you could see what looked like the silhouette of a rope on one of the rafters. If you left money out in that house, it would disappear. You could leave bills out on a shelf, or dresser, etc., and it would just vanish. Sometimes he'd find some of the money stuffed around in various hidey holes. She was pretty harmless. Your money disappearing is more annoying than anything.
Another friend of mine lived in a house for awhile where there was all kinds of activity. They'd see a blue light in their kitchen window at night when coming up to the house, hear a car pull up, but nothing would be there, the sound of a stampede would occasionally pass through the house, that sort of thing. The kind of stuff you see in the "recording" style hauntings. They had active stuff as well. Somebody told him breakfast was ready one morning when he was brushing his teeth, and when he turned around, there was no one there. Their dog would bark at something and chase it around the house. His sister would wake up screaming at night saying there was a dead person on top of her. They found out that the man who used to live there had a wife die in that room, and her bed was in the same place as his sister's. When they moved her bed, the nightmares stopped. His mother woke up one morning after hearing steps come down the hall, and into the bedroom. She said she felt someone sit on the bed, and just assumed her husband and forgotten something and came back home. When he didn't answer her, she rolled over, and there was a depression in the bed, but nobody there. The bed lifted, and she heard steps moving away.
My brother's friend lived in his grandmother's house where a shooting occured in the backroom. Over the years, a number of people, including my brother, saw the shadow figures of two men acting out the shooting, and heard the sound of a gunshot.
I've got dozens of stories like those that I've been involved with, or known people who were. For years, I hit every graveyard and "haunted" house I could find. I've seen some weird and sometimes creepy stuff. Almost every place I've ever lived in had odd things happen in it. Things moved, gone missing, turned on, shadows and mists moving around, the kids seeing things, something tucking in the baby and moving the crib gate, doors locked or unlocked, orbs in pictures, things moving on their own, disembodied voices, poundings on the walls, odd animal behavior, footsteps, I could go on and on.
My best friend and I even had a weird creature encounter in the Jersey woods one night. We used to walk at night through a sandpit on the edge of the local woods. We'd seen small hoofprints in there before, and one night tracked them into an expansive clearing where they just ended in the sand. I made a joke about flying deer. A couple of weeks later, we came over a deadfall and startled something. We looked down into the pit, and there it was. The thing was about 3 feet tall and bipedal. We got within about 40 ft or so of it, where it was standing in the sandpit clearing under the almost full moon. It seemed more afraid of us than we were of it. It kind of rocked side to side on its feet, and made this "Ka-HAH" noise at us. When we moved closer, it took off like a shot into the woods behind the sandpit, startling the sleeping birds, and making that weird noise the whole way. I spoke out and said we didn't want to hurt it, and I even left a message in the sand of that nature. He thought it was silly, and I kind of agreed, because we didn't know if it was even intelligent, much less whether it could read or understand anything we said. It left little hoof marks behind. About 2 to 3 weeks later, we heard it again, in the direction of the woods, and a few blocks away. All the neighborhood dogs went nuts. It seemed to be moving back and forth and coming closer at the same time. It sounded like it got within a block or two of the house, and then it started moving away again. The dogs eventually calmed down, and that's the last we heard of it. I just joke about it now and tell people I got to see the "jersey devil"
There's absolutely no doubt in my mind about the existence of ghosts and other entities.
Holy cat! My sinuses are closing up just reading your stories. (You know the feeling I'm talking about . . .)
When they found a bong there, I said it belonged to leprechauns.
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