Bud Steed - Ozarks Ghosts and Hauntings

Second Edition, Revised and Expanded

Copyright 2015 Bud Steed

All Rights Reserved

This book is dedicated to my wife Jennifer Lynn Steed, who in all our years together has never once lost faith in either me or my sometimes crazy plans. She is the rock upon which our family stands and the one true love of my life.

This book is also dedicated to my children, Bobbi Jo, David, Sean, Ciara Jo and Kerra Lynn. You all are great kids and I cherish each of you more than you will ever know.

I would like to acknowledge Dave Harkins, Tonya Mulitalo and Debbie Crider-Fleeman, my teammates in The Ozarks Paranormal Society, who together, we managed to investigate Wilsons Creek National Battlefield not once, but twice, and caught some extraordinary evidence of the ghosts of Wilsons Creek; we even managed to film it for the Travel Channel as part of the Legends of the Ozarks show. You guys are the best and I am proud to call you guys family.

I would like to thank Jason Mysch of Diamondback Services for not only being a great friend but in re-working the daily schedule to accommodate my ever changing needs and allowing me time to work and complete my many projects; thanks brother.

I have lived in the Ozarks off and on since 1979, and since I have always had an active fascination with the paranormal, I have been privy to a lot of ghost stories and legends told around numerous campfires and in many a barroom throughout the region. When people find out that youre a paranormal investigator they just seem to naturally open up to you about unexplainable experiences they have had, almost with relief in some cases, as if they can finally tell their story to someone who would understand and not ridicule them.

Such is the case with the stories contained within this book. These are just a few of the stories which were told to me by various people over the years, some of the stories well known, some not so well known, but all of them told to me by people who either witnessed the unexplained occurrence first hand or who knew the story well from it being passed down through the ages by family members and friends. Either way, the stories were told with conviction and without a doubt of the authenticity by the storyteller ; they all believe the stories to be true.

In some cases, the stories are based on actual historical occurrences; in others, it seems to be a story based upon urban legend and nothing more, no actual incident could be attributed to the origin of the story. Some of these stories I have been fortunate enough to investigate, either alone or with my teammates from The Ozarks Paranormal Society . And while I can attest to the fact that something paranormal in nature is indeed occurring and know in my own mind what I witnessed, I will leave it up to you to decide for yourselves and to draw your own conclusions from these stories.

On August 10, 1861, the Battle of Wilsons Creek, known to the Confederates as the Battle of Oak Hills, was fought just a short 10 miles southwest of Springfield Missouri. Today the battlefield is part of the National Park Service and is designated a National Battlefield.

It was the site of the first major battle of the civil war west of the Mississippi River and has been called by some the Bull Run of the West because of the heavy fighting and casualties; a lot of the fighting was at close quarters and hand to hand. The Union forces attacked at first light and by 11:00 am the battle was finished, the Union forces retreating back up the Wire Road towards Springfield. Just slightly over 2500 men were killed, wounded or missing with the victory that day going to the Confederate forces under Generals McCulloch and Price.

One of the men lost that day during the battle was General Nathaniel Lyon, the first Union general to be killed in the civil war. General Lyon had been wounded several times during the battle and had his horse shot out from under him. He commandeered a horse and rallied the troops of the 2 nd Kansas Infantry in a countercharge when a fatal shot to the chest finally brought him down for good. Today a marker sets near the site at Bloody Hill where he was shot and killed. His body was taken to the Ray House, the only original structure remaining today and the site of the Confederate field hospital during the battle. The bed upon which his body was laid for examination is still on display in the home. His body was later taken to Springfield under a flag of truce and returned to the Union forces there. After the battle wounded and dying soldiers were scattered all over the yard while the house was pressed into service as a surgery room; the pile of amputated limbs just outside the door was said to be several feet high.

Historic Ray House. Image by Bud Steed

Dead soldiers from both sides were scattered everywhere on the battlefield and the hot August summer necessitated that drastic steps were taken to bury the fallen as quickly as possible. Multiple bodies were said to have been dumped down an old well on the Sharp homestead, located at the southwest corner of the battlefield, with dirt thrown over them in a makeshift tomb; the location of the well is not known today as the entire Sharp homestead no longer remains. Others were dumped into two sinkholes near Bloody Hill, approximately 75 in the large one and around 35 in the smaller sinkhole, and then covered with dirt. The bodies would later be moved to Springfield and reinterred at the National Cemetery, founded in 1867 and located at the corner of Glenstone and Seminole streets.

Given that so many men were buried so quickly, with some of them buried where they fell, it is possible that some of them would not have been removed from the battlefield; the locations of their graves having never been properly documented. There were many stories told of bones, buttons, and weapons having been found after the fields were plowed many years after the end of the civil war, some reported being found as late as the 1950s. It could be that these forgotten soldiers, left behind after the other bodies were moved, are responsible for the number of ghostly sightings over the years. That, coupled with the violence, bloodshed, and death that happened on such a large scale that day, could have left its scar upon the land as well; a permanent imprint of the horrors of battle-forged from the high emotional trauma that the combatants must have experienced. Whatever the reasoning behind it, Wilsons Creek National Battlefield has been the site of numerous ghostly encounters over the years, some witnessed by me personally.

Bloody Hill

One such encounter was witnessed by both Dave Harkins, the founder and director of TOPS, and me when we went to Bloody Hill to determine how best to investigate the spot prior to our scheduled investigation. We were standing next to the marker commemorating General Lyon discussing how to space out the teams and where to locate cameras when we both caught, out of the corners of our eyes, the dark figure of a person dart across an open area just off a part of the old walking trail which is now no longer in service. We both looked at each other and Dave said Did you just see that? to which I replied that I had and we both took off running down the old trail to try and determine if it was a live person or something else that we had seen. When we arrived at the spot, we saw that the approximate direction the figure had ran opened up onto a small glade. The right side of the glade narrowed down to a small trail which ran back out to the main walking trail while the rest of the glade formed a half circle with dense cedar trees forming the perimeter. We saw no one in sight and a quick look at the ground showed no signs of anyone having passed that way for quite some time; no overturned rocks, crushed vegetation or tracks of any kind, which a running person should have left in their passing. We moved on into the clearing, Dave splitting off to the right down the small trail while I moved further into the small clearing, checking the ground as I moved and scanning the tree line for any movement. Dave would later tell me that he had heard someone call his name twice while he was walking down the short trail and was suddenly overcome with a feeling of uneasiness as if he shouldnt really be there. He looked for me back towards the clearing, and although it was fall and most of the leaves were gone from the trees, he wasnt able to see me in the clearing at all; I should point out that we were only separated by less than 30 yards, half of which was bare trees and brush. Dave continued on to the main trail and as soon as he got there he commented on how it was an almost instant change in how he felt when he stepped from the short trail onto the main one. Unable to locate me he walked back to the memorial marker, less than 50 yards away to see if I had returned there; needless to say, I hadnt as I was experiencing my own odd happenings at the time.