Growing up in South West Iowa, meant wide open spaces of farm land and boredom, this is where one literally had to make up their own fun. The fun always ended up tracking down where town legend would say was the most haunted. It was then that we all dared to enter the haunted cemetery, houses, or woods. It was the thrill of the scare and partly because of the legends that so deeply were woven by the elders of the towns.
In attempts of research to learn more, the public library in Mount Ayr, Iowa proudly told us that they burned all those forms of books and they were not allowed in the walls of the library.
I had always had a feeling that Iowa was more haunted then anyone really wanted to admit and it was when I became older that I learned that I was considered a sensitive. They were attracted to me, and I could feel them before anyone else. Maybe it is why I am always interested in discrediting them before I can accept they could be real.
My beliefs that Iowa was more haunted than anyone wanted to admit was held secured when After Life News, Vaucluse Press was found at an internet site, www.afterlifenews.com.
The site states that the stories from Iowa were overwhelming as they wouldn’t have to travel far to reach haunting to haunting. They were brought to Davenport on the stories of the Bell Tower, at the police station in Davenport, Iowa and Palmer College.
Davenport’s legend is similar to what their investigations found, yet they are still investigating according to their web site to verify if there were any hangings that happened. It is known in the city of Davenport that you can see a body hanging from the Bell Tower. I myself have followed everything that this folklore has ever said and have never seen or witnessed a body in the Bell Tower.
In the year of 2005 and 2006, I resided in what I would like to place in Davenport’s Haunted Houses, it was a house located on the sub division of Green Acres, West Davenport, and placed on the forty ninth street. The haunting began innocent enough almost so innocent to be discredited as wind, or bumping of an object.
We had been at the residence only three months and activity began. It began with the turning on the stereo and randomly changing channels. I excused it as a short in the stereo and purchased a new one. Yet, even the new stereo seemed and appeared to do the same and it was then that I learned the feature of locking the buttons on the system as I began to blame the cat. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions and I wanted so badly to ignore the facts that were slapping me in the face.
Soon objects began to come up missing and then reappear when we entered back into the room within minutes. The lights would turn on by themselves, and dim when activity began to increase. The sounds of an old record player began to play, accompanied with moaning.
It was after a small electrical fire that it got my full attention. After many hours of research at the library and on the internet at home, I found the results of the investigation.
The house was built by the previous owner, so it was not the house itself that was the haunting, it was the land. The subdivision was once plotted out in larger plots and Forty Ninth Street didn’t exist in this owner’s abstract. In fact, the abstract included a plot that took up five houses, our neighbors as well. It was not of my character to come out and ask the neighbors, “Hey anything weird ever happen to you?”
Instead my answer came to the door one night. This individual was one that used to live in the house that was adjacent to our house. The house was abandoned as the sewage pipe had burst open and the house was now owned by the city of Davenport, Iowa. No one could buy the house as each time that it went onto the tax auction it was slipped under the rug.
The individual explained some of her activity and it was then that the abstract that I had found was compared to her house’s deed. It was stipulated in her deed that the house was never to have, “Blacks, Mexicans or of any other heritage live in the house.” That I put nicely, as the deed was much blunter giving the time period of the writing of the deed and slang of that time’s era blared at me in black and white.
I read our deed which said in similarity, much the same. Yet, the abstract that I had found on the internet connected much deeper than what I had found merely in the deeds. The plots of land were once owned by the St. Ambrose Church.
The owner of that plot of land was a pillar of society for his time, as he was involved in the St. Ambrose church, but blacks, Chinese, and Mexicans were banned from living on their plots of land. The abstract that I had found bared this news deeply and said that it would remain his forever.
Forever, is a long time, but it held true as there was a Mexican family that moved into one of the houses that were on that original plot of land, and they left with in a few months of living there and gave accounts of more vicious haunting and they explained the entity said, “Get out!”
St. Ambrose was on the map as Davenport’s most haunted places. The individual also had connections with what is now Palmer College, which was once owned by the Masonic Temple, and is located on Brady Street.
At the time of my searching, I was going to a chiropractor that I shared my findings with and it was then that he shared with me the haunting of Palmer College.
In one of the lecture rooms are shadows that weave in and out as they knock around the hanging lights. Sounds, smells, and images were seen by many college students. These are students that come from all over the world and different cultures to in take this ghostly heritage.
The connection does not stop there, as there is a house on Brady and 5th street that was an old Victorian house that led to the death of a family, and became hard to sell and any attempts to own the house were proven with ill results. The house was torn down and left the haunting to become known as the Banshee of Brady Street.
In my records of finding the individuals names mentioned in the abstract and the deed led me to the house on 5th street, the house of that once could be connected with the Banshee of Brady. The individual was the owner’s daughter of the subdivision on the abstract. Yet, in only theory as I had no way of knowing the Banshee’s name, I put it into my thought bank and dug deeper.
The individual that owned the subdivision now known as Green Acres in Davenport, Iowa was also a member of the Ghost Club, started in 1862. He was a lawyer by day and Ghost Club member at night. His name appeared upon the member list. Each member living or dead was made mention and treated as still a member.
The words of forever his property bared true, he still stays with his land. Yet, is he truly connected with the haunting that is similar from Palmer College? Could his daughter really be the Banshee of Brady? In truth, Davenport may have been a violent place, but not all the hauntings can be blamed on the River Rats or the Hobos, and could be from members of its own society. Refusal to move on? Or is it the pact created with the Ghost Club?
