By Jaxyn Cloud, Senior Reporter
Graybill said one night during a ghost investigation, she was standing off to the corner watching, in front of a portrait of the doctor who worked at the hospital for many years, Dr. Alfred Burke Hinkle. He was her doctor while she delivered her daughter. All of a sudden, she felt someone grab her shoulders. “I felt it, and it was heavy,” she said. “It wasn’t just a brush of a shoulder.”
Graybill said she doubted herself, thinking her mind was messing with her. She then felt a rush go through her, from her hips down to her ankles. She said she didn’t know what to do after that, and still wonders about it .
A group called the Paranormal Investigations of Oklahoma has visited the museum many times over the years and is actually planning a visit soon. One time during an investigation, the group was circled around the surgery table in the operating room. One of the members of the group had an expensive headset designed to pick up on paranormal communication. Something grabbed him, and he was so startled he threw the headset off his head, and it broke into pieces. Another member of the team had back problems and said he felt something touch his back in that room.
A little girl visited the museum and saw the portrait of Dr. Hinkle on display. She pointed and said, “That’s the man who was at our house, looking through the windows.”
Museum staff later found out the little girl lived in what used to be Hinkle’s house on his old farm. The house is no longer standing.
The museum often has things misplaced, like picture frames lying on the floor far away from where they were hung.
There have also been reports of people hearing a woman searching for her child near the old maternity ward.
Another member of museum staff saw a person sitting at the old church pew by the maternity ward, but when he went searching, he couldn’t find anyone.
Beth Smith, the museum curator, recalled her experience while watching the museum security cameras.
She said she saw a “school of orbs” climbing the walls of the museum during a ghost investigation. Orbs are clusters of energy that look like tadpoles. Smith said they were traveling from the lobby to the rest of the museum, “like they wanted in on the action of the investigation.”
Many NWOSU students have their own experiences as guests at the museum. Nathan Vaughn, a freshman pre-nursing student, visited the museum last year. While his boyfriend was using the restroom in the museum, the lights flipped off, but it wasn’t a glitch. “The actual light switch flipped off, like it was physically flipped down,” he said.
Dr. Bo Hannaford, the NWOSU president, took this year’s President’s Leadership Class to the museum. “It was super creepy, but I’m skeptical if it’s actually haunted,” said Abbey Elam, a member of the class.
Marshall Howard, a past NWOSU student, used to live in a rented house near Share Medical Center, which is also close to the old POW camp. Marshall said he started having dreams where he saw a figure in the hallway like a negative shadow with no edges
“It wasn’t fear,” Marshall said. “It was complete terror.”
While this reporter toured the museium with Graybill, Smith suggested looking at a certain display again to see if anything out of the ordinary appeared. It looked like a normal display and nothing stood out.
After leaving the room, Smith show security footage where she saw orbs crawling the walls of the room the first time the two looked, but disappeared when they left.
Is the Cherokee Strip Museum really haunted? Only those who walk its halls after dark know.
