By TRENTON JUDD
Student Reporter
Alva’s very own Cherokee Strip Museum may have ties to the paranormal realm.
The Cherokee Strip Museum, located at 901 14th St., is ranked the third most haunted place in Oklahoma and just the history of the museum itself is a little spooky. According to museum Curator Beth Smith, “The Cherokee Strip Museum was originally built in 1932 as the Alva General Hospital, but when the Share Memorial Hospital was opened in 1970 the Alva General Hospital was left abandoned. Six years later the hospital was turned into the Cherokee Strip Museum, but some of the rooms on the second floor still serve as surgical suites.
“ Many of the displays we have in the suites are from the original hospital and these surgical suites are said to have some of the strongest paranormal activity. In between the two suites there is a blood stain that will come back even after you have cleaned, but I honestly think it could be iodine — although not too long ago a second stain appeared just two feet away from the original and I just can’t explain it. We have people that claim to see small orbs of light, or feel a brush of air against their face and some people claim to see shadows and hear footsteps.”
Director of Museum Finances Edith Weibener said, “Last Saturday we had a team of paranormal investigators come in and they had fully charged walkie talkies and within five minutes they were completely dead.” Smith added, “Some of the investigators we have had claim to have repeatedly seen the ghost of a military soldier and the ghost of a little girl roaming around the halls.”
Northwestern employee Alica Hall even recalls a scary incident that happened to her. “When I was in the eighth grade. the museum had decorated for the festival of trees and I was with a group of my friends by the post office section of the museum and I saw a person with red hair, but it looked like one of the old mannequins so I looked away for maybe a few seconds and when I looked back the figure was gone. I asked my friends if they saw it and they replied, ‘do you mean the person with red hair?’ It was by far one of the creepiest experiences I have had in that museum.”
Smith has had her own ghostly encounters. “In the many years I have been here I have only experienced two encounters. I was on the second floor by the nurse’s station and noticed that one of our pictures was lying on the floor by the desk, but there was no broken glass and the picture couldn’t have just fallen off the wall because we have cement walls and the pictures are screwed in with sawtooth hangers. At the time, I thought that someone was messing with me, but the people I asked swore that they had nothing to do with it so I just shrugged it off.
“About a week later I noticed that the same picture had fallen in the same place, but once again there was no broken glass and no sign that it had naturally fallen. I have not had any other experiences since then, but we always get investigators that say there is definitely paranormal activity here.”