by Chuy Dominguez, Student Reporter
You may have been to a haunted house before. But what about a haunted museum?
The Cherokee Strip Museum isn’t any ordinary repository for historical artifacts. It was built as a hospital in 1932, and it was converted to a museum in the 1970s. It is said to be the third most haunted building in Oklahoma, and museum workers have a few scary tales about it that will send shivers down your spine. Those stories are being told this week at an event sponsored by the museum called “Our Haunted History.”
To celebrate Halloween, volunteers will tell ghost stories about the museum during three “haunted museum” events. They will be held Oct. 29 and Nov. 2 at 6 p.m., and Nov. 3 at 2 p.m. Admission tickets cost $10 each, and they can be purchased from the museum, located at 901 14th St. in Alva. Tickets may also be purchased from Merrifield’s Office Supply, located at 512 Flynn Street. Each story-telling session lasts approximately one hour.
Volunteers will tell 10 different stories at the museum, and each story takes place in a different room. Rooms will be decorated to match the stories being told in them.
Some of the tales are about the museum, some are about local murders, and others are about supernatural events that have happened near Alva.
Alicia Hall, a member of museum board, said that numerous paranormal investigators have visited the museum at night – and all of them say they have had paranormal experiences.
Hall said that she and her friends have had a paranormal experience of her own. Hall claims to have seen a woman appear and disappear in the museum. In another story, children claim to have seen a girl named Sarah, who wears a white dress. In yet another story, a blood stain reappears on a piece of carpet each day. Even after staffers clean the stain up, it reappears.
Not all of the stories will be about the museum, though. One story is about a Northwestern student who was allegedly murdered by mafia members in 1956. People say that her ghost haunts the Avard Gym.
For more information about the event, contact the museum at 580-327-2020.