By Bailey Garza
Student Reporter
Many interesting and unusual national days exist. For instance, national days like, Winnie the Pooh day and kiss a ginger day.
One interesting day that is coming up this month is national ghost hunting day.
National ghost hunting day is the day that where people explore the most haunted properties throughout the world. Haunted
Journey’s founded national ghost hunting day in July of 2016 and celebrate it every year to kick off the month of October.
Haunted Journeys is a travel company founded in 2014 that presents the haunted destinations and getaways with the help from haunted inns, ghost tours, and events.
One might say a haunted destination is right here in Alva. The Cherokee Strip Museum is the third most haunted place in Oklahoma.
Ghost Hunters from all over come to visit the Cherokee Strip Museum to see if the stories are true. People who work there say the ghost hunters never leave disappointed.
The Cherokee Strip Museum preserves the history of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma. Before becoming a museum, it was the general hospital of Alva. At the time, Alva also had a POW camp during WWII that held Nazis. Some of prisoners would come to the general hospital, and some of them died in there.
Not only is the Cherokee Strip museum a museum now, a head start program is ran in the basement. Employee Beth Smith said that the children that are in head start a there always talk about a little girl that no adults can see.
There are five confirmed ghosts in the museum. A little girl, doctor, nurse, an Indian, and the most famous ghost, Trapper. The employees believe that Trapper is the ghost of the Nazi POW who died in the hospital.
Employees Beth Smith and Elaine Graybill told a story about a POW who came back to see the museum and he noticed a picture that was in the Nazi memorabilia, and he pointed who Trapper was. They said that every night the picture would mysteriously come off the wall.
The first incident of something paranormal in the museum was before it turned into a museum, when three Northwestern students rented out three rooms in the basement of the building. They did not live there very long. “They left because they felt as if something was in the building,” Smith Said.
Just like National Ghost Hunting Day, ghost hunters come every year to try to prove that there are no ghosts in the museum but they always leave with a different point of view. “I think it’s fun. They let me watch” Graybill said.
Graybill said one year a ghost hunting team out OKC came to investigate, and one of their young group members was so frightened that he had a relative drive from OKC to come pick him up in Alva at 2 AM.
There are many ghost stories about the Cherokee Strip museum. The employees interviewed seem to enjoy sharing their stories. It is almost as if the ghost sightings are normal to them.