since. Researchers and townsfolk alike report hearing both a baby crying and the shouting of grieving parents. Check out the parking spot and picnic table by the bridge over the spillway for the best possibility of EVP or photographic evidence.
5. Echo Lake, Heartshorne, Oklahoma: This man-made lake, created in 1945, is one of the more unusual paranormal destinations in Oklahoma. Legend has it, every few years, the lake releases a poisonous green gas of mysterious origin that can cause illness.
Some say that it is due to chemicals leftover from Old Heartshorne, abandoned and flooded to create the lake. Others claim it was a Native American curse. Others say it is ghosts of people murdered in Old Heartshorne, a famously lawless town located just thirty minutes South of Robber’s Cave National Park, a well-known hideout for criminals such as Billy the Kidd and Belle Starr.
6
Emily slept late and woke sticky, the blankets wrapped around her chest and legs like bandages. She had dreamed of the house, of the red carpet and Frannie knocking around somewhere in the walls like a mouse, but she could recall nothing else. It was hot in the upstairs room and Emily kicked her blankets off and shut the windows. It seemed cooler to keep the air out, as it was windless and when the wind did blow, it felt like a hair dryer in her face.
Emily drove to Keno, the biggest town in Claymore county and the location of Wal-Mart, the only place Emily could find to buy what she needed for the pot luck.
The Wal-Mart in Keno was in the process of expanding its already enormous spread across a flat, once-grassy field. Bulldozers and crews had already laid concrete across a stretch of weed-tangled green space next to the existing store. When she entered the store through the sliding glass doors, the air conditioning hit her and dried the fine layer of sweat on her face. An elderly man in a blue vest standing by the rows of interlocking parked carts smiled and asked her how her day was. He offered her a cart, which she turned down, and he ushered her forward with his wrinkled hands. When the sleeve of his button-up shirt slid up, she saw the tail end of a dragon tattoo grown pale and greenish with age.
Emily navigated the narrow, overstuffed aisles to find a bag of cookies. People pressed against her with their shopping carts, children cried in the aisles, and women hefted 100-pack toilet paper rolls into their car-sized carts. The sheer excess was difficult to resist. The paper towels seemed so clean and fresh in their packs of eighteen, the six-packs of underwear folded neatly against their cardboard backing, and even pre-packaged food, like those soft oatmeal creme cookies, seemed wholesome and frugal when they came in boxes of fifty.
She managed to leave with only a few groceries and a pack of chocolate chip cookies. They rustled dustily in the bag as she walked to the car and hoped that she wouldn’t look like a fool bringing something marked IMPROVED TASTE! to a pot luck. Was a faux-pas not to cook your own dish, even if you knew nothing about cooking and had only brought a skillet and a saucepan to heat soup? Would people look at her and her bag of cookies and immediately understand that she didn’t belong? She didn’t know enough about Heartshorne to even know how exactly to worry.
•
She passed the church and had to backtrack. Levi had told her that if she hit the Quick Trip she’d gone too far, and she had quickly passed the yellow sign. On her way back, she found it: squat, with a purely decorative belfry atop, partially hidden by arching trees.
Inside, a man in starched, tan overalls, the fabric thick and inflexible like tarp, led her through the sanctuary, which was plain, all-wood paneling. He took her behind the pulpit, where a single painting of Jesus hung on the wall, and through a small door which led to a maze of turquoise-painted hallways that reminded her of one of her elementary schools with its
5. Echo Lake, Heartshorne, Oklahoma: This man-made lake, created in 1945, is one of the more unusual paranormal destinations in Oklahoma. Legend has it, every few years, the lake releases a poisonous green gas of mysterious origin that can cause illness.
Some say that it is due to chemicals leftover from Old Heartshorne, abandoned and flooded to create the lake. Others claim it was a Native American curse. Others say it is ghosts of people murdered in Old Heartshorne, a famously lawless town located just thirty minutes South of Robber’s Cave National Park, a well-known hideout for criminals such as Billy the Kidd and Belle Starr.
6
Emily slept late and woke sticky, the blankets wrapped around her chest and legs like bandages. She had dreamed of the house, of the red carpet and Frannie knocking around somewhere in the walls like a mouse, but she could recall nothing else. It was hot in the upstairs room and Emily kicked her blankets off and shut the windows. It seemed cooler to keep the air out, as it was windless and when the wind did blow, it felt like a hair dryer in her face.
Emily drove to Keno, the biggest town in Claymore county and the location of Wal-Mart, the only place Emily could find to buy what she needed for the pot luck.
The Wal-Mart in Keno was in the process of expanding its already enormous spread across a flat, once-grassy field. Bulldozers and crews had already laid concrete across a stretch of weed-tangled green space next to the existing store. When she entered the store through the sliding glass doors, the air conditioning hit her and dried the fine layer of sweat on her face. An elderly man in a blue vest standing by the rows of interlocking parked carts smiled and asked her how her day was. He offered her a cart, which she turned down, and he ushered her forward with his wrinkled hands. When the sleeve of his button-up shirt slid up, she saw the tail end of a dragon tattoo grown pale and greenish with age.
Emily navigated the narrow, overstuffed aisles to find a bag of cookies. People pressed against her with their shopping carts, children cried in the aisles, and women hefted 100-pack toilet paper rolls into their car-sized carts. The sheer excess was difficult to resist. The paper towels seemed so clean and fresh in their packs of eighteen, the six-packs of underwear folded neatly against their cardboard backing, and even pre-packaged food, like those soft oatmeal creme cookies, seemed wholesome and frugal when they came in boxes of fifty.
She managed to leave with only a few groceries and a pack of chocolate chip cookies. They rustled dustily in the bag as she walked to the car and hoped that she wouldn’t look like a fool bringing something marked IMPROVED TASTE! to a pot luck. Was a faux-pas not to cook your own dish, even if you knew nothing about cooking and had only brought a skillet and a saucepan to heat soup? Would people look at her and her bag of cookies and immediately understand that she didn’t belong? She didn’t know enough about Heartshorne to even know how exactly to worry.
•
She passed the church and had to backtrack. Levi had told her that if she hit the Quick Trip she’d gone too far, and she had quickly passed the yellow sign. On her way back, she found it: squat, with a purely decorative belfry atop, partially hidden by arching trees.
Inside, a man in starched, tan overalls, the fabric thick and inflexible like tarp, led her through the sanctuary, which was plain, all-wood paneling. He took her behind the pulpit, where a single painting of Jesus hung on the wall, and through a small door which led to a maze of turquoise-painted hallways that reminded her of one of her elementary schools with its
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