18/01/2023
"The Haunting at Hurtt Lane"
This is a harrowing story from Walnut Grove, Missouri:
In 2012, a family was struck by a string of paranormal activity after moving onto a property 3 miles west of Walnut Grove. The father just left Colorado after his term in the military, and they relocated there to help his ex-girlfriend's grandmother take care of the property. Situated on five acres of land were a couple homes, an old farmhouse, and a barn. Surrounding that was, in his words, a forest that nobody felt comfortable journeying into at night. "It takes a lot for me to get scared... but something in those woods really hated people entering there after the Sun went down. The forest felt like it took on a life of its own. During the day, it was amazing; underground streams at the heart of it, willow trees at the bottom of the hill, and it felt magical almost."
The activity started ramping up about a month into living there. The grandmother had boarded up here skylight windows due to her seeing a man with a top hat staring down at her while she slept. That was unusual, but the couple shrugged it off and chalked it up to an overactive imagination of a woman that had been living in the middle of nowhere for decades. She also had stories of odd happening, knocks, shadow people in the forest, etc...
While burning trash one day, (A common rural occurrence in those parts), the dad and his oldest son heard a deep, booming laughter come from behind the grandmother's home. They rushed to the back of the home to see nobody there. At night, the girlfriend would hear bootsteps slowly coming down the hall towards their bedroom and see a silhouette of a shadow in the doorway, but the boyfriend was next door tending to the grandmother. Corn snakes finding their way into the home was a weekly issue during the warmer months. And the man's second oldest, (No more than two years old at the time), started sleepwalking into the master bedroom, stood there for 5 or 10 minutes, then would go back into his room. These happenings started escalating, so the man mentioned to his mother who lived in Miller, MO, everything going on.
The father was a practicing occultist, and he was used to instances of high strangeness. However, when he felt that his children were being affected, he decided to not take any chances. The man's mother, stepfather, and two brothers came out to investigate the area. They all had experience ghost hunting and exploring the darker reaches of the paranormal, so it was very procedural for them. Shortly after arriving, they set up motion cameras in the master bedroom, made the living room HQ, and sent teams of two outside to attempt to investigate the woods. While inside, the man was showing his mother how touchy the motion camera was, and it would snap photos if the bedroom door even creaked... while chatting and observing the monitor, his toddler son walked into the master bedroom sleepwalking again... the motion camera never went off, but since they were live streaming to a laptop in the living room, they could see everything. His son proceeded to enter the room, eyes closed, and stared towards the ceiling by the window for 15 minutes. The group at HQ started freaking out, but the father didn't want to disorient and scare his son while he was sleepwalking. After he stared at the ceiling, he walked over to the PC that had the motion camera setup... he smiled from ear to ear in a way that sent shivers down the spine before opening his eyes and staring directly at the camera. At that point, the man's mother pleaded to pull him out of the room, so the man did and put him back to sleep.
Meanwhile, outside, the two brothers were near the barn. Between the home and that point was overgrown weeds and tall grass measuring roughly 4 feet high. They stopped dead in their tracks when they began hearing a little girl laughing deep in the overgrowth. The curiosity quickly turned to terror as the sound of the little girl transformed into something deeper and more animalistic... and it was quickly coming right at them. They took off running in the direction of the home as something was barreling through the weeds and grass right to them. They made it inside and explained through labored breaths what happened.
The group made their way outside, looking for anything or anyone that may have been the cause of the incident. Nothing was there, but you could see in the overgrowth where something large had made a path through the middle of it. The three brothers decided it was time to explore the forest. A few hours had passed since the start of the investigation, and there were still a few hours of darkness left before the Sun came up.
Armed with flashlights and EVP recording devices, they entered the ominous woods. "You don't understand fear until you feel it on a primal level. The kind of fear that electrifies your spine and triggers your fight or flight response. That's the kind of feeling you would get walking into those woods after Sunset." the man stated. No more than about 10 feet into the darkened forest, the men heard something heavy jumping through the trees; cracking branches with each leap. The sound of crickets ceased, and the men all agreed that something did not want them entering at that time. They looked around with bated breath; until a strong wind started blowing leaves and dust all around them. It felt like something was watching them from every direction. They ventured deeper into the woods and down the hill a little ways, but then stopped near the underwater stream... something was glowing a faint blue light and flittering through the trees. The light seemed to be sentient and gave off a feeling of apprehension. The brothers started feeling disoriented and nauseous. They backtracked out of the woods and never returned at night.
Years later, the man states that he never truly figured out what was happening there, and that the periods of high strangeness started to become less frequent the four years they lived there. Since moving, the land was sold, and all buildings had been demolished and left to nature.
What are your thoughts? Ghosts? Demons? Cryptids? Or maybe an aggressively protective nature spirit? The world is full of mysteries, and this one will forever be in the minds of those it touched.
Story and Artwork by Jimmy Ash.
