by Eva Pohler
“I think that was a lone white supremacist,” Tanya said.
“Well, the Klan is still active,” Carrie said. “You have nothing to fear from me and my team, but there are others in this town who aren’t so sympathetic, and Margaret has had firsthand experiences with them.”
Their food arrived. Once the waitress had left and they had begun to dig in, Carrie said, “Margaret’s grandfather, Clayton Myrtle, was seventeen when the riot happened. He’d gone to his high school prom, on his very first date, with a girl his mama didn’t approve of, when, after the dance let out, he and his classmates were rounded up by the National Guard and led to the Fair Grounds in a detainment camp. The boys were put in one area and the girls in another. Miss Myrtle sometimes laughs when she recalls what her grandfather used to say when he told the story: ‘It seemed my mama, the city of Tulsa, and the whole damned nation was set against me having my first kiss.’”
“That’s actually pretty sad and not funny at all,” Sue said.
“Margaret is a joyful soul, as was her grandfather, and they tried to find humor anywhere they could,” Carrie said. “They had to.”
“I guess so,” Ellen said.
Carrie finished a bite of her salad and said, “Clayton was a shoe shiner for a lot of uppity white men, so he was able to get himself released from the detainment camp as one of the ‘good’ Negroes—a label he hated like the devil. The Whites back then believed that there were two kinds of Blacks—the cooperative ones who knew their place and the rebellious ones who thought too highly of themselves. Clayton resented these labels as much as his peers, but he took advantage of the situation so he could run home and check on his mama and his younger brother, Jeffrey. Their daddy had been killed in a car accident a few years earlier, so Clayton had become the man of the house.”
“And did he find them okay?” Sue asked.
“All of their belongings had been thrown into the middle of the street, including the birthday presents his little brother Jeffrey had received two days earlier.”
“How senseless!” Ellen said, losing her appetite. She’d read about other riot survivors, such as George Monroe, who, at age five, had hid under the bed with his siblings as four white men carrying torches entered his house and set fire to the curtains, one of them unwittingly stepping on little George’s hand in the process. Reading about it had outraged her, but knowing a woman whose family had suffered made it feel more personal to her.
“And all the homes across from them had burned to the ground,” Carrie said.
“But their house wasn’t burned?” Tanya asked.
“Clayton’s mama told the men who came to her door that if they wanted to be guilty of murder, they could go ahead and burn her house down, but she wasn’t going to leave it,” Carrie said. “And since the houses were so close together, they didn’t burn that one row of homes. It was one of the few that remained standing in the wake of the riot.”
“Miss Myrtle’s great-grandmother must have been a strong woman,” Ellen said.
“Clayton used to say she was just lucky,” Carrie said. “There were a lot of other strong women in Greenwood who lost everything.”
“It’s so hard to believe something like that could happen,” Tanya said.
“Miss Myrtle was born in 1943,” Carrie continued. “Her father died fighting in World War II, so her mother moved in with Clayton and his wife Sonia so they could help raise Margaret. Clayton was more like a father to her, you see. And when Margaret was nine years old, she watched her grandparents scrape together every dime they had to help rebuild Mount Zion Baptist Church.”
“Isn’t that one of the churches destroyed in the riot?” Ellen asked.
“It had just been built and had had its first service in April, 1921,” Carrie said. “And then was burned to the ground on May 31, 1921. The parish was devastated. Can you imagine? Only a month old and burned to the ground. They had a $50,000 loan to pay back, which they finally did years later. They then had to save to rebuild. Thirty-one years after the riot, they finally did. It was a huge accomplishment for a community that had been ravished and then virtually ignored.”
“Yes, that is an accomplishment,” Ellen said.
“How unfair,” Tanya said. “Shouldn’t the city have been responsible for it?”
“Miss Myrtle tried to fight that battle when she was a young woman. She went to college and majored in criminal justice. But when she started the conversation on the political scene in 1975, she received numerous threats.”
“What kind of threats?” Sue asked.
“They started as phone calls,” Carrie said. “Someone would call and say she should leave Tulsa, if she knew what was good for her. Once they even asked how her grandmother was doing.”
“Oh my gawd,” Sue said. “They threatened her grandmother?”
“That’s not the worst of it,” Carrie said. “They started throwing rocks through her grandparents’ front windows and car windshields. The rocks sometimes had papers tied to them with messages that said: ‘The Ku Klux Klan is watching you.’”
“So that’s how she knew it was the Klan,” Ellen said.
“Exactly,” Carrie said. “They took full responsibility, though they never mentioned their names individually. They hid behind their organization in their white hoods.”
“Wow,” Tanya said. “No wonder she gave up the fight.”
“She kept at it for another few years, even after all those threats,” Carrie said. “It wasn’t until her grandmother was murdered in 1981 that she finally gave in to the terrorists.”
“Murdered?” Sue asked.
“By the Klan?” Ellen asked.
Carrie shrugged. “It was never proven that the Klan was responsible. It was ruled a suicide. Sonia was found with a shotgun in her hand, her head blown to bits. But Margaret knew her grandmother. She knew there was no way that woman could have committed suicide—and especially not that way. She was a proud woman who always kept up her appearance—hair and makeup always pristine. Blowing her head off was definitely not her style.”
“No wonder Miss Myrtle refused to talk about the riot with us last month, when we first met her,” Tanya said.
“That explains why she blew us off with the thing about coming into money,” Sue added.
“She’s only doing this investigation because I asked for her help,” Carrie said. “And I wanted you to be aware of how sensitive this topic is for her and for all of us.”
“Do you think the danger of the Klan is as bad today as it was in 1981?” Ellen asked.
“I’m sure of it,” Carrie said, without hesitation.
Chapter Sixteen: Halloween Night
Monday evening after an early dinner with Lexi and Stephen at a restaurant across town, Ellen and her friends walked the two blocks from their hotel to meet Carrie and the paranormal investigation team at the property on the other side of Cain’s at five o’clock. Carrie and her team hoped to take advantage of the diminishing daylight as they set up their equipment in nearly every room of the building. Unlike Ellen and her friends, they were prepared to spend the entire night on site—even the seventy-three-year-old Miss Myrtle. They’d brought cots and sleeping bags and snacks, along with even more equipment than the previous night.
Ellen and her friends had agreed to stay as long as they could, and, although they weren’t excited about the possibility of the shadow man following Tanya to their hotel room again, they were less excited about sleeping in the abandoned building.
Once the equipment was in place, Carrie asked the team to convene in the old skating rink, where they were set up in the same formation as they’d been the previous night in the pale purple glow of the black lights emanating from the full spectrum cameras. All the other light sources had been turned off, including the flashlights each of them held, courtesy of Carrie. Miss Myrtle sat at the card table drawing while Carrie asked the spirits questions. Most of them were a repeat from the night before, but she spent a little more tim
e asking about the fire and the riot. During those questions, Ellen tried not to stare at Miss Myrtle and think about what was going through that poor woman’s mind.
Tonight, Carrie also had a set of dowsing rods made of copper. She handed the portable camera over to Justin and then held a rod in each hand, pointing straight out from her body, parallel to one another and about shoulder width apart. Justin trained his camera on her as she told the spirits about the rods.
“With your help, these can guide me to your bodies,” she said. “As I move in the right direction toward your position, cross the rods together like this.” She overlapped the ends of the rods. “As I move away from your position, push the rods further apart, like this.” She pushed the ends of the rods open to form a wide V, with her body at the apex.
She returned the rods to their original position, parallel to one another, shoulder width apart. “Spirits, if you understand, please tell us if you will help us. You can cross the rod tips together now to indicate Yes and spread them apart to indicate No.”
Everyone watched on in silence as Carrie waited, standing in the center of the room. Just when Ellen thought nothing was going to happen, the ends of the rod tips crossed.
Carrie said, “Please note that the rods have crossed on their own, indicating that the spirits are willing to guide me.”
Carrie moved the tips parallel to one another and crossed the room toward the old bowling alley. “Spirits, please tell me if I’m moving toward your bodies by crossing the rod tips. Indicate that I’m moving away from your bodies by spreading the rod tips apart.
As Carrie continued down the hall, with Justin following, Ellen lost sight of her.
Eduardo, meanwhile, had moved near Tanya with his handheld EMF and temperature reader. “I sense someone with you again. It’s not Vivian. It may be the same spirit that attached to you last night. Can you sense anything?”
“I’m really cold,” Tanya said. “And very tired. But otherwise, I don’t feel any different.”
“Close your eyes, dear, and try to connect with the spirit,” Eduardo said. “Maybe you could talk to him. Ask him to touch your hand and see if you can feel anything.”
While Eduardo worked with Tanya, Sue and Ellen watched Miss Myrtle sketch. This time, she drew a truck pulling a flatbed trailer containing a mound of human bodies. Ellen covered her mouth and glanced at Sue. The book Ellen had been reading mentioned that eye witnesses spoke of such a truck hauling dead bodies away from Greenwood.
But maybe Miss Myrtle was recalling stories about the riot and wasn’t necessarily communicating with spirits.
Carrie returned to the room and walked in the direction of the hobo camp. “Please cross the rods as I move close to your bodies, and spread them apart as I move away from you.” The rods remained parallel.
Sue turned sharply toward Tanya. “I saw him. From the corner of my eye, I saw the shadow man. He was standing right next to you, Tanya.”
“I saw him, too. I can still see him,” Eduardo said. “Tanya, ask him to point to his body. Ask him where his body is.”
After giving Ellen and Sue a look that meant she was unsure of herself, Tanya did as Eduardo asked.
“He’s pointing north,” Eduardo said.
Hearing this, Carrie pointed her rods north. The tips moved closer together.
Ellen’s heart picked up its pace at the prospect of finding the body of this spirit and possibly a mass grave, but she tried not to get her hopes up. Could Eduardo truly see a spirit pointing north? Why was it so hard for her to believe? Nevertheless, she followed Carrie and Justin across the room to the back wall, where the dumbwaiter was. The tips continued to move closer together.
“Let’s take this outside,” Carrie said.
Ellen and Sue followed Carrie and Justin through the old ballroom and then down the hallway to the hobo camp and out the east entrance toward the north side of the building, toward the highway. At first, the rods went slack, back to parallel, but as Carrie continued north toward the highway, the tips moved toward one another again. Then about thirty yards from the building, the rod tips crossed and pointed down to the ground.
“Oh, my goodness!” Carrie shouted into the dark night. “I feel a strong force right over this spot.”
Justin trained the camera at her. “Do you think this may be where the bodies from the riot are buried?”
“Only one way to find out,” Carrie said.
“Dig?” Sue asked.
“We won’t be able to do that until you close on the property,” Carrie said.
Ellen recalled the methods used by the anthropologist, which she’d read about in the book on the riot. She told them about the ground-penetrating radar technology and the probes the university professor once used in the local cemeteries.
“Do you think that professor is still alive?” Carrie asked her.
“Only one way to find out,” Ellen said with a smile.
As Justin hammered a stick into the ground to mark the spot, they were startled by a sudden swish immediately behind him, and the air around them moved.
“Did you hear that?” Carrie asked.
“Something flew up from the ground,” Ellen said, shaken.
Had Justin released a spirit when he’d penetrated the ground?
Chapter Seventeen: The Shadow Man
That night, Ellen and her friends had a hard time going to sleep. Now that they knew a shadow man had attached himself to Tanya the previous night, they were afraid he might be in the room with them again. Ellen reminded them that he hadn’t done them any harm, but even she was spooked.
Sue had just changed into her nightgown and had washed her face when she came into Tanya and Ellen’s room and said, “How would y’all feel about making a circle of protection?”
“What’s that?” Ellen asked, realizing she still had a lot to learn.
“It’s a circle that you can draw out of salt or some other mineral,” Sue explained. “It’s even more helpful if you can mark the cardinal points with candles or water or some kind of natural element. Then you cast a protection spell forbidding any spirits from entering the circle.”
Ellen bit her lip. How could they possibly manage such a circle? And, if they could, would it work? Even though she’d accepted the existence of ghosts, she wasn’t sure she believed that a circle of salt could keep out the spirits.
“It might help us get a little sleep tonight,” Sue added. “Should we try it?”
“How?” Tanya asked. “What can we use?”
Ellen searched through her ghost hunter kit but didn’t find anything in it for protection.
“I have a few salt packets from that doggie bag I brought back yesterday from the burger joint,” Sue said.
“That won’t be enough, will it?” Ellen asked. It seemed to her that if salt was really going to prevent a spirit from crossing, it would take more than a few packets.
“It doesn’t take much,” Sue said. “And then we can light that scented candle I bought for my mom at that gift shop down the street, and we can use cups of water for the other cardinal points.”
“Where would we make the circle?” Tanya asked.
“Well, around your bed,” Sue said.
Ellen bent her brows. “But then you won’t be protected.”
“Unless Tanya scoots over,” Sue said. “I know I’m a big girl, but I don’t need much room. I like to hug the edge of the bed. And we can turn on the TV to drown out my snoring.”
“I don’t know if I can sleep with the TV on,” Ellen said. Then when she saw Sue frown, she added, “But I’m so tired tonight, I just might be able to.”
Sue took out the new candle she’d bought and used her lighter to produce a flame. “Let’s see. I have a compass phone app. Let me find north. Here it is. I’ll put the candle on this nightstand.”
Then she opened each salt packet and sprinkled the salt on the floor around the bed and along the top of the headboard. Ellen could only imagine what the cleaning lady woul
d think in the morning.
After Sue laid three plastic cups of water on the floor along the circle, she said, “Now we just need the words.”
“What happens if we get up and use the restroom?” Ellen asked, still not sure she was going to buy into this whole thing. “Will that break the circle?”
“I’m glad you asked, because you have to open and close it,” Sue said. “I haven’t closed it yet, so you’re okay. But once I do, you’ll need to turn counter-clockwise two times to open it and then two times clockwise to close it again.”
“What if the shadow man gets in while one of us is in the restroom?” Tanya asked.
“Dang, I should have tried to incorporate the bathroom,” Sue said. “Now we’re going to have to say the words out loud every time we close it.”
“What are the words?” Ellen asked.
Sue picked up her phone and read the words out loud as she waved one hand in the air and turned clockwise by the bed twice:
Guardians of the North, South, East, and West,
Elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water,
Bless this circle and protect those within,
Whether father, mother, son, or daughter.
No unwanted entities shall enter,
And safety shall prevail in the center.
This circle is cast.
Grant it shall last.
“That’s a lot to remember every time we go to the restroom,” Tanya pointed out.
“I’ll write it down for you,” Sue said. “Unless you have any better ideas.”
“I’m fine with it,” Ellen said, realizing that Sue truly was frightened. If the circle brought her comfort and security, so be it.
Tanya shrugged. “It’s better than all of us just lying here listening for noises in the dark.”
“Well, I still may do that,” Sue said.
Once they were all three settled with Ellen and Sue each hugging their respective sides of the bed so as not to crowd Tanya, Sue turned on the television to HGTV, and they all tried their best to fall asleep.