Westport’s business owners include Bob’s good friend and hair stylist, Eddy Ahloe. Eddy, has retired his large upscale beauty shop, that was once popularly located on Westport Road, to a simple part-time operation from his home. He came to Kansas City to take care of his parents who moved here to be close to the “Latter Day Saint” Temple in Independence, Missouri.
On my way to the Kansas City library.
There are a number of haunted houses in Kansas City. There is even a private tour company that will take you and a group of friends to each known site. (It is something I’ve been wanting to do for some time.) In my teen’s I was adventurous and investigated a few old abandoned homes in the rural country and graveyards after dark, but I have never seen proof of ghosts or supernatural. I have played Ouija board, and helped the triangle move to spell correct answers. Frightening for little girls at sleep overs. As young girls we have levitated a girl, by holding her with one finger. Games I hope are no longer popular. My sister and I can amaze and amuse our friends with Tarot cards. Some friends follow detailed systems of astrology. I have no proof of spirits, it is nothing more than a game.
They say, Fat Matt’s Vortex Bar on 6th street, in Kansas City’s Croatian Strawberry Hill historic district, is haunted with ghosts. The building was originally a funeral home and the crematorium is still visible in the basement. I once worked at a laboratory that was once a funeral home, it had an abandoned casket in the basement where we stored an old chemistry analyzer.
The Indian Cemetery, in Kansas City, Kansas is haunted. There is a haunted a high school; I’m not sure what happened there to make it haunted. However, there are many vacant, abandoned old school buildings in the Kansas City area. Some recent developers are renovating these old schools into doctor offices, and others have been turned into residential apartments. Among the list of haunted businesses are a church, Memorial Hall, fire station, and a theater.
abandoned property
Some folks have captured images on their cameras at haunted Kaw Point. The historic events that occurred there would include a Mormon massacre, Indian massacre, Civil War violence, and gun fights over stolen gold. The Kansas City area has many haunted locations due to the horrific history the spirits of those killed from raids, gambling quarrels, fight for gold, disputes on religion and race, are still letting us know they are still around.
Kaw Villages
I once worked for a pathologist, assisting during autopsies. I was spooked by one-body; when the autopsy started the clock hanging on the wall above the table, stopped working. The hands on the big dial read 8:00. It was morning, when the body was brought in by an ambulance driver. He had experienced some strange occurence after picking up the dead body. On his was to the hospital, the driver had trouble keeping control of the vehicle. The dead women’s neck was broken as a result. Not her cause of death. It did make it difficult to keep her head from moving around during the autopsy, typically rigor mortis stiffens the body and there is no movement. Six hours later, the procedure was completed. I finished cleaning the room down; I noticed that the clock was working again. Out of habit, I glanced at the clock again before I turned out the lights, and the clock had returned to the correct time, 4:20. The pathologist said, the clock must be broken, and bought a new one the next day.
The most haunted place associated with my house, the trading post during the Santa Fe trail days, is not accessible to people; it is the Sauer Castle. The Sauer Castle is located in Kansas City. It was the residence of a New York man who moved here in 1858. He began building the mansion in 1868 after marrying a young widow with two daughters. By 1872 the mansion was completely furnished with the finest. The building sits on the Shawnee Indian trail that was part of the old Santa Fe Trail. The same road the wagons passed by my house the trading post.
The owner Anton Sauer died in the second floor master bedroom in 1879. His wife Mary continued to live in the house with her daughters. Mary died in the home in 1919 after a short illness. One of her daughters continued to live in the house and married and raised a family. Her husband, John Perkins, killed himself with a handgun. He had been suffering from a serious illness and was 72 years old when he committed suicide. During the Perkins marriage, their daughter drowned in the family swimming pool. Over five generations of Sauer family have lived in the house.
Ghost stories have been circulating since the 1930’s; rambunctious teens and trespassers are constantly trying to get into the house. In the 1930’s the owner had a dog that would fight off trespassers and vandals. In 1987, a great-grandson of Anthony Sauer took ownership and tried for years to resurrect the place with minor repairs like fixing the banisters and balconies. He installed a large fence around the property that keeps everyone out.
In the late 1990, the caretaker was arrested for stealing thirty thousand dollars worth of artifacts from the house. The family believes, false stories about the ghosts is the reason for the vandalism and constant attempts of trespassing.
Do we have ghosts?
I am asked that a lot.
Maybe.
The ghost, if there is one, it thrives on negativity or creating it. A poltergeist might explain why one or more folks feel as though they have been pushed or tripped. I have gotten use to the light bulbs popping when ever someone raises their voice in anger, rather than just burn out. I am not surprised to see a new water heater explode gallons of water, like Niagara Falls in the den.
I get a little spoked when flames shoot out of the electrical box and we only lose power on one side of the house. I get a little jumpy when the door bell starts ringing and no one is there. That has been happening a lot, since I started writing this blog. I assume it is the cold causing some wires to constrict or conduct within the doorbell button. However, the timing occurs as I write my history blog. Is this a coincidence? It makes me wonder if we do have a ghost.
Last Spring, Bob was sick in the hospital. All the power to his guitars and amps were turned off. Or I thought they were turned off. I was awakened by the freakish sound of Bob’s electric guitar playing by itself. I was so scared, I called the hospital and made the nurse go into Bob’s room to check on him. He was well, the nurse said. However, I couldn’t figure out how to shut the guitar up. After recovering from the fear that prevented me from going near the guitar. I slowing inched my way up to the speaker, or amp, (I am not a musician and have been given strict instructions to never touch Bob’s instruments-not even to dust). So I had no clue which switch to turn the humming guitar off. A switch was on, it did cut the power to the guitar. But to this day I do not know how or why that happened.
The vibe at my house attracts musicians and artist. They come seeking Lawyer Simons, they leave friends. Our friend, Tiffany, retained Bob as her attorney. She is a very pretty lady. She has movie star flair. Her blonde hair shined brightly in the room light.
She told us how her job at the jewelry store was going. Christmas is a good time of the year for jewelry sales. She also plays piano at Piropos Piano Bar. She talked about her career playing piano in Vegas and jamming with Max Groove.
We showed her our house. I was embarrassed that our poltergeist kept pushing her. She stumbled into each room. The ghost catching her foot on a rug, or stair, or elevation. She was sober. I know she wasn’t impaired. We may have a girl ghost, who gets jealous. Those things use to happen to me when I first moved in.
She couldn’t resist going over to the keyboard. She played us a few random tunes. They were very good. Bob and Tiffany played a duet.
I would like you to vote if you beleive in ghost or not…….
I do beleive in angels. Spiritual entities who exists to perform the will of our Lord. I don’t have a picture of an angel for proof. But I have seen an Angel with my own eyes. Some religions tell us that these angels testify on our behalf before the Heavenly Courts. Something to reflect upon.
Garden of Good and Evil
God expelled the first humans, from the Garden of Eden, and placed a mighty angel at the east of that garden…..”to guard the entrance to the Tree of Life.” The backyard of my house, a pre-civil war trading post in Old Westport, resembles what the founder, Joseph Smith, of the “Church of the Latter Day Saints,” refers to, in his new understanding of Genesis, as the location of Eden. During his trip through Westport and Kansas City in 1831, he had a revelation regarding the location of Adam and Eve’s first garden.
The old tree that grows in the backyard, we call, the garden of good and evil. Gazing at the tree will make you think you are near the entrance to the garden man was banished from. A hole in the tree has fascinated our pets for years. Something is down there, the dog and duck haven’t gotten it yet, but continue to bark a warning at the tree on a daily basis.
When Westport was young, Joseph Smith and his followers chose this area as their new, “Zion,” as they termed it. It is said that the Mormons, were first run out of New York and Pennsylvania, then organized a headquarters in Ohio, in the year 1831. That same year, the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” established missionaries to explore Missouri. The most developed city of the frontier times, for the new explorers, was Independence, Missouri. Joseph Smith and his followers declared the city the site for their “temple” and claimed God had selected the place as the “gathering place for his Saints to prepare for the second coming of Christ.” Since then, many proselytized Mormons, have come to Kansas City.
The Mormons brought with them a printing press and started a monthly news paper called the Evening and Morning Star. The newspaper began each issue announcing the Mormons were a “sect chosen by the Lord.” They also started a weekly publication called Upper Missouri Advertiser. Each article published, ripened a growing hatred towards the Mormons. In the summer of 1833, the citizens of Jackson County, decided that they had to take matters into their own hands against the “pretended religious sect” of Mormons. At least 700 citizens felt they had to protect society from the evils that the religious sect inflicted upon the community. A mob formed, willing to rid the Mormon immigration peaceably or forcibly. The printing office was destroyed first.
The Jackson County citizens did not see a reason to seek the arm of the law in Missouri. The Mormons, on more than one occasion, had printed Missouri’s liberal Constitution granting Freedom of Religion. The Saints were inviting followers to establish homesteads in the Kansas City, Westport, and Independence area. The citizens wanted a sufficient solution to rid themselves from the deluded fanatics, pretending to hold personal communication and revelations with the most high God. The behavior of the Mormons and claims of their leader’s direct messages from God, along with the increased migrations of settlers to this area, seeking this new religion, turned neighbor against neighbor.
In those days, when the distances were all different among the hills and prairies, many lives were lost. Without any legal authority, innocent men, women, and children were shot, stoned, and clubbed to death here in Westport and throughout Jackson County. Including a sick women who sat up from her bed, possibly brushed open the curtains to investigate the noise, and was shot in the head. She had no weapon in the home, clearly an innocent bystander. The local officers were appealed to by the Saints, but they did not get any justice from the courts or county officials.
During the Winter of 1833, a group of men gathered in a Westport trading post and general store to plan another attack on the Mormons hiding out at an adjacent settlement on the Blue Valley River. Most of the Mormons had already started migrating to Illinois in small groups. When the last group of Mormons heard that the townsmen were planning another raid they tried unsuccessfully to hide in the corn fields south of Kansas City. They were killed and wounded. The Mormons were driven from the county. The work of the mob was complete.
The Mormons left Missouri, by 1838, and fled to Illinois. In 1844, Joseph Smith was murdered by a mob in Illinois. Smith’s son, lead the thousands of followers into the desert and settled in Utah. In 1860, the followers of Joseph Smith, became “The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” A sect of polygamist branched off from the church, their doctrine was introduced by Brigham Young.
The Mormon faith continued to grow and they eventually returned to Independence, Missouri. The church’s missionaries reached the Polynesian islands of Hawaii which have brought many Samoan families to our community. Westport’s business owners include Bob’s good friend and hair stylist, Eddy Ahloe. Eddy, has retired his large upscale beauty shop, that was once popularly located on Westport Road, to a simple part-time operation from his home. He came to Kansas City to take care of his parents who moved here to be close to the “Latter Day Saint” Temple in Independence, Missouri.
In the Spring something wonderful happens at my house the trading post. The weather warms up. Bob brings home fresh bags of garden soil from the local greenhouse, along with starter plants. Fifty-eight days later, we have tomatoes.
Inside large clay pots that sit on the wood deck stairs, strawberry plants were started a few years ago. Each season a few more berry’s are produced. The first year, we just got one. There are several months to wait before planting season starts. Wishing you many warm moments to share.
I aways like to include related articles. The following link is interesting on the topic of Mormons and the Church of Latter Day Saints.
MY HOUSE THE TRADING POST 