MAYSVILLE, Mo. — Martha Shireman says her house is haunted.

The powder-blue, two-story house sits on one of Maysville’s bucolic main streets. It looks peaceful enough from the outside. The dark woodwork and lived-in atmosphere make it seem homey and domestic enough on the inside.

But in this innocent-looking home, lights have been known to turn on by themselves. Strange noises have been heard from empty upstairs rooms. And things like Ms. Shireman’s thermal mug and her sister’s bra mysteriously disappear.

She says she doesn’t mind these ghostly inconveniences, though. She’s just deals with them.

“It really doesn’t bother me,” she said. “As long as (the ghost) doesn’t bother me, I won’t bother it.”

Ms. Shireman moved into the house 12 years ago with her daughter and son-in-law and their two children. She said she had no idea that the house was haunted. For all she knew, it was a historical house that had a rich heritage.

“(Former) Missouri Gov. James T. Blair was born here,” Ms. Shireman said.

And even though the house has this historical significance, it has never been put on the National Register of Historical Places.

“It couldn’t be put on the historical register because it’s been remodeled and remodeled and broken up into apartments at one time,” she said.

The house seemed cheerful and roomy enough for her family when she moved in. But it didn’t take long for the strange stuff to start happening. It began with the plumbing.

“I wanted to put a sink in the upstairs bathroom, and I had my dad come up and help me do it,” Ms. Shireman said.

She knew her dad had shut off the water securely in the basement before he began work on the new sink. Everything went smoothly with the installation. But when her father began to install the new water lines, somebody or something,c turned the water back on.

“My daughter was taking a nap in the bedroom downstairs. She came upstairs and told us water was coming through the ceiling,” Ms. Shireman said. “We had to go turn off the water again.”

Shortly after the plumbing occurrence, an episode happened that involved her granddaughter Samantha. The young girl said she saw a man walking through the upstairs hallway one night. She just thought it was one of her uncles until she decided to ask about it the next morning.

“(Samantha) mentioned the next morning that she saw her Uncle Duck upstairs. I told her it couldn’t be Uncle Duck because he wasn’t here,” Ms. Shireman said.

Yet another encounter was experienced with Ms. Shireman’s mother-in-law, Naomi Shireman. It didn’t take her long after she moved in four years ago to get acquainted with her ghostly housemate.

“I woke up in the middle of the night and all the lights were turned on in my room,” Naomi Shireman said. “I didn’t know anything about a ghost until I told Martie (Martha Shireman) about it the next morning.”

It was only a few months ago when Martha Shireman herself encountered a spooky visitor in her bedroom.

“I was watching television in my room when I saw something flying around the room,” she said.

She at first thought it was just a bird. The small, dark, fluttering figure flew around her room a few times before darting into the hallway and disappearing without a trace or a sound.

“I never saw signs of it, no droppings or nothing. I still haven’t. It just vanished,” she said.

At other times through the years, the ghostly shenanigans have seemed less threatening or alarming. Bowls shatter into pieces by themselves in the kitchen cabinets. Simple things like bags of pennies, travel mugs and other small insignificant items periodically come up missing only to mysteriously return.
“So far everything that disappears comes back, except my sister’s bra. It never came back,” Ms. Shireman said.

The bra disappeared when her sister, Margaret Wilhite, came to St. Joseph from Eureka, Calif., a few years ago. Ms. Shireman recalled that her sister was getting ready for bed one evening and laid her clothes on the guest bed. When she returned to the bed a short time later, everything was there, just as she had left them — except her bra.

“We never found it,” Ms. Shireman said. “(My sister) is a big woman who weighs over 300 pounds. Her bra is not going to get mixed up with anybody else’s.”

• Story originally published by:
St Joseph News-Press / MO | Alonzo Weston - Oct 18.01

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