Haunted Barracks

Witness: Holly Hale
Location: Dermott, Arkansas
Date of Encounter: April 2002 – June 2003

My husband and I moved into an older house that used to be a Japanese Concentration Camp Barracks that at one time was located in Jarome, Arkansas. After the house was moved to Dermott, and remodeled, it was owned by a few families before our landlord bought it to use as a rental house.

We had been living in the house for about three months before "things" started catching my attention. I noticed a picture on the wall that I would have to straighten just about every time I walked by. My husband noticed that the blinds would be crooked like someone had been looking out of them. The level of the particular slat on the blind was way too high for either of us to be looking out of. We would fix it, and soon it would be messed up again. I was putting laundry up one day and besides my three-month-old son, I was the only one in the house. I had just left the spare bedroom where my son's dresser was, and heard a noise so I went to investigate. When I went into the room, the dresser drawers were pulled out and one was dumped upside down on the floor. The drawers were hard for me to pull out so I know it didn't just fall out. I also came into the living room one day and the wagon wheel chandelier in the living room was spinning and the recliner was rocking… I was alone in the house. One morning at about 6 AM, my husband and I were startled awake by a loud noise that sounded as if one of the windows was slammed down. No windows were up because it was in the middle of winter.

The scariest part was the fact that I believe my closet was the portal. If I closed my closet door someone on the other side of the door would bang on it. When I opened it to see what was in there, I saw nothing except my clothes swinging. My sister thought I was crazy until she came to stay with me. I shut the closet for her and she saw first-hand how upset they got if I closed the door. I found out later that some friends of ours lived in this house as children and her brother passed away and was laid in wait in the living room. I'm thinking that I had a few ghosts in the house because there were childish things done like all of my canned goods were set out on the floor in the kitchen, and then grown-up things like the blinds. Almost every picture taken in the house contains orbs. I was never scared of the spirits and found myself talking to them so I wouldn't be talking to myself!