Garfield Ghost Town

I work at a summer camp, and like most camps of course there is going to be some ghost stories being told. Well one weekend when just staff was at the camp we were all hanging out around the fire and some of the local counselors told us a story about the Garfield Ghost Town; which just so happened to be almost directly across the highway from the Camp.

Apparently sometime during the late 1800's the town had been abandoned and almost all of the buildings except for a barn and an old house were relocated to the nearest town. But many local people still visit the abandoned area because there is still a cemetery of the people who had died while Garfield was still an active town. But the amount of people who have had paranormal experiences is kind of insane. There is even a meeting held every year where those who have had encounters with ghosts all gather and tell their stories.

Of course all of us newer counselors decided it would be a cool idea to take the golf carts across the Highway and go check out the abandoned town ourselves. There was 6 of us packed onto this golf cart. Three boys and three of us girls. It was the middle of the night and the only light came from the lights from our phones and the flashlights a couple of the boys had brought. First we decided to check out the cemetery. The graves were crumbling and falling over. The whole place had a really creepy feel to it. I ended up finding a little trail in the corner of the graveyard leading into the woods. I yelled to my friend B that I was going to check it out while they explored and took pictures.

At the end of this trail there was a single grave. It had cracked in half and was almost grown over. I almost would have missed it had I not almost tripped over the headstone. This was when I really started to get creeped out. I quickly ran back to my friends. I just wanted to go back at this point because I felt like someone was watching us. So did both of the other girls but the boys just shrugged it off like we were just being babies.

After this the boys decided we should go check out the buildings that had been left behind. There was an old barn and a house that was halfway sunk into the ground. We decided the barn would be a better place to start because we were less likely to fall through any floors. While inside the barn no one really noticed anything and we quickly grew bored. I remember telling the boys that we should just get through the house and get back to camp because by this time I was feeling really uncomfortable with us being there.

We enter the house through the front door. The floorboards seemed sturdy enough on the first floor. There was old pictures and paintings on the walls and the walls were covered in old newspaper which had been used as a wall paper. After we felt we had gone as far as we safely could on the first floor (after the first couple of rooms there was holes in the floor leading down to the basement) we decided to go see if the upstairs would have anything of interest. The flooring was actually in better condition but all we found was some old toys and a cat skeleton.

So then we checked out the last place, the basement. Since we could not trust the floor inside we ended up going outside and looking for the cellar door. I found it and called my friends over. When we were downstairs there wasn't a ton to look at, just some shelves with jars of old canned goods in one room and an old wood stove in the other. We were all in the room with the wood stove. All of us girls heard a mans voice. He said "You don't belong here. Leave."

For some reason none of the boys heard the voice. But all of us girls did and at this point we were practically begging the boys to let us all leave. They just kept saying "Just hold up, we can leave in a little bit." Us girls practically on top of the boys holding onto them for "protection". After a couple of minutes of them refusing to let us leave we hear a huge crash. When we went to check out what it was, it looked as if someone had grabbed a whole shelf of the jars and threw it against the opposite wall. We ran like hell.

The golf cart couldn't go fast enough for us to feel safe. But as we were leaving a different voice that sounded like it belonged to a small girl whispered in our ears, "Don't come back." Once again the boys heard nothing, which is incredibly frustrating because they all thought we were making it up.

I live about half an hour from Garfield, and my younger sister who is 17 has been begging me to take her back to see the town herself. I refuse to go back. If a ghost can throw a whole shelf against a wall who's to say what it can do to a person who ignored it's warning to never go back. But yeah, that's my experience with the Garfield Ghost Town.