In the peaceful quiet town of
Heppner; there is something a little out of ordinary. The court
house of in Heppner is haunted. No one will ever know how many
ghosts
haunt the Courthouse, people say this place is so over taken
with souls that even its walls will bleed. Andrea Denton the former
personnel director of the county court says
she's never seen any ghosts. But she remembers when Les Paustian,
courthouse custodian, painted Judge Terry Tallman's office. "Les would
pop these paint bubbles
and lines of red fluid would drip down the white walls," Denton
said. "They looked just like blood."Denton said the custodian asked her
when the office had ever been
painted red?. Never, she said. Barbara Bloodsworth used to be the county
clerk. Her office sat right below the courtroom, where many townsfolk
claim sad souls linger. "There
have been many a murder trial in that courtroom," Bloodsworth said.
The most famous case involved a woman who shot and murdered her
lawyer because she was
unhappy about her divorce settlement, she said. "She shot him
down at the cafe. Evidently she didn't think he defended her very
well," Bloodsworth said. Vi Wilgers
said her boss, District Attorney David Allen, gets a creepy feeling
when working late. "My boss was working late one night and heard
something creaky. The next day
he said, 'I'm never staying here after dark again. Former District
Attorney Annetta Spicer understands why. She used to get scared in the
courthouse at night. Many
times Spicer said she would walk away from a room only to return and
find a window open that had previously been shut. She heard footsteps
outside her door, even
when no one was around. And once she saw a man at the top of the
stairs outside the courtroom. "He didn't turn to look at me, which I
thought was odd. He was
standing in front of the picture of the founding fathers of Morrow
County, staring at it." Spicer says she asked her assistant who the man
might be when the woman
looked in the hallway, the man was gone. none of them had
heard him leave.And it's impossible not to hear people come or go
because the courthouse stairs make
creaking sounds and shudder no matter how light the footstep. Late
one night she heard three toilets on the top floor flush, all at
once. There was also the time she
pushed the start button on her small hand-held recording
device and heard the giggles of small children she didn't know. And the
day she found her files on active
cases, turned around in the opposite direction of how she filed them. "They were all still in order in the stand where I had left them. But they were all picked up and turned around," Spicer said.