#Fort Leavenworth

[popculturelib]

Haunted States of America: Kansas

Ghost Stories of Fort Leavenworth (1988) by the Musettes Fort Leavenworth Museum, illustrated by Craig Streeter

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is an active army installation that was established in 1827. It protected the Santa Fe Trail and areas near the Missouri River as an important part of the westward expansion of the United States. Today, it is the oldest active Army post west of the Mississippi River.

Ghost Stories of Fort Leavenworth was written by the Musettes of the Fort Leavenworth Museum, a museum advocacy group, in an attempt to document stories of the many ghosts in and around Fort Leavenworth, which include:

A tea party held at 624 Scott Avenue

Faces seen in the fire and smoke of hearths

Ghosts of men who were executed at the US Disciplinary Barracks, a military prison

General George Armstrong Custer

Fort Leavenworth currently does ghost tours in and around the Fort if you live nearby and want to learn more. The museum is now called the Frontier Army Museum.

The Fort Leavenworth Historical Society also has a book titled The Haunted Houses of Fort Leavenworth (1995) by John Reichley. If you're interested in more stories about haunted Kansas, check out the aptly titled Haunted Kansas: Ghost Stories and Other Eerie Tales (1997) by Lisa Hefner Heitz in our collection.

The Browne Popular Culture Library (BPCL), founded in 1969, is the most comprehensive archive of its kind in the United States.  Our focus and mission is to acquire and preserve research materials on American Popular Culture (post 1876) for curricular and research use. Visit our website at https://www.bgsu.edu/library/pcl.html.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"TOBACCO IS UNDOING OF ESCAPED CONVICT," Wichita Eagle. November 17, 1929. Page 1. ---- Negro Fugitive from Fort Leavenworth Is Captured After Brief Freedom ---- FORT LEAVENWORTH, KAN., Nov. 16. - (P) - Freedom of Dean New, 35, former negro soldier who participated in the Houston, Tex., riots in 1917 and who escaped from the Fort Leavenworth guard today, was brief, the prisoner being captured just before dusk at Beverly, Mo.

Following his escape from a gang of prisoners working near the garrison on Green house the negro hurried across country to the Missouri river, which he swam.

His desire for a chew of tobacco apparently was his undoing. J. D. Cannon, postmaster and keeper of a general store at Beverly had been informed of the escape and when the negro entered his store his suspicion was aroused.

He made no effort to halt New, however, until after the fugitive left the store. Mr. Cannon then seized his shot gun, followed the negro outside and detained him. Being unarmed, the fugitive made no effort to escape.

Military authorities were notified immediately and returned the prisoner to the guard house.

New is alleged to have killed a man during the Houston riot. His sentence would have expired February 14, 1937, but he was declared eligible for parole June 9, 1927.

[whitepolaris]

):

[doniell-cushman]

Learn about the time I lived in a haunted house.

[wormkats]

fort leavenworth kansas

[qqueenofhades]

Plus, it is absolutely fucking disgusting that Trump was up there being treated like a serious candidate while CNN simply did not moderate or fact check him at all, and not in fucking Florence ADX or Fort Leavenworth, but that is a WHOLE other problem.

[gatheringbones]

[“Chow was the activity around which the whole prison revolved. The sections took turns going first, with twenty minutes for each one to make it all the way through the line. The guards controlled the speed with which the units were called, and one day at lunch, shortly before a big inspection was set to take place, one of the guards decided to assert his power by slowing down the food line so that section three didn’t get fed. Everyone flipped out, holding their empty trays, yelling bloody murder. This guard did the same thing at dinner, and the next day, again, at both lunch and dinner, until it became crystal clear that this was deliberate, someone acting on orders.

Meals were the only good thing we got every day, and the prison was fucking with them. It messed with our heads, created hostility between the sections, and generally tempted us to engage in behavior that would land us in the SHU. Prison is about control and dominance. On the second day of the crisis, the military police investigative unit (MPI) arrived. They’re the guards who cultivate confidential informants. They sat back and watched the panic, waiting for someone to misbehave in an actionable way.

Fort Leavenworth had a prison inmate council, something like a student council for prisoners. After three days of this deliberate baiting, I went to the council with a plan. Following chow time, prisoners had the option of either going directly to their own housing unit or heading to the medical window to pick up medications. There was a rule that prisoners could always get Tylenol, no questions asked. I suggested that every single prisoner go to the window and ask for a dose, which would overload the line dramatically and slow down the whole cycle of the day. We would be fighting back, while still following the letter of the law. It would only work, though, if all eighteen housing units got on board.

By lunch the next day, everyone was in. Every twenty minutes, more people stood up and moved from the dining hall to the pill line, in unison. The line wrapped all the way around the prison. My unit was the last one, so I got to see the reaction in the dining hall. The guards were panicked. They called for reinforcements. Riot cops came in with their kneepads and shields, arrayed like storm troopers all around the line.

As the investigators walked toward me, I grabbed my forehead. “I have the worst headache of my life!” I said.

I was shocked. Both that it had worked and at the extremity of the response. The commander of the prison was there, as were what looked like civilian cops from the outside. I started to worry they’d crack down on me. I worried they had seen me organizing. I was sweating. I actually did then get the worst headache of my life. Finally, at 4:00 p.m., the last people in the line, including me, took their Tylenol.

That night, the prison called a lockdown. For dinner, we were served sack lunches in our cells. Some people were thrilled at the success of what we’d done, how we’d stood up to our captors, but a lot of other people were pissed. Yes, we’d avoided the SHU, but instead of solitary confinement, we’d gotten stuck with group confinement, which could be its own version of hell, too.

The next morning, they released the lockdown. At chow, the commandant of the facility stood watching us, flanked by his deputy and a large group of investigators. I was ready for the deliberate baiting of inmates to begin again, but instead, something wondrous happened. Chow proceeded exactly as it was supposed to.”]

chelsea manning, from readme.txt

[amundsenxcook]

reasons for crying today

(transcript of amundsens letter:)

december 29th 1926

dear dr cook,

thank you so much for your last article. i should have written you long ago, but have been rather busy.

i want to wish you a happy year and should i come in the vicinity of fort leavenworth on my lecturetour you may rest assured i will look you up.

kindest regards,

yours very sincerely

roald amundsen

[anza-redstar]

Cook was transferred from Fort Worth jail to Leavenworth penitentiary on April 6, 1925. He was by all accounts a model prisoner—aside from his irksome habit of washing just once a week, based on the medically dubious notion that bathing opened the pores up to disease. He took up embroidery as a hobby and, like so many things he set his mind to, mastered it. “The result of this needle work I prize today quite as much as the best of my literary efforts,” he wrote. (The warden once submitted Cook’s floral designs anonymously to a statewide contest, in which he won first place, beating out the housewives of Kansas.)

[soupdwelling]

what the fuck do you mean jon matteson worked at fort leavenworth and got peppersprayed once and had his headshots taken by a random guy he worked with and some other guy he worked with made sausages in his basement what is going on

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Praises Warden's Bravery," Wichita Beacon. December 12, 1931. Page 1. ---- LEAVENWORTH, KAN., Dec. 12. - (UP) - The bravery of Warden T. B. White "saved my life from the three convicts who kidnaped me," Elizabeth Phillips, 18, married daughter of Joseph Gates, farmer, said today in an exclusive interview with United Press.

The three convicts, who held Warden White captive, entered the Gates home seeking to escape pursuing possemen. They captured the girl and her brothers to use as shields.

Mrs. Phillips said the men told her they were revenue men and that they wanted her to go to a neighbor's house with them.

"I thought the warden was one of the 'revenue officers," she said.

"When we started to leave an army airplane (from Ft. Leavenworth) flew low over the house. The men were frightened and it was then that I was sure they were not federal officers.

"The men took an automobile from four Leavenworth boys and decided to take Warden White, my- self, and my brother along as shields.

"I know you're going to kill me,'" Mrs. Phillips quoted the warden as telling the convicts. "But don't kill these two. They aren't in it at all."

"I jumped out of the car and started to run. Warden White grappled with the men. I heard a shot and turned - Warden White fell.

"The men must have thought they had killed him, because they left.

"I am sure they intended to kill all of us, and only Warden White's bravery saved us."

[railwayhistorical]

San Pedro River This is where Charleston Road crosses over the San Pedro River. (The historical site of Charleston is nearby.) Adjacent to the old bridge is a historical marker for the Mormon Battalion. Here they had a "battle of the bulls" (1846) on their march between Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and San Diego. The battle was with actual bulls, not people. Two images by Richard Koenig; taken May 4th 2024. Land acknowledgement: O’odham Jeweḍ, Akimel O’odham (Upper Pima), Tohono O’odham, Hohokam.

[wormkats]

fort leavenworth ks

[dcydevils]

[ STATS ... ] NAME . Elias Everett Ford [ E. E. Ford ] AGE . Fifty GENDER . cis-man PRONOUNS + SEXUAL ORIENTATION. he/him + who knows ! ! FAMILY . n/a OCCUPATION . Director of the CIA HEIGHT . 6'3

[ MORE ... ]

A born and raised patriot, Elias has only ever known their ideals. Until the age of twenty, what his parents taught him was all he was led to believe in ... and then, came the army.

Elias's life has very much been a military one, deciding early to make a name for himself in such circles. Elias graduated from West Point, with a B.S. degree in Military Science. He earned the General George C. Marshall Award as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. He subsequently earned an M.P.A. degree in and a Ph.D. in international relations from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

In the army, it became a game of one position, then another, and while most dreamed of the day of going back, Elias held no intentions of leaving. He said it was his duty, but not everyone believed that. He was good at it ... and he could get used to the violence.

And he did. Upon his ultimate return as a now fully formed man, there was no other field for him to explore... Everything his parents had taught him had already been forgotten... it was too long ago, wars blending together into the back of his mind.

Elias ultimately retired from the U.S. Army. During the ceremony, he was honored for his work as a combat leader and strategist in the modern world. For all in such circles, his nomination for Director of the CIA came as no surprise — and his cold grip on the position, much less.

And he didn't come to play. Elias would fix things ... or die trying.

[ PERSONALITY ... ]

Putting it simply, E. E. FORD can be radical, but he gets it done. He knows all too well it's not always enough to play by the rules ... and sometimes turning yourself into one of the bad guys, is the only way for the good guys to win.

[dailyanarchistposts]

May Day Since 1886

Lucy Parsons, widowed by Chicago's "just-us," was born in Teas. She was partly Afro-American, partly native American, and partly Hispanic. She set out to tell the world the true story "of one whose only crime was that he lived in advance of his time." She went to England and encouraged English workers to make May Day an international holiday for shortening the hours of work. Her friend, William Morris, wrote a poem called "May Day."

Workers

They are few, we are many: and yet, O our Mother,

Many years were wordless and nought was our deed,

But now the word flitteth from brother to brother:

We have furrowed the acres and scattered the seed.

Earth

Win on then unyielding, through fair and foul weather,

And pass not a day that your deed shall avail.

And in hope every spring-tide come gather together

That unto the Earth ye may tell all your tale.

Her work was not in vain. May Day, or "The Day of the Chicago Martyrs" as it is still called in Mexico "belongs to the working class and is dedicated to the revolution," as Eugene Debs put it in his May Day editorial of 1907. The A. F. of L. declared it a holiday. Sam Gompers sent an emissary to Europe to have it proclaimed an international labor day. Both the Knights of Labor and the Second International officially adopted the day. Bismarck, on the other hand, outlawed May Day. President Grover Cleveland announced that the first Monday in September would be Labor Day in America, as he tried to divide the international working class. Huge numbers were out of work, and they began marching. Under the generalship of Jacob Coey they descended on Washington D. C. on May Day 1894, the first big march on Washington. Two years later across the world Lenin wrote an important May Day pamphlet for the Russian factory workers in 1896. The Russian Revolution of 1905 began on May Day.

With the success of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution the Red side of May Day became scarlet, crimson, for ten million people were slaughtered in World War I. The end of the war brought work stoppings, general strikes, and insurrections all over the world, from Mexico to Kenya, from China to France. In Boston on May Day 1919 the young telephone workers threatened to strike, and 20,000 workers in Lawrence went on strike again for the 8-hour day. There were fierce clashes between working people and police in Cleveland as well as in other cities on May Day of that year. A lot of socialists, anarchists, bolsheviks, wobblies and other "I-Won't- Workers," ended up in jail as a result.

This didn't get them down. At "Wire City," as they called the federal pen at Fort Leavenworth, there was a grand parade and no work on May Day 1919. Pictures of Lenin and Lincoln were tied to the end of broom sticks and held afloat. There speeches and songs. The Liberator supplies us with an account of the day, but it does not tell us who won the Wobbly-Socialist horseshoe throwing contest. Nor does it tell us what happened to the soldier caught waving a red ribbon from the guards' barracks. Meanwhile, one mile underground in the copper mines of Bisbee where there are no national boundaries, Spanish-speaking Americans were singing "The International" on May Day.

In the 1920s and 1930s the day was celebrated by union organizers, the unemployed, and determined workers. In New York City the big May Day celebration was held in Union Square. In the 1930s Lucy Parsons marched in Chicago at May Day with her young friend, Studs Terkel. May Day 1946 the Arabs began a general strike in Palestine, and the Jews of the Displaced Persons Camps in Landsberg, Germany, went on hunger strike. On May Day 1947 auto workers in Paris downed tools, an insurrection in Paraguay broke out, the Mafia killed six May Day marchers in Sicily, and the Boston Parks Commissioner said that this was the first year in living memory when neither Communist nor Socialist had applied for a permit to rally on the Common.

1968 was a good year for May Day. Allen Ginsberg was made the "Lord of Misrule" in Prague before the Russians got there. In London hundreds of students lobbied Parliament against a bill to stop Third World immigration into England. In Mississippi police could not prevent 350 Black students from supporting their jailed friends. At Columbia University thousands of students petitioned against armed police on campus. In Detroit with the help of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, the first wildcat strike in fifteen years took place at the Hamtramck Assembly plant (Dodge Main), against speed-up. In Cambridge, Mass., Black leaders advocated police reforms while in New York the Mayor signed a bill providing the police with the most sweeping "emergency" powers known in American history. The climax to the '68 Mai was reached in France where there was a gigantic General Strike under strange slogans such as

Parlez a vos voisins!

L'Imagination prend le pouvoir!

Dessous les paves c'est la plage!

On May Day in 1971 President Nixon couldn't sleep. He order 10,000 paratroopers and marines to Washington D.C. because he was afraid that some people calling themselves the May Day Tribe might succeed in their goal of blocking access to the Department of Justice. In the Philippines four students were shot to death protesting the dictatorship. In Boston Mayor White argued against the right of municipal workers, including the police, to withdraw their services, or stop working. In May 1980 we may see Green themes in Mozambique where the workers lamented the absence of beer, or in Germany where three hundred women witches rampaged through Hamburg. Red themes may be seen in the 30,000 Brazilian auto workers who struck, or in the 5.8 million Japanese who struck against inflation.

On May Day 1980 the Green and Red themes were combined when a former Buick auto-maker from Detroit, one "Mr. Toad," sat at a picnic table and penned the following lines,

The eight hour day is not enough;

We are thinking of more and better stuff.

So here is our prayer and here is our plan,

We want what we want and we'll take what we can.

Down with wars both small and large,

Except for the ones where we're in charge:

Those are the wars of class against class,

Where we get a chance to kick some ass..

For air to breathe and water to drink,

And no more poison from the kitchen sink.

For land that's green and life that's saved

And less and less of the earth that's paved.

No more women who are less than free,

Or men who cannot learn to see

Their power steals their humanity

And makes us all less than we can be.

For teachers who learn and students who teach

And schools that are kept beyond the reach

Of provosts and deans and chancellors and such

And Xerox and Kodak and Shell, Royal Dutch.

An end to shops that are dark and dingy,

An end to Bosses whether good or stingy,

An end to work that produces junk,

An end to junk that produces work,

And an end to all in charge - the jerks.

For all who dance and sing, loud cheers,

To the prophets of doom we send some jeers,

To our friends and lovers we give free beers,

And to all who are here, a day without fears.

So, on this first of May we all should say

That we will either make it or break it.

Or, to put this thought another way,

Let's take it easy, but let's take it.

[myhauntedsalem]

Elizabeth Polly’s Grave

A cholera epidemic hit Fort Hays in Central Kansas in 1867. Elizabeth Polly lived at Fort Hayes with her husband, Ephraim Polly.

Elizabeth worked in the Fort Hays hospital with her husband who was an Army Hospital Steward.

A legend states that Elizabeth was a trained nurse. But other stories state she was just a Good Samaritan. Regardless, many believed she was God sent for she nursed and comforted the sick and dying during this epidemic.

Working day and night, Elizabeth’s only respite was an occasional stroll atop nearby Sentinel Hill.

Unfortunately, Elizabeth fell ill with this disease herself in the fall of 1867. Her dying wish was to be buried on top of Sentinel Hill. At her funeral she was given full military honors to recognize her courageous efforts.

But her dying wish was not to be for Sentinel Hill is made of solid bedrock so she was buried at the base of this hill instead.

In 1905, Fort Hayes was closed. All the soldiers’ bodies were moved to Fort Leavenworth. The civilians were placed in Hays City Cemetery. But Elizabeth’s body remains.

Starting in 1917, there have been many sightings of Elizabeth’s ghost.

A farmer, John Schmidt reported seeing a woman dressed in blue walking across his back pasture. He followed her as she headed toward Sentinel Hill. He watched as she entered one of his sheds.

When he arrived and inspected the area no one was there.

In the 1950s a highway patrolman stated he hit a woman wearing a blue dress and white bonnet with his patrol car near Sentinel Hill. When he got out to look around the woman he hit was gone and his car was not damaged.

Elizabeth was buried in a blue dress and white bonnet.

Many witness accounts state that when Elizabeth is seen she emits a glowing blue light. Because of this her ghost has been nicknamed Blue Light Lady.

Her ghost is frequently seen wandering atop Sentinel Hill–the place she loved best.

In the 1960s Elizabeth finally got her dying wish. Her body was reburied at Sentinel Hill’s summit. A marker placed on her grave reads “The Lonely Grave.”