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Discover Mid-America — October 2009

The haunting of My Granny’s Attic

by Bruce Rodgers

It started the night Michelle Staley began moving her antiques into the house in old downtown Lenexa that would become her shop, My Granny’s Attic. The thumps, the creaks, the sounds of someone walking across old hardwood floors, doors opening and the very faint — what sounded like — children’s voices.

At first, Michelle totally dismissed the noises. “Old house sounds,” she told herself. But there were other things.

“I’d be working on something, put something down and come back later and it would be missing or moved somewhere else,” says Michelle. She dismissed those happenings at first, too.

“I thought I was just tired. But in a month or two, I decided something was going on here. I wasn’t just tired.”

An entry to the crawl space that runs the length and width of the house where My Granny's Attic is located. In early September, a paranormal investigator claimed to have encountered a "face" of a teenager inside the crawl space. (photo by Bruce Rodgers)

With the unexplained noises and missing or moved items, came the cold spots, the light touch on her neck, the sickness when she went down the basement and the feeling that someone was standing behind her. Many times the front door chime would go off and no one would be there. Sometimes, a customer would ask if someone else besides Michelle worked at the shop because he or she didn’t always feel alone upstairs.

It wasn’t easy for Michelle to consider her shop was home to spirits. She’s a seasoned antique dealer, 26 years in the business with a solid reputation of professionalism. Other dealers, journalists, historians and artifact experts come to her for advice and information. Ghosthunter she is not.

And there was the fact that other tenants of the house, including her current landlord, had experienced nothing unusual. Even her husband Darrell was unaffected. But Michelle knew what she knew — she was not alone and she set out to prove it.

In early September another paranormal investigative team came to the shop. The team confirmed what three other investigations had concluded: spirits inhabit My Granny’s Attic.

“I don’t think anything here is evil, where I envision this gnarly hand,” says Michelle calmly. “I think they just want my attention.”

The latest investigative team called the situation a “residual haunting” or intelligent haunt. Still, Michelle termed the September investigation “just wild.”

The team discovered a crawl space that ran the length and width of the house, leading Michelle to speculate the house was built before the early 1900s and could be part of the Underground Railroad.

EMF (electromagnetic readings) indicated a lot of paranormal activity inside the crawl space. When an investigator entered the crawl space and began moving through, he reported confronting a “face” of a teenager, possibly 15 to 17 years old. That recounting had Michelle remembering when the autistic daughter of a customer ran up the stairs into the closet where there is a crawl space opening shouting, “The children want to come out!”

Maybe the crawl space hid children on the Underground Railroad, thought Michelle.

After the investigative team had done its work, they and Michelle sat in the shop’s living room area talking of the night’s events and of Dr. Percy L. Jones, one of the town’s first doctors who once lived in the house with his wife Louise. As Michelle relaxed on a small lounger, “I felt this cold, electric touch to my body,” she remembers. “I then turned to my left and felt a burning and itching. I left the room and then discovered three scratch marks on my lower back.”

The incident was unnerving but Michelle kept it together.

Research has shown that the house is located on the old Santa Fe Trail and built near a water source. Running water tends to increase paranormal activity, claim investigators. Or, as Michelle speculates, maybe some of the antiques have “spirits attached to them.”

Whatever the causes, Michelle says the “land, house and antiques brew up this strange combination of energy.”

With over a year of encounters, she remains calm yet still nonplussed. “I’m ready to listen to them but they have to take the opportunity,” she says.

“I don’t see dead people.”

For more information on My Granny’s Attic and its inhabitants, visit www.mygrannysatticantiques.blogspot.com or call 913-825-1938. The shop will be having an End of Season Parking Lot Sale on Oct. 17. No admission charge to spirits or earthly inhabitants.