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Bedford, INDIANA - Times Mail - 'Haunted' House's History
BY KRYSTAL SLATEN krystal -at- tmnews -dot- com
August 2, 2007
MITCHELL — Dr. John and Jessie Gibbons were married in Mitchell on Sept. 10, 1899. Some time after that, they moved into the house at 714 Warren St. Records can’t conclude whether or not the Gibbonses built the home or if it was already there when they moved into it. The doctor used two rooms for his medical practice — an exam room and an operating room.
Jessie died of pneumonia in the home in 1934, and John died at the hospital in 1944. He practiced medicine up until a few years before his death.
The Gibbonses never had children of their own. However, a foster daughter is listed in the obituaries for the couple.
Rumors, however, circulate that the couple took in children when their parents were killed or died. One such story is of a girl named Rachel and her twin brother, Enus. Their parents were reportedly killed in a carriage accident, causing the children to go to live with the Gibbonses. No records can be found about the children, but the story continues that Rachel was injured in a fire on Christmas Day in the home in 1912. She died of her injuries two days later. Enus died two years later. Both are reportedly buried in the back yard, along with an infant and two adults, according to sonar work Jarret Marshall had performed on the backyard.
Dr. John and Jessie Gibbons are both buried in the Mitchell Cemetery.
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Bloomington, INDIANA - Herald Times
Fall 2005 - Featured Home
When Jarret Marshall saw the ad in the Herald-Times reading “Historic house for sale” at a low price, he thought it was a bargain too good to pass up. What he didn’t know was that the house he bought in Mitchell, IN, was haunted. A property manager for a Bloomington apartment company, Jarret is skilled at fixing up buildings. The first day in his new house, an imposing 3700 square-foot edifice, he began tearing out a partition wall that had been added decades earlier to divide the parlor from the entry hall. Sorting through stacks of old lumber in the cellar, he found two square pillars and their supports. Dragging one upstairs, he found that it perfectly fit the space where the partition had been. Returning to the basement to fetch the other one, he heard a pounding at the front door. “I could see the door shaking,” he remembered. “But when I opened it, there was no one there.”
Jarret conjectures that in replacing the pillars to their original position, he may have awakened something. The parlor had been the site of a disastrous fire early in the 20th century in which a young girl died. The scars of the fire are still visible on the edge of the old pocket door, which had been covered by trim and hidden from view for decades.
The large frame house was built in either 1899 or 1913, depending on which authority is consulted, by Doctor John Gibbons and his wife Jessie. A spacious home with 10-foot ceilings on both the main and upper floor, it has a servants’ staircase in the back as well as a separate entrance for the doctor’s office. Apparently Dr. Gibbons’ daughter was the victim of the fire. After the doctor’s death in 1934, the house belonged to family members for some years, but eventually was converted to a boarding house. Then it was purchased by owners who kept it as a single-family home for 12 years before selling it to Jarret. “The house was in really bad shape,” Jarret observed, “as if people hadn’t taken care of it. When I began taking the carpets up and found these beautiful wood floors, I thought this was a real diamond in the rough.” The problems were only cosmetic, not structural, and he set to work at once, his sister Megan helping him. “My sister’s bedroom is above the parlor,” Jarret went on, “and she had been painting. After dinner she went upstairs to paint some more, and as I was carrying dishes from the dining room to the kitchen I saw a woman cross the room and stand by the fireplace. I thought it was my sister, and I told her she could help me with the dishes if she wanted. She turned her head and I went on into the kitchen. Someone said ‘hey’ and the hair stood up on my neck. I went upstairs and found Megan and told her ‘I was just kidding about the dishes’ and she told me she hadn’t been downstairs since dinner.”
Unusual things began happening more frequently, particularly at night. The running footsteps of a girl were heard over and over, and sometimes whispers, as if a mother were shushing an overly-active child. Jarret began inviting friends to come to the house to experience things for themselves. “We had some paranormal researchers come down, and they said to get old-fashioned toys from that era that might provoke the ghosts,” he continued. “We bought a ball and jacks and put them on the table. They were there the next day and we laughed and went on. But the next day they were gone, and none of us had moved them.” Soon afterwards, during an evening gathering of friends and co-workers, a jack from the ball and jack set skittered across the floor from the dining room into the parlor, coming to rest in front of all the guests. Then jacks began raining down apparently out of nowhere, and the ball came bounding across the floor as well. Gale Ray, another Bloomington apartment property manager and friend of Jarret’s, witnessed the strange goings-on and heard the voices whispering. “I’m of sound mind and a conservative person,” she said, “but I experienced some of the most awesome things. It’s absolutely incredible.
Everybody’s a skeptic when they walk in the door, but then they hear it, or see things.” Jarret believes there are three ghosts: the little girl, the mother, and a male spirit that comes out only rarely. So what’s it like, trying to live a normal life in a haunted house? “It never gets boring,” Jarret said carefully. “In a way, it’s comforting, because it shows that there might be more. ” On many occasions he has heard footsteps moving through the house, and more than once has been awakened by the perception that someone was standing next to the bed. Several friends who have spent the night at his house have felt their bed covers being tugged. While out shopping, Jarret ran into the couple who sold him the house. He at once asked if they had ever witnessed anything strange. The wife laughed and confirmed that her husband had on several occasions seen the spectral woman from the window as she crossed the front porch, but she was never there when he opened the door. “It’s made me feel so much better to know that other people have seen the same things,” said Jarret.
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