The Sallie House // Kansas // 57

This story takes place in Atchison, Kansas at 508 N 2nd street. WHICH IS OUR LAST STATE.
The house was built between 1867 and 1871, by Michal C. Finney. His son, Dr. Charles Finney, got a knock the door on a stormy night in 1906. A very frantic mom was holding her daughter, who was dying because she had appendicitis. Dr. Finney couldn't wait for the anesthesia to kick in so he started operating on her right away, unfortunately, her appendix burst during surgery, and she passed away quickly after
Just think how freaking awful it is, to be a little girl, already in a huge amount of pain, to have someone dig into you, while you're still awake, what she went thru, I csnt even imagine.
BUT, spoiler alert, this part of the story is widely known but could be just a legend. There is a lot of controversy on if Sallie even existed or not.

This was taken straight from Debra's blog, and I know you don't know who that is yet, but I feel like this is kind of important to know, someone asked her if they ever found out for sure what was causing it, and Debra replied with, quote,
"No we did not. We are fairly certain that there was never a little girl spirit named Sallie. There are no records we can find to substantiate Sallie. We believe that there is a much darker force in the house that presented as an innocent little girl to gain our acceptance and ultimately an invite to cause chaos in the home and within our family."
The reason I put this quote so early is because This is actually terrifying, as we get further in, you'll see how they did invite this particular spirit in and treat it almost as if it was alive.
Many other people have done extensive research on the home and cant find anything on a Sallie that lived in the town, some even say that there was no activity even reported in that house up until around 1990.
You can choose what you wanna believe as we get further into this story, maybe she wasn't even from there but was from another town over, or maybe records got lost or just didn't exist of her. Maybe just the appendix story was made up, but Sallie still is a spirit inside the house, could've been from a different time period than they thought. Or a spirit posing as a little girl.. So many possibilities.

The family who actually brought the Sallie house into the light, were the Pickman's. Tony, Debra, and their newborn son. They moved into the house that was owned by, Les Smith, who rented it to them. It was never actually either of their intentions to make the Sallie house famous, they were more nervous than anything to come out publicly because they were worried about what people might think of say about them. They didn't wanna be blasted on TV and all the bullshit that comes with it, they more or less just wanted help because they didn't know how to deal with this type of situation. Unfortunately, most of this ended up happening anyway but they still lived in the house for 22 months, enduring multitudes of paranormal happenings.

One of these many incidents was with teddy bears, the Pickman's had been gone all day with Debra's sister who had been visiting, and when they got home, Tony went upstairs, and the stuffed animals and dolls in the nursery were in a perfect circle, so he asked Debra why she put them in a circle, but she had no idea what he was talking about, all 3 went upstairs and saw what Tony described. Thinking its some goofy prank, done by his brother, who lived next door, they put them back on the shelves, flipped the light off, and headed back down, on the way down the stairs, the light came back on, so they all went back upstairs and all the stuffed animals were back in the damn circle. (Think about how fast this is happening cause they're not even making it all the way down the stairs)
Not long after this happened Tony's brother was over and talking about the bear incident, they were in the living room, and they had a bear, that was sitting on the table next to the TV, his brother states saying things like, if you're here I'm gonna take a picture, show me, do something, when he finished his sentence, THE BEAR SPUN AROUND IN A CIRCLE and this id actually caught in the picture his brother took. You can see how blurry the bear is from spinning, while everything else is in focus.
They're scared shitless at this point, understandably, and it's actually the first time they felt forced to leave, though it happened many times after this too.
So, They packed up the baby and headed to Tony's parents house, as he was putting him in his car seat, he felt a stinging sensation on his back, but he was freaked out and just wanted to go, so he ignored it, until they got there and it was still bugging him. Thinking an insect bit him at this point, they lift his shirt to see if they can find where it got him but instead found 3 scratch marks right down his back.

A lot of the anger and forces seem to go after Tony the most. He couldn't sleep at night because he would hear whispers that he said sounded like 6 different people, he couldn't make out the whispers, but he could hear them a lot, he also would hear scratching noises on the walls (hate that)

They would have lights and TVs go on and off, pictures flip upside down, and candles that had never been lit, would have wax melted UP the candle, you heard that correctly, the wax melted the opposite direction gravity says its supposed to.

Tony came home from work one day at around 7 am, he was going to pour himself some orange juice, so he grabbed a glass from the cupboard,  and when he turned around, a little girl that he described as dressed from the 1800s, with brown hair that was pulled up with a bow on top of her head, was standing there, they both seemed to have startled each other so when he dropped his glass, it shattered, so he looked down quick, by the time he looked and it she had disappeared. This was believed to be Sallie, and he immediately bolted up the stairs to tell Debra, who started asking him a ton of questions, trying to get details. Tony said she looked just as real and any human looks and he drew up a portrait of her the best that he could. (Which ill have Megan post with the story) also I should mention quick that the original spelling of Sallie was S-a-l-l-y, but when they figured out the time period she would have lived in, it was changed to S-a-l-l-i-e and I mention that here because that's how its spelled on the portrait he made.

This wasn't the only time he saw a full apparition, he was trying to sleep one day, when he heard the usual creepy sounds, the whispering and scratching on the walls. He looked at the window and said it looked like dust particles and first (describe- you know how you can see little dots floating-sunny day) then it started to get darker and darker until it actually formed into the shape of a woman. She walked towards his bed, he was trying to scoot back as much as he could, because he's scared as hell, and her fucking arm shot out at him, while she said, "I'm gonna"
He said he was so scared that he couldn't even get himself to scream.

In June of 1993, they Pickman's brought in Barbara Connor, who was a psychic and a family friend who they trusted to stay discrete about the situation. She came from California and was connected to some production companies. She was approached not long after but multiple platforms trying to do a story on the house. Barbara is actually who named it the Sallie house because that's the first name she heard while investigating the house, told to her by a little girl apparition.

Due to being told that they should maybe almost invite this spirit in by Barbara, because she was a sweet little girl, who just wanted some attention, Debra got her a little boy doll. Barbara also said she needed to set rules and be firm on those rules. She unpackaged the doll (as in, got rid of twist ties and everything) then put it back in the box and wrapped it up like a gift. She left it in the corner of the nursery, where she had put some crayons and paper for Sallie to draw or write with. For months the package sat in that exact spot. Until the day that Debra walked into the nursery and saw that exact doll, sitting in the crib. She looked over to the wrapped box and it still sat in the exact same spot, untouched. She even checked to see if the tape had been pulled off anywhere or moved, which it hadn't. She also caught pictures of the crayon standing up on its own, in a writing position.  (She didn't know what she was doing obviously, but PLEASE don't invite spirits in like this, they can be malevolent and posing as a kid)

Back to the crayons and paper I mentioned a minute ago, Debra had written on the pad of paper, quote, " Hello Sally, how old are you?" When her neighbors brought by a few dolls that their kids had played with previously. She went to put them in the corner, where she set stuff up for Sallie, and on the paper, was the number 7 and the word, like.
"Like" as in, she probably liked the toys she was getting.

They have a lot of picture proof, literally multitudes of pictures with blobs, masses, orbs, shadows of figures, and faces in them. One picture is of the doll they got her, with a blue mass around it, when sent to their psychic friend Barbara Connor, she claimed that it was love and happiness, basically her way of telling then she loved her doll (huge cringe)


As they brought in more mediums and psychics, they found a rose in the windowsill that was still burning, but from the inside out. This wasn't the only thing that started on fire on its own, a teddy bear also had flames coming out of the top of its head. (Hate hate hate)


Tony knew it was time to get out of the house when Debra was getting ready for work one morning and he started to have thoughts about how he wanted to hurt her as he was watching her, he felt like he wanted to stab her. They left the house within a week after this incident.


Les Smith was catching word that they were bringing mediums in, he didn't believe it any of it, but he stopped by one night to make sure the house was locked up, and he decided to tell Sallie, if she was real, do something, to show him she was real, he came up with an idea, he wrote his phone number down and told her to call him, but to only let the phone ring twice, then do that twice, so he knows its her. He thinks he's only talking to himself at this point because again, he's a non believer. On his way out the door the next morning to let the Investigators into the house, his phone rings........it rang twice and when he picked it up, no one was there. He hung up, headed back out the door, the phone rang again, two times, now he's remembering what he had said that night before about her calling him,, so he picked it up, and alls he hears was static. He calls his friend father Tom because he's freaked tf out and basically asks if this is even possible. Father Tom tells him it is and to NOT mess with it. (100% agree) After that, he'd only go over if he needed to and did his best not to bother anything there.

He did go back while he was on duty one night with his partner, Joe Butner, to sign a contract for the tv show, sightings, who were filming at the house.
-while he was signing, paper flutters
-plastic on windows, no wind
-crew said she's here, got out equipment
-said she didn't like the police uniform, so they peaked the heck out

Later in the day, they decided to take a drive by the house, they were in an old Ford truck that had big buttons for the headlights that you had to pull to turn off and push to turn em on. So it's pretty obvious when someone messed with them. As they got about 20 yards from the house, the headlights went off and radio static came on. Joe thought Les was messing with him, so they drove by again, only this time, the dome lights popped on, Joe was watching the whole time though and his hands never left the steering wheel. So they went back one more time and the headlights went out again. Its never happened again since then.

They feel like maybe the cameras or all the people being there brought out the energies a bit more, which caused more attacks on Tony.
There is actually about 9 minutes of uncut footage of Tony's back and torso as cuts started forming one by one.  (This got to me) multiple people witnessed this and the uncut film had been authenticated multiple times. This wasn't the only time this would happen. They'd have Tony sit in a chair for hours and they'd just watch as more scratches would appear. (You can look these videos and pictures up, btw) Some crew members actually quit due to not being able to handle what was happening.


Neighbors also experience weird happenings and some say that their dogs won't even walk onto that property.
Kate peltzer lived next door with her 3 year old son, whos window faced the Sallie house.
He would wake up around 2-3 am (witching hour, nothing good happens) and he'd be freaked out about the monsters. Then one night, he screamed screamed (you know the actual screaming, like something is really wrong), so Kate ran to his room and as she entered, the hairs on her body stood up, and her son was hiding in the blanket, with only his eyes visible and his finger, which he was using to point at something on going in circles around his bed (fuck NOPE) he said it was a black, flying monster. Kate grabbed both of her kids and had them sleep in her room that night.
Kate was invited on a paranormal investigation, since she lived next door to the house. On their way down the stairs to the basement,(some on the stairs, some already made it down) someone turned the lights off to use a night vision camera. As soon as they turned off, a brick was thrown at the people on the stairs. But the basement has a stone wall and wooden ceiling, so there were actually no bricks in the area they were in. So after flicking the lights back on and looking at the brick, they decide to try shutting em off again, and the same thing happens. Another brick is thrown at them. Then again and again, it happened multiple times and Kate wouldn't even go into the basement afterwards.

One evening, Kate decided to have a barbecue with some friends and family. Her two nieces were curious about the house, so they peaked in the window, Kate told em to look thru the back door because things had been seen thru that door before. As her nieces are looking thru the window, Kate walked around the side of the house to see if the radio would turn on, like it had done many times before, except this time, something grabbed her, so she took the hell off ( like most of us would) except she said she was half crying and half laughing because she was in so much shock that something actually grabbed her.


Fun fact, one of the previous tenants was into witch craft, and she painted a pentagram on the floor, which has since been covered, but probably didn't help the situation. They do think this help feeds one of the most malicious spirits on the house. This spirit may be in control of the other ones there and causing them to fear it.
Many investigators report feeling sick, heavy feelings in their chests, difficulty breathing, and nightmares after being in the house.


The Pickman's went back 14 years later, they went back the first day and took some pictures but on the second day, as they pulled up, Ranae Leiker, whos a paranormal investigator, saw a dark shadow getting out of a chair, and felt it was almost as if the shadow was waiting for them.
As the Pickman's walked in, they said the feeling of the house was different from the day before and really heavy.
Debra was smudging the master bedroom and Tony was taking pictures, out of the corner of her eye, Debra saw Tony get lifted up and thrown about 3 feet, it was so forceful that his laced shoe was actually left on the ground, right where he stood. He couldn't get back up either, Debra and Renae said they could actually see his neck muscles being tense from trying so hard. (Veins and what not) Ranae started yelling that she demanded in Gods name that it release him, which it eventually did.

Robbie Thomas who is from Canada and a psychic whos helped law enforcement, written books, has a radio show, and worked on many paranormal cases, did an investigation of the house along with Michael Esposito, who specializes in EVP recordings. Michael was able to get multiple recordings, including creepy laughter, spirits saying, "he's the devil" and, "he's in power" and Robbie says as soon as he entered the house, he could feel evil. He felt the most uneasy in the master bedroom closet, which had cold spots, made his hair stand on end, and gave him extremely uneasy feelings. He even brought his dog in, who refused to go in the closet (trust them animals!!) This was also the bedroom that Tony had been lifted up and thrown in.

One of the times they were filming, Ranae asked if they wanted to bring clergy into the house, and at that moment, Tony grabbed his stomach and actually fell backwards, while screaming. They immediately smelled sulfur and lifted up his shirt and his skin was red and the hair on his stomach was like pulled up to his skin, which was described as if you'd take a lighter to your arm, the way the hair burns up, is what it looked like and this is where the sulfur smell was coming from. They could actually see it happening to more of his hair. Which there is footage of, in the documentary the Sallie house-Gateway to the paranormal.

RESOURCES
Haunted Heartland: The Sallie House in Atchison, KS | News | kctv5.com

About The Official Sallie House Website (thesalliehouse.com)

Watched The Sallie House Gateway to the Paranormal