PARK HILL — Fog resting in the early morning revealed a tall man with a top hat standing on the east porch of the Murrell Home.

At least that is what a maintenance worker for the museum said he saw when arriving early one morning.

“He was concerned that someone was here,” said Shirley Pettengill, site manager for the museum. “When he came in to check it out, the figure disappeared. He said it must have been George.”

But George has been dead since 1866.

“People have all sorts of experiences here,” Pettengill said. “I myself am a skeptic, but there are still things I can’t explain.”

Like the orbs she and a colleague saw floating in the parlor and kitchen.

“They were probably bugs,” she said. “But I really don’t know what they were, and I wasn’t the only one seeing them.”

George Murrell started building the Murrell Home, originally called Hunter’s House, in 1844.

The plantation home, nestled in the hills near a winding creek, is the site for many unsettling feelings and unexplained phenomena.

“We had a gentleman here touring the home who claimed to see a figure of a woman in the kitchen,” Pettengill said. “He then pointed her out in a picture. He pointed to the first curator, Jennie Ross Cobb, and said ‘that’s her’.”

Pettengill said people claim to hear children laughing and crying in the home, and other noises like a piano playing with no one touching the keys.

(Click here to watch a video of Travina's visit to the Murrell Home with Phoenix Videographer, Jennifer Lyles.)

“We hear these stories and retell them later,” she said. “It’s all a part of the history.”

With rumor of a murder in the southern bedroom upstairs, Pettengill confirmed the story.

“When we pulled the carpet up from that room, there was blood stains all over the floor. I had someone tell me it was over a poker game.”

Tahlequah resident Clint Reed, 32, said he’s had some of his own unexplained experiences on the Murrell Home grounds.

“One time me and a bunch of friends thought it would be cool to walk around on the trails out there,” he said. “At one point during the walk, we all stopped. My buddy asked, ‘Did you hear that?’ Everyone said, ‘Yeah,’ and we took off running as fast as we could get to the car. As soon as we got in the car, we started talking about how weird it was. As we were driving off, I said I couldn’t believe how much the sound was like a woman screaming. My friend said, ‘No, I heard a kid laughing.’ Then the girl I was with said she heard a man talking. Everything we heard was different but it happened at the same time. I haven’t been back out there since. It was creepy.”

Pettengill said visitors have to remember that lot’s of people have been born and died on the property and in the home.

“It’s been here through the Civil War,” she said. “It has been raided by both sides. There were skirmishes and bushwackings that happened out there on the grounds. We are just fortunate the home was never burned down.”



Reach Travina Coleman at 684-2901 or tcoleman@muskogeephoenix.com.



Ghost tours

WHAT: Haunted Seminary Hall Tour, hosted by the Northeastern State University College of Liberal Arts Graduate Student Association.

WHEN: 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights in October.

WHERE: Northeastern State University, 601 N. Grand Ave., Tahlequah.

TICKETS: $5.

INFORMATION: 444-2897.

PROCEEDS: Go to the NSU College of Liberal Arts Graduate Student Association to help pay for conference fees.



WHAT: 16th annual Murrell Home Ghost Stories Tour.

WHEN: 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., every 15 minutes, Friday and Saturday.

WHERE: Murrell Home, 19479 E. Murrell Home Road, Park Hill, near Tahlequah.

DONATION: $5.

RESERVATIONS: Required because of limited seating. Children under 6 are not encouraged to attend. Call 456-2751 or e-mail murrellhome@okhistory.org.