HALLOWEEN day 3: The Ghosts of Avilla
‘The tales fit what happened here’
Avilla ghost stories tied to Civil War history
The town of Avilla, located in Jasper County, sits east of Carthage, along what was once Route 66. Those passing through seem in a hurry to do just that. And it doesn’t take long, given Avilla has a total area of .20 square miles. There are only about 120 or so acres to it, situated on either side of the main road. A sign says it is home to 125 residents.
written by Scott Meeker
photography by Curtis Almeter
The town of Avilla was founded in 1856 and was named after Avilla, Indiana. When the Civil War began in 1861, Avilla had around 100 residents. Many people in the surrounding area were divided over the question of Missouri secession. This caused the small town to become a point of conflict during the war. Much of the eerie folklore surrounding the town grew from the skirmishes during the war.
The traffic passing through Avilla along Route 96 isn’t accompanied by the traditional hum or thrum one would normally associate with it.
Instead, the cars and trucks that pass through this quiet village scream as they pass. They shriek. Sometimes they moan.
The posted speed limit of 55 mph may just as well be a polite suggestion. Drivers coming from either direction seem to have the proverbial lead foot as they leave Avilla in their rearview mirrors.
Despite a posted 55 mph speed limit, traffic roars down the two-lane Hwy. 96 through the heart of Avilla.
A dilapidated barn along Hwy. 37, just outside Avilla, stands uncertainly as the last of the evening light etches out its frame. Avilla and the surrounding area was settled in the 1830s and 1840s. Winding streams and rich farm land were said to be what attracted many to the vicinity.
Maurice Phipps says he once petitioned to have the speed limit lowered due the road’s proximity to a small park and a school, but the request went unheeded.
This abandoned gas station is one of several former businesses that went belly up after Route 66 traffic was rerouted around Avilla after I-44 was built in the 1960s.
The village sits east of Carthage, along what was once Route 66. Those passing through seem in a hurry to do just that. And it doesn’t take long, given Avilla has a total area of .20 square miles. There are only about 120 or so acres to it, situated on either side of the main road. A sign says it is home to 125 residents.
Phipps isn’t buying that last bit of information, however.
Maurice Phipps, or "Rees" as he prefers to be called, lives with his family in a building that once served as Avilla's general store before being converted into a residence. Although he hasn't lived in the small town as long as some, he's been there long enough to have seen some "weird shit.”
Standing on a side street talking to visitors inquiring about the tales of ghosts that haunt Avilla, Phipps hollers at a neighbor down the road as she walks out to her car.
“Hey, Brandy! How many people live here in Avilla?”
The woman pauses for a moment, looks around and then shrugs.
“I don’t know … maybe 50?” she says, before getting into her vehicle and driving away.
“Maybe 50,” Phipps agrees. “Don’t believe the sign, especially when you figure at least 15 or 20 of the houses here are abandoned.”
Back to those ghosts … he says he hasn’t lived in Avilla as long as some, so he can only confirm what he and his family have experienced, and the stories they’ve heard.
There’s the legend of Rotten Johnny Reb, of course, and tales of the Death Tree. But the town is home to other spirits as well, he says. An acquaintance who lives a short drive outside of Avilla claims to have seen a ghostly figure in chains, walking through a small cemetery.
The unsettling lore surrounding Avilla has made the town the subject of paranormal studies, books, videos and online articles.
The Phipps family lives in a building that once served as Avilla’s general store before the building was partially converted into a residence. It’s a spot that sees more than its share of ghostly activities. They’ve witnessed floating orbs and “shadow people” moving in the street in front of their home.
“We’ve seen some weird shit,” he says.
Falling cues, floating orbs
During the heyday of Route 66, Avilla was a thriving little town.
That’s what Rick Walker, owner of Bernie’s Bar & Grill, has always heard, anyway. He’s owned the small bar for five years. Before that, it was owned by his mother, Bernadette – who went by “Bernie.” Those with a longer memory may remember the tavern owned prior to that by Flo Melugin.
“You’d come in here and if you were a local, you got your beer a nickel cheaper than if you were from Carthage,” Walker says. “She treated the local boys really good, I hear.”
The creation of Interstate 44 in the 1960s diverted much of the traffic away from Route 66, which served to hasten Avilla’s decline, as it did other small communities along the route. A 1971 fire at a local lumberyard destroyed several buildings and residences.
There’s not much left here, but Bernie’s – like the old bank/post office building – is a reminder of a different time.
Bernie's Bar & Grill is the local watering hole and possibly the only remaining original business besides the post office in Avila. Those with a longer memory know the tavern as "Flo's," owned by Flo Melugin, whose home used to be located behind the establishment.
Avilla is now something of a ghost town, both in the literal and figurative sense. Walker says he’s heard all the stories over the years, though he hasn’t experienced much … save for the incident with the pool cues. And the orbs.
“I was closing up maybe 19 years ago,” he says. “All of the pool cues suddenly fell off the wall for no apparent reason. “The cues were in there fairly tight. I thought maybe someone had banged on the outside wall to try and scare me. Either way, I locked up and got out of there pretty quick.”
It's common to see patrons waiting their turn to play on the single small pool table Wednesday evenings, which are tournament night at Bernie's Bar & Grill.
When Walker had security cameras installed in Bernie’s, the tech told him that the occasional fly or moth might get picked up on the feed and look like something else. Orbs, perhaps?
“I’ve never actually seen the orbs in person,” he says. “It’s usually when I’m looking from home on my phone. I’ve seen a couple of them that chase each other around the bar. And I’ve never seen a fly or moth come across the bar, hop up on the pool table and then hop down the other side. They’re real faint … like a white ball.”
So other than the falling pool cues and the orbs caught on security cameras and the stories he’s heard over the years, that’s pretty much the extent of Walker’s experience with Avilla’s paranormal side.
“I do get the hair standing up on the back of my neck every now and again,” he says. “I think it’s just because I know what people have talked about.”
This ornate shed owned by the Lee family sits accross the street from Bernie's Bar & Grill and was built where former bar owner Flo Melugin's house once stood, according to owner Peggy Lee.
‘They shot him down’
Ten miles west, at the Battle of Carthage Museum, historian Steve Cottrell says he doesn’t know much about the history of Avilla, but he offers up an excellent resource.
“We call it ‘The Schrantz book,’” he says. “It was written in 1923 and was reprinted by the Kiwanis. We sell them here at the museum. It’s a compilation of Civil War stories. A lot of the accounts are firsthand, especially from people who had been kids during the war.”
“The Schrantz book” Cottrell refers to is titled “Jasper County, Missouri, in the Civil War” by Ward L. Schrantz. Born in 1890, Schrantz moved to Carthage as a child. A decorated veteran of World War I and II, he was a writer for the Carthage Press newspaper, a city councilman and founder of the Jasper County Historical Society. He was known for his unceasing passion for local history until his death in 1958.
Indeed, the book is a treasure trove for those looking for accounts of troop movements and skirmishes in Southwest Missouri, including in Avilla – then a relatively new settlement, having been founded in 1856.
Within its pages, J.B. Stemmons recounts the night that his father was killed and their house torched by Confederate guerillas.
He remembers waking one night in 1862 to the sound of gunfire and his father – Dr. Jacquilan M. Stemmons, a Union supporter – stepping outside with a gun to address the attackers who were intent on using a wagonload of hay to set the Stemmons’ home ablaze.
“He said that if they must kill, that was one matter, but the firing of the house was a different thing. He said he was ready to die if he must, but that the attackers ought not to burn down the shelter for his wife and children who would be left after he was gone. They shot him down … We could hear him groaning for some time after he was shot, so we knew he did not die immediately. After that the firing of the house went on just the same … I was one of the last to get out.”
There were other skirmishes near Avilla during the Civil War, though this incident is probably the most well known. As for ghosts that may or may not haunt the village, Cottrell says he’s probably not the best person to speak to on the matter.
That, he says, would be Lisa Livingston-Martin.
Rotten Johnny Reb, the Death Tree and the shadow folk
Sitting in the small park pavilion in Avilla, Livingston-Martin says the historical culture of the area has always intrigued her. As she speaks, one has to occasionally strain to hear her over the howling of cars as they tear down Route 96, just a few perilous yards away.
An attorney, writer and a founder of the Joplin-based Paranormal Science Lab, Livingston-Martin has conducted investigations in Avilla, trying to capture concrete evidence of the ghosts and spirits that have been sighted over the years. Unfortunately, their work didn’t yield any definitive proof.
“Avilla is kind of unique because Southwest Missouri was generally Southern-sympathizing,” she says. “The Confederate flag first flew in Missouri in Sarcoxie. Still, you had strong Union men … slave owners who didn’t feel the issue was worth seceding (over). This is one of those spots that epitomizes the struggle of the Civil War.”
An attorney, writer and a founder of the Joplin-based Paranormal Science Lab, Livingston-Martin literally wrote the book on the subject – “Civil War Ghosts of Southwest Missouri,” published in 2011.
Dr. Stemmons, she says, was one of Avilla’s leading citizens and staunchly pro-Union. He helped form a militia that was known for its proactive tactics, setting out to hunt down the bushwhackers who would often intimidate small towns into supporting the Southern cause.
Which what likely made him a prime target.
Later, after Stemmons’ death, a detachment of Union troops from Fort Scott, Kan., came to join the militia members in Avilla, which became a supply station for a time.
Legend has it that a patrol came across the body of a bushwhacker who had been shot and beheaded; the head was hung from a tree in a nearby orchard.
In 1862, the Union Army gained possession of Missouri but the area surrounding Avilla remained infested with bushwhackers and small bands of Confederate raiders. It was common for Union soldiers to track down and kill rebel bushwhackers. As the story goes, a bushwhacker’s corpse was found south of town with a bullet hole through the skull. Likely an undiscovered body from a previous skirmish, the victim was dubbed “Rotten Johnny Reb.’ His head was removed and hung from a tree limb as a warning to other bushwhackers. The skull is said to have hung for over a year and the tree was subsequently dubbed the ‘Death Tree.’ It's rumored that the spirit of Rotten Johnny Reb still roams around in search of revenge.
“The records aren’t precise, but this supposedly happened on the south side of Avilla,” Livingston-Martin says. “Some accounts say it was an apple tree, and some say it was an Osage-orange. They say crows began hanging out in the tree, which makes it even more eerie.”
The ghost of Rotten Johhny Reb has been described as a headless specter, usually wearing a duster and sometimes carrying a rifle or a lantern … always wandering in search of his lost head.
While there have been numerous accounts of sightings of this particular ghost – and of the “Death Tree” where his head was hung – it’s not a tale exclusive to Avilla.
“There are a lot of those stories,” she says. “Beheadings were not that uncommon in the Civil War here. It’s a similar story to that of the Headless Horseman from the Revolutionary War. They all came from Celtic folklore, and it was the Scotch-Irish who settled this area. These are ancestral stories and (Rotten Johnny Reb) fits that folklore format.”
Sightings of the “shadow folk” seen by Phipps and his family are also common in the area, she says.
“Shadow people tend to be blacker than black; darker than a shadow should be … a true absence of light,” she says. “They tend to be residual replays in the environment. You see the same thing happening over and over, like energy imprinted on a magnetic tape.
A seed and grain facility sits abandon on the edge of town.
“Others seem to be aware of you. But in most instances they tend to shy away from you and run the other way.”
Sightings of shadow people had been made in front of the Avilla post office, which once served as the village bank. Another has repeatedly been spotted in front of an old stone building that might have also once housed a tavern and was later adjoined by an Oddfellows lodge.
“There’s one of the shadow folk who has been seen stumbling out of the old bar and falling down, either drunk or having been shot,” she says.
She and other members of the Paranormal Science Lab have conducted investigations in Avilla, trying to capture concrete evidence of the ghosts and spirits that have been sighted over the years. Unfortunately, their work didn’t yield any definitive proof.
Still, Livingston-Martin says the tales of Rotten Johnny Reb, the Death Tree and shadow folk continue to fascinate her.
“One thing that has always intrigued me is they fit the culture of those who settled this area,” she says. “The tales fit what happened here in Avilla.”
Abandoned homes like this are a common sight in the “ghost town” of Avilla.
Avilla United Methodist Church is one of two churches in the small town of Avilla.
This condemned structure that sits along side of hwy 96 in the heart of Avilla is slowly being overtaken by trees and vines. It awaits demolishion.
The post office building in Avilla was originally home to the town bank. In 1932, the bank was robbed by members of the notorious “Irish O’Malley Gang,” which also resulted in the kidnapping of a cashier.
Curtis Almeter
There are many big things to say about Curtis.
For starters, Curtis Almeter is an award-winning [taxidermist]. He is best known for his [lamps]. Curtis' hobbies include [kicking] and [chopping].
It's hard to describe Curtis without mentioning his [worried] obsession with [trees]. In a parallel universe Curtis might be found ducking along a [sandwich] somewhere in [Chicago].
Curtis' favorite quote is, "A [marshmallow] in the hand is worth two in the [magnet]."
This short bio was compiled with the help of a very [green] Kayla Monteleone.
Scott Meeker
Scott Meeker was born in Joplin and will most likely die here too, and he’s totally OK with that. No, really, he is.
A professional word monkey, he got his start in journalism as a … Look, Joplin is in a convenient, central location that offers a variety of travel options, a great cost of living and is home to some really creative folks whose company he enjoys, got it? He owes you no other explanation.
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