Eerie connection
Did you know the movie “Poltergeist” had an Oklahoma connection?
One of the scariest movies made and often rescreened around Halloween is “Poltergeist,” first released in 1982.
Who doesn’t remember the scene with the little girl sitting in front of the snowy television screen announcing, “They’re here”?
In “American Hauntings: The True Stories behind Hollywood’s Scariest Movies” published in 2015, authors Robert E. Bartholomew and Joe Nickell present an Oklahoma connection to the movie.
In the chapter entitled “Poltergeist: The Inspiration for the Film,” the authors discuss the haunting of Mr. and Mrs. C.A. Wilkinson and their daughter, Shirley, of Tulsa. Their story was originally published in the Tulsa Tribune.
This Associated Press story appeared in The Oklahoman on
Aug. 3, 1957:
Mr. and Mrs. C.A. Wilkinson and their 12-year-old daughter packed their belongings Friday and moved out of the house they claim is “haunted” by an electrical phenomenon.
“I’m about to crack up,” Mrs. Wilkinson said.
The family thought their troubles had ended Thursday after Wilkinson, an oil company employee, dug up water pipes around the house and removed a new metal fence he believed responsible for creating a magnetic field.
The family slept in their car Thursday night after tables and chairs went on a weird “dance” and overturned.
They are puzzled as to what’s causing electrical plugs to blow up without being connected, a sweeper to go on an aimless course through the house, and various household articles to start hopping around.
The “mystery” has damaged their $1,300 electric organ, caused the refrigerator motor to blow out twice and knocked the clock from its shelf six times.
In another wire story from Tulsa, The Oklahoman provided this explanation on Aug. 6:
The mystery of the haunted house of Mr. and Mrs. C.A. Wilkinson of Tulsa may still be a mystery — depending on whether grandpa did it all.
The Wilkinson’s 10-year-old daughter, Shirley, Monday accused her grandfather Wilkinson, who died in 1952, with stealing her fingerprints and putting them on articles in the home which had behaved strangely the last month ...
The Wilkinsons returned to their home Monday after engineers with the latest electronic instruments, and two “ghost hunters” from the American Society for Psychical Research expressed belief the “spell” was at last broken. The family moved out last Friday after Mrs. Wilkinson told reporters that she was about “to crack up” because of the weird events.
The girl’s statement blaming her grandfather for the troubles came after she was told articles in the home were dusted with invisible powder which could not be removed and became visible only under a special light.
Then the girl, with tears streaming down her cheeks, said in an accusing voice: “Grandpa stole my fingerprints an put them there. I don’t know why he did it. I’m going to talk with grandpa on Tuesday night and tell him to stop all this.”
Shirley said she hesitated to accuse Grandpa Wilkinson earlier because he might stop his “visits” with her.
When an organ repairman said cords inside the organ had been cut, apparently with a knife, Shirley said seriously: “Grandpa cut the wires and pulled out those strings. He didn’t want me to play the organ and I loved it.”
She conceded, however, that it would probably be better if the organ stayed in the repair shop a while longer.
Shirley isn’t the only one who involved Grandpa Wilkinson in the eerie events. Both Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson said they had suspected he was implicated before Shirley mentioned his name.
Happy Halloween!