When Places Remember: Portals, Spirits, And The Stories We Carry

A green pulse in the dunes, a ranger who shouldn’t exist, and a dog named Sam who breaks his own faithful routine—our journey begins at Beaver Dunes Park, the stretch of Oklahoma terrain many call the Bermuda Triangle of the Plains. A longtime listener from the Panhandle sends two stories from the same patch of sand: teenage misadventure rescued by a helpful ranger later revealed to be dead for 15 years, and a later trip where a quick turn toward a green light ends with a beloved dog vanishing without a sound. Those two moments set off a wider exploration of portals, lost travelers, and the blurry edges between memory and land.

We dig into the legend of the Shaman’s Portal, tracing threads back to Coronado’s expedition in the 1500s and Indigenous warnings about the dunes after dark. Rumors of military night digs, electromagnetic oddities, and buried craft swirl around the site, even as hard evidence remains elusive. From there, the map blooms across Oklahoma: Dead Woman’s Crossing and its grim wagon rattle, Claremore’s Belvidere Mansion and its uneasy temperature swings, Veteran’s Lake with tales of tragic apparitions, and a one-room schoolhouse in Pawhuska where chalkboard names supposedly vanish on their own. Each stop adds a data point and a shiver.

We also step through living spaces that hold the past like a breath: the Cherokee Strip Museum with ground-floor cold spots and a piano that plays itself, Tulsa’s Cain’s Ballroom with a performer who never left the stage, and the Blanchard Cemetery where a tall man waves instead of warns. The stories grow stranger—an old saloon run by Miss Lizzie and her girls, a golf course bathroom glowing without power, and the Stone Lion Inn where a child’s hand brushes a cheek and a pipe’s scent announces a presence. Along the way we weigh skepticism and belief, grief and comfort, and how a community’s search for a missing dog becomes part of the folklore that keeps a place alive.

If tales of portals, haunted venues, and mysterious lights spark your curiosity, this one will keep you leaning forward. Listen, share with someone who loves a good mystery, and tell us your own encounter. Subscribe for more listener stories and strange histories, and leave a review to help fellow explorers find the show.

Chapters

• 0:00 Listener Story From Beaver Dunes
• 2:15 The Helpful Ranger Who Was Dead
• 3:18 The Dog, The Green Light, The Disappearance
• 5:20 Shaman’s Portal Lore And Origins
• 8:20 Oklahoma’s Bermuda Triangle Explained
• 11:05 Portals, Legends, And Skepticism
• 13:20 Dead Woman’s Crossing Tragedy
• 16:00 Haunted Mansions, Lakes, And Schools
• 19:20 Museums, Ballrooms, And Friendly Spirits
• 22:10 Cemeteries And The Twilight Shift
• 24:40 Saloon Ghosts And Urban Creatures
• 27:10 Hotels, Tobacco Smoke, And Personal Signs
• 29:10 Gratitude, Community Stories, And The Unseen

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Good afternoon, Dr. G's Fair Tales and Magic. Go to that website. You can click the podcast and end up here. Or you can tell us your story. Or even book Cassandra and I for an event. John sends this story from Oklahoma on the website last night. Hey doc, frequent listener. Want to tell you two stories about the same spot. One just involves me and some friends. The other one involves my girlfriend and I, and my dog, Sam. We were in Beaver Dunes Park. That's in Oklahoma, in the Panhandle area. Now the first story takes place with I'm a junior in high school and we're out there messing around, and there are three of us. And we uh may or may not have had some recreational smoking activity, but we ended up lost. And one of the friends that was with me kind of stumbled over a rock and hurt his foot. He didn't really break anything, but he was limping around a little bit, maybe a sprained ankle. And it was starting to get dark. We weren't really that worried, but we knew we should keep going in one direction instead of trying to, you know, just find the best way out, just pick a direction and stick to it. So we walk for about three or four minutes, and there's a ranger, and he leads us out, he walks us out to the back to the main area and says, just follow that, and you're good. As we're following that, same friend trips again. Really hurts his ankle this time. But there are people around, and a ranger came on a vehicle that kind of looked like a golf cart, only it had a longer back, and took us back to the car and we take our friend to the hospital, and he's uh he's got a sprained ankle. But on the golf cart, whatever that thing was, on the ride to the car, I said, you know, we thanks a lot for you know helping us out. Well, that's what we do. See, he was pretty nice. He was nice, you know, can we thank that other ranger who you know let us out of there? The guy stops the golf court and says, What do you look like? So we described the ranger we saw. His uniform was just a little bit different from yours, though. Yeah, um that particular ranger, his name is Mike, and he's been dead for about 15 years. That's my first story. Now, fast forward, not too long ago, my girlfriend and I and the dog are out there. Um will fetch things bronially. He should have been on a dog commercial for hey, I'm gonna throw this and he's gonna bring it back. Very cool dog. He's uh mutt. Uh my grandmother used to call him the Heinz 57 variety. So we're playing fetch and we're running around and taking a lot of photos, doing some things. Now, even when he's outside, if he's around us in like a camping area, because he loves to go camping, when it's time for him to go to the bathroom, he'll run around in circles and bark, and he wants to go away from camp or from the house or from the yard, that kind of thing, when he can. So my girlfriend takes him out just a couple of hundred yards away from where we are. Now she claims that she noticed a green light, and she turned around to look at it, and when she turned back around, Sam was gone. She called him rather loudly and kept calling him, so I realize something's wrong. I put down what I'm doing and I go to her assistance. We can't find Sam. It's now been a while. No sign of Sam. We handed people flyers, we talk to people. Hey, if you see this doll, you know, here's pictures of Sam, here's what he looks like. He's very friendly, he's not gonna bite you. And then we ring into a couple of other people whose animals also became missing. Then they tell us there's supposed to be some kind of portal there. Now I do want to tell you that, you know, no offense intended, but I don't believe in any of this crap. I don't believe that there are ghosts, I don't believe that there are portals, I don't believe in psychics and mediums and you know, all that kind of stuff. Well, at least I could say I didn't up until this. The dog is gone. The dog is not the kind of dog to run off. We looked for the dog, friends of ours came and joined us, strangers came, Sam is missing. What do you make of that? Well, it's an interesting story. So I looked up that area. And uh there are some stories about that particular place. They call it the Shaman's Portal or the Shaman's Portal, I'm sorry. It's an urban legend associated with right where you were, Beaver Dunes Park, located in the Panhandle of Oklahoma, but you know that, near the small town of Beaver, which is where you live. This area has garnered a reputation for mysterious occurrences, strange phenomenon, leading up to its nickname as Oklahoma's Bermuda Triangle. And as we did some research, we found that the legend dates way back to the 1500s. So Spanish explorer Francisco Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and his men ventured into the sand dunes. And according to the lore, three of his men disappeared after chasing. You're ready for this, an eerie green light that they encountered in the dunes. Now, the men reportedly vanished in flashes of green light. Coronado describes that in his journal as the work of the devil. Now, it wasn't uncommon back then for many, many people of all walks of life and all races. If something happened that they didn't understand, they would not say it was the work of God. They would say, hey, that's the work of the devil. They didn't know anything else to call it, so that's the catch-all, right? Beaver Dunes Park is uh how we say intertwined with all kinds of cultural narratives. We have Native American tribes. They inhabited that region long before the European exploration. Um those indigenous people allegedly warned Coronado about the dangers of lurking in the dunes after dark, saying that it was an evil place. The term Shaman's Portal is believed to have originated from these warnings, suggesting that the area may serve as a gateway between our world and some spiritual realm. So, you know, over time, stories surrounding Shauman's Portal have evolved. There's elements such as military activity, even extraterrestrial encounters, and some of the locals claim to have witnessed military excavations at night, while others speculate about buried alien spacecrafts or some electromagnetic disturbances in the area. Despite these claims, there's been no hard evidence presented to substantiate them. So, in the more contemporary discussions about Shauman's portal, there are numerous theories, its nature, ranging from a site of ancient burial grounds to a location where paranormal activities occur nightly. While many of these stories lack verifiable evidence, they will continue to capture our imagination and curiosity. We have a lot of mail that comes in, both email and mail, about portals and things like that. Living in Arizona, the Superstition Mountains are right down the road from where Cassander and I call home. And not necessarily daily, but I would say weekly. You hear about something that happened to somebody or somebody's friend in the superstitions. You've heard us talk on the podcast uh many times about portals and that sort of thing. There was one about Dead Woman's Crossing in Weatherford, Oklahoma. It's Dead Woman's Crossing Bridge. It's on the road around Deer Creek in Weatherford. Now, local legend states that I believe in 1905 a woman called Katie DeWitt James and her baby girl Lulu, I believe it was Lulu Bell, boarded a train to visit family in Payne County. She had just filed for divorce on the grounds of cruel treatment at the hands of her husband. Her father had personally put her on the train and expected to hear from her within the next few days. However, weeks passed with no word from his daughter. He turned to the officials, they couldn't seem to offer anything, so he engaged a private detective to locate her. The detective learned that Katie had befriended a prostitute named Fanny Norton, I believe, on the train, who had taken her and the baby to her brother-in-law's house in Clinton. They alleged that she stayed there for a few hours, then took a trip in a buggy. Fanny returned alone and claimed to have no idea what happened to the pair. However, the detective found the buggy had disappeared into a field near the creek where it had spent an hour before coming back out with bloodstained wheels. Fanny then stopped at a nearby farm and gave them the baby wrapped in a bloody dress. However, on being questioned by the detective, she denied any involvement, although the fact that she poisoned herself later the same day seems to indicate possible guilt. Local legend says that Katie's spirit now roams the area around Deer Creek in search of her baby, sometimes calling out her name. Witnesses have even claimed that if you stand under the bridge and keep very still, you can actually hear the wagon wheels rattling above you. And there are some other stories in Oklahoma of bizarre things or paranormal things. I want to say Claremore. Belvidere Mansion was built, I believe, in 1902. It was the Bayless family. However, six months before the mansion was completed, Mr. Bayliss died after his appendix burst. His wife and six children did not move into the home until weeks later, but they ended up staying until 1919. It is believed the spirits of the Bayless family have remained in the property. It's got a reputation now for being one of the most haunted buildings in Oklahoma. Visitors report feeling hot in cold spots throughout the house and have heard many unexplained noises and even disembodied voices. It's common for hazy figures to be seen in dim light inside of the property. Yet another listener writes in, Doc, should you talk about Veterans Lake in Sulphur, Oklahoma? It has a long time had a reputation for being one of the most haunted locations. It's said to be the to be possessed by the spirit of a lady who once drowned in the lake. She was apparently attempting to save her child when she herself ended up drowning. And a few years later, there was another drowning when a girl died in a boating accident. It's said that the apparitions of both the lady and the girl can be seen in the lake, and local legend states that anyone entering the lake after dark will be pulled under the water and drowned. We thank you for that story. There are a couple of other lakes, and I would have to look them up. There's not enough room in my memory for all the stories. There are one or two more of those that come to mind, and I don't remember where they are. I apologize for that. But same thing. You go in there after dark, you get pulled under the water. There's Bird Creek School in Pahuska. Bird Creek School is one, is a one-room schoolhouse. Was built in the early 1900s for Native American children. If you were brave enough to enter the building, you should write your own name on the chalkboard that remains to this day in the classroom. If you leave for a few minutes, it's said that when you return, your name will have been erased from the board by the spirits who linger there. We actually have something in the show like that. We won't give it away, but uh not a not a completely foreign concept. Then they talk about Cain's ballroom in Tulsa. Before we do that one, though, there's uh an email, and I'm looking through it now, I apologize, but she sparked interest in other things. The Cherokee Strip Museum in Alva. Cherokee Strip Museum in Alba, Oklahoma now serves as the Cherokee Strip Museum, but it was actually a hospital in its earlier days. These days it is alleged that the ground floor is haunted, and it has been a site of various different paranormal phenomena. Visitors to the museum frequently report encounters and cold spots in various locations on the ground floor of the museum. It's also common for people to hear disembodied voices or the piano on the ground floor to play by itself. It's generally assumed that the paranormal activity experienced in this museum is caused by the spirits of the former patients who died here while it was still a hospital. No one has any suggestions as to why they seem to be confined to the ground floor. My boyfriend Dan's this email is from Judy in Oklahoma. My boyfriend Dan and I have gone there many times, and it's really weird. The ground floor makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, and all the other floors, although they're a little creepy, all the other spaces don't have the same amount of I don't even know the word I'm looking for, fear as the ground floor. And while we're talking about Oklahoma, we can't leave Tulsa out. There's Keynes Ballroom. Cain's Ballroom has been a popular concert venue for many years, hosting hundreds of performers. It's also said to be one of the most haunted buildings in Oklahoma. And I'll interject there no matter what state you're talking about, or no matter what kind of a story, many, many people will describe many different buildings as being the most haunted ones in an area, in a town or in a state. One of the most well-known spirits is said to haunt the venue. He's a former performer named Bob Willis. Bob was a country western performer who seems to have enjoyed performing there so much that he decided to stick around after his death. There's also a female presence that has both been seen and felt over the years. Visitors to the venue and groups of paranormal investigators have reported feeling like they are being watched or encountering cold spots in the ballroom. Many orbs have been captured on camera, lights turning off and on, and maybe even a strange disembodied voice or two. We have the Blanchard Cemetery. Blanchard Cemetery is apparently haunted by a very tall man in a dark-colored suit. He is apparently a man who is buried in the cemetery, but his spirit has no malevolence towards anyone. In fact, most of the witnesses who report seeing him say that he's usually waving at them in a friendly manner. Perhaps his family is long gone and he's simply lonely. This is not the only paranormal activity reported at the Blanchard Cemetery. Another reason why it is considered to be one of the most haunted places is that at night there are lots of strange, unexplained noises that are heard. We had a lot of cemeteries in the area I grew up in. And even as a person who doesn't really get freaked out by that sort of thing and hasn't been freaked out by it in a very long time, some of the cemeteries that I have visited take on a different kind of vibe after the sun starts to go down. One in particular that I can remember is in New York, it's where Hunini is buried. So when we first went to Makella, it was uh, I don't know, three o'clock in the afternoon, 3 30, something like that. It's broad daylight, as they say. The second time we got there just about starting to get twilighty, and took some pictures and you know, had a little whisk room and a dustpan and cleaned up some things around the headstone. But it seemed like it took us a very long time to find our way out of there. And if you ever go there and see Houdini's grave, you're if you face Houdini's grave and you turn around the other way, you can see the road and the way out. It's not like it's a maze of pits or anything like that. Excuse me. So that's a podcast idea. If you visited a cemetery in the daytime and visited the same one at Twilight and it's completely different, let us know your story. We have the Blue Bell Saloon, that's in Guthrie. Bluebell is was once operated as a bordello by, I believe, Miss Lizzie and her girls Claudia and Estelle. It was a popular saloon right up until the day when Claudia was found dead. Miss Lizzie had Claudia's body buried inside the saloon and continued to operate the bordello with Estelle. A short time later, both Miss Lizzie and Estelle were found dead of unknown causes. Ever since their deaths, the saloon has been haunted by Miss Lizzie and her girls. Now we've managed to find three more. Mohawk Park and Golf Course. That's in Tulsa. It makes it onto the list of Oklahoma's most haunted spots, thanks to a couple of strange tales that are connected with it. The first tale, they say, it's supposed to be haunted by a creature that is half woman and half deer. They claim that there are also little people who apparently room around the whole property and can be heard making all sorts of strange noises. Finally, excuse me for a moment, there is a bathroom in the golf facility that's said to be extremely haunted. All manner of paranormal activity has been reported there. Most commonly, the lights often seen inside, despite the fact that there's no electricity in the building anymore. Langston's Western Ware. I believe that one's in Oklahoma City. It's a former dance hall and bar, which was built in, I believe, 1919. Today it's said to be a very haunted place, thanks to the presence of two ghostly sisters, Rose and Patty. The sisters are said to have been taxi dancers in the old dance hall, which means that customers could pay them to partner with them on the dance floor. I think one of the future podcasts is about a dime a dance place, which was something like that. Story goes that Patty was shot by her boyfriend, leaving her sister so distraught that she hung herself in an upstairs room of the dance hall. Ever since, there has been a variety of unexplained events. It's been leading people to believe that Patty and Rose are still haunting the building. And then we found one on Stone Lion Inn. That's in Guthrie. Stone Lion has become incredibly popular with paranormal investigators in most of the recent years. The hotel is apparently haunted by a number of ghosts, including a middle-aged man and a little girl known as Augusta. It is said that Augusta is around eight years old, and she is usually spotted up on the third floor of the building. Lots of people have reported that Augusta strokes their cheek during the night. She also loves to move small objects from one place to another, which she apparently sees as fun. The male spirit is usually seen smoking a long pipe in the late hours, and his appearance is often accompanied by the smell of tobacco smoke. The smell of tobacco smoke. Those of you who are frequent flyers of the podcast know that it's not a big secret. I died three years ago. They brought me back to life, but I've had continuing up and down issues since then. We were in a restaurant. Literally it translates to um the basement. It's not a basement. You go in on the main level, but just doesn't have any windows. It's Muca de Pepa de Peppo, I think. Cassandra and I are sitting there, and I'm Sicilian, and I think I was taught how to cook some Italian dishes when I was barely old enough to hold the silverware to mix them. We're discussing things on the menu, and all of a sudden I smell smoke, cigar smoke. Then it was pipe smoke, or couldn't really tell the two, and then I thought perhaps it was both of them, because one way was one scent and one way was another. Both of which, both those smells, I associated with my father, who usually had a cigar, but didn't really light it. He just kind of bit it for the look. Occasionally he would light it, and he did have a rather cool-looking hand-carved uh pipe that he occasionally smoked. So those are our stories, not only from there, but from Oklahoma. And I do thank you for sending that in. What's your story, everybody else? You don't want to send us in. I do appreciate every single person that listens, that sends us stories, that gives us a like or a share or follows us. Help us spread the word. Give it to your friends and family, wherever they may be. Tell them to give us a listen. We do appreciate it. And we always remind you, there is indeed a world unseen. It's a world that exists all around us all the time. And every now and then, for whatever the reason, we catch a glimpse of it. And the dead get in. And hey, tell a paranormal story. Even if you do it while smoking a cigar.