Fun scary and the not so fun

I meant to get this posted last Sunday as the events were fresher in my mind, but things came up and so its happening now. October 1st was the general meeting for the SAA group I'm in and we were meeting at the cemetery for some kind of scavenger hunt. I was a bit skeptical but it turned out to be really fun! The school's historian who runs the museum at the school was there to follow us around to the various destinations and tell us interesting facts about the people of old Kirksville.

We first ventured out to AT Still's grave the founder of Osteopathy medicine and of AT Still University the first DO school. There we saw that his son Fred died on the graduation date of the first graduating class and learned that in memory of him they did not celebrate.

AT Still gravesite

Next we found a giant boulder marking the grave of the second school's president. It was during the time of prohibition and I guess he was throwing a party with alcohol and drunk. When someone asked him how he wasn't worried about rioters or getting caught, I can't quite remember which, he pulled out a hand gun that he would use against them. He dropped the handgun and when he bent down to try and catch the falling gun, it landed on the ground and shot a bullet into his head.

We then found a mass grave with all the soldiers who died during the Battle of Kirksville, the last battle giving the Union control over Missouri. It was also cool to find the grave of Jesse Kirk, the man who Kirksville was named after. After visiting some more interesting places we raced to the finish line in first! Wooo woo, got a cup full of candy =) 

Then we heard a creepy story from the museum curator about an old Jewish women's prayer box and the events that would follow the people who owned it. She had prayed to God in the form of this box I suppose as to the cause of the Holocaust that she had miraculously survived but none of her loved ones had. I suppose the answer to this was in Kirksville. The brother in law of AT Still's daughter had started laws in America sterilizing people deemed unfit to reproduce (had seizures, deaf, were from particular regions of the world, etc). Apparently these laws are what gave Hitler the idea for his genocide in Germany and thus caused the Holocaust. Once this was discovered the hauntings from the box stopped. Definitely an interesting story. Overall it was a fun night learning random facts about the history of Kirksville and enjoying some fantastic rich hot chocolate with friends!

A photo with the curator

A photo with our SAA board member, she is whited out and I look like a pig monster =P

And finally a photo at the entrance of the cemetery! I was told to make my scariest Halloween face, but I guess no one else decided to join in...

That was the fun scary night, now onto the story of the not so fun scary night. Last Sunday night Jon got a phone call from his mother that his brother Adam got into an accident on his way back up to NAU. Apparently what ended up happening is he saw a giant boulder (the size of the front of a car) coming down the side of the mountain. He slammed on his breaks and swerved but the boulder still hit the side of his truck, popping all four tires with the impact and sending him spinning 70 feet down the road. The car just behind him said that if he hadn't of swerved the boulder would have landed right on the truck cab, which definitely would have killed him. We were both shaken to hear this, especially Jon and immediately said a prayer of thanks to our Heavenly Father for listening to our prayers to keep our family safe. Every night we pray for this and I'm so glad we do! 

We'll be heading out to Boston at the end of the month so stayed tuned for updates on that and the rest of Fall and Halloween funness to come =)