An unusual incident create cause for an explanation.
January 2004
by Michael E. Tymn
The prescription bill bottle was found partially inside of the wall directly behind the head board. No plausible explanation has been provided.
“It was like an explosion. I sat up in my bed from a sound sleep, turned the light on, and couldn’t see anything, so I turned the light off and went back to sleep.”
It wasn’t until two days later that Mary Voegele, an 85-year-old resident of Cottage Grove, Oregon, discovered the apparent cause of the “explosion.” Embedded in the wall right behind the headboard of her bed was a bottle of Mentholatum ointment. The bottle was firmly wedged in the wall at a 45-degree angle.
“I had taken the bottle from the medicine cabinet to use it that night,” Voegele relates. “It was almost empty and I had set it on the nightstand next to the bed. When I went to look for it the next night, it wasn’t there. It wasn’t until the night after that that I saw it enclosed in the wall. They left me alone for five days and then knocked on the wall four times.”
Who are “they”?
“Well, I have to call it something,” responds Voegele. “I guess it must have been a ghost. I don’t know what else could have caused it.”
It was after the knocks on the wall that Voegele, a Catholic, talked with a friend who suggested that she sprinkle holy water around the room to get rid of the invading entity.
“It’s really weird,” says Johnny Faerber, a neighbor who photographed the bottle in the wall. “I’m a real skeptic when it comes to that kind of thing, but I don’t see any other explanation for it. There is only about a three-inch space between the headboard and the wall. Somebody would have had to move the bed and cut a hole the exact size of the bottle to wedge it in there. Why would anyone want to do that?”
Voegele lives alone and does not recall anyone being in her house around the time of the strange happening.
Voegele thought that may have been the end of the haunting, but then three weeks later, while sleeping, something hit her in the face. She turned on the light and discovered it was a couple of used, crumpled Kleenex tissues. “I think that was on the nightstand too, but I’m not sure,” Voegele explains. “I don’t know what to make of that. It may not be related at all.”
Voegele does not recall any other paranormal activity connected with her or her house, a small ten-year-old manufactured structure. “My brother told me that this type of thing is usually associated with old houses,” Voegele continues, “so why would it happen in my house?”
No one had recently passed away in the house and Voegele could think of no one on the “other side” who might be out to hurt her. “But I had a sister who died two years ago and we hadn’t spoken in 30 years,” she adds. “I tried to get everything together with her before she died, but it didn’t work.”
