We're going to a castle? Is it haunted? Yes ...

We're going to a castle? Is it haunted? Yes ... 
When your granddaughter is turning 15 years of age, what can grandparents possibly do to lure her away from her friends on a Friday night in late May?
We had to do some quick thinking and plotting.

First, we picked up the birthday girl and her little sister after school, while they were hungry, and promised them food. Then we played a game on the road trip: We're going to do something exciting for your birthday, you have to guess.

That took her away from texting for a bit.
Game on!
 

She got to pick between IHOP and Steak-N-Shake, because it was her birthday. It was a hard decision, but in the end, pancakes with lots of whipped cream always wins.

Click on the whipped cream link if you want to watch a GoPro time-lapse video of our funny meal:
See how fast the whipped cream face vanishes, then the pancakes are gone. 
As our server brought a surprise chocolate and ice cream topped with whipped cream dessert, she was joined by the iHOP staff as they embarrassed Alivia to death, clapping their hands and inviting everyone in the restaurant to wish her, "Happy Birthday."
As two senior citizens, older than us, walked past our booth, they purposely stopped, leaned over and wished Alivia a happy birthday.


Back on the road, the girls were still trying to unravel our destination as we played 20 questions.
Gosh, they were good questions!
At some point they guessed: "We're going to a castle?"
"Is it haunted?"
Their eyes flew open as they realized they were right. They didn't know whether to be excited or scared, but their smiling faces showed they knew the night held many possibilities.

Where in the world is Pythian Street in Springfield, Mo., and what is a Pythian, anyway?

Spirits are high, you can tell from our expressions, as we unload our Ghostbuster attitudes and head up those steps.

Oooooo ... the castle is guarded by stone dogs. Why don't we feel safer?

Here's our knight-in-shining armor. So much for protection, it looks like he's watching the girls from back in the darkness. Do we see red, squinted eyes looking out over their heads into the library? Is this the same knight that Megan's mom had stationed beside her fireplace to scare grandchildren away from the flames?

OK, this is a dubious look. When are they pulling the curtains open?

What is this? Megan was taking a picture of Dwain sitting beside the fireplace and a great big mirror over the fireplace. Somehow, the picture disappeared, and all we have left is this blurry image. Is it a spirit that moved in front of the camera, just as she clicked it? We can't know.

We were assigned to table No. 6. Now what is the program?

Uh-oh ... are we going to lose Alivia and Lucie to a boring grown-up speech?
 

The fancy ballroom was filled with more than 100 people of all ages and interests. This night, we were all listening to our tour guide's experiences with the unexplained and his promise that we would see and hear things we had never experienced before. He told a little bit of history, starting when the castle was opened 100 years ago in June 1914 by the Knights of Pythias, a fraternal order older than the Masons.

When the castle served as an Enlisted Men's Service Club during World War II, this ballroom was visited by such entertainers as Bob Hope and Groucho Marx.
Imagine that ... we're in the presence of Groucho Marx. Maybe he took the tour with us.

This is the basement of the Pythian castle. We're in the far right row of three rows. Our narrator said this basement has served as everything from a POW prison to a military hospital to the Enlisted Men's Service Club when it included a movie theater, ballroom, bowling alley, pool hall, library, and arts and crafts area. It probably also had a lot of smoking and drinking.

With as many people who came and went, he said it most certainly was the site of thousands of deaths.
He was sure some are still in the castle.

Are those spirits twinkling in the caged windows looking out from the basement.

Our narrator said a Japanese POW painted scenes in this basement cell. Did he? Who knows ... All we know is: Don't touch the walls.

No telling how old these metal cell doors are. But our narrator said, there is no forgetting the sound when they slam shut and the noise echoes up and down the basement.

 

This was a dungeon in a far corner of the basement. Supposedly, a German prisoner was held in this room. EVR (Electronic Voice Recordings) have picked up a German voice in this room. So our guide turned off the single light and spoke in German and English, asking questions of any spirits who had something to say. He invited anyone with a recording device to turn it on, and if they got anything, to please share it.

Are you picking up any voices with your electronic recording device? We don't want to scare you, but is that a shadowy hand across your chest? Megan said, "That would freak me out."

  

Oh, lucky us. Because it was Alivia's birthday, we got to go first. That's Alivia in the lead, wading through shallow puddles in this super narrow tunnel, then Lucie and finally Megan with the pale red light reflecting off her back. Why won't our guide go in this tunnel?

We found out later, that some notable mediums had seen what appeared to them as threatening shadowy, hairy not-of-this-world beings guarding the end of the tunnel. Then they had seen a ghostly man wearing a suit, waving his arms and telling people not to go in the tunnel.

Whew, we're climbing out of this hole. We're glad we didn't hear that story before going in the tunnel. It was creepy enough without the story. The end of the tunnel was blocked off because it now leads underneath government property.

Early in the castle's history, it served as a home for widows and orphans. Megan, Alivia and Lucie are lined up in the corner beneath one staircase, and Dwain and the guys are lined up underneath the other. Boys and girls were never allowed to interact, even if they were sister and brother. What is the blurry image on the right side of this photo?

This is the theater on the second floor. Boys on the right, girls on the left. See the clear aisle?

As the lights twinkle like stars, we see a faint, blurry shadow stretching down the aisle. Could it be Bob Hope? Those old entertainers can't resist a stage and an audience. We sat in the dim light and listened to electronic voice recordings that past visitors had shared.

The spirit of a young boy often inhabits this room, one of the spaces not restored in the 100-year-old castle. He's often heard bouncing a ball against the wall and irritating the spirit of an old, widow woman in an adjacent room.

Right now, that room was muggy. Notice the windows were open. Lucie was glistening because she refused to take off her blue fleece hoodie. Is she cold? No! She wasn't going to let a ghost touch her bare shoulder. Smart girl, always ready for the unexpected encounter.

Whew, the tour is over. Time to say thank you to our tour guide.

Yep, looks like we survived any encounters with spirits. It doesn't look like any unearthly things are riding home with us, so Lucie took off her hoodie.

Walking through the crowd, even the most doubtful person couldn't dispel the possibility that they had been visited by a spirit from the past.
 

We've got to get one more picture before heading off for the promised ice cream.

Here's a parting look at the Pythian Castle in all its ghostly and historical glory. It was well worth the drive and cost of admission. Sometime, we'll have to reserve a couple of slots in a historical tour.

We know two grandparents who had a lot of fun out of Alivia's 15th birthday.