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Maurice Schwalm was an innovative paranormal investigator based out of Kansas
City in the 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's. Its amazing how many investigations Mr. Schwalm organized and led in and
around the Kansas City Metro Area. He was a product of his time...and his investigation style involved seances,
psychics, and other techniques that were the norm at that time.
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MO-KAN Ghosts by Maurice Schwalm is an out-of-print book. You can't order it at Barnes
& Noble or Amazon, but I have found one place you can buy it. Click here to buy it
on-line from Toad Hall Inc. for $14.95.
The material from the book presented below is not presented here for gain or profit, but simply to acknowledge
Mr. Schwalm and promote recognition of his work. Hopefully the attention will help Toad Hall Inc. sell copies of
this interesting book. We'd like to see it back in-print and more widely available. |
Below is a report included in MO-KAN Ghosts about the 1859 Jackson
County Jail Museum, and an investigation conducted there in October of 1982. Its interesting to see the result
of a paranormal investigation conducted over 20 years ago. Below that, you'll find information about Maurice Schwalm
himself from the Forward to MO-KAN Ghosts. And we close out this section of the report with some observations and
comparisons between Mr. Schwalm's 1982 investigation and our 2006 investigation.....
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THE JACKSON COUNTY JAIL MUSEUM
AN INVESTIGATION REPORT WRITTEN BY MAURICE SCHWALM
FILED IN JANUARY OF 1983
The "Prison of the Damned" in Independence, Missouri has a written history
that tells remarkable little about why it was so named by the citizens of the county. The Old Jackson County Jail
and Marshall's House were built in 1859. The Marshall's House has high ceilings, central fireplaces, and a stately
exterior intended to make it clear that the County Marshall was a person of importance. It included a parlor and
an office downstairs, and sitting rooms upstairs. Behind the house was the jail. It was built of native limestone
blocks, two feet thick, and up to six inches long. It was arranged into twelve cells, six on each floor. The only
heating element in the cellblock was in the central hallway downstairs.
The details of the small cells are rather interesting - especially since it is
here that the reports of a haunting are localized. Each of the small cells was equipped with two doors. The inner
door was constructed of hand-forged iron grillwork. The outer door was solid iron. If both doors were shut, the
prisoner was cast into almost total darkness. A window was provided, but it too was covered with iron grilling
and shutters. There was no glass to shield from the elements. But the cells were well supplied with leg and wrist
irons. A layer of straw provided sanitation and bedding. The cell population was usually about fifteen each. This
allowed ample facilities for sleeping in shifts of five. The healthy sometimes survived.
An investigation of these facilities by the Occult Studies Group was made on October
31, 1982 in the presence of two reporters from KLCI-FM radio. This occurred because prison staff members have had
clairaudient experiences, including footsteps, growling sounds, and an occasional death rattle. The curator also
had an unsolicited report from a Los Angeles policeman who toured the jail as a visitor. He reported sensations
of cold spots and nausea. He felt unable to go into one particular cell as his hair stood on end when he tried.
The Occult Studies Group meditated in the center of the lower level of the jail.
This happened to be opposite the north center cell the policeman had refused to enter. While meditating, the group
was joined by a hooded cadaverous form that was urgently concerned with political murders and secret mass burials
on a sandy beach beneath high cliffs. Then they were conscious of a figure in a blue uniform in the center south
cell.
While they were meditating, the reporters stood nearby. Various people touring
the facility also came and went; a few asked the reporters what was going on. When told, an eleven-year-old girl,
who was there with her family, announced that she had just seen a soldier in a blue uniform in the center south
cell prior to the group meditation. The soldier shook his fist and said, "I'm going to get you," to someone
in the hall. Later on, group members obtained photographs of shifting black forms within the cell.
The official manuscript history of the jail indicates that a jailer died there,
Deputy Marshall Henry Buggler (should be spelled "Bugler"), on June 13, 1866. This is described only
as incidental to a jailbreak, which freed two horse thieves. But research developed a theme of counterterrorist
politics. The Liberty Tribune
on June 29, 1866 reported: "Instead of the authorities taking steps to have them captured, the radicals advance
the interests of their failing party.... They would have the governor declare martial law.... All persons who had
been in the rebel army or in the brush could come to town with arms no longer.... In the future none but loyal
speeches would be allowed...etc." Other records indicated that Buggler's (Bugler's) family was from Fort Osage
Township, which is the only area in the county, which possesses high cliffs and sandy beaches. The Lewis and Clark
expedition in 1804 on a loop of the Missouri River established Fort Osage there.
One hundred and twenty years is a long time in the history of a river bottom.
As in the Argentine "Dirty War," there are no names and no bodies. But there may be a commentator.
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MAURICE SCHWALM: THE MAN AND HIS METHODS
The following is from the Forward to MO-KAN GHOSTS, and focuses on
Maurice Schwalm, his life, his motivations, and his techniques. Keep in mind that his techniques were very much
the "standard" for his era of paranormal investigations...and some still use these techniques today.
While Ghost Vigil investigators do not use seances, talking-boards, psychics, or other similar methods...we do
respect and admire the wide-body of work that Maurice Schwalm contributed to the world of paranormal investigation....
Maurice Schwalm first became interested in the paranormal at the age of twelve, when
his dog Butchy was accidentally left some seven miles away from home. When Butchy later showed up on the Schwalm
doorstep, Maurice discovered that lost animals are believed to find their way back using extrasensory perception.
Fortunately, Maurice's investigations and childhood experiences with the
paranormal were never discouraged by his family or friends. As a child, he had a severe leg infection which threatened
to turn to gangrene. He decided to try religious meditation. His family belonged to the Unity Church and had a
picture of Jesus "in the garden." Maurice meditated on the picture and his leg healed, leaving only a
normal scar.
After that, whenever he had problems he would meditate. He describes what would happen, upon these meditations,
as Jesus would appear as a picture on the wall that moved. His immediate family found the healing and meditations
quite normal. They encouraged this method, in fact.
His serious investigations into the occult did not begin until 1970, when he was appointed Program Chairman of
a local psychic lecture group. In the beginning of his investigations, Maurice would arrange for a large group
of people, who claimed receptivity to the spirit world, to meet at a "haunted" location. The procedure
was for each person separately to write down his or her impressions while on location. Later, Maurice would correlate
them, looking for a pattern of recognition and an explanation for whatever motivated the entity (or entities) to
haunt the premises.
As time went by, working with a large group became unwieldy. The number was whittled down to a few and eventually
to only one psychic at a time (in the manner of famed psychic investigator Hans Holzer). More recently, Maurice
has worked exclusively with Nita Taske, who wrote the introduction to this book. |
SO WHAT'S IT ALL MEAN?
Its interesting that Maurice Schwalm's report is one of the sources that identifies
the "haunted cell" as Cell #2 rather than Cell #1. There seems to be a bit of confusion over time as
to which cell is actually the "haunted cell." It could be that the paranormal energy at the jail is focused
on more than one cell, leading to two different versions of the same legend. It could be equally possible that
over time, the "legend" of the haunted cell has simply changed and morphed with many tellings of the
tale.
Not all of the history that Mr. Schwalm presents is consistent with the history
currently presented in the jail museum and as part of the tour. The six documented hangings that took place within
the walls of the jail don't even come up in his report, leading me to believe that he did not have that information.
Six horrible deaths taking place within the very room that the Occult Studies Group psychics focused their efforts
would not have been left out of his report had Mr. Schwalm known about it.
Two quotes from the 1982 investigation report caught my attention. First:
"While meditating, the group was joined by a hooded cadaverous
form that was urgently concerned with political murders and secret mass burials on a sandy beach beneath high cliffs."
And this one as well:
"The soldier shook his fist and said, 'I'm going to get you,'
to someone in the hall. Later on, group members obtained photographs of shifting black forms within the cell."
Two weeks before our 2006 investigation, Lindsey Gaston of the museum staff and
members of Miller's Paranormal observed a tall "hunched over" shadowy shape at one end of the 1st floor
Jail Hallway. See the Background section of this investigation report for more details. These two quotes from Mr.
Schwalm's decades old report appear to parallel what was reportedly experienced by Lindsey and Miller's Paranormal.
In addition, the anger reportedly expressed by the spiritual soldier is consistent with some of the activity our
group encountered during vigils in Cell #1. See the Contact in Cell #1 section of this investigation report for
more details.
Well, for the paranormal investigators of Ghost Vigil Investigations, it was an
amazing honor to investigate a location that captured the interest of Maurice Schwalm so many years ago. If you
are interested in paranormal locations in the Kansas City Metro Area, then click here and buy a
copy of Maurice Schwalm's MO-KAN Ghosts!
-Mark Stinson
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