Stoll Kansas
This story is one that I thought a lot about before writing. There is a place in Kansas called Stoll. It's one of those 'blink and you'll pass it' kind of towns. My friends and I were into visiting strange and weird places and one of us had heard that this was definately a 'strange' place. So we all loaded our butts into my best friend's car and headed for the open road.On the way we joked and chatted and discussed the stories we had heard about the town. There we supposedly a lot of weird things that had happened there. One of the churches there was said to have been burnt down and there were many stories on why. One story said that the church burnt down because of lightning, another said that a satanic group had set the fire, and still another story said that the church burnt with people still in it. Whatever the true reason, we were on our way to see it.We had traveled for a while and realised that we should have been there already. We were supposed to be looking for a graveyard. I was sitting in the front passenger seat and 'Maverick' was sitting in the back seat on my side. Both of us should have been able to see it clearly. We were looking out the window and still hadn't caught sight of it. 'Anu' decided to turn the car around and back track because she was sure we had passed it. We ended up turning around several times. Anu was about to give up and go home. She decided to pull into a small gravel parking lot and turn around for home, when we looked across the road. There, bigger than life, was the graveyard we had been looking for. None of us could figure out how we could miss seeing something that big. It was one of those gothic type of graveyards. It had big gorgeous head stones made of marble. It also had the look of being neglected. We parked the car and got out.Upon entering the graveyard we descovered that it was more in disrepair then we had thought at first. Just looking around we could see headstones that had been kicked over, desecrated, or worn by time. There was a path going in between the gravestones that looked like it had been used a lot. We followed it to what remained of the old church. I can still remember the sadness I felt as I looked at what was left. The front wall had been caved in, bricks were everywhere. The roof was completely gone and you could see the stains from smoke and fire all through it. As I stepped over the foundation of the wall, I felt a cold chill. I stopped in my tracks and was bumped into by 'Blockhead'. I was staring right in front of me at the alter area of the church. Upon the wall the image of a crusafix had been burnt into the brick. You could see the outline of image on the cross. All over the walls were symbols and graffiti. Beer cans and bottles littered the floor. Over to my right was a gigantic pentagram painted on the wall. There were sayings such as 'satan will live again' on the walls. At that point I wanted to leave. I kept quiet though, not wanting to ruin it for everyone else. I took one more look around the church and went back to the graveyard. I decided I wanted to look around at the gravestones and see what years they were from. As I started walking around I started sinking into the ground. Gophers had been running rampant through the graveyard. After a while I made my way to the back of the graveyard to a fence that ran along the back wall of the church. It was getting darker and twighlight was almost gone. Everyone decided it was about time to leave. We all were getting freaked out by the sounds and the feel of the church. So we headed back down the path to the gates. When we got through the gates all of us noticed the sign on the church across the street.(that's where we had parked the car) Most churches have cute and sweet sayings or quotes from scripture up on their sign. This one didn't. It said something about hell on earth and damnation for all. We got into the car and left as quickly as possible.When we pulled out of the parking lot it was night. We had gone down the road a bit when we noticed a car behind us. Now we were in BFE and there were no major roadways near us. We noticed a set of head lights close behind us... almost as if the person turned off their headlights till they got close and then turned them on again. This made Anu nervous. The lights got closer and closer to us. They stayed with us the whole way back to a main road and then dissapeared as suddenly as they had appeared. We continued home and decided not to go back there anytime soon.Talking with a friend of mine after I finished this story, I rembered some of the other things that struck us as odd on that day. We talked about the fact that the reverend's tombstone was in a section that had headstones that were old, but looked brand new. His headstone was the only one in that section that looked decayed and old. There was also an image above the cross that looked as if it was etched in smoke. It was in the shape of a devil's head. In an effort to make sure that memory hasn't clouded these images, I'm going to take a trip back there soon. I guess I want to make sure it's there and that I remember it correctly. I'll update this after I do.
