Kadoka, the Paranormal Experience

For those of you who followed my blog, here is the paranormal experience that Andy and I had in Kadoka.

To refresh your memory, Kadoka is a dinky little town in South Dakota with a population just over 700 people. The place seems stuck in time by the things we see around us: circa early ‘60’s. We decide to stop here for the night so that our arrival in Sturgis will be timed just right for exploring Sturgis and then head for check-in at the University in Spearfish.

We investigate a couple of motels, before deciding on a campground that also had motel rooms. The place looks clean, has a pool and is away enough from the main traffic to offer a quiet night’s sleep. We check in, and the room is indeed small with few amenities. The only clock in the place is on the wall. I take out the smartphone and the wall clock is an hour behind.

“Did we cross a time zone?” I ask, “because my phone does not match the wall clock.”

Since the phone has been so good at changing with the time zones, I check the GPS too. It still shows central time as well. Andy resets the clock to central time. We then decided to take a ride through town to check things out. I point to the sign for the business district, and off we go. Well, the ride turns out to be 5 minutes if that. It was nothing more than a postage stamp of a few streets, complete with church and school and local bar. We are back in no time to our starting point.

There is one more street we haven’t checked and Andy take off down the small lane. It ends abruptly at a small patch of cemetery. Just as I am wondering how I will turn around in such a tight space, Andy proceeds into the cemetery to loop around and come out the other end. I am appalled at first as it seems so disrespectful. There are not more that 20 plots. The small drive leads in, left, another left and back out. After a moment, I gently take the bike through this path making sure the engine is as quiet as possible out of respect for the dead. I breath a sigh of relief when back out. I did not like the feel of the place at all.

Back at the motel with daylight still to be had, we thought a dip in the pool would be the thing to do. We get back into the room and the wall clock is back to being an hour behind. I examine the clock and although it doesn’t say it’s an atomic clock, I figure it must be; that we are in mountain time after all and it has reset itself. We enjoy our dip in the pool then head to the local diner only two streets away. As I’m finishing my meal, I look at the clock on the wall, and it matches what my phone is telling me. I ask the waitress what the time is, and she gives me Central Time. Now I’m really confused. Are we just on the line or something?

That night Andy and I have trouble falling asleep. There seems to be a strong smell of disinfectant we hadn’t experienced upon check-in. It’s keeping us awake so we turn the TV back on and let that numb our brains until we think it’s foolish to keep it on any longer and both go to sleep.

I wake up with a start from a nightmare I’m having, the sweat dripping down my forehead, and as I try to calm myself from the vivid images still dancing in my mind, Andy gets up and uses the bathroom. I pick up my phone to see what time it is; ten minutes to three.

“I know why I’m awake” I say to the dark, “but why are you?”
“I just had a bad dream” he tells me.

Now this is just so odd that we are both awakened by bad dreams, that I do something I’ve never done in our more than 30 year marriage; I ask him to tell me his dream and I’ll tell him mine. With that he begins to recount the nightmare he has just had. The goose bumps begin in earnest then, as the dream he is telling me is mine! Oh, the characters in his are different, but the theme is the same. In each of our dreams we have let ourselves into a place we don’t belong; a vacant building. Yet in my dream a spirit appears in a nonthreatening way letting me know that this is not where I should be and pointing the way out. In Andy’s dream he knows he has to get out, yet the only exit is out an upstairs window onto a slippery roof, where he clings for his life. We are both quite for a moment. I notice that the disinfectant smell is gone, and we both go back to sleep. In the morning, we awaken to find the wall clock has stopped at ten minutes to three!

As I ponder the dreams we each have had, it’s as if Andy were chastised for trespassing on sacred ground. Although I knew better, and did not want to, I also took the bike through the cemetery. The spirits wanted me to know this was not correct, and pointed me the way out. Andy however, was less thoughtful, the exit he was provided a bit more frightening; I suppose to hammer the lesson home. With Kadoka giving us both bad vibes, we were more than happy to kick the stand up and depart. One thing is for certain; I know what Blaze and I will think twice about next time!