paper flags: day date.

Maddie and I went on a day date today. We went hiking in the notoriously haunted Hummel Park and ended up meeting a nice man in a Superman costume. That was fun. It was a perfectly gloomy morning for a hike in a haunted park.

A little history on the park:

Hummel Park, which is said to be one of the most haunted places in Omaha, NE and rumored to be an ancient Native American burial ground, was once the site of a fur trading post run by Jean Pierre Cabanne in 1823. It was later named in tribute to J.B. Hummel, a long time superintendent of the Omaha Parks and Recreation Department.

The park has a very eerie feel to it. Spread over 200 acres, it is filled with steep hills and winding, dirt roads. An area at the eastern edge of the park is known as "Devil's Slide" because of the many suicides that have taken place there. Erosion has washed the area free from trees and resulted in steep cliffs and sharp drop-offs.

One of Hummel Park’s most mysterious characteristics is the trees that bow over the road entering the park. It is believed that many black men and women were hanged from these trees in the early 1900’s by local racist lynch mobs …and their souls still dangle from the trees. Park visitors claim to hear screams and cries coming from this park late at night.

Another of Hummel Park’s well known mysteries is the “Morphing Stairs,” a long, stone staircase located at the top of the park. These stairs are said to “morph” because nobody knows the exact number of stairs in the staircase. Each time a person counts the number going up or down, a different number is counted on the return trip.

The “Morphing Stairs” lead down a large hill into a valley containing a decrepit pit area with a deteriorating shelter house. Spray-painted markings in this area, such as inverted pentagrams and swastikas, along with the presence of dead animal carcasses, indicate that Hummel Park is a place where occult rituals and devil worship have taken place.

In addition to these satanic rituals, numerous murders have been committed in the park. One of these murders involved an Omaha prostitute named Laura LaPointe, who, in 1983, was sexually assaulted and then robbed of $25 by four other prostitutes. She was beaten to death with a 6 foot tree limb and a softball bat, and later discovered in a roadside ditch located in a heavily-wooded area of the park.

The screams and cries heard by park visitors, coupled with local ghost hunters’ claims of unexplained electro-magnetic readings and sightings of various ghostly apparitions, indicate a high level of paranormal activity at Hummel Park.

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