| | Ghost Sighting: Little Girl of the Arbors
by William B. Brown
(New Haven, Missouri )
Six Flags, St. Louis
The Little Girl of the Arbors.
By William B. Brown
Tech manager for the Full Moon Paranormal Society (FMPS)
Note: Six Flags, St. Louis is a big place and has at least 5 known entities. I have decided to give each ghost their own article. Because of Six Flags policy I will not use the name of any ghost even if we think we know the name. The only exception will be Robert or Bob the Pigman because Six Flags has used his name during the October Fright Fest for several years now. This story is solely the responsibility of the FMPS. Six Flags Theme Park and its management are in no way responsible for its content.
Officially we do not know who the little girl is or how long she has been at Six Flags St. Louis. She has been seen by night security officers in the shade arbors. These are two Quonset hut shaped tunnels covered in vines. In the summer time they are a good place to sit down and cool off. In the 1970's the Pet A Pet Zoo was located near where the arbors are now. This may be why she seems to be drawn to this area.
One of the Security Officers who would talk about his experience said that he was making his rounds at about 3 AM. As he entered the arbors he saw a little girl. She appeared to be about 8 to 10 years old and was wearing a yellow dress with white puffy sleeves. As he approached her to find out what she was doing in the park after hours she disappeared. When he tells the story it would appear that he was calm, cool and collected but I have it on good authority that he arrived back at the security office a huffing and a puffing and looking like he had seen a ghost.
Other security officers including Stephanie, one our lead investigators, has heard giggles at several areas of the park including the front mall area and behind the Empire theater. Sometimes after hearing the giggle she would toss a coin towards the giggle and the coin will be tossed right back to her.
Stephanie is a year round night security officer so was on duty in January 2009. It was late at night and very cold. She was finishing one of her rounds and walking across the plaza in front of the Place Theater when she heard a little girl's voice cry out "Mommy, Mommy". Stephanie is not afraid of ghosts but this shook her up. In January the park speakers are not on. During the part of the year when the park is open those speakers are so loud they defeat most efforts to record EVPs.
During the 2008 season and especially during the October Fright Fest I was one of the operators of the Colossus Ferris Wheel. Most of the time I was the one who loaded the Colossus. When the lines were long and the kids were restless I would ask the parents if I could tell the kids a ghost story. With one exception permission was granted even if sometimes the kids weren't all that thrilled.
The story I told was a generic ghost story I called the little Girl of the arbors based on the real little girl ghost. The basic story I told was about a little girl ghost that stayed at Six Flags. We didn't know who she was or how long she had been there. She was about 10 years old and wore a yellow dress with white puffed sleeves. She was a very nice little girl but she was very shy so she was only seen late at night but if they went to the arbors and ask her to come out and play sometimes she would run her fingers through their hair.
One lady with about 4 or 5 kids was all excited to hear the about the ghost. When the ride was over they went directly to the arbors which are right by the exit gate for the Colossus. Apparently she and the kids spent about 15 or 20 minutes trying to get the little girl to come out and play with no apparent success. She and the kids then went to ride the Batman roller coaster. As they were leaving the Batman something or someone grabbed her blouse and gave it two sharp tugs. She could not see who did it. Some of the kids saw her blouse being tugged but could not see what did it but two of them say they heard a little girl giggle. The lady told me that she thought that the little girl followed them up to the Batman and pulled on her blouse to let them know she was really there.
All of these stories are great but unfortunately they are just personal experiences and without hard evidence they are just stories. I have no reason to doubt the veracity of these people or any of a multitude of others who have experiences through out the park. Do we have any hard evidence? I thought you would never ask. Read on.
Most mornings another operator and I would walk through the arbors on the way up to the Bugs Bunny National Park (BBNP) where I prepared the kiddie rides for the day. We often talked about the little girl because of the experiences he had with her at the arbors. He would stop between the two arbors and ask her to come out to play. Then he would toss a quarter into the shade. Sometimes the quarter would be tossed back to him. There was no one else there that could have tossed the coins back to him. It is interesting to note that nothing smaller than a quarter was ever tossed back. No one said our little girl was cheap.
On the morning of July 22, 2009 I arrived at my work area in the BBNP kiddy ride area. There are three rides that I was responsible for getting ready to operate in the mornings. These were the Bugs Bunny Ranger Pilots airplane ride, Elmer Fudd Weather Balloons Ride and the Taz Twister teacup ride.
When I approached the Ranger Pilots exit gate I noticed three muddy, child sized, barefoot footprints leading away from the garden area near the ride exit gate. There were two right foot prints and one left foot print. I was able to take two pictures with my cell phone camera before I had to get back to work. Luckily my cell phone has a 3.2 megapixel resolution so it takes fairly good pictures. I looked for footprints in the mud in the garden area but there were none to be found. Unfortunately I did not have any more time to investigate that morning and the footprints were fragile and were gone shortly after we opened.
Every night as we close the rides we clean the area and empty the water coolers into the garden areas next to the rides. During the night the asphalt areas of the park are washed down with high pressure hoses. The BBNP was one of the areas washed down the night before the foot prints were found.
We are always looking for alternate explanations before declaring any experience to be paranormal. We have decided that there might be an explanation that would explain the footprints. Someone might have entered the BBNP area after the wash down with a child. Then they removed the child?s shoes and socks and put the feet onto the mud. Then they would have allowed the child to take three steps across the asphalt then picked the child up. Then they could have smoothed the mud so there were no traces of footprints in the mud.
There were no people in the park over night except maintenance and park security officers. One of the security officers was FMPS lead investigator, Stephanie. She said there were no reports of children in the park during the night.
I and most other people find the alternate explanation even more far fetched than having a ghost child leaving the footprints to show us that she really is in the park.
Two pictures of the footprints were taken on the morning of July 22, 2009. Other pictures were taken later to allow us to show the orientation of the footprints.
The next morning right after we had opened I was operating the Weather Balloons. A lady with two small children in a stroller came to the Ranger Pilot ride. She stopped at the entrance gate and got a toddler out of the front seat and placed him on the ride. She left a baby in the stroller and apparently forgot to set the brake. The stroller started to roll backwards towards the railing and curb around the Taz Twister. No one was in a position to stop the stroller. I yelled just before it would have hit the curb and probably turned over and severely injured the baby. Just as I yelled the stroller made a 90 degree right turn and stopped. It was now facing down hill but did not start to roll again.
Did the little girl stop the stroller and save the baby? I don't know but several of us borrowed strollers and tried to duplicate the way that stroller turned. We were not able to get any stroller to turn the way that one did. Again this is a personal experience because no one took pictures and I could not take the time to get witnesses to describe what they saw.
Even without hard evidence I think that with the proof from the previous day that the little girl is sometimes at the BBNP helps validate the experience. Because the safety of the children
it is my overwhelming concern I am very happy to know that the little girl may be helping me keep them safe.
William B. Brown
www.jwbserv.com/ghost
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