ROSE BUD — Priscilla Stone isn’t easily frightened. When she awoke at 2 a.m. to find a picture that was hanging above her head clanking against the wall in Rose Bud’s Darden-Gifford home, though, she admits she was “terrified.”
“I had been told as a child when I was frightened to say, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan,’ and that’s what I did,” she said. After turning on the lights in the historic home, Stone said she grabbed her computer and began a search for answers that would lead her to Alan Silva and the Arkansas Paranormal Investigators.
A retired professor of education, Stone found a passion for restoring homes after her husband died. She had admired the historic Darden-Gifford home since first seeing it in 1967, and when given the opportunity by its current owner, Nick Stark, to live in and renovate the home, she was thrilled — in spite of the fact that the home had limited electricity and no running water for some time after her arrival.
The home was built in the late 1800s by J.W. Darden, a local lumber manufacturer, according to historical documents. After his death in 1903, his wife, Nancy, continued to live in the house until 1908, when she sold it to J.S. Gifford. It was added to the National Historic Register in 1976 and was later purchased by Stark, a Rose Bud resident, in the 1980s. Over the years, the home has been a source of fascination for more than its historic facade.
“It is rare that a week goes by without people stopping who want to see the house and hear about its history,” Stone said. Several of her visitors have their own tales to tell of apparitions walking the grounds and the sounds of an unseen sewing machine running on the second level of the home. Stone remembers one man in particular who who had come knocking on her door. The man said he hoped to release the spirit of a family member that he believed was trapped in one of the house’s upstairs rooms.
The majestic white house, standing at the end of a tree-lined drive, seems anything but scary in the light of day. Stone enjoys watching the two dogs she rescued in the aftermath of the recent tornado in Vilonia — Jo, a mixed-breed female with a missing foot, and Jo’s mischievous pup Jethro — scamper and play in the backyard. The second-story porch swing, which is original to the house, provides a view of the lawn and adjoining pasture, where Stone’s three stallions romp, seemingly unaffected by the nearby traffic on Arkansas 5.
Sometimes when she is alone, though, Stone said, the structure comes alive with otherworldly activity. Doors slam, curtains fall, footsteps are heard on empty stairways, and floors creak in the former servants’ quarters, which can be reached only by a narrow, hidden stairway. The door to a room that Stone found to be padlocked for no known reason rattled on its hinges on occasion until she propped the door open.
The results of two previously reported paranormal investigations at the property have been discarded or lost, so Stone turned to Alan Silva’s Arkansas Paranormal Investigators, hoping the team could provide evidence of any unseen entities residing in the Darden-Gifford home.
Silva, the team’s founder, said his team uses scientific methods and the history of the structures they investigate to get a clear picture of what might be causing unexplained activity.
“A lot has to do with the history of a place and what has gone on there,” Silva said. “Legends can fuel stories, so we want to eliminate natural occurrences. If we find paranormal activity, it’s the icing on the cake.”
The investigators utilize many familiar tools of the paranormal trade, such as EMF detectors, which measure electromagnetic-field fluctuations and spikes that are believed to occur in the presence of paranormal entities. Flashlights are also employed to interact with spirits, as they are asked to respond to questions by turning the devices on and off.
When Silva’s team arrived at the Darden-Gifford home on an early-fall evening, cameras were set up in several areas where activity had been reported, including the servants’ quarters and the padlocked room on the second level. Besides encountering a number of orbs, which are said to be a manifestation of supernatural energy, several members of the group reportedly experienced cold spots in locations throughout the house.
Investigators reported experiencing heaviness in the air as they entered the padlocked room upstairs and placed a flashlight on the floor of the darkened hallway just outside the door. After several minutes without activity, a team member asked if whoever was present in the room wanted the team to leave, at which time the flashlight blazed brightly. After the group consented to leave, the light went out.
During the night’s investigation, it was the servants’ quarters that proved the most active. EMF readings spiked consistently when placed near a Victorian dollhouse, only to dissipate when the meter was raised approximately 3 feet off the floor. Silva’s group determined that the area around the dollhouse where the readings fluctuated was consistent with the height of a child. This theory was further validated when video evidence collected during the investigation revealed what appeared to be a face in the servants’ quarters window, located behind the dollhouse.
Silva said entities have been known to hold an attachment to an object that they held dear in life, and Stone had retrieved several items from the property’s barn during the home’s renovation.
Despite the continued paranormal activity that she experiences in the Darden-Gifford house, Stone is no longer fearful of things that go bump in the night. She tutors children and teaches art classes in the historic structure and considers it a “gift” to be living in a place where the ghosts of the past make their presence known from time to time.