There is an abandoned cornfield, located somewhere along U.S. Route 36 near Kensington, Kansas, that is allegedly haunted. The legend, spread mostly by the youth of Smith County, Kansas, goes as follows:
At the abandoned Friar Family Farm, somewhere out in the fields near the old water tower, there lies an overgrown corn maze, from way back when the farm used to do its annual fall festival throughout October. Whether started by the farm owners themselves or merely by the local town’s kids attempting to scare one another, a bet was challenged to those that dared to venture onto the property. The wager was simple: reach the end of the maze, find the scarecrow with the digital flash camera draped across its neck, snap a picture of yourself to prove your success, and you’ll be awarded one hundred dollars upon your return. The provider of the compensation of this amount was indeterminate. However, that detail appears irrelevant to the legend at large.
Of the nine images taken on the digital camera confiscated from the property, none of the identified missing people were ever found. And of those nine individuals, four were children, and the five adults consisted of four men and one woman. Six of the missing individuals have since been declared dead by the state of Kansas, and the remaining three are still considered missing to this day.
During a court-ordered police investigation of the abandoned Friar Family Farm sometime after the eighth missing person, a child by the name of Kenney Lewis went missing. It was rumored that authorities had attempted to speak with Mr. and Mrs. Friar, who were still living in a farmhouse about a mile away from the corn maze, which was located on land they had sold to the Kansas state government due to both financial issues and their respective ages making upkeep of the property difficult. The police, who wanted a verbal statement from the couple regarding the contents of the digital camera, knocked on the farmhouse door at approximately eight ‘o clock at night. When no one answered, they assumed they were asleep, and decided to call the couple in the morning. When no one picked up the phone the following day, a state trooper was asked to check in on the household soon thereafter.
The state trooper, a 28-year-old named Marshall Lancaster, knocked on the farmhouse door around noon. When neither Mr. nor Mrs. Friar answered, the officer cupped his hands against a glass window in an attempt to see into the house. When he did so, he saw whom he believed to be Mr. and Mrs. Friar slumped over on the living room couch. After a few attempts to catch the couple’s attention, he feared them to be unconscious and broke down the door, which wasn’t hard to do, he claimed, considering the hinges had rusted over.
When he had reached the bodies, he realized that neither was Mr. nor Mrs. Friar, but rather, two scarecrows seated in their places, dressed in their clothes. Subsequent investigations by the Smith County police concluded that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Friar, nor their bodies, were present on the property, nor was there any evidence of foul play.
The couple remains missing to this day.
This lack of evidence led the investigation, shortly after discovering the empty farmhouse, to go cold, with only obscure leads in scattered directions.
One such lead was brought to light years later, after the government-seized land (both the farmhouse and the surrounding property, including the old corn maze) was sold to a wealthy rancher. The rancher, who began to clean up the property in preparation for the harvest and the well-being of his livestock, soon appeared on the local six ‘o clock news during a story about the estate’s annual pumpkin patch. It was during this story in which satellite images depicted the corn maze’s unique shape: a perfect equilateral triangle, with one of its sixty-degree tips being the location of the scarecrow, where the digital camera was discovered.
Instantly, the property became the target of several trespassers, almost all of whom were self-proclaimed conspiracy theorists and crop circle believers attempting to uncover whatever truth lay dormant on the farm. This was ironic, considering the shape was professedly manmade.
Of all the trespassers convicted, one, a 46-year-old Anthony Bergeron, was never found, yet was cited by one of his co-conspirators as having been present on the property alongside them but minutes before his disappearance.
The other two co-conspirators, along with the aforementioned, describe a “flash of light, like lightning” only minutes after Bergeron became separated from the group. Initially, they assumed it to be the flash camera described in the reports. However, that was confiscated by police and no longer resided on the premises. Additionally, one of the men found himself snared in a beartrap while walking the maze, prompting his other co-conspirators to call 911, essentially convicting all three, but saving their friend in the process.
There were no reported bear sightings nearby.
Six days after the trespassers had issued their statements, the rancher was called into the Smith County police station for questioning after forensics analysis determined that the beartrap confiscated from the corn maze carried traces of blood from a young girl, Marissa Harmony, who had gone missing roughly three years prior. The rancher, who had shown complete cooperation throughout the investigation, stated:
“They (the beartraps) were there when I purchased the land. I didn’t want them to injure any of my grazing livestock, so I disarmed them and put them all in the barn, but somehow, they got back out. Armed, too. I have no use for beartraps. We’re in Kansas.”
The rancher went on to express his concern for the wellbeing of the local town’s kids, stating that, despite the fencing and signage throughout his property, he could still “hear them” outside his house at night and that he “didn’t want anyone or (his) animals to get hurt over a silly dare.”
Three nights after that interview, conveniently on Halloween itself, the local children of Smith County reported that, when out trick-or-treating at the farmhouse, the rancher never answered the door.
Written by MakRalston
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