Thursday, October 29, 2020
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Parents grapple with Halloween protocol By TIM STAUFFER The Iola Register
Sweet treats Ghostbuster Brigham Smith accepts candy from The Register’s Kylie Cromer as Munchkinland and More Preschool and Daycare Center visited local businesses Wednesday afternoon. REGISTER/VICKIE MOSS
Trick or treating is normally an easy decision for parents. Free candy? What’s not to like? But this year, aside from the typical ghosts and ghouls known to haunt familiar stomping grounds on October 31, the concerns of many parents center on the novel coronavirus. Is it safe to go door to door? Should kids wear masks? What about candy? Should we put it in plastic baggies? How do you ensure kids are disin-
Amie VanNice fecting their hands between houses? Or is it better, and just plain easier, to keep the kids home, turn off the lights and wait for next year? The Kansas Department of Health of Environment’s guidelines for celebrating Halloween are quite clear. They do not recommend door
to door trick or treating, stating that it “is very difficult to maintain proper social distancing on porches and at front doors, ensure everyone is properly wearing face coverings, and because food sharing is risky.” That said, it’s hard to believe Halloween can simply be called off. Surely some young sugar-fiend will ring your doorbell, or a rebellious teen will escape out the backdoor with friends while “Beetlejuice” is on. Then what? Kelly Eccles, a nurse pracSee HALLOWEEN | Page A3
Terrifying tales of historical horror If you dare continue, first take a deep breath and hold it. Taste the dryness of your mouth as a single bead of sweat snakes down your spine. Are you afraid?
Trevor Hoag Just Prairie My hands are still trembling as I write this. Fingers like ice. Pray, dear friends, to never see what I have seen. For not only will the sane rhythm of your heart never return. … No one will believe you.
Lorenz Schlichter Memorial cemetery, rural Le Roy, is infamous for being haunted by the children of German immigrants.
ON THE DAY they hung him in 1862, young private Bell, too, was seized by fear. Though the July heat was suffocating, his limbs grew numb with cold, stomach acidic and bilious. A week earlier, he’d been drinking and getting wild with his Union brothers near Humboldt, during a brief respite from his duties at the fort in Iola. Now he was to “suffer death by being hung by the neck until ... dead, dead, dead.” If only he’d never touched her, Elizabeth Haywood. But he’d done it all the same. Threw her down, she said. Threatened to “blow her brains out.” An example thus needed be made — the first execution in Kansas. This was no longer a lawless territory. In order to avoid a spectacle, Col. Cloud had John Bell marched to the site of what would become Highland Cemetery almost 70 years later. And that’s where I found
In Highland Cemetery, Iola, the restless ghost of John Bell haunts the hill where he was executed during the Civil War. REGISTER/TREVOR HOAG him, ascending the gallows one wretched fall evening. Drop. Snap. Swing. Back and forth he swayed, bloodless. Then dropping to the ground, he stumbled and crawled in my direction, men-
acing, and with eyes full of the cruelty of hell itself. I could only flee in horror, my mouth unable to articulate a scream. Perhaps if I crossed running water, I thought, the ghoul would be unable to fol-
low. SO UP the Neosho now, just outside of Le Roy. Last time I was there, jet black crows dotted freshly cut corn fields as I crept along obSee HORRORS | Page A5
MV volleyball falls at state tournament
Marshall, LaTurner campaigns pass through Iola By TIM STAUFFER The Iola Register
A crowd of about a dozen Republican supporters greeted Rep. Roger Marshall and Jake LaTurner outside Pete’s Jump Start in Iola Wednesday morning. The event was organized by the Marshall campaign and marked one stop of many as the two politicians rush to make the most of the campaign’s final days. Marshall, who currently represents Kansas’s 1st district in the U.S. Congress, is running for an open Senate seat vacated by the retiring Pat Roberts. He is locked in a Vol. 122, No. 256 Iola, KS 75 Cents
Rep. Roger Marshall poses with Bill Mentzer and Marcia Roos, both of Iola. REGISTER/TIM STAUFFER tight race with Kansas State Sen. Barbara Bollier. LaTurner, who has served
as state treasurer since 2017, is running for Kansas’s 2nd Congressional District. He
defeated incumbent U.S. Rep. Steve Watkins in the Republican primary and now faces Topeka Mayor Michelle De La Isla in the general election. In a sign of how tight both races are, the visit from Marshall and LaTurner comes three days after both Bollier and De La Isla came to Iola. When asked to opine on the state of the race, Marshall responded, “It’s been great. We started off on a 38-stop tour Sunday afternoon in the snow in Plainville. It’s amazing, the excitement we’re seeing. It feels like a Chiefs pre-game.” The small group gathered See CAMPAIGN | Page A6
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Officials back off from statewide mask mandate
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