I do not know why but most people have a certain thing about the unknown. Whether it is the unknowns of life, death, UFOs, murders or legends, some people just have to know the story and try and figure out the outcome. In part one of this series, I will write about some cases that have unknown endings. Some will be frightening, some will be brutal and some might even seem funny but all are true stories.
The Town of Keddie
Very few people know or have ever been in Keddie in Northern California. It has always been a very small and quiet place. This is even truer since in a census taken in 2000, only 96 people lived in Keddie. There used to be much more, but since 1981, it has become a ghost town. A terrible event happened in April of that year that has changed the little town forever and has left many questions unanswered. It has even given this town some unwanted and morbid tourists.
Cabin 28
On the morning of April 12, Sheila Sharp came back at her cabin at around 9 a.m. The cabin where she was the night before was not even 15 feet away from her own.
She walked in the front door as she usually did not knowing what had happened. What she was going to see probably still traumatizes her to this day. Directly inside she saw her brother John Sharp and his friend Dana Wingate. Both were bound hand and foot, stabbed and hammered to death. There was blood on every inch of the cabin. The walls had cuts on them and the furniture was busted open. She looked around and then saw on the blood soaked couch, her mother lying there. She was also killed the same way. What is strange though is that here two younger brothers and a friend of theirs were found in the back bedroom untouched. However, that was not it since her little sister Tina was missing.
On April 11 1981, at the Keddie resort three horrible murders were committed in Cabin 28. Glenna Sharp, 36, her 15-year-old son John and 17-year-old family friend Dana Wingate were bludgeoned and stabbed by assailants still unidentified. Sharp's 13-year-old daughter Tina was missing from the scene when 14-year-old Sheila Sharp discovered the bodies the following morning. Sheila had been spending the night with a friend. Glenna Sharp's two youngest boys and another boy, toddlers at the time, had been spared and were found safe in another room of the cabin. Ultimately, Tina Sharp's remains were discovered 3 years later when a bottle digger found parts of her remains 95 miles away near a waterfall.
Since the cabins were all, so close together it would be pretty much impossible that no noise was made that night. However, no one seemed to hear anything that night. In the years following the murders, the Keddie Resort fell into disrepair and most buildings were condemned. Many around the area talked of the cabin being haunted. To this day, the case remains unsolved.
Over the next decade or so, it rotted into a refuge for squatters and hobos, and the county condemned most of the buildings. However, in the past few years long-time owner Gary Mollath has gone on a furious restoration campaign that has the old resort looking pretty much as it did in 1981 -- sans people.
He rented out a couple of the best cabins, and says he hopes to rehab the rest enough to reopen in a year.
First there is Cabin #28 -- dubbed "The Murder House" by locals -- to contend with.
The condemned building's yellow-and-white paint is flaking, doors are nailed shut and most windows are covered with plywood. Bums and kids have often broken in for kicks, but by several accounts, they all flee in a hurry.
"That house has been such a negative point for so long that I intend to tear it down and put a park there," Mollath said. "Then I'm going to open this place back up and cater to groups -- with people traveling closer to home now, I think the timing will be just right.
"I want people to come and say, "Wow!" when we start up again. Not be scared."
He did indeed keep his word. In 2004, the famous Cabin 28 was torn down. There is no more cabin there but people all over still wonder what happened that sad night in April.
