Neighborhood a major haunt

But one Oklahoma City neighborhood has the ghosts that keep the whole city coming back every Halloween.

Carey Place.

Just blocks from major thoroughfares, Carey Place's stillness is almost unbelievable.

The houses have lush back yards and off-the-beaten-path architecture. Shamrock and hatchet cutouts grace some of the houses' shutters. The quiet street serves as a sidewalk. A few cars travel the street in the busy afternoon.

Around Halloween, Carey Place becomes a main attraction for Oklahoma City University students, metro high schoolers and some adults who remember trying to scare their girlfriends there as teen-agers.

The neighborhood, a few blocks from OCU, boasts a variety of trees that would be a botanist's dream, said one resident. And the legends that live there are every child's nightmare.

The Legend of Carey Little Carey, a young girl, lived in "The Hatchet House" on the corner of Carey Place and NW 18. "The Hatchet House" has telltale hatchet shapes cut out of its shutters - a sure sign something sinister happened there, folks who retell the story often say.

No one really knows how long ago she lived there or what exactly happened to her, but that's just how legends go, said Sue Bowlby. Bowlby and her husband, Bill, live in The Hatchet House now.

Neither have ever heard or seen Carey's ghost, Bowlby said.

As the legend goes, Carey was taken from a nearby school and killed with a hatchet. Her body was left either on The Hatchet House's front porch, Bowlby said, or in a driveway two houses down the street, some of Bowlby's neighbors say.