Julia Keeline Murder and the Beresheim House Ghost--
John Keeline fancied him-self a sportsman. Some might say a playboy.
Through his family connections he was officially a bank officer, but his main interest was exhibiting pure-bred poultry… and drinking. His wife was displeased-- the drinking, not the chickens-- and threatened to leave him, just as his previous two wives had done. But this time he was determined to stop it.
In a drunken rage he stormed into her bedroom as she was dressing. They argued. She attempted to hide in the clothes closet, and made a feeble attempt to protect herself with her hand when she saw the shotgun leveled at her head. The shot went crashing into her jaw and neck. Her sister, who was staying at the house, heard the shot and rushed in; John turned and shot her as well. He went to the butler’s pantry, grabbed a pistol, and put it to his own temple.
It’s no doubt always spooky to enter any crime scene, but survivors said this was worse. It wasn’t just the ubiquitous blood from Carla Keeline as she bled to death, it was as though she was somehow still there… that she wasn’t ready to go. Her ghost was haunting the place. The relatives refused to enter their ancestral home, and sold it at auction for demolition to build a church on the site.
If a spirit won’t leave a house, what happens if it is torn down? Would she inhabit the new church? We checked with a local pastor. He said not likely; God doesn’t like loose ends, and someone who is partially in both worlds is definitely unfinished business. Could the spirit move some-where else?
We checked with our premier paranormal researcher, Sarah Stream. She confirms that spirits can travel. About that time, strange things began being noticed at the Beresheim home near downtown. The man who killed Carla, her husband, was John Beresheim Keeline… his mother grew up in the Beresheim house and his grandparents lived there. The Keelines refused his remains, so he was buried in the Beresheim family plot. If Carla's spirit was now homeless, could she have found refuge at the Beresheim house in the same way her husband found refuge in the Beresheim family plot?
If it was Carla Keeline, she certainly wasn’t shy; she arrived in the middle of a party. Many eyes saw her appear in the middle of the parlor and rush up the steps in a blur of motion, perhaps revealing her familiarity with the house. Once she arrived odd things became common. To the owners it grew unsettling to return home to lights that were on when the switches were left off, a broken mirror, and flour spilt over the floor when nobody was home. A neighbor who worked late reported frequently seeing a shadowy figure walking around and around the house, as if looking for something. They sold the house and it became a nursing home.
Perhaps Carla finally found what she was seeking.The house was a nursing home for twenty years and after that the ghost has never been seen again. Did Carla bond with one of the elderly residents? Perhaps she found the unrequited love that eluded her during her short mortal life, and she crossed over with one of them. The Beresheim ghost is gone, but it remains one of Council Bluffs’ unsolved mysteries.