Oklahoma News Report

A swell of voters across the state headed to county election boards Friday, many of them waiting in line before the sun came up to cast their votes on this the first day of three days of early voting in Oklahoma.

“We’ve always voted, I’ve done absentee, I’ve done different things but usually you’re used to walking right up but now you can see that people are taking this election very serious with the economy and everything that’s going on,” said Niki Cullum, Tulsa.

Election board volunteers say they’ve never seen a turn-out like today’s. But, Shelly Boggs with the Tulsa County Election Board is staying conservative.
“We’re holding true with our 400 voters an hour and that’s pretty much what we did in 2004 although our lines are much longer this year than they were in 2004,” Boggs said.
She said if they had a bigger office, however, they would more than likely be processing about 500 ballots an hour.
That’s the approximate number they expect to see at the Oklahoma County Election Board by the end of business today.
There have been reports that folks are getting calls from the democratic and republican parties telling voters to get out to the polling precincts and vote early. But officials say the only place for early voting is at your local county election board.

The old Owens Mortuary Home has sat empty and quite on Main Street in Sapulpa for years. Halloween weekend the shrieks coming from inside might be enough to wake the dead. The old funeral parlor has been transformed into a spooky halloween fright house.

For ten bucks those brave enough to venture into an old funeral home after dark will be treated to thrills and chills and it’s all for a good cause according spook house creator, Barbara Broomhall. She says this weekend’s proceeds will benefit the Salvation Army Angel Tree Program. “Because I’m afraid there’s gonna be a lot of children without toys this year.”

Halloween weekend the home’s old embalming room appears to be back in business. Former sitting rooms have become mock torture chambers and graveyards. If you’re not careful, you may find yourself staring at creatures right out of your worst nightmares.

The first floor of the old funeral home is where most of the action takes place, but if you’re brave enough to climb up to the second floor you may just wind up face-to-face with a real ghost. Broomhall says many people including her own children have reported seeing a shadow man on the second floor. “I have not seen him personally, but I get the heebee-jeebees when I go upstairs. I won’t up up there by myself.”

A group of paranormal investigators recently came out to enjoy the frightful fun on the first floor, but it’s what they experienced on the second floor that brought them back to conduct a thorough examination.

Roger Powell of Second Sight Paranormal says his group captured audio and video evidence of spirits inhabiting the old funeral home. “There was an orb of energy that we caught. Orbs are basically just spirits just manifesting some of the energy around them. They’re able to collect enough to appear on film, but you still can’t see ‘em with the eye.”

If you’d like see pictures taken by Second Sight Paranormal investigators at the old Owens Morturary home, check out their website. myspace.com/secondsightparanormal.

The Fright House inside the old mortuary on Main Street in Sapulpa will be open October 31st and Nov. 1st from 7pm to 11pm.

The Tulsa County Sheriff’s office along with nine other area law enforcement agencies launches a new data base system that allows residents to track local registered sex offenders.

The database called “OffenderWatch” can be accessed through the sheriff’s office Web site. It covers the unincorporated areas of Tulsa County and the cities of Bixby, Broken Arrow,
Collinsville, Glenpool, Jenks, OSU-Tulsa campus, Owasso, Skiatook, and Sperry.

There are currently 321 sex offenders in the database.
The database can map the residences of registered sex offenders
including how close they are to a school, daycare or area park.
It also features an e-mail notification to advise a resident
whenever an offender moves within a one mile radius of anyone who
registers an address.
The Tulsa Police Department is not participating in “OffenderWatch”. They say they have their own system for accessing sex offender information.
As far as other parts of the state, Oklahoma County is also looking into implementing “OffenderWatch”.
For more information: http://www.tcso.org

Union High School physics students are learning about force, torque, and projectile motion by building the kind complex catapults once used to knock down castle walls. It’s a seige machine called a “trebuchet.”

It uses a lever balanced over a fulcrum to hurl objects by placing projectiles at one end of the lever and counterweights at the other.

In this hands-on expariment a two pound pumpkin is the projectile and free weights provide fling force when allowed to drop.

To keep smashing pumpkins from messing up the school’s track field, all pumpkins were securely wrapped with duct tape before being flung.

The widespread financial turmoil is forcing a lot of folks to search for new ways to save money.
What used to be considered a place to shop for the working poor or down and out is becoming more common for people of all socioeconomic backgrounds.

“Well we just recently retired and with the economy the way it is today I think it’s a smart thing to shop these shops,” said Nancy Jones, Broken Arrow.
Like many shoppers we talked to, Jones is new to resale shopping.
These trouble times seem to be attracting a lot of newcomers to thrift stores and resale shops.
Goodwill Industries has seen a year-to-date increase of 7.6%.
But sales are even better in the private sector. Consignment and resale shops have seen, on average, an increase of about 35% over last year.

Wayne Henry has owned Uptown Resale in Broken Arrow for 17 years. And if there’s one thing that is certain about his business, when the economy takes a dive his business thrives.
“We were hearing like the malls were reporting all-time low sales and we were having record highs.”