“I believe every small town, where there’s beauty, there’s also a dark side.”
Withers Productions has taken on the bold task of reaching right into that darkness to pull into the light those things that have long been forgotten or buried deep within a town’s history, including Pampa.
Nathan Withers started Withers Productions more than five years ago with the intent of giving a voice to those who have become nothing more than a hushed whisper within the shadows, piecing together and narrating their stories to help those of us still living better understand that not everything that is hidden should be forgotten.
Withers Productions started a series a few years ago called My Paranormal Experience that gave every day folks a platform to tell their own paranormal experiences, some from here in the Texas Panhandle and others from beyond our state as far as Iowa and New York.
“My Paranormal Experience was originally about not just finding any story that everyone already knows about-it was about finding unique, compelling stories that have never been told,” Nathan said. “Because that’s what we stand for. We want to tell what’s in the dark, bring out things that have meaning and have never been discovered before.”
“There’s a lot of people you didn’t expect to believe in this stuff, but once you get into a general conversation with them and they get to know what you do, they start talking and telling you things,” Withers Productions crew member, Beth Huffman said. “They felt like no one was going to listen to them, so we come along and we’re open to it and not going to judge them.”
“We wanted to showcase every day people that were too afraid to express the feelings that didn’t seem right because they were afraid of being judged. So many people in this community at first were so shut out to the idea, but whenever we made a pilot video of a few people talking, all of a sudden, these community people started to open up about things they had experienced. And they weren’t just from here in Pampa, but from all over,” Nathan said.
“As far as Pampa goes, we’re just trying to show that where there is light, there is darkness. This town has a lot of history that has not been revealed yet. It’s either been swept under the rug or they simply don’t want to talk about it. We want to preserve the history-that’s our goal.”
A few examples of the places that Withers Productions have investigated include the old elementary school-now City Hall of Skellytown where phantom footsteps can be heard down the halls and a basketball game can be heard and felt on the empty court; the Blackwell House in Lefors where a cowboy hat seems to find itself in random places in the bedroom and loud, repetitous knocks can be heard under the bed; the Malvern Manor in Iowa where the entity that resides in the home calls itself Number One; and the Hillson Hotel right here in Pampa where the infamously sinister Captain DeZita once resided on multiple occasions, leaving an air of anxiety and unpredictability behind for those who have dared entered to endure.
A project that Withers Productions has been passionately working on in recent years focuses on the dark history of Pampa-a collection of true stories that come directly from those old buildings sitting on the bricks of downtown where passersby don’t give a second thought about what secrets lurk within the walls.
“Here is what we call the Gateway-outside is the wrought-iron gate that connects to the Combs-Worley building and the Gene Martindale Law Firm,” Nathan said. “The whole concept of it is it’s a portal between two worlds-our world and the spiritual world.”
“What we’re doing now is connecting some history in this next chapter and investigating what this place truly is.”
The initial interest wasn’t of Nathan’s own volition however-someone or something was calling him in.
“About three or four years ago, my wife and I actually encountered this lady, Vanessa Milligan, who is the origin and reason for this story. She made it very clear when I met her-she said, God put you in this position for a reason. You’re here to tell these stories and get all the darkness to the forefront and everything is going to come around full circle. She said you are going to go to a gate and that gate is going to greet you. She said all these different things were going to happen as we investigate and that’s exactly what happened.”
The latest investigation led them to the upstairs portion of the Gene Martindale Law Office building, an abandoned series of empty rooms shrouded in darkness. This would not be the first time the crew has investigated the location however, searching for answers as to the building’s history and what part the iron gate has served and continues to serve.
The methods in which the crew attempt, and often succeed, to contact whatever is on the other side of the veil does not come without its scrutiny from those who either do not believe in such a thing as a walking, talking afterlife or from those who would rather not “dabble” in such matters.
“To an extent, the five of us are also skeptics and the whole point of us doing this is to find irrefutable proof that this does exist, that there is something in between where you end up after you die versus where you’re at now in the living,” crew member, Scottie Dabbs said. “People are terrified to think about what’s beyond that door, but death is a part of life, it’s a cycle.”
Nathan and the crew have big and bold plans for the future of Withers Productions and if you didn’t know who they were and what they were about before, there’s no doubt you will now.
Nathan welcomes you to Withers Productions and hopes that you stay tuned for the bigger picture.
To see and hear all the stories that Withers Productions has unearthed so far, check them out on Beacon TV or through Stream Beacon TV on Facebook. Those buildings that you’ve passed a hundred times will never look the same way again, guaranteed.
