Meat Grinders

The Meat Grinders is a scary urban legend about two children who disappeared, many years ago, at Farmer John’s Meat Packing Plant in Tuscon, Arizona.

According to local legend, the meat grinders in Farmer John’s Meat Packing Plant in midtown Tucson are haunted by the ghosts of two murdered children.

In 1964, the slaughterhouse and meat packing plant was owned by a man named Warren James. He had two children, Sarah who was 8 years old and Nelson, who was 6.

One afternoon, in early October, Mr James was delighted when his children dropped in to visit him at work. Their nanny, Miss Stiles, had brought the two kids by for a short visit. She ushered them into their father’s office and told them to wait there until he was ready to spend some time with them. Then, she left to take a short break.

Miss Stiles had only left the children alone for a few minutes but, when she returned, she was shocked to discover that the office was empty and the two children were gone. Unable to locate them, she alerted their father.

Mr James immediately shut down the production line and asked his employees to assist in the search for the missing kids. They all walked around the meat packaging plant, looking under tables and moving machinery, but there was no sign of Sarah or Nelson anywhere.

By this time, Mr James had become frantic. He decided to contact the police and report his two young children missing. Soon afterwards, a police car pulled up and two officers arrived to make a more thorough search.

After spending hours combing the factory, searching high and low, the police cold find no trace of the missing children. It seemed as if they had vanished into thin air. Their parents were inconsolable.

A week passed and there was still no sign of Sarah and Nelson. The police suspected foul play and a team of officers dispatched to go over the entire building with a fine tooth comb. This time, they examined the meat processing machinery very closely and their dilligence finally paid off. They discovered what appeared to be traces of human remains, lodged in the sharp blades of the meat grinders.

The entire plant was immediately closed down and a recall order was issued for all meat that had recently left the plant. The official reason given was: “Contaminants found in meat, human in nature”.

Within days, the police issued a warrant for the arrest of the children’s uncle. Mr James’ brother had a long history of being mentally unstable. His job in the factory involved feeding meat into the meat grinders. As horrible as it was to contemplate, the police believed that the crazed man had murdered his niece and nephew.

When they broke the horrible news to Mr James, the devastated man collapsed in despair. The police had to explain to the grieving father that his own brother had fed the bodies of the poor children into the waiting jaws of the meat grinders.

A few days later, even though the remains of Sarah and Nelson had not been recovered, they were officially declared dead. Due to the horrific publicity, nobody was willing to accept meat from the factory and it soon went out of business.

Shortly afterwards, the dead body of Mr James was found hanging in the factory’s refridgerated meat locker. Driven out of his mind by grief, he had taken his own life. After his death, the meat plant was sold and, over the years, it passed through many hands.

Ten years later, the new owner began contacting the police to report mysterious tresspassers in his factory. According to the employees who worked there, a little girl and boy were constantly spotted running around the building. Matters only became worse when his frightened employees claimed they had seen an adult man throwing two young children into a meat grinder. When the workers rushed over to stop the crazed individual, he disappeared into thin air.

Eventually, employees quit and refused to work at the plant, saying that it was haunted. Soon, the factory was abandoned and left to fall into ruin.

However, that was not to be the end of the stange incidents. In 1984, twenty years to the day after the children had vanished, a security guard patrolling the area discovered the body of a dishevelled man hanging in the factory’s meat locker.

After being transported to the mortuary, the man was identified as Warren James, the uncle of the missing children. Inexplicably, the medical examiner found the words “I killed them” carved into his chest.

They say that, every year, during the month of October, the ghostly figures of two young children can be seen running around the abandoned factory building. On Halloween night, according to legend, the shadowy image of a man can be seen hanging in the meat locker, while another figure can be seen dumping two small bodies into the meat grinders.