Willows High School Class of 2008: Cursed?
Published on May 12, 2008 by Daniel Taylor · 26 Comments
Exactly 10 years since my own graduation from the hallowed halls of Willows High School, my alma mater is undergoing something of a Final Destination-esque string of tragic deaths within it’s current senior class. To put things in perspective, my graduating class was all of 99 people (the 100th got expelled the day of graduation) and the town hasn’t exactly exploded with growth since then. It’s a small town in the truest sense of the word. Nothing crazy really ever happens there. The only newsworthy death in Willows I can remember, until now, was my cousin Reed, who drowned in the Sacramento River after tying an ice chest to his ankle. They brought him back to life though. It was even on Rescue 911 ( albeit in a slightly edited capacity). But what’s been happening to the Class of 2008 is definitely something different for the residents of Willows, or, I’d imagine, any small town.
First there was the shocking death of Brian Parks, quarterback of the varsity football team, son of the head coach, and about as wholesome, All-American kid as they come these days. From the LA Times story:
Brian Parks collapsed Aug. 21, on a scruffy field, in the shadow of a badly bent goalpost. It was halfway through a Monday afternoon preseason football practice for the Willows High School varsity. Parks was a 16-year-old junior, a candidate to be the team’s starting quarterback. It was 92 degrees, a good 10 degrees cooler than at much of the previous week’s practices.
The person closest to Brian when he went down, about an arm’s length away, was the head coach. He was in his 29th year of coaching in the Northern Section of the California Interscholastic Federation, and the last 26 of those had been as a head coach. He also taught physical education, health and sports medicine at this school 75 miles north of Sacramento, and was the person best equipped to handle the crisis. Brian had fallen face down, helmet slightly embedded in the dirt. His arms were splayed to his sides, hands resting awkwardly. One of his teammates yelled at him to “Quit screwing around.”
When the head coach turned him over, he saw lifeless eyes. The head coach ordered a 911 call, then started CPR. Brian’s practice jersey was quickly cut off, then the shoulder pads. While an assistant searched for a pulse, the head coach continued mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, the procedure that he had taught and been taught.
It took less than three minutes for the paramedics to get there. In Willows, almost nothing is more than five minutes away. The sign at the city limits helps explain that: Population 6,250, Elevation 135. When the paramedics arrived, they found groups of teenage boys, standing in small clusters, their faces blank with a sort of collective inability to comprehend. Nearby, an assistant coach was down on all fours, sobbing. Once the head coach relinquished medical efforts to the paramedics, he thought of his wife, who had just driven up from their home, three blocks away. The head coach’s name is Curtis Parks, and he knew that he and Cindy had just lost their only son, a son whose middle name was Curtis.
Parks had died from an unknown heart defect: Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. Fast forward to this year, and another prominent, stand-out Class of 2008 student, Kayla Arnold was stricken by an even more mysterious unknown ailment, dying after her family removed her from life support:
Kayla Arnold, 18, was taken off life support and died late Wednesday morning, according to family spokesman Curtis Parks, whose son Brian was a close friend and classmate of Kayla’s, but died in 2006.
“Kayla was a wonderful young lady and loved by a lot of kids,†Parks said Wednesday. “I know the community will rally behind her family the same way they did last time.†Parks said that an official cause of death had not been determined as of Wednesday and said an autopsy would be scheduled “very soon.â€
“The doctors have been able to rule out a few possibilities. We know it did not have anything to do with drugs and meningitis was also ruled out,†Parks said. “But, we still don’t know what actually happened or why.â€
The fact that the Arnold family spokesperson was Parks, the father of Brian Parks, should give you some idea of the close-knit community in which these two mysterious tragedies struck. In fact, Brian Parks and Kayla Arnold were buried only a few feet from each other in the Willows Cemetary. That two, tragic, untimely deaths had happened to the same class of kids was pretty rare in the annals of Willows High School history. People wondered how it was possible that two such unorthodox deaths could happen in such proximity to one another. Statistically speaking, it was all pretty bizarre. Then came the news today of Willows High School senior Stephen Furtado, pictured above, murdered alongside his prom date in the forlorn mountain outpost of Chester, CA:
A senior at Willows High School and his prom date were found dead Sunday afternoon by the girl’s mother in Chester. The Plumas County Sheriff’s Office said Steven Daniel Furtado, 18, and Chester resident Jennifer Carmen Carrigan, also 18, are the victims of homicide.
As it this all weren’t bizarre enough, after being informed of his sister’s death, Jennifer Carrigan’s brother Billy, drove from his home in Berkeley to be with his family. Only he didn’t make it:
After hearing about the death of his sister, Billy Victor Carrigan, 20, left Berkeley to be with his family in Chester. The California Highway Patrol reported that Carrigan was driving east on Highway 36 near Mineral when he lost control of his 2001 Toyota Tacoma pickup on a 30 mph curve. The truck skidded off the road, reportedly became airborne, and slammed into several pine trees. Carrigan was wearing a seat belt but suffered major injuries. He was flown by helicopter to Enloe Medical Center, where he was reported in critical condition today.
Now I don’t necessarily believe in curses, but I don’t necessarily not believe in them either. Maybe it’s just bad luck. Maybe its just one-in-a-million times 3. But some crazy shit is definitely happening in Willows, CA. Let’s all hope it stops.
UPDATE: Jennifer Carrigan’s brother Billy has died from the injuries he sustained in the crash:
Willows High School Class of 2008: Cursed?,Billy Carrigan died Tuesday at Enloe Medical Center in Chico, said Christina Chavira, a hospital spokeswoman. He had been in critical condition at the hospital since Sunday, when he got into the accident along Highway 36 outside his hometown of Chester, about 150 miles north of Sacramento.
Tags: Brian Parks, CA, Chester, Class of 2008, cursed, drowned, Kayla Arnold, murder, Prom, rescue 911, river, Steven Furtado, Surrounding Areas, Tube, Willows High School
Readers Comments (26)
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Billy Carrigan died earlier today
WTF….willows isnt cursed or no final destination…it just happen..nothing else behind it. Their gone and everyones hurting from that but its nothing to fear about cuz thats life.
Seems like a curse, I know; we’ve buried way too many great kids in this town! Just the time for them… we’ll never know why so we can only mourn them, miss them and love them… that is life beginning and end.
I’ve been to more funerals since I’ve been associated with Willows than in my live up to then… most of them kids. God rest their souls… “keepers” every one!
Uncle Neil
http://www.zealland.com/Treasure_Chest_Mar15-21,99.htm
I dont know what this matters to anyone but as far as I have heard but Steven was the first and only student to get an In Memory Of tattoo for Kayla and Brian just days before his death. A lil bitter sweet I think!
One in a million times 3? that would be 3 in a million………..
way to go, shitdick
A grand total of 2 kids from the Class of 2008 died. While unfortunate, it’s hardly something out of Final Destination, but blogging as if it were is a good way to get Stumbled. Congratulations. I guess.
I was class of 2000, There seemed to be alot of death during the time i went to the school and right after. Dana M, Brad Bennet, and a couple others not in my grade. Its sad, but the murder of that poor kid. It just makes me sick.
June 26, 2008
I am from the Willows High School Class of 1953 and my heart goes out to the Furtado Family (John was in my class), and to the Carrigan Family! The violence and the loss seems so senseless as well as tragic.
Dave Singleton
this is all over thought, as a member of the class of 2008 I can truly say that it has just been a hard past few years and nothing more.
kayla was an awesome girl, ill never forget her
I AM PART OF THIS CALSS. AND I WAS CLOSE TO ALL OF THEM. BUT I WILL SAY ONLY ONCE THAT WE ARE NOT A MOVIE. WE ARE CURSE. IT JUST HAPPENED. WE ALL HATE IT . BUT JUST STOP MAKING IT SEEM LIKE WE ARE JUST A MOVIE… THIS IS OUR REAL LIFE. ..
i am also a member of the class of 2008, these tradgeties are truely sad but i do know that they are all in a better place…we will all miss them and i was a close friend of steven and jennifer and i knew brian and kayla as well. they were all beautiful people and my heart goes out to all their families. but we are not cursed…things in life happen the way they do because its for a reason but sometimes we wonder why it happened the way it did and all i can say is it was terrible but they are all together and we will see them again. god bless the class of 2008.
is just metaphor, a way of expressing the shock and horror that such tragedy could bestow a small community. I don’t believe it is truly believed by most that the town is literally cursed. It’s just a way of trying to reconcile in one’s mind how such tragedy could occur, it’s like not being able to comprehend such a horrible string of events happening without some ulterior plan. How could this community be so cursed, what did it and its townspeople do to deserve such bad luck?
No disrespect intended and I am certain none is intended by the posters decrying that the town must be cursed. I really don’t think that is literally what is meant. God bless.
Yeah…I was a sophomore/junior at Willows High when this happened. Definitely weird… :/
I recall living in Willows during my high school years (1990-93) and absolutely hating it there. Most all of the “popular” kids were complete jerks and the town felt like living in hell. It comes as no surprise to me that place might have some sort of curse. The best thing that ever happened to me was moving away from that oppressive agg-heap of a backwards village.
Everything happends for a reason. You may not see it now but in the future you will slowly begin to understand why things like this happend. We must all learn that in Life there is death. Why does death happend? Because it is the will of God. When one takes there own life, that is death by free will and one will not be saved by God for such a thing. However, willow school is under no curse. Do not put faith into worries, for when you put faith on what you worry, then what you worry sill come to past. thats why when others tell you not to worry, dont worry. Have faith in God who is great and good you shall receive.
Willows is a very small community so when death happens it affects everyone. I remember one of my classmate/friend passed away too… and it was very sad… R.I.P David M. class of 99! Also my brother was friends with Reed… rest his soul!
Vang Cha
My family is related to the young girl who was murdered with her prom date, in Chester. Her exboyfriend was finally convicted of the horrible event. He was sick with jealousy. He parked his car at the end of their street and snuck in the house, while her mother slept in the next room. When her mother awoke she crept by the bedroom door so as not to disturb her sleeping. She went to work as usual. It wasn’t til after she came home that she found the horrible sight of her daughter and friend slaughtered. Their killer should have gotten the death penalty. He gets to live while they are merely marters. Chester is a town of tradgedy and something is wrong there. Maybe it is the fact it is so high in the mountains that young minds just get twisted. I don’t know! The twisted roads to the towns there are also deaths gates. I hate them. Twice my nephews were nearly dust to the cliffs of hell. I thank God they have since gone on to towns in lower CA.
i dont believe in curses persay i believe in karma but these were tradgeties that we all wish wouldnt have happened. but then i really think about it cuz we just lost 2 more willows high students 2 1/2 weeks ago. class of 09 students. who i also knew very well. melissa elithorp and nikki milani. so in 5 years we have lost 5 willows high students. maybe we are cursed. and its scary cuz things always happen in 3′s so who could be next? we have brian, steven and kayla. now nikki and melissa. everyone just be safe. who all knew eachother very well. i once again send my prayers and love out to their families may god be with them.
I used to live in Willows, and it is my personal opinion that Willows is in fact a cursed and haunted place. the west side of town isnt bad, but as you follow the canal up and east to the cemetary it gets worse. My mom found a house on the corner of e.wood and 2nd streets, right across the street from the cemetary. It was a 2 bedroom house and from the moment I stepped foot in the place I knew something wasnt right. In my bedroom one night a teddy bear flew out of the closet at me with great force, nobody couldve possibly been in the closet… so it was thrown by something not visible to me. Another day, a battery operated disney toy started talking WITHOUT the batteries in it. I was scared to death in that house. My mom called up our church to come bless the house and when they all arrived, to our horror, right in the middle of my floor there was a huge pentigram imprinted into the carpet. It wasnt there before, seemed to have just appeared. Another day I noticed a discoloration on the wall in my room and scratched a bit of paint off… it revealed red paint under the white paint, and we discovered it was all over the room. I changed rooms with my mom and her husband but the other room had an opening to the attic and gave me creepy feelings. Also when you look out the window, all you see is the cemetary. I started sleeping in the living room after that. One day I was home alone and watching tv in the living room when the tv switched channels by itself. It was one of those old tvs that you had to turn the knobs on for the channel to change, and there was no remote control. Right after that happened, while I was sitting on the couch, the whole house felt like it moved, like shifted or something, to lean to one side, almost like it was sinking into the dirt. I ran the hell out of there and down to a friends house till my mom went home. My step dad relapsed into meth use in that house, and started acting strange doing strange things. He was previously a devil worshiper and had a petigram tattooed over his heart on his chest. Awhile after I started sleeping in the living room, he would come out late at night when I was sleeping and touch me innapropriately. I told my mom who at first did nothing about it. Eventually she went to her pastor at church, one Deborah Powell of family full gospel fellowship. She insisted I was making it up and my step dad was innocent. My mom took me to the police and I filed a report, and she took me to his sisters house afterward because she lived across the street from the police dept on Lassen. My mom told her we been to the cops and she begged my mom to not get her brother in trouble so they made me go back to the police and lie, and say that I made it all up cause I was mad at him. He got away with touching and fondling me. Later on we discovered, he was having a sexual relationship with the pastor at the church. The pastor insisted my mother not divorce him because divorce is a sin and she would go to hell, and that i would go to hell for breaking up my moms marriage. The pastor was also praying in tounges every day and encouraging the congregation to do so as well, to get god to knock down the wall to the bar that resides next to the church, and make the whole block the holy property of the church. Turns out, the church got shut down and the bar bought the church property and made the bar bigger some years later. After I caught my step dad shooting up in the bathroom one day, he came out and threw me on my moms bed and started touching me again. This time Id had enough and kicked him in the nuts and then in the head with my knee, and ran to my friends house. Her mom convinced my mom to leave town with me, back to my home town, where my grandma lived, and the next day they drove us out of the state. I have never ever been in a creepier, scarier, more evil place than Willows California. You couldnt pay me to step foot back there. Anyone willing to live there is brave… epecially in the cursed neighborhood between 1st and 4th st near the cemetary… pure evil.
Your post does not surprise me, For the short year I lived in Willow’s CA, I don’t want to go back. The whole town is cursed, Especially with fire I believe almost anything new or exciting catches on fire there.
I lived in the big white Victorian house on N plumas st. Beautiful house I did not care for my neighbor’s though they were scary they all had there window’s blocked out so no one can see or let alone if they could see out. They never left there house they had a secret car, One night at 2 AM we saw the man using a woodchipper in the pouring rain in his backyard, And a couple week’s later. He was using his private car in at 3 am in the back yard, Doing weird thing’s and leaving and coming back. We just thought we were being nosy neighbor’s and to leave it alone. Until one day they backed up there car and left. And never came back, totally abandoned… I was already terrified of them. But I so desperatly wanted to know what was inside that house so my friend and I snuck in through the back window and boy… Was it a site just the basement was a treasure chest it was huge the size of a small house and boxes and boxes filled with thing’s, It was really scary in the house your gut screaming at you to get out but your curiosity telling you to stay, A lot of valuable’s in that house lot’s of stuff we made money off of. but we couldn’t get into the main part of the house the door was locked. But the window was broken but my friend and I decided we need a man to go through it, Because we were terrified enough being in the basement just me and her. So we got our guy friend to go through the door window and unlock it for us, Just wow. First the reeked because cat’s were living in and out of it. They left EVERYTHING, Sorry story is getting pretty long anyway, I am going to make it shortish.
Pretty much, That house became my obsession I needed to know what happened in that house what made them leave a fortune of antique everything in there why they had child room when I never saw any children. Why there was blood in the kitchen why they left everything in the middle of the night.
Turn’s out, They were registered sex offender’s. But any record on that house was wiped clean except that there were 12 arrest’s made in that house with no name’s. The kid’s who lived there really wanted them dead they said in there journal’s they left behind. And they were wiccan’s (nothing I am agaisnt though) They also left all there animal’s there to die.
I never truly found out why they left. Because it became turf war everyone ended up finding out bout the house and it’s treasure’s everyday we would go there more and more stuff was missing. I didn’t like it, because I called it “my” house. It was my discovery, We did a lot of thing’s to stop it in our power, It kind of made and my friend crazy fighting any kid we saw in that property ( I had an advantage since i lived right smack next to it) buying surveillance sing’s so it would scare people away.
The kid’s were dumb enough to believe it, but the big scary group of men who would break in every night and not scared to hurt girls like me and my friend they made it clear one night when we were leaving the house. I was scared then and left it alone because I kind of feared for our safety or our lives.
But a couple month’s later I went back… And everything was gone it made me so depressed.
Pretty much the year I lived there, I made all these great friend’s I was so happy I was out with them all day. all the time i found this great house that made me go obsessed crazy I lost all my friend’s within just 8 month’s of living there because of how CRAZY they were and always making me chose side’s. Getting jumped at the park by a 6 foot tall 200 plus with my last remaining “freind” he beat us up pretty good, but we ended up winning the fight, he got pretty pissed about it so turned EVERYONE against me in willow’s all the kid’s a majority of adult and the cops. I couldn’t leave my house without kid’s starting shit with me, Without cop’s pulling me over. Or the neighbor’s spying on me. I only left is when I went the willow’s independent study but even then was no so fun because people I never even saw before “knew” me and thought I was a leader of a gang who liked to kill children ya they believed that shit. And my last “friend” ended up being a psycho stalker who threatened my family. That’s not even close to half the drama and all the crazy shit that happened in willow’s.
Just a couple week’s before I moved out I did get a boyfriend probably the only thing that lightened up the horrible year of my life then. we only did last two week’s thought aha
Sorry for babbling on pretty much, I am with you on that.
SO glad I am out of willow’s so glad I’m not going back. For anyone who live’s there it’s just a tragic end to happen because even my own family turned on me living in willow’s. And I can never see them again
penisadvantage
You people don’t know what you’re talking about. Three kids from our class died.
Kassi, you’re lying. I lived in that area and its fine.
And Steven wasn’t the only person to get in memory tattoos for them. Besides, when Brian died we were sixteen and couldn’t get tattoos even if we wanted
Basically, don’t talk if you don’t know what you’re talking about
I think it woke us up.
Willows High School
Class of 2008