Meat Grinders

Two children who had disappeared were killed in a meat grinder at the abandoned Farmer John's Quality Meat packing plant in midtown Tucson, Arizona.

According to the legend, the meat grinders in Farmer John's Meat packing plant was founded in 1964 and owned by Warren Hubeny; a former prospector from Denver. He had two children, Alexa who was 14 and Norman who was 12. Alexa was now a teenager and was always hyper and was always outside running around and tanning. Norman was only a pre-teenager who just stayed inside and listened to music on his father's record player. It was the same every day.

One afternoon in early October, Mr. Hubeny was delighted when his children dropped in to pay him a visit. Their mom had ushered them into their father's office and told them to wait there until their father could spend some time together with them. Their mom had only left the kids 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 altered her husband. Warren immediately shut down the production line and asked his employees to assist in the search for the missing kids. Warren Hubeny and his employees walked all around the packaging plant, looking under tables and moving machinery, but there was no avail of Alexa or Norman.

By this time, Warren had become frantic and panic striken. He decided to contact the police and report his children missing. Soon afterwards, a police car pulled up and two more cars arrived to make a more thorough search. After spending hours combing the factory, searching high and low, the police could find no trace of the missing children. It seemed as if they had vanished into thin air. The parents were inconsolable.

A week passed and there was still no avail of Alexa or Norman. The Tuscon Police Department suspected foul play and a team of officers dispatched to go over to the entire meat packaging facility with a fine tooth comb. This time, they examined the meat processing machinery very closly and their dilligence finally paid off. They discovered of what appeared to be the 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 "Contaminates found in meats, human in nature".

Within days, the police issued a warrant for the arrest of the children's uncle. Warren Hubeny's brother Oliver had a long history of being mentally unstable. He was born and diagnosed with special needs and had many problems with his life. His job in the factory involved feeding meat into the meat grinders. As horrible as it was to contemplate, the police belived that the crazed man with special needs had murdered his niece and nephew.

When the police broke the horrible news to Warren, the devistated man collapsed in despair. The police had to explain to the greving father that his own brother fed the bodies of the poor children into the waiting jaws of the meat grinders. A couple days later, even though the remains of Alexa and Norman had not been recovered, they were officialy declared dead. Due to the horrorfic publicity, nobody was willing to accept meat from the factory and the facility soon closed down and went out of business. Shortly afterwards the place closed down, the dead body of Warren Hubeny 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 passed through many hands.

In 1974, the new owner began contacting the police to report mysterious trespassers in the factory. According to the employees who worked there, a teenage girl and boy were constantly spotted running around the facility. Matters only became worse when his terrified employees claimed to have seen an adult man throwing kids into the meat grinders. When the workers rushed to stop the crazed individual, he disappeared into thin air. Eventually, workers 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 the end of the strange incidents. In 1984, twenty years to the day 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 Hubeny, the uncle of the missing children. Inexplicably, the medical examiner found the words "I killed them" carved right into his chest.

Folks say that every year, during the month of October, the ghostly figures of two young teenagers can be seen running around the abandoned meat packaging plant facility. On Halloween night, according to the 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.

The Farmer John's Quality Meats is a chain of meat packing facilities and currently the company has moved to Ash Fork, Arizona just north of Tucson. Also there are other places in Arizona that have the Farmer John's Quality Meats packing facility such as Flagstaff, Kingman, Seligman, Winslow, Joseph City, Williams, Holbrook, and several other places that have the facility including the states of New Mexico, Texas, and California.