Site of the 1995 Bombing — Field of Empty Chairs
620 N Harvey Ave, Oklahoma City, OK 73102
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Museum admission: Adults $18, Seniors 62+ $16, Military with ID $16, Students 6-17 $15, Children 5 and under free. Outdoor Memorial is free and open 24 hours.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat, paved outdoor memorial; fully accessible museum
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1977 · 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing · Domestic Terrorism · Federal Memorial
The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building opened in 1977 as a nine-story federal office complex housing 17 federal agencies. On April 19, 1995, at 9:02 a.m., a Ryder truck containing approximately 4,800 pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil detonated on NW Fifth Street outside the building's north entrance.
The explosion destroyed the building's north face, collapsed floor slabs, and caused the deaths of 168 people — including 19 children in the building's second-floor daycare center. A rescue worker was killed during operations, bringing the documented toll to 168. The blast injured 684 people and damaged or destroyed 324 buildings across a 16-block radius.
Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were arrested within days. McVeigh was convicted in 1997 and executed in June 2001. Nichols was convicted of federal and state murder charges and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The Murrah Building was demolished in May 1995. Preservation of the site began immediately. The Oklahoma City National Memorial Foundation worked with architects Hans and Torrey Butzer, who proposed the design that was ultimately built — a reflective pool running east-west on the former Fifth Street, flanked by two gate structures bearing the times 9:01 and 9:03, framing the 9:02 moment of detonation.
The memorial was dedicated on April 19, 2000. The Field of Empty Chairs — 168 individual bronze and stone chairs arrayed in nine rows representing each floor of the building, sized to distinguish adult victims from children — occupies the former footprint. The Survivor Tree, an American elm that was a hundred yards from the explosion and survived, anchors the east end of the site.
Sources
The paranormal dimension attached to the Oklahoma City National Memorial occupies a category distinct from typical apparition folklore. The Shadowlands entry specifically notes accounts from parents who brought young children to the site — children in the three-to-five age range who became visibly distressed and described seeing someone dead.
This pattern — young children as observers of things adults cannot perceive — appears across a range of mass casualty sites and is a recurring element in contemporary paranormal accounts. The specific age cohort reflects a cultural belief, present in multiple traditions, that very young children have not yet developed the selective perception that filters out certain kinds of presence.
No independent paranormal investigation report, newspaper account, or documented witness interview corroborating this claim was located during research. The accounts remain in the realm of parent-transmitted anecdote.
The weight of the site itself — 168 empty chairs, the Survivor Tree, the 9:02 gates — functions as its own kind of presence regardless of paranormal framing. The memorial is calibrated to produce a specific emotional response, and it does so effectively for most visitors. Whether that response is a function of design, historical weight, or something else is not a question the site's documentation attempts to answer.
Walk the Outdoor Symbolic Memorial — the Field of 168 Empty Chairs, the Survivor Tree, the Reflecting Pool — on the footprint where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building stood. The indoor museum traces the bombing from the moment of detonation through the investigation and trial of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.
The open-air memorial is accessible around the clock at no cost. 168 bronze and stone chairs — each bearing the name of a victim — stand in rows on the former footprint of the Murrah Building. The Survivor Tree, an American elm that withstood the blast, anchors the east end of the memorial.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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