Stalking Shadows (14 page)

“Sounds good to me,” I agreed.

I waited patiently while Sherry locked up the office, and then I followed her into town. She pulled into a local chain motel. After registering, I put my suitcases upstairs before rejoining Sherry in her Ford Bronco. We drove to a local restaurant and sat down in a booth in the back.

After ordering, I decided to press Sherry about the cemetery.

“So, tell me about the cemetery,” I said, taking a sip of my Diet Coke.

“There are shadows,” Sherry began. “They show up a lot and are scaring away mourners and people visiting gravesites. I’ve seen them once myself. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to whom they appear to, nor when they show up. It’s to the point I won’t even go through the cemetery by myself. I’m so scared.”

“I saw them,” I said. “They don’t appear to be threatening. Any idea why they’re there?”

“No. I wish I knew,” Sherry said wistfully.

“Have you called in a team of paranormal investigators?” I asked.

The waitress delivered our food, so it took a moment for Sherry to answer.

“No. I don’t want people to think I’m nuts, and I wouldn’t even know who to call anyway. I mean, if word got around that the cemetery was haunted …” she said, taking a bite of her pasta.

“Sherry, since other people have seen them, I’m pretty sure a lot of people know the cemetery is haunted. But, maybe I can find out what they want and put a stop to this. They really need to be crossed over,” I told her. “Why don’t you come back to the cemetery with me? We’ll do a little nighttime investigation and maybe figure this whole thing out.”

“No way am I going into that cemetery at night. It’s creepy enough during the day,” Sherry said, emphatically slamming her fork down on her plate.

“Okay, okay,” I laughed, wiping my mouth with my napkin. “Let me into the cemetery tonight and I’ll see what I can do.”

“By yourself ?” Sherry asked, her eyes growing wide.

“Yes. Not the safest way to investigate, but since you won’t come with me …” I shrugged.

“I’ll come with you,” Sherry sighed. “But only if I can wait in the car so I can go for help if something happens.”

“Deal,” I agreed.

We continued to talk over dinner about ghost hunting and what I was going to do later that night. She dropped me back at the hotel and we agreed to meet at the cemetery gates around ten o’clock that night.

Cursing myself for not bringing any ghost hunting equipment with me, I drove to the drugstore—the only shop open in town. I quickly discovered I was going to have to conduct an old-school ghost hunt, because all I could find was a microcassette recorder, some tapes, batteries, and a flashlight —I already had my digital camera with me. It wasn’t much, but it was all I could muster up on such short notice.

The inky blackness of the night seemed to engulf the entire Jeep on the way back to the cemetery. The moon sat hidden behind ominous dark clouds, and streetlights, once you left the town proper, were few and far between.

The headlights pierced the darkness and illuminated Sherry’s car waiting for me just outside the gates. Sherry had already opened the gates and waved me through. I stopped by the office to help her close and lock the massive iron gates to the cemetery behind us.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked, her arms wrapped around her midsection, as if to protect herself from a sudden onset of ghosts.

“I’m sure. Come on. It’ll be fun,” I said as we walked back to my truck. “Tell me where these ghosts normally appear.”

“They’ve been seen just about everywhere in the cemetery, although at night most of the reports come from people who have seen them by the gates,” Sherry said, as she opened the door to my truck. “I can’t tell you how many people have knocked on our door telling us they saw a group of people trying to get into the cemetery after hours, but when Rob goes and checks, no one is there.”

“Okay, let’s start here then,” I said.

“What do we do?” Sherry asked, looking around nervously.

“We try to coax them out,” I answered, as I loaded batteries and a cassette tape into the recorder.

“Can I wait in the car?” Sherry said.

“If you want,” I sighed.

Sherry climbed into the passenger seat of the Jeep and quietly shut the door, while I walked toward the gates of the cemetery. I decided to try an EVP session, so I flipped on the tape recorder.

“Is anyone here?” I asked, letting my energy fan out in all directions, hoping to detect one of the ghosts coming in my direction.

No response.

“No one is here to hurt you. We just want to help you. Can you talk to us?” I asked.

Again, no response, and I didn’t feel the presence of a spirit anywhere around me.

After about a half-hour of waiting, I rejoined Sherry in the car.

“Let’s head back to the Gates of Salvation section, where they appeared to me,” I suggested. “Maybe we’ll have more luck there.”

Sherry agreed and I began slowly weaving my car back through the narrow roads that snaked through the graveyard. Within a few minutes, we arrived back at the Gates of Salvation.

I grabbed my flashlight and started walking around the area, ending up at the back of a section across the street from the Gates of Salvation.

“That’s the oldest section of the cemetery,” Sherry yelled to me from the safety of my Jeep.

There were graves everywhere, and many of them dated back to Revolutionary War era. As I walked among the gravestones, I found a small, empty area against the back fence. The flashlight revealed woods on the other side of the fence, and other grave markers lining the fence like soldiers.

“Now that’s odd. Why wasn’t anyone buried here?” I wondered, panning my flashlight around the area. The beam caught a slight movement close to a tall obelisk monument about twenty feet away from me.

Just as I was about to walk toward the movement, I caught something moving out of the corner of my eye. I slowly turned, and my flashlight caught the same three ghostly figures that appeared to me earlier in the day, as they emerged from behind trees and tombstones and stood in a semi-circle in front of me, still keeping some distance away.

“What are you trying to tell me?” I asked, mostly out of frustration. “You can talk to me, I can hear you.”

“We lived. No one will know,” one of the ghosts said to me telepathically.

“Why?” I asked.

“We have no markers,” the ghost answered. “Behind you.”

I turned around and saw the empty plot of land by the fence.

“Are you buried there?” I said.

“Yes. Please help us. We lived.”

“I’ll help you. I promise,” I said.

“Thank you.” With those words, the ghosts faded back into the night before I could ask their names.

I made a mental note of the people buried on either side of the empty plots and walked back to my truck to rejoin Sherry, whose eyes were wide open in fright.

“We need to get into the office,” I said. “We need to find out who is buried in those graves without tombstones.”

“Why?” Sherry asked.

“Because that’s why the ghosts are here; they want to be remembered and there are no names on those graves.”

We drove back up to the front of the cemetery, and she unlocked the office. After about an hour of searching through the files, burial books, and scouring a detailed map of the cemetery, we were able to discover there were a father and two of his sons buried in the unmarked graves.

The records also showed that the father and his sons died within two months of each other in the mid-1800s, from scarlet fever. My research showed that a horrible bout of scarlet fever did go through the area at that time. Given the fact that the father and sons were farmers, which was listed on the cemetery records, they probably didn’t have the money to pay for markers—a sad tale to be sure.

“What do we do know?” Sherry asked.

“We get some sleep. When does Rob come back from fishing?” I asked.

“In the morning, why?” Sherry asked.

“Tell Rob to make some wooden crosses, write the men’s names on them and put them at the gravesites. That should take care of your problem,” I answered.

After bidding Sherry goodbye, I returned to the hotel for some much-needed sleep. The next morning, I stopped by the cemetery to say goodbye to Sherry and started the long trek home.

Two weeks later I received an e-mail from Sherry saying that since Rob put the crosses at the gravesites, there have been no more sightings of the phantoms. They’d just wanted someone to know they lived and they mattered.

The Cemetery Where Few Rest in Peace

A small cemetery we’ll call Palmdale is also one of the exceptions to the norm. The cemetery is located just outside of a small town in Michigan. Due to recent acts of vandalism and the desire to protect the small cemetery, I will not divulge the exact location.

The cemetery itself dates back to the very early 1800s, and there is still the occasional burial taking place even today. The graveyard sits on a heavily wooded, large parcel of land surrounded by residential homes, although I’m sure this wasn’t always the case, as most of the houses are relatively new.

Historical records show that at one time there were two Native American reservations within fifteen miles of the cemetery, and five known Native American burial grounds within six miles of the graveyard. It’s common knowledge that Native Americans once roamed the land freely, and the location of the cemetery was considered a neutral zone by the area Indian tribes.

Different tribes would come to this area to bury their dead, because of the close proximity to the water. Many Native American tribes in this area buried their dead close to the water because they believed the flow of the water would assist in carrying the soul of the deceased to the other side. The area was rich in fish and game, and many members of several tribes would peacefully hunt, fish, and perform their burial rituals in peace.

Once the area became settled, after the War of 1812, the Brits set up a fort close to the location and the Native Americans were rounded up on the reservations. Different treaties were signed, and eventually many of the members of the various Indian tribes were shipped off to Canada.

Much of this history has long been forgotten, as the bustling town developed into one of the main shipping ports on the Great Lakes. In present day, the town’s importance to the shipping industry is gone, and the once-busy docks that moored schooners and other types of shipping vessels have been eroded away by time and the waters of the large lake nearby. Few of the original buildings remain, some destroyed because of the fire that roared through town in the 1870s, and some demolished due to the evolution of a society that demanded larger, more modern facilities. Some of the original buildings, such as two large hotels that burned to the ground in the fire, have never been rebuilt.

Palmdale Cemetery holds the remains of many of the founding fathers of the small Michigan hamlet, which we’ll call Ashley, along with a host of settlers and unknown seamen who died while in port, or en route to Ashley.

The cemetery is encircled by a road, and another road leads from the main gates straight to a small white building, with a covered wraparound porch. A bench is built into one side of the building.

On the surface, the cemetery looks like any other old graveyard: rows of tombstones lined up like mismatched soldiers; the brief life stories of the dead carved on the tombstones, showing the dates of birth and death and, in many cases, a small epitaph.

These grave markers all stand as a grim reminder that one day, we too shall leave our earthly bodies and take spirit form. The cemetery itself appears to be a calm, peaceful place for the bodies of the dead, and a good place to reflect and remember the loved ones we’ve lost to the inevitable clutches of death.

However, if you pay attention and take the time to cut into the underbelly of the cemetery, it’s an entirely different story. Many residents of Ashley know about the paranormal side of Palmdale Cemetery. Some have even experienced it firsthand, although rarely, if at all, will they speak of it. Even when they do, it’s only with trusted friends and in hushed voices.

On my first visit to Palmdale Cemetery, I too thought it was a serene environment and the entire place seemed rather benign—until I really began to concentrate. I decided to delve a little deeper into the undercurrents of energy that softly pulsated and danced among the tombstones.

I walked down the road toward the white building, and settled myself on the bench that overlooks the western side of the graveyard. My intention was to simply soak in the energy and see what happened. After closing my eyes and taking a few deep breaths to lower my energy vibration to match those in the cemetery, I opened my eyes and sat perfectly still, careful not to let my eyes focus on any one thing, but to see everything all at once.

You know that old saying, “sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees”? That’s exactly what happened. When I did take the time to really notice what was around me, I saw that there were dark shadows, roughly in the shape of humans, standing among the trees and tombstones. It was then I noticed that the energy had changed dramatically. It went from barely perceptible to pulsating. The air felt electric and fully charged—not threatening—but definitely pumped up enough to where you couldn’t miss it if you tried.