17 replies to this topic

[Hudak]

Are all cemeteries haunted? I live in between two and am somewhat curious, I've grown up playing hide and seek in both but have never experienced anything paranormal...?

[Axman]

I don't believe that cemeteries harbor spirits any more than any other place. They may be there but not in an excessive way.

[Markway]

The old received wisdom is that cemetaries make the best neighbors, they're always dead quiet!

I suspect that this is not the case. I just went into my library,my notes are not computerized, and I have to add another room for my library, and so books are piled onto books, but if my memory is correct, research was done in the early 1980's which showed that areas of up to five miles away from some graveyards had statistically signifigant increases of injury and violent death.

I don't know why, but the repository of an entity's body seems to be subject to a great deal of concern by the spirits who have presumeably left them. Cemetaries are one of the first stops for people trying out their new EVP equipment, and when cemetaries are disturbed it very often sets off an avalanche of ghostly manifestations. One was uprooted in (Denver, Boulder?) Colorado. The methods used were a public disgrace, putting everyone who could not pay into a 3 foot box. Corpses were robbed, bodies were trimmed with axes to make them fit, remains were confused. People living nearby had confused looking ghosts wandering through their homes during the daytime! The City finally took over and simply plowed the remains under and made the area a park.

In short. I would not choose to live next to, disturb, or select to walk through a graveyard at night. :ph34r:

[Hudak]

Lol Great! I feel soooo much better about where I live!

[Holly]

A similar situation occurred in Boston Commons Park...Total disregard for remains and I know it left many unsettled spirits lingering in the area. On the other hand, I've had a couple of wonderful experiences there as well.

No, I don't believe all cemeteries are haunted. If a spirit chooses to remain on this plane, why not find a place that reminds them of happier times?

As I write this, I have a friend who is dying of brain cancer. I know that when she passes, she will be back to visit this world...and she will most likely spend her time on her farm, near her horses, which she loves so dearly.

[Axman]

I lived across a creek from a cemetary in Michigan, in fact my bedroom window overlooked it. I was 16 at the time. It was also in the city limits of our town. The city limits were one mile square so yes I guess statistics would be correct in this case. Not because it was within five miles from the cemetery, but because it was a town with lots of busy activity. Not only that but 2 city blocks to the other side of our house was a hospital. I guess that would factor in too. But I remember sitting at night and looking out my bedroom window and seeing a peaceful wooded cemetery. Nothing ever went on there paranormally in my years living there. So I don't believe cemeteries are any more haunted than prisons or hospitals. Yes they can be haunted but I still don't think it's any greater. I have also seen ghosts of people who were cremated and the ashes dumped many miles away. The ghost doesn't follow the ashes so why would it follow the body?

Just my thoughts!

[lulaboo]

i believe that every cemetery has a lively energy to it
whether it means theyre all haunted or not i really cant say
when i was 14 and up till i was 26 i used to live right down the street from a rather large cemetery which was quietly active ill call it (ive never heard any stories about people seeing or experiencing things there)
and i cant say ive ever seen anything there myself but ive felt the presences of its inhabitants and somehow on my daily visits there ive forged a bond with them
i guess you could say they became my mentors because it was there that ive learned alot of what i feel i know about the supernatural/paranormal aspect of life.

[Whyte]

Well, not only have I walked around in cemeteries at night with fellow investigators (Lee County Ghost Hunters) I have made daytime trips alone. In fact, just last weekend I caught an excellent EVP at Lee Memorial Gardens in Lehigh, Florida on a day trip alone. (No, I don't condone alone trips but I grew up around here and am very familiar with the area cemeteries and gardens)

We've also gotten great results with both photos and EVP in Buckingham Cemetery, Florida. We have one member of our group that likes to scout out locations alone and place small toys/figurines on the graves of children during holidays.

I have to agree that one must be very careful not to disturb those presences that may abide in cemeteries. I believe each one harbors a "sentinel" of sorts. We we able to capture a photo of what I believe to be one such entity. It resembles a lion/dragon's face and an ecto trail can be seen clearly as it wraps around both me and my team mate. We "bumped" into it and the temp immediately dropped to 29 degrees on our probe and my EMF went off like a car alarm! lol I'll see if the group will alllow me to post it here.

I also believe that if one does visit a cemetery for the purpose of investigation it is important to remember to respectfully thank any cooperating entities and to firmly state that they are to remain there and not follow.

[Markway]

Sorry Hudak, I didn't intend to scare you, but I felt somewhat obligated to answer your question honestly.

There are a lot of factors at play here. One of them is a topic I am anxious to discuss with someone who thinks they know; Why are some places haunted while others are not? Circumstances being similar of course. In other words, some cemetaries seem to be much more peaceful, or at rest than others, and I would like to know why.

The research I referred to on "Bad Auras" or whatever, surrounding graveyards I find at least a little suspect, although I cannot dismiss it. For example, if no one wants to live around a graveyard, perhaps the area attracts less than desirable renters, present company excepted of course. Included in those statistics would be the vandalism that seems to follow graveyards. On the other hand, I think that I have seen the effect of bad psychic environments upon living beings.

When I was in college there was one block long innocuous looking dead-end street that accounted for more than 3/4 of the rapes in a city of 60,000 people. Yeah it was close to young women, yeah it was private, but 3/4's?

As a Christian I have trouble explaining why there should be anyone dead at their burial place. Shouldn't they have gone on to their reward? But still, some seem to linger. At the Amazon.com building I once worked at the old morgue was like a singles bar some nights. Go figure. Maybe the old dudes are just trying to hook up

[trudy_causey]

I feel safer in a cemetery than I do walking down a city street. I believe thatspirits can sense that you are not frightened of them. I go to many of the cemeteries in the town I live in at night and I have never felt scared at anytime. I have felt that there were spirirts around me but I don't believe they mean any harm. I have been to a haunted house that for some reason or another I felt very threatened and I just wanted to leave. But never in a cemetery.

[Markway]

I suppose that a lot of fear is due to a reluctance to encounter the unknown, while at other times the fear is a more genuine reaction a threat imagined or real.

I am very sensitive to atmospheres of place and at times have a moderately active ability in the realm of Psychometry. When it's working it is like having an extra sense that manifests itself as a distortion of the other five.

I have not usually felt bad conditions in cemetaries, although such things seem to change according to the time of day,(something I have never understood), and I have not made it a practice to wander graveyards at night. Certain "Bad" houses certainly become worse at night and I am certain that some cemetaries may be the same.

I have had the very strong feeling of being watched by unfriendly ????? three times. Once from a house that went on for a number of years, once in an old park late at night that came upon me and a companion seperately and so strongly that we both almost panicked. The third time was in an old building and seemed rather neutral. Never in a graveyard, but again I don't go there at night.

The one feeling I have had at a graveyard during the day was odd but not threatening. It was a feeling of time dislocation. Hard to describe, of course, but I felt dreamy, and disconnected from the here and now. How do I explain something for which there are no real words? Compare it to being high maybe. It was summertime, and warm in an old part of an old,( for the NW) cemetary. Bugs were humming, wind softly blowing, and then ...this feeling of dislocation, everything too still, expectant, no car noise, the feeling of being in the presence of a place or a time rather than a personality. All of a sudden it was over. Very weird, but not unpleasant.

The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

[trudy_causey]

the house I spoke of about feeling threatened was built in 1852 and it is being remodeled. My husband is one of the crew that was working on the house when I learned about it from him. He came home that afternoon and was telling me about being at this house and that him and another guy were working there by themselves and they began hearing banging noises coming from within the house. So that weekend we rode to this house and it sits in a beautiful location in the country. I had my best friend and her husband with us and we were walking around the house and she heard the banging noise but I didn't . The guys were chicken they sat in the car. I took some pics and I also used dowsing rods. The only strange thing I got was 2 pics that looked like someone had held up a white wavy piece of cloth in front of my camera. The dowsing rods would pick-up on things and so did my compass it started moving by itself.
We ll I wasn't stisfied with that I went back a second time with my daughter and this time none of the pics turned out, the film was a complete blank. So I decided to go back on halloween and this time it was after dark and as we pulled up in the yard I already had the feeling we were being watched we heard the banging noise this time it was coming from under the house in the crawl space and it sounded like someone was hitting metal with a hammer. I began feeling my hair on my neck stand up and felt very cold. I told my daughter it was time to leave.

[Markway]

:ph34r: Sounds as if you really got a hot combination. Usually there's one or two of those nasty little elements, but not all at once.

I know for a fact that upsetting a physical container of psychic energy unleashes a lot of force. For whatever reason physical environments can absorb energy from certain sources. Human forces may act either as a power source or as a user of that energy.

Like your husband, I too was in a building which was a psychic battery, and it too was remodeled. Activity had always been present, but it really kicked up a few notches when the remodeling took place. It wasn't as threatening though. Whatever was going on there was mean but playful, and preoccupied.

I know what you mean about that threatening feeling, pretty darn hair-raising. I think that being scared by something you can't touch, but only see, and hear, is one of the most frightening things imaginable.

Some cemetaries have so much of a psychic charge that high strangeness begins to occur upon the boundaries. One cemetary back east has large "Haunted" areas inside the cemetary, and things like phantom cars 60 years old are spotted on the road close by. Some areas are more easily haunted than others, and I believe that the reason is that they contain a psychic charge. Add the restless dead that have not been able to disengage from their bodies, and you can get a pretty messed-up place.

[Axman]

BTW When i had my landscaping buisiness in MI, may of my jobs were caring for cemetery plats in a cemetery where the family was required to care for the plats. I had several gravesites that I cared for and one time I saw a man kneeling at a grave. I saw no car and since I finished my work I walked toward him to ask if he'd like a ride somewhere. The man vanished into thin air.

On my first ghost hunting excursion June of 1983, we sat all night in a cemetery and I witnessed a moving orb amongst the rows of stones. The night was clear but the cemetery was foggy. I suppose the wetland nearby could account for that but... The cemetery was also at the cul de sac on a "Dead End" road, cooincidence I am sure but rather funny anyhow.

[Markway]

One aspect of this cemetary business that I really wanted to hear from others on was the one which you just touched upon. I forget offhand the proper term, but it's the sighting of people, seemingly solid, who turn out to be dead. Some of these apparitions talk and interact with the viewer, while others seem to be bringing their own time with them, rather like that very cool old children's series, The Children Of Green Knowe, where the exact status of the persons involved became problematic. I.E., are we their ghosts?

Did the man seem solid, normal, and so on? Was he tending a grave, or just kneeling?

When I was a kid state abbreviations had four letters. Is Ml Maryland?

I grew up in the town of Bellingham Wash. My favorite cemetary was Bayview. My relatives were down in the pioneer section which dated to the 1850's. It was like a big park with a crick and a ravine twisting through it, and it was on a slope. This allowed for a lot of privacy,20 acre's maybe?

I've always like the place, but it did change personalities after dark. One summer's day when I was 18 my girlfriend had a picnic there in a private corner. The afternoon ended with the two of us making love on top of this Civil War veteran. As I said though, it was on a hill, and when the sun goes down it's down!

We sort of came to and said, "Wow, we'd better be getting you home". We packed up and started walking out of there. Well, the back gate had been padlocked, so we had to go to the main back gate. I was cool and calm, when suddenly I realised that my girlfriend had a death grip on my arm. Then I got scared.

There we were, clutched onto each other, walking down this road, past this angel of death that some vandal had painted flourescent eyes onto. Suddenly she says," What's that!!". I said, "What?". "Those voices, can't you hear them?". I listened, heard nothing, and then I did. Jesus, I really did. Now I was REALLY scared. She said," Let's hide! ". So, we did.

For some reason hiding made us feel better. We hunkered down behind a big grave stone and a bush, and tried to hear the voices better. All of a sudden I realized that what we were hearing was five paperboys taking a shortcut home through the cemetary. Just like that we weren't afraid anymore. I said, wonderful human being that I am," Let's scare them!" So we did. We made these low moaning muttering sounds, and those paperboys begin to panic. "SHHH!! DO YOU HEAR THAT!! JESUS!! LET'S GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!" So they ran, and we felt better. THE END :rolleyes: