While growing up, as a teenager it was not unusual to hide in the
local cemetery and await the passage of some innocent person heading to
the store or somewhere else in the early evening darkened hours. I
still to this day remember the creepy thrill of jumping out from behind
to tombstone and scaring the unsuspecting individual. To a young teen in
those days this was a means of entertainment that actually hurt no one.
However, as I grew older the cemeteries became places of potential
fear.
I was in the United States Air Force and stationed in
Nebraska while in the service. A friend and his wife lived away from the
base and to get to their home we would need to travel a long house-less
road. After traveling several miles on this road one would come upon a
deserted cemetery out in the middle of nowhere. There were no churches
near it, no houses to be found anywhere but just the cemetery alone.
We
visited our friends one evening and during our visit the wife began to
relate her experience on the road as she neared the cemetery. She
informed us that as she was traveling home late one evening she took
note of a young girl of about seven or eight standing in the middle of
the highway with her arms stretched out in front of her as if she was
asking for help. Immediately she stepped on the brakes of the car and
stopped her vehicle. As she looked around the area the little girl was
nowhere to be found. My friend looked all around her car for the
youthful child but was unable to find her. Finally confused and somewhat
scared she continued on her journey to her home.
After she had
finished relating her experiences to my wife and me, a thought passed my
mind. Why not place a tape recorder within the cemetery confines and
record what takes place when the living is not present. Perhaps nothing
will happen and the tape will remain blank but then again one never
knows unless they try it. Our friend's husband and I drove pass the
cemetery towards my home to retrieve a small, battery operated cassette
recorder and on the way back we made a brief stop to buy a fresh, new,
unused tape for it and a supply of new batteries. As we got near to the
cemetery we un-wrapped the new tape and placed it into the recorder
along with the fresh set of batteries. We stopped near to the gate
entrance and slowly made our way around the graves to the center of the
graveyard where we set the recorder on top of one tombstone and turned
it on. And that was our cue to quickly depart and that is what we
hastily did.
While we were leaving both of us had chills running
up and down our spine as if some unknown number of eyes were following
our every step. We finally approached the car, got inside and
immediately left the area heading to my friend's home. Upon arrival we
laughed with our spouses at what we had done. We looked at the issue as
nothing more than fun and games. It was similar to our scare tactics as
young kids in the cemetery. None of us actually expected to hear
anything usual or strange on the tape after we played it back. We could
at least in the end have a good laugh and experience something unusual
to relate to our children as they grew up.
As midnight approached
we decided to retrieve the recorder and the cassette tape and see what
"ghostly events" we had captured on it. Once again as we made our way to
the center of the cemetery we experienced the same chilling feelings
and felt that someone or something was still watching us as we moved
around. We finally picked up the recorder and as quickly as we could we
made our way out of the graveyard and into the safety of our car. Off we
went to my friend's house to see what interesting sounds we had
accumulated on the tape.
We got to their home and went immediately
inside to sit at the table. As our host was providing fresh hot coffee,
I rewound the tape to the very beginning and started to play it. On the
first play of the cassette it did not appear that anything was recorded
other than a lot of static similar to that which you hear when the TV
goes off the air late at night. We next decided to give it a fair chance
and played it a second time. Our ears we getting used to the static now
and during the second play we could faintly hear distant voices on the
tape unfortunately it was impossible to decipher what was being said. We
assured ourselves that it was not our voices as we came and went from
the cemetery and since there were no houses in the area we knew it was
not some sort of echo from a distant home. This left only the
disembodied souls who resided at the cemetery. As we fine tuned our ears
to the recording we could hear the sound of a train traveling in the
background and clearly hear it sounding its horn every now and then.
Fact of the situation was that there were no trains for many miles from
this cemetery.
In view of what we had heard on the tape we
concluded that there was in fact a lot of activity taking place in that
graveyard. Perhaps in the future I may try the same experiment again in
Delaware as we have an abundance of forgotten family graveyards with but
a few graves within its enclosed gates. I might just hear some
additional voices that could be made out and understood. Only time will
tell.
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