Into the Mystic?

INTO THE MYSTIC?

Lower Mystic Cemetery in Mystic, Connecticut

I first visited this cemetery back in April 2014. As a taphophile, a lover of cemeteries and all that is related, I had spied this one from the passenger seat as we sped past headed to the historic seaport town of Mystic. I told my husband that we were going to stop on the drive back to Groton...or else.

 I have a 'thing' for old cemeteries and I just KNEW this one had some interesting stones and maybe a mystery or two. After all, I had high hopes for a cemetery with "mystic" in its name!

I first saw the old stone well when I was strolling toward the center of the cemetery. It stood in a large area unmarked by trees, shrubs or headstones for that matter. It looked odd and a bit out of place. I mean, how often do you really see a big well like this in a cemetery?

 As I walked closer, I noticed that it had an old metal handle that looked as if it was still operable. Should I? I have seen PLENTY of horror movies when the innocent chick gets axed because she's more nosy then needed. The curious cat gets the...how does that go? Oh yeah. Curiosity killed the cat.

Great.

I had to try the handle though. I couldn't help but look over my shoulder. It felt like I was on the movie set of "The Ring" or that old zombie film of all zombie films, "Night of the Living Dead"..

After my big adventure at the cemetery well, I continued my walk around. I saw many cracked headstones and markers with anchors carved on them. Since this area was on the coast, I knew I would find some burials of old fishermen, sailors and salty sea captains. The cemetery was well kept and I wish I could have spent more time. This cemetery had stories to be told. It's on my list of places to re visit the next time I am in Connecticut.

Hopefully when I crank the old stone well on my next adventure to Mystic, I will remain unscathed from any horror flick creature crawling up from the watery depths. The human imagination is a powerful tool, isn't it? My real hope is to catch the caretaker while he is tending to the grounds. I would LOVE to know the rest of the story!

 Would YOU crank the handle??

Happy Samhain!

The end of October has arrived.

The air is crisp again. Green has turned to red and gold as the hand of autumn begins to make itself seen upon the mountains. Many leaves are scattered to the ground crunching underfoot as they are trod upon. Pumpkins are wearing faces. Black cats, scarecrows, ghosts and cornstalks stand watch in front yards. Halloween is here and I am ready.

The past month is a busy one for people like me. I often laugh and say October is like Christmas retail season around the haunted office. Many people call and email with spooky stories, unusual photographs and questions about the paranormal. This past month was filled with library presentations, book festivals, haunted cemetery walks and haunted history walks and I loved every minute of it!

The 2 cemetery walks I held in Massillon Ohio in mid October went very well. One night we had a bit of rain but it did little to dampen the 60 some souls who attended on those 2 nights.

I always enjoy the stroll by lantern light and cannot wait to go back next year!

Twilight in the Potters Field of Massillon Cemetery

The Civil War Memorial

We had several people who captured EVPS in the area of the soldiers memorial on our walk. The statue was unveiled in 1876 and is in honor of the fallen Vets.

The cemetery office building as seen on October 11th.  There are always questions asked about this structure. Is it vacant? How old is it? Is it haunted? Find out when you come and do the walk with us next year. (tease tease)

I cannot wait to return to the cemetery in 2012!

The Haunted America presentation with the Tuscarawas County Public Library was a blast. 220 souls attended and I had a great time presenting this new slideshow on haunted locations across the nation. Lemp Mansion, Area 51, Salem, Mansfield Reformatory,Winchester Mansion, and the Trans Allegheny Luntatic Asylum to name a few. It was nice to see old friends and meet new ones as well. Very cool!

The West Virginia Book Festival was held in Charleston, WV at the Civic Center. This was a first time event for me and I enjoyed meeting all who stopped by our booth.

I enjoyed hearing the spooky tales people shared with me and hope to see you on one of our haunts!

I greatly enjoyed leading haunted history walks in Ohio and West Virginia this year. Hard to believe I have been doing this since 2003! The weather was good on the walks and many people brought cameras , tape recorders and camcorders as well.  Local Cleveland news and Metromix covered out walking tours in Canal Fulton. There were kind enough to send us some photos.

Signing some books on the Haunted History Walk of Canal Fulton Ohio

                                                    Instructing dowsing at the cemetery in Ohio



I was invited to film a show in Macedonia Ohio on Cable CHANNEL 9 called Teen Focus and had a great time. The hosts had wonderful questions and the entire program can be seen here
The hosts are local students and did a fantastic job!


                                                      MORE ON HALLOWEEN

Halloween is a holiday filled with mystery, ancient meanings and best of all....candy!

I remember dressing up as a kid and try to carry the tradition on as much as I can every October... to the chagrin of my teenage kids. This year I dressed as a evil Catholic school girl.

Here are my kiddies a few years ago at a Halloween costume contest in Ohio. Mason is a spooky Confederate and Sage is the girl "thing" from the movie The Ring.  Needless to say, Sage took First Place!

                                                                            BOO!

MYSTERY & LORE

The origination of Halloween is veiled in mystery and lore. Halloween has its roots in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced: sow-in). As the festival of Beltaine (another Celtic festival) celebrates the return of lush vegetation to the earth, the birth of animals and the fullness of life, Samhain celebrates the end of these things. Samhain was and is the recognition of the other half of the eternal cycle of life. After the last harvest had been gathered in and before the onset of the harsh cold of winter the people of the Celtic lands marked this time with observations that have been carried forward into our own time and across the sea into the mountains of Appalachia.

It was at Samhain time when livestock was slaughtered and the meat was preserved for winter use. Even today, on family farms in America it is the first of November that marks the time after which hogs are slaughtered. It also marks the beginning of hunting season.

For many centuries throughout Celtic Europe it was believed that the souls of the dead returned at Samhain to visit their old homes and families. It was customary to welcome them in, to once again warm themselves by the hearth fire and share in the family meal. The family would prepare a meal consisting of traditional foods that were always eaten at Samhain for good luck. In Ireland this would have consisted of colcannon which is a mixture of potatoes and cabbage or kale, brown bread and porridge made from the grain harvest. A place was set at the table for each family member and visitor present as usual. But, at Samhain one more place was always laid. This was for the visiting spirits. The extra plate was filled with food just as those of the living participants in the feast. The meal shared with the spirits was known as the "dumb supper" and is still a part of both the European Celtic and Appalachian celebration of Halloween in many families.

Samhain was a natural time for the living to ask advice of the spirit world since the spirits were traveling about the earth at this time. Many customs and games came about as a result of attempts to divine the future with the help of the departed spirits. One old custom is to place two nuts in the embers of a fire, naming one after yourself and one after your sweetheart. If one of the nuts pops and jumps from the fire the match is ill fated. If both of the nuts stay near each other in the fire and burn to ashes, the match is true love. A custom that is still very common in Ireland today is to serve a special fruit cake called a barmbrack. Inside the cake there are charms such as a button for bachelorhood, a thimble for spinsterhood, a coin for wealth and a small horseshoe for good luck. Whoever gets one of the charms is destined for the next year to be blessed by whatever the charm signifies. Since Samhain is the beginning of the dark season of winter, the twilight time of the year, and the Celtic way of reckoning time begins with the onset of darkness, Samhain was considered in many regions of the Celtic world to be the true beginning of the year. Thus, whatever could be divined on this night was fated to be until Samhain came round again. The consuming of special foods for luck during the coming year was an important part of Samhain and later on was transferred to our modern custom of eating special foods on New Year's Day.

The true meaning of Samhain never has been based on Satan, evil spirits or wickedness in any form. In the modern western world, where infant mortality is low and death is confined largely to the sterile environment of hospitals, we have little exposure to the end of life. This was not so in the world of our remote ancestors nor even in the world of our grandparents. Humans have always had difficulty facing death and the Samhain traditions that have been passed down through the centuries were how the Celts did so. It is an affirmation that life and death walk hand in hand.

wanes and the dying light of the shorter days is brightened by the warm glowing fire in the hearth, let us remember the true spirit of Halloween. Let us remember and cherish those that have walked this earth before us.

                                                       Happy Samhain

Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum ghosthunts in 2011

Call me crazy.

Why would anyone want to walk and roam the halls of the 2nd largest stone cut building in the world with the lights out?

We rented out the entire old hospital in Weston West Virginia for two nights in 2011. It was called the Weston State Hospital in 1913 but has now reverted back to the original name: the Trans - Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.  Each night, we packed in ghosthunters, skeptics and wanna believers who all admired the architecture, history and ghost stories. Most hoped something of the paranormal sort would happen, and to some, it did!

Darrin and Danielle did not expect to have it happen to them but it did. It occurred on a day time tour! Darrin and Danielle both felt as if "something" moved thru them when they took the history tour at TALA before our private ghosthunt there on Friday the 13th of May 2011. It happened at the same time and caught them both off guard.

Why investigate this building? Come on! Looking at the history alone, one can almost imagine what kind of energy has been left behind here. Lobotomies, electro shock therapies, insulin therapy, and cold water immersion? The list goes on and on.

The hospital structure was begun in 1858 using prison labor and eventually the help of European stone masons. Construction was halted during the American Civil War for almost a year. The final stage was completed in 1881 but patients had already begun arriving in 1864. The first patients were several housewives from Ohio. Hmmm....

Some of the faces carved by irish immigrants on the wall outside the Civil War section

The hospital was originally built to house about 250 and ended up blowing that number away by 1950 with around 2400 taking up residence. The hospitals original grounds were 666 acres. Yes.... 666..  The hospital had its own dairy farm, gas well, water supply and its very own cemetery. It was all intended to make the hospital self sufficient and it pretty much did.

The famous clock tower. One side does not have a clock face so workers could not look up and see what time it was while they were hard at work!

The hospital building commands your attention.
It was designed by the renowned architect Richard Andrews following the Kirkbride plan, which called for long rambling wings arranged in a staggered formation, assuring that each of the connecting structures received an abundance of therapeutic sunlight and fresh air. The Kirkbride plan influenced the construction of over 300 similar facilities throughout North America. Other Kirkbride buildings include the Athens Lunatic Asylum in Athens Ohio, Columbus State Hospital, Danville (PA) State Hospital and the Maryland State Hospital for the Insane to name a few.

                                                       Weston State Hospital aka TALA


On our July 16th 2011 hunt at TALA, one participant was thrilled to get her first "ghost voice" or EVP on tape. Electronic Voice Phenomena or EVP  can be captured on audio tape, which means video recorders and voice recorders. She emailed me this:

" I've not gotten through my pictures yet, but I started listening to my audio (not all the way through all of them yet either). My FIRST recording, where I had walked in on a group doing a light session in the children's ward, I got something that literally made me go "Ho-Lee Shit!" (pardon my .... not french).  During the session the guy who was asking questions was talking.  Over that, you hear a male (sounded about 20 years old) say "Go away. Please leave me alone".  The recording was no one in the group!"
Needless to say, this was just one of the many EVPs captured on our ghosthunt at the old hospital.

One of the paranormally active areas in the hospital. Children's voices have been recorded here when no kids are present. People have placed toys and balls in this room as trigger objects.

The Medical Center building

This is the location of the Morgue

Inside the morgue area

We look forward to more investigations in this grand old building in 2012.

Check our website for information!

But in the mean time, swing by their website or stop over and do a day tour.

You'd be crazy not to.

Cemeteries, Cameras, and Lanterns, Oh My!

Cemeteries, cameras and lanterns, oh my!

Just another day in the life of Sherri! October 4th found me "posing" for a photography class as a light fog and mist enveloped the hills around us. Mark Romano's photography class from the New River college needed a spooky prop in the cemetery and I guess that meant I was "it."

One of my favorite "trick" photos that my Grandpa Brake did

I grew up with my family in NE Ohio in a home where we had a darkroom in the basement. My dad was a avid photographer and did it mostly as a hobby, but he did do a record album cover for a local singer in Canton Ohio back in the 1980s. My Grandpa Brake was as a photographer as well and was with the first unit of army photographers to visit Hiroshima after the bomb was dropped. Grandpa Brake had a photo studio in Webster Springs WV and ran it for about 20

 years. Anyway, I'm a sucker for anything dealing with photography, nighttime and cemeteries so of course I said "yes" to Marks query as to whether I would help him out with his photography class.

Cemeteries occasionally make people a bit leery, even during daylight hours. Not me! I remember our parents hauling us around Webster County WV many summers ago. They would stick us all in the back of a pick up truck and we would go visit family cemeteries. Sometimes we would sit on the tailgate or cemetery ground and have lunch, snacks, or a maybe just a bottle of pop. We would walk the cemetery, hear about our ancestors and clean some graves. Pulling back vines, brushing off dirt and walking the hillsides of many cemeteries perhaps added to my adult interest and love of the "Silent Cities of the Dead".

When Mark approached me about posing for his students and helping them learn how to use their cameras at night and on various settings, I thought of two places locally in Summersville that would be good back drops. The Walker Cemetery and the Southern Methodist Episcopal Cemetery by the Moose Club downtown.

This photo was taken by Pam Mace and was shot in the old Methodist cemetery next to the Moose Lodge in downtown Summersville. This cemetery is the one we venture into on our Haunted History Walks of Summersville. Love the lighting!

Another eerie photo shot by Pam Mace. This was up on the hill as you first arrive into the Walker Cemetery in Summersville WV. The sky was perfect early on and shows up well in some of the early evening shots. All that is missing is a full moon!

Pam captured an image of me being reflected on the back of one of the headstones to the left. Do you see it?  This was taken at the Walker Cemetery in Nicholas County WV. I use the candle lanterns featured in the shots on my walking tours of town and my husband Perry make them for us to sell as well. They have a great ambiance at night, don't they?

This is another shot taken at the Methodist Church cemetery in Summersville. There are many variations of markers in this cemetery. Recumbent, table top tombs, new England style, hollow metal markers and victorian symbolism is present on many.

This is the simple headstone for a child who dies in 1860. Lambs represent innocence, the Lamb of God and purity in children. I took this photo this past summer as I strolled through the cemetery researching the stones for my walking tours.

New England style markers usually represent those who moved into the area from the NE area of the United States. In this cemetery in Summersville you can see a few of these all carved from local sandstone. The stones can be compared to human torsos as they have "heads" and "shoulders".

Malvina Kelly's marker as been snapped in half and lies propped up against a tree trunk towards the backside of the cemetery.

The grave of Margaret Dotson taken during the day....

and then one at night....

This was taken by Pam Mace during the photo shoot. Assistant Rick is standing at the head of the grave while I am sitting on the table tomb.

Thank you to Mark Romano of Images by Romano for letting me share in the class expedition!

More haunted blogs to come this week.....

Prison Ghosts

The Ohio State Reformatory

Okay. I know it's an old creepy building. I know it has a dark history and that many men were murdered and felt their last breath slip away while incarcerated in this place. But what....and why would you linger is such a hell hole like this in the afterlife? Wouldn't you want to "go" somewhere pretty with green fields, birds singing and the sun shining? Why spend eternity slithering around in a dark and dreary building like a prison?

The Ohio State Reformatory

There seems to be a general consensus among prisoners that if you die in prison, your soul stays in prison. You are serving an eternal sentence with no chance of parole.

Eastern State Penitentiary

Take for instance this photograph I took of an old door at Eastern State Pen. My husband and I visted this historic prison in the summer of 2009. Roaming the halls was one thing, but stepping into a cell gave you a completely different feeling. Your body knows the difference between a "happy" place and a "not so happy" place. Stepping over the doorway and into a cell gave me an overbearing sense of dread and a mild claustrophobia-like feeling of suffocation.

 Can you even imagine what went on inside the heads of those men who were not mentally insane ? Feelings of desperation, anger, hate, resentment and fear?

Solitary confinement cell at Eastern State Pen

What a recipe for a haunting!

Eastern State Pen prisoners in the yard

And what of those prisons who executed the condemned? What kind of spirits haunt areas where men- in the name of justice- snuffed out other mens lives? The firing squads, the hangings, the electric chair and the needle. The list of the executed in America is sadly a long one. Both men and women were put to death legally. I have come across records of men...and women being burned at the stake in Colonial America. Not to mention to hundreds of illegal lynchings that took place in small town America.

Whitegate Cemetery, West Virginia

And what of the locations where the prisoners were buried? Would they be haunted as well? Would the souls of those hung and electrocuted for their crimes wander the burial ground? Whitegate cemetery in Moundsville West Virginia is a great example of a prison cemetery. Hundreds are buried here with only a simple license plate style marker. These were the bodies of men who were not claimed by their families after dying in prison...or after their execution was completed. Just a simple field, no fancy statues or marble markers...just little white plates with names and dates.

The paranormal field tends to be a subject that offers more questions than answers. Why do we haunt? Are we really stuck in the Afterlife? Can we help ghosts?

One thing is for sure. Prison's are haunted. They have been...and will continue to be.

Maybe that's why I like spending so much time investigating them and writing books about the subject? Who knows? Maybe I was a prisoner or a guard in a past life?

Now THATS another Blog!