Graveyard Stories

In the dead of night, as people sleep, that is when the spirits creep. As the bell tolls three dark things take power, we like to call it the supernatural hour. Alrighty, if you are hearing this, you have arrived at the supernatural hour podcast and I'm one of your many hosts, Raven. I'm Chad.

And I'm Rogue. And Doc's not here today because he's doing some emergency medical stuff. He was planning on coming until literally an hour ago, so. We'll miss him, but he's doing more important things than what we're doing here.

What's the name, emergency? The 29th, 30th and 31st of October. Klaus is hosting the Indian Hills Horror Haunted House. It's a private residence haunt, a backyard haunt.

It's at 2817 West, 950 North in Provo, Utah. The hours are Friday, October 29th and Saturday, October 30th from 8 PM to 11 PM. And on Sunday, October 31st goes from 8 PM to 10 PM. So it's a great haunted house.

It's free. Donations are accepted. In 2019, they had about 2,500 people come through over the two days that they had it. In 2020, they didn't host it because of COVID, but it will be a fun night.

Advanced Paranormal Services will be there also. So come on out and enjoy a fun evening on the 29th, 30th or 31st and go through a great free haunted house. We had a great booth at the Para X at Bridger Land Paranormal. We met a lot of really interesting people, a lot of booths.

We met some of our podcast listeners that came by. It was fun to talk with them. We had a successful day of selling some fun merchandise. I have a quick little thing about meeting some of our patrons.

We'll go ahead and say. So when we went to Fort Douglas, a couple of our patrons in my group sent me an EVP. They said, hey, when we were in the reading room, we got the CBP. I think we may have chatted about this a little on the last podcast.

But in my group, it was all female. Not for any particular reason. That's just how it worked out. One of the gals is asking the spirit in the room to knock a water bottle off the table.

In the CBP, we hear a man's voice say, no, it kind of drags out a little bit. And so it's like, wow, that's cool. There was no man in my group. And they got that to you.

They emailed you that information. Yeah. So they have an email. We'll get it up somewhere someday.

And then, so I thought, okay, that's cool. And then, what, three weeks later, at the Paranormal Festival, a different, there's three ladies. A different three ladies came up to me at the booth and they said, hey, when we were in that reading room, remember when the one lady was trying to get the spirit to knock the water bottle off, we got this recording of a man saying no. And I love when that happens because we got double confirmation on that.

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, that was really cool. I was there when the gal was relating the story to Raven.

And it was like, that's really cool. And she explained to her that the other people had sent the one back in already and that it was a confirmation. And it was a great experience. But we had a great time up there.

There was a lot of people. We're going to have some people from up there that we met at the para X on a podcast in the near future. We met some really interesting people and they had some great products and services that were there. So you can look forward to some guests hosts coming on pretty soon.

At least guests people. Yes, people. Yeah. Yeah.

That was a fun event for a first year. There was a nice turnout. There was about 40 different vendors, some really great audity type vendors. I don't know.

I spent more money than I probably should have while I was there. So I had to errands made out of bone. And they looked so amazing that I had to run over to that booth and I ended up buying earrings that have dog claws on them. And just some really unique booth.

So it was a really great event. Yeah. We had a lot of fun at the event doing that and hosting it and hosting our booth. And people really liked the booth.

We had a lot of comments about how fun it was and what put together in our product line. Yeah. So this was their first year. And it sounds like they're planning on next year.

They sent out an email asking, you know, what, well, what could have gone better. And the only thing I really said was they just needed their address on their webpage. We had a bit of a moment trying to find it. Raven may have gone a little, a little postal, not all the way postal.

They're not dead people, but it was hit and miss. Okay, Karen. Not again. No.

We also want to kind of just talk a little bit about our patrons. We want to appreciate them. Say thank you for your patron, and hoping get everything going and the funding, the podcast that we do, the web hosting and everything we do. We've got some great people and number of them were at our event that we had a petite school.

We're going to talk about a little bit later. A few of them couldn't make it because of the night they couldn't get off that night, but we did have a great turnout with everybody, but also with our patrons. And we just want to give out a patron shout out. You can go out to patreon.com, advance paranormal and become a patron.

There's some great benefits of being a patron. So our next little segment is brought to you by O'Tales Restaurant. If you can ever eat in there, it's fabulous and you need to go there. They're yummy.

Two locations, Linden and Orm. All right. So into business, we are in October and it is a busy season. This week has been extremely busy and we are not slowing down.

But let's see, Wednesday, we made it over to a restaurant that has, I don't remember when that restaurant opened up. Do you remember, Freden? I don't like the impression. I got the impression.

It was back in the 70s. It's been around for a long time. Wasn't it up in the woods, Crosseria? Yes.

As soon as I've mentioned the name of the restaurant to a few people, it's very well known and some people didn't even know it was still open. So I think it's just been around that long. The neighborhood type of Mexican restaurant. We arrived in this place.

We stopped. We were able to eat and hang out a little while. And for me, that was a little different because we were able to kind of relax and be there a little bit. Kind of get the vibe of the place.

That's residential. Yeah. Because usually we arrive at residential, it's come in. Let's figure out what's going on and let's get out of here.

This one, we were able to relax a little bit and feel the vibe. And I kind of enjoyed that myself. However, through the end of that, it was probably my most least faithful or least liked place that I've ever been to because it did end up having an effect on me and making me feel like I was going to have heart attacks. So let's get into that.

So when we were sitting there eating, I could feel somebody over to the right and then I could feel over to the left like craziness. So we knew this was going to be an active place or at least I really felt like it was going to be. When we went over to the empty area where they had already shut off for the restaurant, I had my thermal cam over there and was able to pick up an image on the wall that I don't know that we really figured out who that image was. However, through talking with equipment, we really found that there's quite a few little residential visitors in that place from the gentleman that would give candy.

I think we picked that up on when it was on your phone. Chad, I'm not really sure how you picked up that candy. Yeah, we got a little app on the phone and it gave up. It gives up words every so often.

And it's one of those apps that's a free app out there. I think it's Ghost Hunting Tools of some kind. And sometimes it's been pretty random. And other times we've had some things that really strike comb.

Raven and I have done that on a couple of investigations where we had like words coming up that were very meaningful. And other times it's just been, we can't figure anything out. But the candy, I showed the list and Raven kind of picked that one out of a list of, I don't know, six or eight words that I did. And she actually mentioned that when I think you mentioned only one or two and that one really jumped and made an impression with both one of our Ghost Hunters that was there.

And also the owners of the restaurant, they both picked up on that and they both knew that same person. Right. And then we also found the skinny man. So we had the skinny man that hung out.

So he liked to make noises. I don't know what you think, Raven. We had that cup sitting there. You think that was this tall skinny man that knocked that cup over.

Yeah. I was hanging out in that corner because we were, I don't remember if we were just going to shoot in the breeze for a minute waiting for some interaction with the Ghost Needer Pro again. And one of our investigators, Nate, he heard a noise at the exact same time I saw someone walk across the front door. And I said, Nate, you just, did you hear something?

And he goes, yeah. And I said, you heard something. I mean, his reaction to hearing something fit perfectly with my reaction scene, something. But I thought, oh, it's probably someone outside, right?

So I got up and I went and looked outside and it wasn't, I mean, it was only what 15 feet, I wasn't walking across the whole building. And so if there had been somebody there, I would have seen them, but there was nobody out there. The doors were locked. And it was just a, just a tall black shadow.

And it was in that same area. So about 15 minutes later, the owner's son came in and when he walked in, he looked different than what I saw. He looked like, again, it was the same as if you remember me talking about Fort Douglas. It wasn't just a shadow.

It wasn't a person, it was just a black shadow. But, you know, the son came in, walked past this bottle that we had sitting, just teetering on the table. And he was walking past it for a good 15, 20 minutes and it didn't move. And he walked past it and it was bad.

After a second or two delay? Oh, it was a little longer than that. It was probably five to 10 seconds to tell off because Rog and I had this conversation of, oh, we think he walked by knocking off. But I said, I don't know.

It was too long of a delay for that to, you know, it'd been him. Just a little wisps of wind to have taken it off the table or anything, you know, that had already passed when he had when it had fallen off. Yeah, and just a little precursor to this happening. After we had dinner, I went up to pay the bill.

I don't think either of you were aware of this. And the gal that was running the cash register and checking that she goes, oh, this is going to be, you know, a busy night, you know, spiritually. She goes, I saw the thin guy out in the hall out there in the foyer. And it's like, that was before we even, you know, said anything or brought anything up with that.

So they have been aware of entities and spirits in this area in this thing for a long time. But she actually mentioned that she had seen him just previously out in that foyer area where you come in. And the whole night we could hear that. And they said that they could hear whispering from the back room and all night long you could hear whispering from the back room.

And I actually went back there, oh, three or four times to see if there was machines, you know, because it's a working restaurant and they've got some machinery in the back that's always running. And I thought, well, maybe I'm hearing that, but you'd go back there. And there was nothing that made that sound. I mean, there were sounds, there was hums and buzzes, but nothing that was the same timber.

And it wasn't just a steady noise. It was, you know, how whispering is. I mean, breaking some hossing. It was really good recording.

You know, you went back and there was nothing that was making intermittent sounds. Everything was just very steady. And it was, it was an active night. It was, it was a lot of fun.

I really enjoyed it. It was honestly a place that now I'm going to take my family to go back to eat because like I said, it was a place that affected me differently than I've ever been affected. I've never had, you know, like an emotion or that heart attack kind of feeling. So I want to go back to see how I feel, see what types, you know, I don't know.

I'm intrigued. Let's just put it there. Yeah, I'm interested to hear how it goes when you go there just eat and see if you get the same reaction. Right.

Agreed. So next week, so next podcast, hopefully I'll be able to let you know how it went. Little update, huh? Cool.

Yeah, there you go. Right. So beside that, we've also been busy again. We were a public event and we went to petite meat.

And I mean, I hate to just be kind of, you know, corny, but it's a really neat building. So what is petite? So chief petite meat, right? Yes.

We were petite meat cheese. It was my grade school. Yes. So it's an old elementary school that's up on the hill in Payson, Utah.

So it's an old sandstone type school. I don't think it's sandstone, but kind of that red sandstone type. I know it. And it's clay brick.

Yeah. And I know it was soft because there's an elevator on the south side now that wasn't there when I was in school. And that's where we all carve our names into the side of the school. So you can't see Raven's name on the side of the school, but it's there.

And it wasn't just me. Everybody did it. There's names there from, I don't know how long. But it's an old, I mean, it's two story.

It's got a tall bell tower. Well, two stories up in a basement. I was just going to say there's three stories. There's two stories above ground there.

Have a basement. It's a very, very imposing school as it is. And then it's at the top of this massive hill. And so it just stands out.

When we do this for the YouTube videos that we do every other week, we put every week we put YouTube videos up to it. But when we put this podcast up as YouTube, I will include the picture of the petite school as we're talking about this. So if you're watching, there's on YouTube look above and you'll see the petite school in the picture. And there's just something about seeing it in person.

Pictures don't do it justice. So if you've ever been a Payson Canyon on the Neebel Loop, you have to drive past it. And you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. I agree.

As I was driving up to it, I was in awe. I was like, is that really where I get to go? It really is a beautiful building as you walk up to it. Who was that the first time you'd seen it?

It is the first time I've seen it. Or I mean, we've been to Payson. I probably should have paid attention to it in the past, but it's the first time I paid attention to it. So I got that off back there.

It was beautiful. The interesting thing, I went to school there, second through fifth grade. So second through fourth grade, for four years it was my school. And it's funny because so there's the old part that was built in 1901.

And then there's the new part, which was built in the 50s. But there's a hallway. The new part in the 50s. Yes.

Yeah, my school is built in the 70s, my elementary school. And they tore it down three years ago. Oh, we don't. We don't turn to our stuff.

So it's funny because there's a hallway that goes from the new part to the gym. The new part has a, these were the auditorium lunchroom is. And in the hallway is where the bathrooms are in the drinking fountains. And it's funny because I've only been in the school at hand full of time since.

You were a little. But I tell you that hallway with the bathrooms in it, when I was little, that was a long hallway. And now it's not very long at all. Perceptions changed, don't they?

Yes, they do. Anyway. Back to Rogue. We keep hijacking her segment.

All right. So petit meat for, so we had a bigger group, I think, than we have ever had. And that was really exciting for me. But at the same time being in that building, I threw those walls and such.

It was kind of thinner walls that you would hear. I think sometimes other people in other rooms. But I don't know. I'm speechless honestly because I just had so much fun.

I went down to what is now the, maybe a ballet studio, a dance studio. And I could just feel so much happiness. This was one of the happiest places I think I've tuned into as a working empath. I just felt so much happiness that it was hard to think that I was ghost hunting in a place that I was getting so much joy from.

So I would have to say that your year's there at school, it couldn't have been a real bad school because I think the kids really enjoyed being there because that area we were at was the old gymnasium, I believe. I was just going to say, I didn't feel joy because that's where you go. That's where you went to play dodgeball and back in the day, you got whacked hard with dodgeballs and nobody cared. There was no feelers and all my feelers are hurt.

Back then you just had a big red blemish on your cheek for hours and it stung. So I had. Well, did you find any joy in that? No.

I found joy. I was the one that was the one that was the target. I was the one trying to get out so that I would not get hit in the face with the dodgeball. No, but in general, the school, yeah, I had a good time there.

Great. It was a small school. I mean, you figured out the time that I went to school. I mean, there's four grade schools in Payson and that was one of them.

And just a lot smaller population now in a school, or then in the school that you had now. So most of the majority of my memories there are good. But here's the funny thing. I tell people that's where I was in grade school and people say, well, did you get the haunted fields?

Then you know what? I didn't because we were little. The only really paranormal thing that happened when I was there was the janitor every once in a while would come up and say, you know, don't go down in the crawl space because that's where I see the ghost of Chief Petitney. And I think it was more just to keep us out of there than anything.

But every Halloween, they would have a spook alley in that hallway in the basement where you could go through. And for a free school sponsored spook alley was pretty good. And they would let the school kids go down there during the day, you know, the last day before Halloween or day of Halloween. Same janitor would come upstairs, run around to all the rooms and say, I just saw the ghost of Chief Petitney.

Let's go down and look and so we'd hold him down to try to see the ghost of Chief Petitney and his wife. But as far as actual haunted instances when I was in grade school, I didn't know this. Yeah, I mean, you're in grade school. You should be having fun not doing things that create haunted spaces.

You know what I mean? But I think that there was a little bit of attachment to the land. I think that that was who we were running into, at least with our team. I don't know that with the team I had that we found anyone that was really attached to the building we had land attachment.

However, there were so many items because it is now a museum. We were finding orbs all over with some of the museum items. So I think there's some items that have been brought in after it was a school that are bringing in some of the different activity. Right.

And that's one of the things I was just going to say is with as many objects as they brought in. I think there are probably spirits that are there now that probably may not have been there when I was there. In fact, we actually talked to two or three spirits that said that they were there because of objects that were there. And when I was doing arts and crafts in that basement room, that was not full of Anakin's and dresses, just FYI.

And I was going to ask you, when you were going to school there, was out of blacksmiths, little area down there, why was it represented as a blacksmith shop at that being there? Do you know? So you mean when you went downstairs and then to your left? Yes, I believe so.

No, that was the kindergarten. Oh, okay. Because that was the one area that one person on my team had his hat knocked off and they did pick on a, he was a rather large guy that they knocked his hat off. Yeah, so that was the kindergarten room.

Interesting. Really? Poor little kindergartners. And I didn't go to kindergarten to that school, so I have no stories for you.

Well, good. That's a good thing. This is a good thing. That was a really great venue.

I hope that we get to go back there again. It'd be great if we could go back there. I would love to do a lockdown and just kind of do an overnighter. I think that that would be a great venue if we could.

Yeah, that would be fantastic. So one thing I did do is occasionally I found, so there's four rooms that I was in there. And I found two or three spirits that remembered me from school. Really?

And I asked if I was their favorite and they all said no. I asked if I was their second favorite. They also said no. So, you know, whatever.

Huh. Well, that's interesting that they remember you. Yeah. And I asked if he remembered, I think it was a woman actually asked if she remembered a certain aid and she did.

And the reason I brought up that aid's name is because I had a little grade school crush on that particular aid. So, there is one interesting story. We had a lot of interesting stories. So, there was the fellow on your team that kept getting his hat knocked off.

We were just done with our first rotation and just getting ready to go to the second rotation. And I had forgotten to walk you talkies so that we could, you know, coordinate. And so, I said, there's about 10 minutes left in this rotation, but we were just right there ready to move on to our second space. But you were also downstairs, Rogue.

And so, I told my team, I said, just stay here for a second. I'm going to run down and see if they're almost done, see if we're ready to rotate. And so, I walked down this hall and the hallway where we were, it had automatic motion sensing lights that we could turn off. But the second half was dark.

And so, they were standing there kind of by the kindergarten room where it was light and I walked down the hallway. And I was kind of calling out as anybody here, anybody here, nobody, nobody. I do think Nate was way, way, way, way, way back in the dirt underneath. And I came out, I saw you.

We chatted. I said, I want to rotate. I walked back. You followed behind me and said, I'm going to go grab Nate, who's way back in the corner, right?

And you were calling for him and I heard him call back and he was far away. And as I walked back from the dark part of the hall into the light part of the hall, now a couple of my cousins were there and my sister, one of my cousins said, I can't remember exactly how she said, but she asked something about the man that I was talking to and I said, I didn't talk to him. And she goes, well that man, that was just right there, he went to talk to him. I said, there was nobody there.

I said, I walked, cleared in the hall. I talked to a rogue group in the dance studio area. And then I walked back. I said, there was no man.

And she, I mean, she's like, oh, he just leaned in. He had a black t-shirt on. He had long dark hair. There was nobody in our group that even matched that description.

But she saw him. Really? And I said, well, you just saw a ghost because there was nobody in the hallway. So that was probably the coolest thing that happened on our team.

That's pretty cool. And then when we talked to Dave later, the kind of our guide that was there, the guy that just opened the door and kind of introduced us. He's like, oh, yeah, he's like, oh, I can't remember what the ghost name was. So and so.

So they knew who it was. Really didn't have the name for him. Dave had some interesting stories. He didn't really tell.

He told me because I don't do a group. I just kind of said there and help make sure things go on and run the rotations and that kind of stuff. So I talked to Dave a little bit. He doesn't like to tell people what's going on or too much because he wants to find out what the different groups find as they investigate because he likes to compare his notes with what they've, with what we come up with and what different groups come up with.

And so he doesn't do a lot of telling people where the hotspots are or that kind of stuff. But he was great. He was, he was really great to work with. We want to thank he and was it Janine for getting us access to the building.

They were, they were phenomenal. Yeah. And Dave loves this. He's like, I love this stuff.

So yeah, he was awesome. And the Petitnik Museum is available. I'm not sure exactly what the hours are, but it's a free museum. I think it's open most weekdays.

We can look that up. But it's a phenomenal museum. Look, I think it's called Petitnik Community Museum and historical museum and community center, but they have a lot of things there in the, in what used to be the auditorium, you know, slash lunchroom, they will have exhibits all the time. Like they've got a cool exhibit and I'm just trying to think of things that I see as I pass.

They just, they've got something there all the time and you can rent it. My sister got married there. You can rent it out for family, got reunions and stuff. Yeah, large yards.

I mean, it's a beautiful, beautiful venue. The hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and they do free tours.

So, you know, they're, they're glad to take donations, but yeah, it's, it's free and it's, it's a beautiful building. And if you're down in that area, I'd highly recommend going through it just for the museum aspect of it. It's a beautiful building and I need to have, I've never taken my kids there. So I need to go there and take my kids.

Yes, you definitely need to take your kids to that. That's one of those things, you know, it's just always there and sometimes you don't think about it. So I'm trying to take it for granted. I mean, they know I went to school there because every time I drive, I'm like, hey, look, my grade school, but we've never, I've never taken it inside.

That gave me like national lamp, human vacation. Look, it's my elementary school. Like every time you drive by it and they're probably like, yeah, I know, it's your elementary school. Right?

Yes. They're over. I'm not going to go to school. You don't need to say it again.

So we have anything else or is that wrap up our investigations? I think that pretty much wraps up. That is all we have. Yeah, it's been crazy.

But it was a great investigation. It really was. And thank you to everybody that came also. We appreciate you coming to these because it allows us to be able to find other places to go to.

So for our main topic, we're going to talk about it some more for the Halloween spooky season, but it's brought to you by Castle PhotoArt. And he actually took our photos as apps, advanced paranormal, wisps personnel. And he sent me some. We're actually going to go get some more because the light went away a little quicker than we were expecting it to.

And he wasn't able to take as many pictures as he would have liked. But the few that he did get are really cool. I really like them. And he does nature's pictures.

He does photo art portraits, all sorts of things. So for those of you that have been longtime listeners, that's Castle. That was one of the original founders of this podcast. That's our Castle.

This is kind of our third of our Salem Witch Trial Halloween series. And we're going to talk today about some graveyard stories because it's Halloween and who doesn't like graveyard stories. We're going to talk a little bit first about some graveyard stories of the Salem Witch Trial Cemetery. It's actually the second oldest cemetery in the country.

It's called Old Barien Point Cemetery. And it was established in 1637. Not only because of its age, but every occupant at Barien Point really holds some historical importance because, you know, 1637, there's not a whole lot of people in the ones that were here. We're pretty cool.

I mean, they were, we don't call them pioneers, but they were literally pioneers of their time and their age and everything that was going on at that time. There's a name if you go to the cemetery of a man named John Hawthorne and spelled H-A-T-H-O-R-N-E. And he was actually a judge, one of the judges during the Salem Witch Trials. And if you read, you know, the accounts of his involvement with the Witch Trials, he was pretty unapologetic about it.

And even up to his deathbed, I mean, there was no deathbed repentance for him. Even on his deathbed, he was like, yeah, you know, I judge him. They were, which is, they were awful. I mean, he pretty much stuck to his guns and whether it's because he truly believed it or didn't want to, you know, just trying to stay face, I don't know.

But here's the kicker. So John Hawthorne, this Witch Trial Judge, is the great, great grandfather of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the famous writer. And Nathaniel Hawthorne was so ashamed of what his great, great grandfather did that he added a W to his name, because Nathaniel Hawthorne, the writer, is H-A-W-T-H-O-R-N-E. And he did that, hoping that he could hide the fact that they were related.

Oh, they're not related. He doesn't have a W in the name. Which I thought was interesting. And then came the internet and everybody knows.

So we all know. I'm telling, you know, our 15 listeners about it. Okay, so there's some other names that associated with the Witch Trial at Bering Point. There's a memorial for those wrongly accused.

It's kind of at the front of the cemetery. And again, it's not where they were buried. It's just memorials. And it's interesting because when you go there, I mean, we went there and people come and they still put flowers on there.

You know, there's little flowers and little tokens, little, you know, some people put coins, some people put little pieces of candy or little teeny stuffed animals, but they're still remembered. And then there's Headstones of, I think it's funny when I was reading this. They called them the Pius chastisers. But basically, their accusers are all buried there.

Which is interesting because you think of all the upheaval and turmoil at the time. And they're all just, you know, at some point we all die and we're all basically put into the same ground. But when you go there, it's really kind of like taking a step back in time. There's a line almost between when, you know, wicked people and innocent people was really blurry.

You know, with everything that went on. But some others that were laid to rest at Old Bering Point were some people from the Mayflower and like Captain Richard Moore. And the last governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, his name was Simon Bradstreet. So as you can guess, it's a super, super popular cemetery.

Because of Salemitch Trials, I mean that's a big thing. Everybody knows about it. And every year, especially kind of this fall, Halloween-y type of year, there's tons of people go back there to visit. There's another draw which features a memorial to those people who died in the witch trial.

And just behind the memorial are where the graves are. So there's the memorial and then right behind them is where their accusers are buried. It's also known as the Charter Street Cemetery. It's the oldest cemetery in Salem and the second oldest in the nation, which we mentioned before.

The total number of people buried there are 347. So it's not huge. No, that's not very large at all. But it's the headstones.

Are they upright or are they on the ground? So the memorials, which aren't, you know, they're just the memorials. They, there's a wall and they kind of stick out of the wall. I mean, you wouldn't sit on them because that would be like sacrilegious or something.

But it's almost like they make a chair. It's like the wall is the back and the memorial would be like the seat. They're a little longer. They would make it weird to be a chair, but they kind of stick out a long way.

But if I remember right, the headstones are the standy up kind. They like that word, standy up kind. I think you're trademarked it. I think you're a straight word.

Yeah. I mean, they're not flush the ground now because they didn't have lawnmowers back in the day that they had to worry about. They just let the sheep help. I was going for a laugh.

I like that. Nobody laughed. That's okay. I'm used to it.

I'm going to try to distance himself from his second great grandfather. He did recognize the importance of his dark era. And as you read, I don't know if you've ever read Hawthorn Dritings, but as you'll read that, you'll kind of see in some of his character names, Omaojes, to the ones that are carved into these graves at all bearing point. And it's believed, I don't know that he's ever said, but it's believed that some of his interest in this area stems from some late night strolls.

He had his wife, her name was Sophia, and she suffered from chronic migraines. And so to kind of help get her mind off of the pain of these migraines, they would, he would take her for walks, and they would walk around the neighborhood. Oftentimes it was at night because that's when her headaches would flare up. And it's not a very big area.

And the Thaniel Hawthorn lived quite a long time ago. It still wasn't very big when he was around. And so oftentimes their walks would go past the cemetery. And after seeing these names night after night after night, they just kind of stuck in his head.

So one of his works, it's probably the most notable that was influenced most likely by these walks is the House of Seven Gables. And this, I have never read this book, but the novel follows the New England family and their mysterious house. And throughout the story, Hawthorn explores the aftermath of some of these witchcraft accusations. So one of the characters in this book, the House of Seven Gables, is Hepsaba Pinchion.

And if you've read the book and that's not how it's pronounced, I'm sorry, I'm actually kind of intrigued in reading this. But people believe that her name came from one of these strolls. One of the headstones in this cemetery has the person named Hepsaba Packer. And it's just not a super popular name.

If someone were to say the name Hepsaba to me, I would think ancient Egypt, that sounds like the name of a pharaoh. Yimatat Hepsaba. Right. Anyway, so if we go back to the real Hepsaba, Hepsaba, Drake Packer, she was not involved in the witchcraft hysteria.

She actually died about 10 years before the Salem Witch Trials occurred. And as far as we know, she died with no scandal. She was probably a young wife, 25 years old, so she may have had a couple of children. So people might think, well, why would he pick her name?

I want to say it's a very unusual name, but this was a time when people were named things like Chastity and what are some of those other names at the time? Hope. Hope, Prudence. And you still hear some of those names.

I mean, I know some people nowadays named Chastity, but just with the religion of the time and how religious everybody was, a lot of the girls names had some of those unusual names. But one of the things that could have stuck out in Hawthorne's mind was her gravestone, which had the carving of death's head on it. And having the carving of death's head was not super common. It's not an uncommon sight today, but at the time, it wasn't.

It was actually quite popular a little bit later. It's a skull brandishing angel wings. And no matter how many times you see that, it's still going to catch a ride. So it wasn't too much longer after this, that this deathhead kind of became the It grave marker.

So I mean, some of those things, you know, someone wears it and then everyone has to jump on the bandwagon. And we're not exactly sure if Hepsaba is the one who started the whole deathhead craze, but it's definitely gained popularity and I remember when we were in Boston and we were down in Boston Commons and some of those great guards were down in that area. And this would be more around the 1700s. But there were a lot of the gravestones that did have those.

But again, like you said, that was a later era and hers was earlier at the 1640s or so when that was there and it wasn't as common. A little later, you know, a hundred years later, it was a lot more common on a lot of those old gravestones in Boston. Right. And one of the reasons it became so popular is they determined to symbolize both one's physical death and one's spiritual regeneration.

So the skull being the physical death and then the wings being the regeneration of the spirit. Interesting. As most cemeteries, it's haunted, right? So some of the stranger currencies are widely believed to be supernatural because this was the age of the witch.

And so this wasn't just later. This was, you know, so you should break ground and bury somebody that starts happening. It's also an era that many chose to discredit all these stranger currencies because of all the hysteria. So it kind of depended where you were at the time.

But let's put the witch hysteria aside. We've already talked about that in our last podcast, but there are nearly 400 years of ghostly accounts of the cemetery. So we figure, if you've got that many accounts, there's got to be something going on. So I'm going to, I'm going to quote some Nathaniel Hawthorne.

If you are uncultured swine as I am, if you're like me and you've never read much of Nathaniel Hawthorne, here we go. We're going to become cultured. You ready? He says, there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt ghostlike.

The spot where some great and marked event has given color to their lifetime and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. And I love that. It really makes me want to read more of him because even though he was appalled by what happened in the palled of what his second great grandfather, his part in it, you know, he still says it's a terrible event, but it has given color to their life. It's given, you know, something to make their life not boring.

I don't know how else to say it. Obviously, I'm not a famous writer. I can't say eloquent things like Nathaniel Hawthorne. So, you know, there's that.

But a lot of people in that area really echo Hawthorne sentiment and they believe that the grounds of old bearing point are saturated with restless spirits and that it's probably one of the most, if not the most haunted site, not only Massachusetts, but all of New England, because not only are there, you know, deceased souls there, but just all of the pain and anguish on both sides, you know, just all the emotion of the jurors and the accusers and the emotions of those being tested. And even if you weren't being accused or an accuser, just worrying that you would be accused had to have been just an emotional roller coaster, you know? Because I think everybody at that time period probably just had a lot of emotional juju in their life. This graveyard, it's on Charter Street, it overlooks the South River and it was built on some land that was set aside by the early towns of people of Salem.

It doesn't matter what area you're in, at some point you realize people die, when people die you've got to put them someplace, they can't just sit in the corner, right? It's kind of creepy after a while. And in 1637 they voted and Salem said, we needed a designated burial site because so many people had died remember we talked in our last podcast about sickness in the preceding decade that kind of helped cause the stress and everything that led up to the trials. And they were only in the years of 1628 through 29.

So they said we needed a designated burial site. So they designated this but it wasn't really big as far as acreage but you know at the time they didn't really need it. It's only about two blocks long. And this is one reason why there's only 347 people there, so it's just not very big.

But holy cow it packs a paranormal punch. And they say, I've only been there once and we weren't there for very long, we didn't have a whole lot of time to do too much wandering. But people that have gone to some of these cemetery's back east, which I have not, say it holds its own with the St. Louis Cemetery number one, the one in New Orleans and the Bonne Adventure Cemetery in Savannah that are famously haunted.

So this one's just right up there with those. Anybody that's been there and I felt this one I was there. We were only there for a few minutes but if you go there and you're sensitive in any way you are just overwhelmed with a sensation of sadness and despair. Even just walking through people have said that they just feel this heavy depression.

Just walking by people have said we just feel this depression like there's no hope to be found in the world which here's your Harry Potter quote, like the dementors. It just sucks at happiness right out of you. Over the years people have caught EDP, electronic voice phenomenon at Oberian Point. A lot of people have captured photographs, mysterious shadows, lights, orbs, whiteness, apparitions, just all the stuff that you would get probably at any cemetery.

But one of these apparitions they believe belongs to Mary Bright Corey, who died August 28th, 1684. If you remember two podcasts ago we talked about Giles Corey, this is his wife and she became one of the victims of the witch trials. They think that this apparition is her. There is another ghost that's been seen.

She's the figure of a woman who appears in the back corner of the cemetery. And when people have seen her, she's usually spotted wearing a powder blue dress and she's holding a picnic basket. Some people have said that they've seen her accompanied by a young boy and they believe that these two spirits were mother and son and died in a fire. Are they seeing them burnt up?

Is that why they think they died in a fire? Like are they? The apparitions burned? It doesn't say.

It doesn't say. They just said that they see her. But you know, if I were to see a woman in a dress holding a picnic basket holding a little boy's hand and they're both burned, that would be terrifying. Sad, very, very sad, but also super creepy.

So I don't know if there's some local lore of a mother's son that were burned in a fire. But we know they weren't burned as witches because they didn't do that in Salem. So there's another apparition that's been seen very frequently and she's known as the Lady in White. But apparently she seems to be a little camera shy because not very many people have gotten her picture, which I'm sorry, but in paranormal world it's kind of hard to get a picture of an apparition, so that was not a shocker.

I guess people that have seen her apparition will pull their cameras out but as soon as they pull the camera out the apparition immediately turns into an orb or vanishes altogether. I guess one person was able to slightly capture part of her before she poofed into a different form. They have seen her spotted in the parking lot of the cemetery. They've seen her at nearby buildings and restaurants.

No one's really sure if it's the same apparition or if people are seeing different apparitions. Some people think that the Lady in White and Mary Corrie are the same apparition. A lot of people argue about this and most people say considering everything that went on at the time and all the angst and all the emotion that went on. So many ghosts, most people think that they're different.

That Mary Corrie and the Lady in White are different. Some people think the Lady in White was an Irish Catholic immigrant because she usually appears on the outskirts of the cemetery, which is where they buried the Irish part of the community. So yeah, they had some Irish mistreatment segregation back in the day, just FYI. There are people who love to visit old cemeteries.

I'm one of them. And there are some cemeteries that I have on my bucket list. Being said, I haven't been to them yet because they're back east. They're kind of hard to get to.

I've been to some in Boston, which is kind of cool. My favorite one, and this is a little sacri, but it's funny, and I didn't come up with it. But in Boston, you can actually see there's a pub that's across from an old cemetery. And there's a sign on the pub door because Samuel Adams' headstone is right by the fence.

If you're just walking down the cemetery, you can reach to the fence and just touch Sam Adams' headstone. And the pub across the street says, this is the only place you can drink a cold Sam Adams while looking at a cold Sam Adams. Anyway, but if you are, you know, one like me that likes to visit cemeteries, this one is definitely on your famous graveyard list. It's not your average ghost city.

So here are some other stories that people have said. There's a man named Mike, and he was visiting old bearing point cemetery. He said that he saw it, and that's all he describes it as is it peeking out of the ground. He actually got a picture of it.

He claimed that the operation was just in front of the gravestones, and it looked like a very strange torso wearing a suit, tie, head, mutton chops, and was about shoulder height out of the ground. So not long after Mike's visit to the cemetery, two friends, you know, they were younger, were daring each other to go in, and it was just in the middle of the night, so they walked to the graveyard together, and it wasn't long before they saw something that they said we are never going to forget that. It was a shadowy operation that rose up from the ground right out of a gravestone, and so that freaked them out. And there were two sisters that hadn't encountered.

They were actually on a ghost tour. They weren't there by themselves. They had never been there before. They were taking a lot of pictures, like most people do when you're in a graveyard and on a ghost tour.

And later when they got home, they were uploading photos on their computer, and they think that they found a paranormal image. And one of the sisters says, I don't even have to look at the pictures to know something supernatural occurred that night. She says it still haunts her mind to this day, and when you have somebody that says something so emphatically, you know, you kind of believe it, you know what, but she doesn't explain what it is. So she just knows it's paranormal, which I think is kind of weird, but there you go.

She believes it. It's an unwelcoming sight, even for a graveyard, just because of all the feels. People joke that it would give Tim Burton nightmares if you went there. And like I said, I've been there and it didn't give me nightmares, but it's definitely one of the saddest feelings and tares I've been to.

A phrase that you see along on the headstones aside from the death's head is memento mori, which loosely translates into remember death. It's a really cold sensation when you go there. You know you're standing in one ghost and lost souls. It just kind of came from an era of terror.

I would call the witch trials, even though it was not a very long time, very, very terrible. I'm making up words again. Terrifying time. A lot of locals say that when you go to the cemetery, that it would be very wise to be respectful when you're there.

A lot of people think if you misbehave in the cemetery, you're going to get cursed. And the ghost city tours there in Salem advise that when you leave a couple pennies on the gravestones, it will kind of help most of the rest of the spirits. They will leave you alone if you leave them a little bit of money. So they want to follow you home, basically.

Yeah. In fact, they'll advise their tourists. They say before you leave, leave a few pennies. You leave some change.

Which I thought was interesting. But I'll tell you what, to the lady that talks about how terrifying her vision, her paranormal thing on camera, it's like, tell us more. Drive me nuts. Yeah.

I don't know what it is. It's just paranormal. Yeah, she said she instantly knew it was paranormal and then she just clamped up about it. Oh, so okay.

Nice. I know when I'm in Europe, I've been Ireland, we've talked about it Rome, Malta, those graveyards are some of the most beautiful graveyards. They're pieces of art. It's like going to a museum.

I don't know that I see the same type of gravestones, headstones here, but I haven't been back east. And I'm kind of, as you're talking, I'm visualizing. Like, I'm in Europe. They're the bigger, more like with the weeping angel, you know, just real, I don't know, pieces of art statues.

There's some cemeteries out there that are just amazingly beautiful in a sick way. Yes, my favorite cemetery I've ever been to is on Princess Street in Edinburgh. I think it's Princess Street. But it's from the body-snatcher era.

And they've got the towers where the guards would watch to make sure people didn't come and act bodies. But it's just the old little church in there, and it's just overgrown and all the other trees just dripping with, I don't know, just spooky fields and it's dark even in the middle of the day. All the headstones are covered in moss and dipping sideways. And I love that cemetery.

And I get now, you know, it's going to go ahead. I was just going to say that when I was in Ireland, we went to many areas on a couple of tours where there would be dilapidated churches and inside the churches had now become cemeteries. You know, when you go into like the Catholic churches, and I don't know if it is this way in this country, because I haven't been into that many Catholic churches in this country, maybe back east, but there are people buried under the floors and the grounds and their headstones are part of the flooring in the church. Yeah, that's a place in that.

Have you ever seen that? Yeah, in England. I don't know here because I don't go to a whole lot of Catholic churches here. But when I was in England, you know, you'd go into Westminster Abbey and the churches there and the other floors were pretty much all just headstones.

I did watch YouTube video not too long ago where they had a Newark Catholic church in Los Angeles and was kind of right by the freeway. They did have a muzzle in them down underneath it. I don't know if they had burials right in the chapel itself or the cathedral part itself, but the cathedral itself has a mausoleum in the basement. They went into that.

It's Hollywood graveyard, YouTube videos, very fascinating to watch. So I love all the cemeteries, but I've got some stories from some other cemeteries across the nation. So I just had a couple other stories, and this didn't happen at the Salem. These happen in other places.

And I got looking online, you can find cemeteries stories all over the place. I'll just tell you a couple more and then we'll move on. This is in Colorado, the cemeteries called Silver Cliffs Cemetery, and it's nearby a mining town of Silver Cliffs. This mine had just an abundance of ore, but bad management.

And because of the bad management, and as they say, and I will quote financial shenanigans, round the company into the ground three times, not once, three times. Today the cemetery is famous for dancing blue lights. Even National Geographic published an article about the lights in 1969. People that have seen these say that they're small, round, they come in other colors besides blue sometimes, but these lights will dance across the gravestones.

Some people that are boring say the reflections of light from the town, but there have been sightings of these lights before electricity came to Silver Cliffs. So the reason I say they're boring is because I will debunk stuff because you have to, to be credible, but it made me very happy to hear that sightings were recorded before electricity because dancing blue lights come on. That's amazing. That is, that sounds like a wisp.

It's like fairies. Wisp. Wisp. And the last one is called Step Cemetery.

It's abandoned. It's in Morgan Monroe State Forest, Indiana. There's actually only a couple of dozen graves here. A lot of them go back to about 200 years old.

It's officially, it's officially a local family cemetery, but legend says it was founded by a cult called the Crabites. And the Crabites apparently had rituals which included snake handling and sex orgies. Some people say that they can still hear chanting of the gatherings in Cemetery night. However, if you get looking around you just can't really find any reference to the Crabites out of some local stories.

There's very little, in fact I just saw a YouTube video on this this afternoon about the Crabites in the cemetery and they said the exact same thing. If there's, you go out on the internet there's just not very much about that Crabite group at all. Right, so I kind of think that might be lore. Might be some lore.