EDITOR’S NOTE: As a Halloween entertainment, a freelance reporter takes you on a trip to a graveyard with a group of folks who hunt for spirits that may be lingering from beyond the grave.
The pitter-patter sound like raindrops on a tin roof shatters the still of the night.
“Is it raining?” asks Melanie Hunter, a soft-spoken, bespectacled woman. “It sounds like rain.”
“I didn’t feel a single raindrop,” says Lisa Bradley.
Six pairs of eyes turn to the dark, near-midnight sky as Monday night fades into early Tuesday. It is bone-chillingly dry. The moon is like a lop-sided specter’s grin through the skeletal trees.
Hunter takes a step toward the threadbare trees that fringe the tiny cemetery in a neighboring county.
“Are those falling leaves?” asks Bradley as she looks at the autumn trees. A cool wind sweeps over the group.
“This always happens when we come here,” Hunter says. Members always feel a “welcome wind,” she says.
Members of the Indiana Ghost Trackers look where the sound of falling leaves and raindrops continues for the next few minutes.
The group studies paranormal activity in a scientific and professional fashion, Hunter says. The group has members who are skeptics, believers and in-betweens, and only if they do not find a logical explanation for an event do they deem it paranormal, she says. “We are skeptical but open-minded,” Hunter says.
Most of the members got involved in the group after they had personal experiences that they could not explain, she says.
Hunter, who has been a member since 2007, says she had an experience with a poltergeist in an apartment she and her family once lived in that increased her interest. A co-worker told her about the trackers and she was hooked.
The hunt is on
On this night, six members stand around the grave of a Civil War soldier, James R. Mannan, who was killed on Feb. 10, 1862, when he was 17 years, 8 months and 12 days old. Hunter sets down her digital recorder on the headstone. She is the secretary of the group.
Kat Klockow straightens the small Stars and Stripes that lies toppled next to his headstone. “There you go, buddy,” she says. Klockow is working on a book about hauntings in Bloomington and southern Indiana.
“Are we ready?” asks Bradley. She is the director of the Bloomington chapter. “I’m going to keep my flashlight on,” she says. “I feel safer with it switched on.” The others nod.
“Hello,” Hunter says in the general direction of the tombstone. “I’m Melanie. Do you remember me?”
She looks around the group and continues: “Do you remember any of us? We came to visit before.”
There’s a rustling of leaves and footsteps in the background.
“I’m sorry if we are disturbing you,” she continues softly. “Is there anyone with us this evening?”
After a couple of minutes of silence, Klockow chuckles: “Do you remember that incident with the horse?”
Hunter gives a small laugh and narrates: Every time the trackers go on a hunt, they make it a point to introduce themselves to any “entities” that might be there. The last time this group was here, after Bradley said “is there anyone here?” a horse snorted loudly in the background. The horse is a resident of the area around the cemetery, Hunter says. They continue chatting about horses, deer and other animals.
During a hunt such as this, when the group engages in such chit-chat, digital recorders tend to pick up some background conversation that is inaudible at that very moment, Hunter says. It is almost as if someone is trying to join the discussion, she says.
A hunt is a practice investigation in which team members check certain places or areas for paranormal activity and practice investigation skills, Hunter explains.
“Can you smell that?” asks Kevin Greene. The others take deep breaths.
“Yes .” Hunter says. “It’s a flowery . perfume . incense smell.
“Yeah! That’s the smell,” Greene says. “Flower . incense.” A smell is usually indicative of a presence of a being, Hunter explains.
Frightening encounters
During her last visit to this cemetery, Klockow says, she had an experience here that she rates as one of her scariest. She was standing in the cemetery with others when they were conducting an electronic voice projection session to record spirit voices.
Klockow says she took a step backward and stepped on something soft. She thought it was a mole hill, but when her foot didn’t sink in, she looked down to see what she was standing on.
“I was standing on a leg, which was wearing a gray, woolen sock and solid leather boot,” she says. She says pictures taken of the woolen leg and leather boot only show her leg encased in a gray, misty fog.
Hunter says during her last visit, as she was walking to her car, she felt a man trotting next to her across the cemetery. High-pitched screaming of a female has also been heard in this cemetery, she says.
‘There is someone here’
After a couple more minutes, the group members troop to another tombstone that catches their fancy. This stone is in the form of a tree trunk with fascinating carvings. “I feel someone watching me,” Klockow says. The group members take pictures of the area all around them so they can go through the pictures later for any presence.
“The batteries of my camera have drained,” Bradley says.
“The batteries of my flashlight have drained,” Greene adds.
“I feel a cold spot right here,” Hunter says.
Greene fishes out his thermometer and the mercury barely touch 45 degrees at the spot Hunter points to. A couple of inches to her left, the thermometer reads about 57 degrees.
“There is someone here,” Hunter says.
They said this is not the first time that the group has seen batteries drained from their gadgets in this cemetery.
About a minute or two later, Bradley shows her camera batteries are back at normal levels, Greene’s flashlight is back again and the temperature is about 57 degrees all around.
To wrap up the session, the group moves to the entrance of the cemetery.
Hunter gets out a gadget she calls her K2 Meter and speaks into the air: “Is there anyone with us here today?”
The K2 Meter lights up like a sky on fire. Everyone in the group gasps.
“If you are here with us, can you please light this device again,” Hunter says.
The K2 Meter flashes again — green, yellow, orange and red — all the colors on the gadget go off in a burst.
“Battery drain,” announces Bradley.
In a voice as soothing as a school teacher’s speaking to a petulant child, Hunter asks if there is a message they’d like conveyed.
Except for the occasional cracking of a twig, everything is quiet.
“I feel someone here,” says Traci Copley, Greene’s sister. Greene’s thermometer drops to 49 degrees and but inches behind him it is 68 degrees Fahrenheit. “The increase or decrease in temperature suggests the presence of a being,” Bradley explains.
A few minutes later, the temperature returns to about 57 degrees.
Don’t follow
Before departing, the group members join hands in a “circle of protection” to pray and ask the entities not to follow them, as well as to thank them for allowing living beings to intrude in their space.
Almost all members say they’ve experienced something following them at some point.
“I once had to tell this entity in a very ‘Shatnernesque’ voice to not follow me,” Klockow says. “It stopped.”
She pauses for a few moments, tilts her head and grins. “I share my birthday with William Shatner.”
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