The New Diggins Investigation
The mild June eve was filled with anticipation and excitement as we piled into the van and headed east to New Diggins, WI.
We where going to check out Dee's old "haunts". She used to live and work in the small town. In its heyday the mining town was known as "Little Chicago". Today it is a quiet close-knit community with not many residents and two saloons. Both are rustic and well know to tourist and bikers a like.
Arriving at about eight in the evening, we parked near the historic church that is over a hundred years old. Deciding to walk around the town to check the location, we traveled one square block and took in the whole village. The homes that were occupied were very well-kept the abandoned ones were over-grown, and to be quite honest many of these buildings you wouldn't even have known they were there, the weeds, trees and vines were taking back the land.
Dee told us about her life in New Diggins and pointed out the home we were to planning to check out tonight. To get to it we walked through knee-high thick grass that would grab at ones feet and over logs. It was only after we were done and heading back to the van did we realized that maybe we should have been watching out for snakes. Oops!
Upon reaching the house once shared by a little girl named Opal and her crippled mother, one could tell the home had at one time been well cared for. A deep stone lined water-well laid right outside the kitchen door for the frail woman.
Missy had the digital camera with the flash set, Dee had the voice recorder, I held the EMF device. The only window that looked at us from the main room of the small house was what we focused on. You could feel the woman sat watching her little girl play among the trees.
The whole night the EMF never went off at all. The flash of the camera was repeated and repeated as Missy took pictures of the window and the slightly open kitchen door.
We did decide not to venture inside since the flooring may not have been sound and the fact that we didn't care to come across creatures with teeth that would have felt cornered and would have been very unfriendly to the three of us. Little woodland beasts don't have that great of a sense of humor.
Checking out the pictures on the screen, Dee and Missy spotted what appeared to be a face in the window. Dark eyes and a firm chin seemed to stare sternly out to the three of us.
Darkness was enclosing fast upon us and we had left the flashlights back at the van. It had been such a bright summer evening when we had arrived that we didn't think we would need them. Though back among the woods night fell sudden and hard.
Leaving Opal's home we walked up the winding hill toward the old church. The stolid wood structure was built in 1844 by Father Mazzuchelli, who was known among the German and Irish miners as "Father Matthew Kelly". The wooden building was well-kept and beautifully constructed. The simple hand carved detail showed the pride and grace that had went into its construction.
The voice recorder was on and each of us in turn asked if anyone was there. Dee even knocked on the thick doors and invited someone to speak to us. The trees on the outskirts of the churchyard were strangely quite. No birds or insect sounds at all. Continuing to flash the camera Missy snapped more photos while moving to the edge of the grounds toward the deep dark woods. Dee pointed through a gap in the foliage and said she thought the original graveyard was in that direction. We couldn't see any monuments since the trees and brambles made it so much darker than it really was.As we drove home that night, the voice recorder was played for all of us to listen to. Two hours worth of voice activated recordings played in about thirty-five minutes, most was of the three of us commenting back and forth with a few questions to who ever was listening thrown in. No voices from beyond. But there were the photos........
The next day I got the pictures processed and there was the face, along with twelve solid black photos. The fellow who did the processing said it was impossible to get these from a digital camera and wanted to know how we did it! Simply told the truth, we don't know. It was not till I got home did it dawn on me that we had no pictures of the church. Every other photo was there - but no church! Made me wonder if the church, in some mysterious way, had put up a barrier to our inquiries.
The face still stared out at me in the photo that I held. It appeared to be more clear as I studied the photo. I decided it was necessary to have a follow up visit back to Opal's. I went back to New Diggins to check out that window in the daylight. It was about eleven o'clock in the morning on a bright and sunny day. Back through the brush and up over the logs I went just to find torn and dangling insulation hanging down on the other side of the glass. How strange that the reflection of shadows can play such tricks on the eye.
New Diggins was fun and gave us a bit of excitement and a chance to do an investigation and enjoy a great summer night.