St. Catherine’s Investigation
This monument was at the graveyard in St.
Catherine, not the ones we had gone to visit. Upon arrival we took various
pictures of different stones. We took a second one of this one as well. This
photo appears like many. Simply a picture of sunlight and shadow.
It was about eight o'clock and dusk was approaching when we got to St. Catherine's Cemetery. A small well kept graveyard next to the Catholic Church, in a tiny Iowa farm town.
Here many of my relatives are buried. My family history has a murder-suicide. It occurred nearly eighty years ago and we were there to see, hear or feel if the two involved were at peace.
The equipment we had for this investigation included a voice recorder, camera, a magnetic field indictor and a temperature gauge.
The ground was uneven and we were safer to explore the site while there was still light. Not to mention that others don't get upset if you visit during daylight hours, at night people have a tendency to think you are doing harm to the scared place and may report to the sheriff.
We began to walk; I was ahead of Dee by about five feet or so. I carried the digital voice recorder hoping to catch a ghostly word or two, known as EVPs. Dee held the temperature gauge and the EMF device. It scans the area and beeps if it comes across a magnetic field.
One has to watch for man-made items that will set the EMF off. Such as power lines and other electrical devices. If you can get it to repeat itself in the same area, chances are it's picking up on something that can be explained.
This is the same monument as above, only it was taken later in the day as evening
approached, shadows grew. If you look carefully on the right side of the lower
stone, the hint of a face stares out at you. Almost as if the resident was wondering
what you are doing there. Whether it is there or just an occipital illusion is
up to the mind of the observer.
As we traveled down a grassy lane I joked that where ever you looked you would run into a relative. I casual mentioned my maiden name and suddenly the EMF went wild in Dee's hand.
We both froze!
I turned to look at Dee and the EMF and it went silent just as quick as it had begun. With a slow and deliberate movement Dee rotated around a full 360 degrees and raised and lowered the EMF to see if she was catching something man-made at the spot.
Nothing - not a beep or a flick of the gauge.
For about two minutes (though it seemed much longer!) Dee tried to recreate what ever it was that set it off. I said to her "Oh my, look to your right". She turned and started to laugh, there only about a yard away from her was a grave of a relative!
"Must of heard you mention their name and just wanted to let us know they were there," Dee said in between chuckles. It was a strange feeling to think one might have had a communication with a spirit, even if only for a second or two.
We then visited my great-uncle's monument, followed by a visit to his younger cousin, who was a victim of a horrible shooting accident. We asked both simple and non-invasive questions and waited after each for response in turn. Thanked them both and wished them well as we placed flowers at both their graves.
Dee and I continued to walk through the cemetery reading names and dates, then wondering what their lives must have been like. We studied the markings on the older monuments. They tell a lot about the people involved. Both the deceased and the loved ones left behind. Some were very touching and told a story, you could sense the sadness and loss.
We also used a temperature gauge and was very surprised at how the temp would jump thirty or forty degrees in the sunlight and no breeze to speak of.
After about an hour, we packed up and headed back home. We couldn't wait to listen to the recorder. What a surprise when all we heard besides our own voices where birds, birds and more birds! What's more amusing was that neither Dee nor myself remember hearing them at all at St. Catherine's.
Guess we weren't alone after all.