Today we are exploring graveyards and boy do I have a hair-raising nighttime experience from my early days where I experienced a rather shocking encounter … literally and another time being gently pushed out of a graveyard during the day by an unseen objector! We also look at: Do spirits hang around their graves for all of eternity and why graveyards scare the bejeekers out of people.
#54 Graveyards, ghosts and my shocking experiences
Now for my creepy and slightly unsettling graveyard experiences:
I have called this experience: The graveyard shocker
Some friends and I often roamed around dark buildings but never really had the chance to visit cemeteries at night until one day we were at the other end of Tasmania for a work event and thought why not pop down to the local cemetery and visit some of the local spirits.
We arrived and the old rickety gate was open. No one else, living that is, was around at midnight so in we slipped. It was quiet, really quiet and I was thinking to myself – Where do you start exploring in a graveyard? Well for me, I love the old headstones, the older the better. Yo8 know the ones with the decorative flourishes and fancy writing. And while I was trying to balance the torch light and take some photos of the old ornate headstones near the gate, the others went off in a group with their K2’s and a spirit box to see if they could hear some voices of the resident spirits and catch some movement on the K2 EMF detector. So, we went our separate ways but were also still within sort of 60-80 metres of each other. I could hear their giggles and see their torch lights dancing around in the distance.
I am quite happy wandering about by myself and fumbling around in the darkness and as I was focussing on taking a photo of a lovely ornate cross on a headstone from somewhere in the mid 1800’s, I heard a voice in my head, not a nice voice and it said, ‘Turn around’ in a raspy horror movie fashion. I stopped, kind of shook my head slightly and ignored it. I am used to hearing creepy whisperings in the day and night and have learnt to just observe, and not react to them.
I slowly moved away from that headstone as I figured I was probably annoying one of the local spirits and in my head said, “Sorry if I was disturbing you.” The voice followed me, repeating its creepy message, and again I ignored it. What did it want? – to frighten me, hurt me… feed on my soul, Nah…just joshing, sorry I got lost in the moment. I wasn’t going to feed into what it wanted so started to walk away a little quicker now and out of nowhere, I felt one of the worst electric shock I have ever had in the middle of my right calf muscle. It pulsed from my ankle to halfway up my thigh. I am embarrassed to say now that I screamed as you would with such a sudden shock and the dancing torch lights in the distance stopped.
Within 10 seconds, I could see them moving towards me in a quick-paced fashion and the two ladies pulled up out of breath. They shone their torched in my face and looked at me sitting on the slightly damp ground rather stunned. ‘Did you fall?’, one lady said. “No”, was my response, ‘something shocked me, like an electric cattle prod-type electric shock times 100!
We all just looked at each other. “Where did it happen”, just there I pointed. One of the ladies, ventured to go explore that spot because we curious paranormal types just can’t help ourselves. In the meantime, I got up, brushed myself down and stood rubbing my leg. As I bent down to get my torch, the friend who went to check out the spot about 4 metres away, let out a sudden bunch of angry swear words and came hobbling back to us holding the back of her thigh. “ That BEEEP &%#, zapped me’. We looked at each other stunned ( no pun intended) and made a quick dash to the car. While strapping out seat belts on, one lady said , “You sure did upset someone!”.
I backtracked in my mind about my walking around the graveyard that night and couldn’t find anything that I could have done to upset anyone, living or non-living. Three thoughts came to mind:
1. Had I stumbled upon a dark being feeding on emotional or trauma imprints in that spot in the graveyard and it felt threatened?
2. Was it an upset spirit resident? I think not as I haven’t been shocked by spirits before. That is usually a dark paranormal tactic.
3. Was it a spirit caretaker watching over the graveyard and thinking us disrespectful intruders, and making his or her feelings known?
I guess we will never know? The voice didn’t follow us into the car or to our accommodation so that said to me that it was solely connected to the cemetery.
On the subject of spirit caretakers, my next experience wasn’t quite so ‘shocking’ but nonetheless this time I definitely upset a local in an old graveyard in a small country town near where I live.
I have called this experience: The graveyard guardian
I occasionally get the urge to make my way to an old cemetery here in Hobart. It is almost like a yearly pilgrimage and I quietly and respectfully walk around, reading the headstones, taking a few photos and thinking about the people who lived in those times and were buried here now.
One hot afternoon, I chose to sit next to an old stone monument. I had a paranormal investigation gadget with me and turned it on and sat it next to me, so I could see the light flickering and gauge movement to signify spirit presence.
I was enjoying the peaceful afternoon sunshine and watching others wandering around exploring the old lopsided headstones when suddenly the gauge flicked quite sharply and I heard its loud ticking type sound. I looked at the device and the red light at the front flashed. Being an electromagnetic reader, you would normally do some debunking to make sure there was nothing in the vicinity that could be triggering it but sitting 100 metres from a building in a cemetery, there were no man-made triggers present.
I observed the device as it flickered away and monitored my thoughts to see if anyone wanted to speak to me in my head. I suddenly and quite brashly heard in my head, “ Get out!. ‘Oh,’ I said, have I offended someone?”. The device was flickering once, and the gauge was strongly flicking once which is a ‘yes’ signal. Having been there for an hour or so, I thought it best to move on and go home, so I said goodbye to the irritated spirit and headed to the car.
Passing the church and with no one around I thought I might sit in the church for 10-15 minutes and see if any spirits were about. Well, the spirit caretaker followed me into the church. As I was sitting quietly in a pew, mid-way up the church, I heard the name “Charles’ in my head and asked if this was the caretaker’s name. I heard nothing, no response, so set up the light device and within 10 seconds, he was using it.
I had the paranormal device kind of hidden, snuggled up close to me because there were other people coming into the church and I didn’t want to frighten anyone by my possibly perceived as odd behaviours. The device gauge strongly responded to the name’ Charles’ then, ‘Major’ and I said,” It is nice to meet you, Mr Charles Major”.
I asked Charles when he worked at the cemetery and we whittled down the time frame to around the Late 1800’s. I have looked online and haven’t managed to verify Charles’s working at the cemetery but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true. It just means I wasn’t looking in the right place. Charles eagerly walked me to the door soon after our conversation and I think he was glad to see the back end of my nosiness.
This is interesting though; I did find a reference to a ‘Major Charles MacKenzie’ who is buried in the cemetery from 1856. Are they one in the same person and I have misinterpreted the mediumship messages? Did Major Charles object to my extended visit and questions? Has he taken it upon himself to look after the church and graveyard? Was he just saying hello to someone who could finally sense and hear him? Or are Charles the caretaker and Major Charles two different people?… I will have to give the church a visit and explore this situation further.
INFORMATION
Do spirits hang around their graves for all of eternity and why do graveyards scare
the bejeekers out of people?
The belief that spirits linger in graveyards has a few different aspects some that I agree with and others that I don’t feel are as important to the deceased. Depending on where you are in the world and your spiritual, cultural or religious traditions, there are different beliefs around death and the sites of burial:
· Graveyards serve as a physical anchor, a physical reminder, a place where the memories and energies of the departed are concentrated. In this perspective, spirits can be thought to hover around their final resting places, seeking a sense of connection with the living. I like to think if spirits are going to be anywhere in the Earth realm it would be with their family and friends. I imagine waiting for family and friends to visit their grave site could be a lonely existence, get pretty boring or if the spirit particularly doesn’t like other people then a graveyard is full of spirits, could get on their nerves!
· Another perspective looks at unfinished business or unresolved emotional issues that may hold the spirit’s soul energy at their gravesite until they communicate their message or release their pain.
· Some individuals who pass away suddenly or under traumatic circumstances sometimes don’t know they have died and may get a rude shock if they follow family members into a cemetery and happen upon their headstones. Realising that they have left their physical bodies, they may linger in the graveyard looking for the light… a way to cross into the Afterlife.
· Physically, depending on your beliefs, some see the graveyard itself as a boundary between the realms of the living and the dead. There is that symbolic significance as a place of transition and passage. A friend told me her family believes that graveyards or cemeteries act as portals where the spiritual and physical worlds intersect.
· In some traditions, the final resting place is a place of celebration, and honouring the ancestors such as ‘The Day of the Dead” celebrated annually in Mexico. The ancestors come and enjoy the festivities, connecting with family members and friends and then return to the Afterlife.
· While other cultural beliefs, some I found in mainland Australia and New Zealand hold their burial sites are sacred ground and not to be disturbed other than by the elders for ceremonial reasons.
· As with the caretaker in the second story,, he told me he wanted to be there tending to the upkeep of his beloved cemetery and keep an eye on people like me. He will be there until he considers his duty is done and he chooses to transition into the light.
· In my experience, the dark eerie experiences people feel in graveyards or cemeteries are not spirits but rather the darker energy beings as we heard in story one today. The supernatural entities position themselves in these locations because they gravitate towards despair, grief, sorrow and sadness and stay there simply because of the emotional imprints.
· My personal belief is that the body or ashes of the person’s physical being reside in the earth but their soul’s energy is free to choose its path with visiting friends and family, continuing its spiritual journey either reincarnating to learn a new lesson or experience personal growth or waft about in mass consciousness learning the mysteries of the Universe. I have to say that I am not in a hurry to leave the Earth reality but at the same time can’t wait to see what the Universe holds for me when returning to energy form.
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I look forward to sharing this spooky space again with you next week,
And remember, life is perfectly paranormal.
