Last Friday we stopped for a couple of hours at Mt. Olivet one of the oldest and largest cemeteries in Nashville, TN for a brief paranormal investigation. We had planned to be there longer but because of different events during the day we arrived very late. We thought about skipping it and just going back another day but then decided we could use this time to get some basic photos and familiarize ourselves a little and then plan a return.
The cemetery was founded by two Tennessee businessmen, Adrian Van Sinderen Lindsley and John Buddeke, in 1856. A little less than thirty years later Lindsley passed away and was buried at Mt. Olivet. The architecture of the cemetery is Gothic Revival and at one point there was a chapel in that style built by Hugh Cathcart Thompson, the architect of the famous Rhyman Auditorium.
For this investigation we each carried a recorder, Meghan had her Canon rebel DSL camera, I had an infrared camera, the S-Box, and a body camera.
We started the investigation by just pulling over and then splitting up and walking around looking at the different graves. Because it was late I did not try and find some of the more notable burials in the cemetery like Thomas Rhyman, Edward Barnard, and Anne Dallas Dudley. While reading the names on the graves we recognized many of the family names from counties and streets of Tennessee. As we got out of the car we split up with Meghan going to graves to the right of the car and me walking forward further into the cemetery. As I have done in past investigations I pulled out a few of the best captures and also uploaded to youtube a full video of all the EVPs and the S-Box session.
The first EVP that I separated out in to its own clip was what we believe to be a residual haunting of someone saying a prayer.
I also pulled out a clip to compare an EVP that was recorded on both Meg and my recorder.
And the final clip I separated was our favorite and one that made us certain we needed to return. I had parked across from a tall monument for the Weaver- Cole- Cheatham family. Meg had gone there to investigate while I wandered away to some of the larger tombs.
Meg began reading the writing on the graves out load one by one beginning with Dempsey Weaver, 1815-1880. Dempsey was one of the founders of Third National Bank in Nashville and at one time was Treasurer of Vanderbilt University.
After Dempsey Meg moved on to his son, Thomas Weaver's family. Thomas was born in 1850 and passed away suddenly in 1911 in Florida. He had followed his father's footsteps working in banking and serving as trustee for Vanderbilt University. He married Mattie Cheatham in 1872. Her maiden name was one of the names we recognized as the county next to us is Cheatham county. From there Meg moved on to the grave of their son Richard Cheatham Weaver, 1895-1913. He was only 18 when he died of an accidental gun shot wound to the abdomen.
Next she moved to the grave of his oldest brother Thomas Shadrack Weaver Jr, 1873-1918. Thomas
It was at these last two graves where Meg recorded an EVP that convinced us we have to go back. As Meg moved to Richard's grave a voice says "Hey read me". When we first listened we questioned whether in 1913 "Hey" would have been used in that way because we think of it as a more modern usage. Meg check out the etymological use of the word and indeed it dates back to the 15th century. And to further confirm the voice was Richard when she moved on to Thomas Jr we hear the same voice say "now come back."
As we were listening to the recordings we read about the family history. The Weaver family owned a home called Seven Oaks which burned down but would have been near the Nashville Airport, and there are Seven Oaks apartments and Seven Oaks Park still in the area. Not only was Weaver a well known name but they had connections to the Cheatham family as mentioned above and also the Cole family who owned Colemere which is now a restaurant and event space called Monelle's at the Manor. We definitely had fun learning about some of the history of these families in Nashville and look forward to returning not just to revisit Richard but to see what else we can learn about Nashville and the people who once lived here.
Here is the full video including several other EVPs and our S-Box session.
Thank you for watching we have some big plans ahead in the next few months and look forward to sharing the results.
Our goal this year for paranormal investigations is to stay local, with a few exceptions, and focus on getting to know our area. By local I mean a 2-3 hour window; some place that we can drive to, spend a few hours, and return in around 10-12 hours. We started with Maple Hill Cemetery and the Haunted Children's Playground in Huntsville, Alabama.
Maple Hill started as a two acre cemetery in 1822 when LeRoy Pope sold the property to the city on September 14. Over the next 100 years as Huntsville grew so did the cemetery. Today it is over 100 acres and the burial site of many notable Alabama politicians.
Adjacent to it is a small playground surrounded by limestone cliffs. The playground has been called one of the most haunted places in Alabama. The ghosts of children have been seen and heard here, swings are said to move by themselves, and glowing lights have also been seen. Some theories say the children are the young victims from the 1918 Spanish Flu, which hit Huntsville particularly hard. I have also seen references to kidnapped children in the 60s or 70s but have been unable to verify that.
We wanted to visit the cemetery during the day so we knew that our night investigation would not go very late but at only a two hour drive we will easily return for more night investigating later, probably during warmer months. Even in Alabama January is cold.
We arrived in Huntsville around 3pm and drove to the cemetery. I had a list of notable graves which included a baseball player and several rocket scientists. However when we arrived there were two funerals taking place so we didn't look too hard for the graves and we decided to just drive around and see what we found.
Our main investigative tools were one voice recorder (normally we would each have one but the battery didn't hold its charge on one), one night vision trap camera, and our S-Box. During daylight hours we drove around the large cemetery with the S-Box and also at times getting out and walking around with just the recorder.
We then went to our true destination, the adjoining playground, to look around, read a story, and get some photos.
We left to warm up and grab dinner at Below the Radar Brewpub, before returning a bit after sunset which is a time known as "the gloaming" which is an awesome word and I have asked Meg if we can write a horror script titled The Gloaming.
This video starts with a very clear EVP, I think one of our best. I actually pulled it out to make it its own video. I'm trying to figure out how to drive more people to my youtube videos and while I like keeping the compilation videos I feel a series of short videos will help get more views as people will see it as less of a commitment.
I also have some of our best interactions with the S-Box as we used the Estes Method. The Method gets its name from Estes Colorado, specifically the Stanley Hotel when Karl Pfeiffer, Michelle Tate, and Connor Randall performed the experiment in several sessions in 2016 and since then it has been used by many groups including some on tv. The idea of using the blind experiment was made popular by them but they were not the first. In 2013 Daniel Morgan and Shawn Taylor published The Double-Blind Ghost Box: Scientific Methods, Examples and Transcripts. The way it works is one person listens to the Spirit Box on head phones so that they are unaware of what questions are being asked. They then say what words they hear. Since they can't hear the questions they won't be biased to trying to make sense of the words in a way that will give answers to the questions. Basically it removes any bias, towards making sense of the sounds, that the investigator may have.
The following video will repeat the EVP and then continue into the SBox session. At the end is video from our trap camera that for some reason continued to upload with no sound. I finally got it to work and will post that in a separate video.
Now our video from the Trap Camera with sound. I set it up looking at the swings because it is reported that they move on their own. While I did not record the swings moving we did get a strange moment where after recording for over 5 minutes my camera moves. Then we had a strange sound that we heard but could not identify.
My final video is just a little fun. We had left the car during the day and I forgot my recorder in the car. At some point we hear the door open like some one is getting in but then silence. A few moments later you hear the two of us return and both car doors open and close.
If you enjoy this and want to see more I will post our past investigations down below. Please consider following my youtube and this blog page. It won't always be paranormal stuff but I promise I try and keep it interesting :-)
