The Day I Started to Believe...
Are cemeteries more than just the resting place of the bodies of the dead?
Who doesn’t enjoy a nice spooky tale? As a kid growing up, I loved to hear ghost stories. For some bizarre reason, tales of the unknown didn’t seem to scare me -they fascinated me. I do believe that when I was very young, I would say five or six, I saw a ghost. My family was getting ready to move and we were looking at new houses to rent. My parents found one on the outskirts of Baltimore and my sister and I were told to stay in one of the rooms and play while the lady showed my parents the house. While I was playing, a man walked into the room. I looked up at him and he just stared back at me. There was no one else in the house but my family, and the lady who owned the house. So, who was this guy? Then without saying a word, he turned and walked back out of the room and walked to the left. I quickly got up and followed the strange man out into the hall and looked in the direction he exited. To my astonishment there were no doors or windows to the left, just a solid wall. Of course, my parents didn’t believe me, just a young boy’s imagination, they said. But was it the wild imagination of a little boy, or was it something else?
That incident only fueled my interest in the paranormal and I began reading books about the subject and became a lifelong ghost hunter. I must confess that I never did see a ghost again, and have not to this day, but two incidents occurred in my life that have made me a believer, and with that belief comes a great deal of respect. Fast forward about twenty-two years. It is now the year 2002 and I am living in Hagerstown, Maryland. I had decided to do a little spook hunting in my local area and found out about a place called, “Miller’s Church Road”. After doing research about this area, I discovered that a church had been burned down in the late 1800’s, and the reason was because a satanic cult had been practicing black magic on the site. That church was called Miller’s Church. My interested was at an all-time high now. My friend Tony and I decided we were going to go out to the area and document it for a TV series we were planning to shoot about the unexplained. I had been working in the film industry for several years and was looking to start working on documentaries, and was sure that Miller’s Church would be a good start. So, I took my 35mm camera along with me and we took a bunch of pictures of the old tombstones and what remained of the church foundation. Despite knowing about the areas dark history, we didn’t feel any discomfort at the time. We felt no strange vibrations, cold spots, eerie feelings, nothing like that. In all honesty, the only real excitement came when the farmer who lived up the road arrived and chased us off.
A few days later, I took the pictures to a local CVS and got them developed. What I found shocked me. One of the pictures I had taken was of one of the old tombstones. It had a marking on it. It was a pentagram, a satanic symbol. It wasn’t a smudge, or something smeared on the stone. You could actually see where it had been gauged into the rock. Since I was the one that took the picture, I knew there was no pentagram on a tombstone. I would have freaked if I had seen that. I immediately took the picture to show Tony. He couldn’t believe it. We both looked over the stones in that small patch of woods and there was nothing on any of them. You couldn’t even make out the names of the people on the stones. I knew I had to prove that this was legitimate, but that meant going back.
Tony wouldn’t go back to the cemetery with me. In fact, he told me he would never even drive down that old road again. It really shook him up. I, on the other hand, could not just look the other way. I had to know if this was real. So, the next day I went back to Miller’s Church. I found the tombstone from the picture and studied it. There was nothing gauged into it. No marking on it at all. I took another picture of it and rushed off to CVS to get it developed. After a few anxious hours, I got back the prints.
No pentagram.
In 2002, I saw a pentagram similar to this chiseled
into the stone of a grave at Miller's Church Cemetery
I didn’t know what to think. I showed the pictures to a few friends and they suggested I get them looked at by an expert. So, I sent the pictures off to a paranormal magazine to have one of their experts look at the photographs. Now, here is where you see how much of a rookie I was. I got a letter back from the editor who claimed to be excited by the pictures but to study them thoroughly they would need to see the negatives. Instead of sending them a copy of the negatives I sent them the originals. To this day, I have never heard back from them, nor do I know the whereabouts of my pictures or negatives. Needless to say, I will not be making a mistake like that again.
About five years later, I was having lunch with a good friend of mine, who wished to remain anonymous, so I will call her Dana. Dana was also very interested in the paranormal and I was very interested in Dana, so to impress her, I told her about my experience at Miller’s Church. Well my tactic worked, because she wanted me to take her there to see it. Not wanting to ruin my chances of love, I agreed. Honestly, something about the situation didn’t feel right. I felt very strange about taking her. It was almost as if I knew something bad was going to happen. During the drive over, Dana became very excited and started talking about how cool it would be to see a ghost. I explained to her that I had never seen a ghost at the cemetery. I was not even sure if it was that kind of haunting. Dana didn’t even seem to hear me and just kept saying strange things about having a sexual encounter with a ghost and how excited she was getting. I really was not sure what to think. Was she just trying to show off for me, or was she really being serious. Either way, I was not comfortable with the direction the conversation was going. Then we arrived at the cemetery.
I parked the car and we got out. Everything seemed to be okay at first. I showed her the old ruins of the church and the small tombstones hidden in the small patch of woods. Then she wondered off on her own. After doing some looking around the wooded area I decided to go get her so we could head back before the farmer caught us, if he was even still around. I saw Dana squatting down by a small opening, I think she was a looking at another tombstone. As I approached her something unbelievable happened. The back of Dana’s pants moved down off her bottom. She screamed and jumped to her feet and pulled her pants back up. She thought it was me but saw I was still another ten feet away. I was frozen in shock. There was no way she could have pulled them down on her own. Her hands were out in front of her and she was in a squatting position. Then she started to freak out. She said that she felt someone pulls her pants down. I told her I had seen it as I was approaching. I noticed that she was rubbing the side of her hip and asked if she was okay. She said she felt stinging. I asked to see and she pulled the side of her pants down and my jaw dropped. She had four scratches running down her hip. It was like the hands that yanked down her pants had scratched her while doing so. She quickly looked at the other side and saw the same thing. Then she looked up at me. Her eyes began to water and I knew it was time to get the hell out of there. We rushed off to the car and quickly left. She cried the entire way home. At first I felt bad for her, but then I started to think about what she had been saying on the drive over. How she wanted to have an encounter with a ghost. Careful what you wish for. Dana and I never went out again after that day.
Those two incidents from 2002 and 2007 certainly changed my point of view when dealing with the supernatural. I now had a new respect for it. Was the pentagram on the tombstone a warning for me to stay away? Was something there trying to communicate with me? When I was driving Dana to the church site, what was the strange feeling I was getting? Was it the same spirit warning me not to? Did Dana somehow open herself up to attack by the comments she was making? I think there are far more questions than answers when it comes to the paranormal. I just know that I have seen things that I cannot explain, and that I now have tremendous respect for. If what had transpired in 2002 had opened my eyes to the possibilities, then what I saw in 2007, certainly made me a believer.