The Birdville Cemetary
Stockyards Paranormal Investigations ventured to the Birdville Cemetery in Haltom City on the night of November 18, 2006. Paula was our guide and host for the evening. Paula Schermerhorn (http://mystikkoz.com/ ) belongs to the Birdville Historical Society and fortunately for us has access to the cemetery.The Birdville community was one of the first permanent settlements in Tarrant County. There are several markers in the Birdville Cemetery which date to the 1800s. There are several websites that offer a history of Birdville and this cemetery. I would encourage anyone interested in obtaining more on the history of Birdville to check out these sites.
Paula has worked with us on several investigations and she has done investigations at the Birdville Cemetery. She reports that she has picked up orb photos, evps, and witnessed some light phenomenon occurrences here. One historical note that you might not find is that there were two large public swimming pools located on property just next to the cemetery. There were several accidental drownings that occurred at these pools. It is suspected that some paranormal activity could be attributed to spirits who died at the pool rather than spirits associated with those buried in the cemetery.
We were lucky enough to have a near perfect night for an outside investigation. The weather was clear and cool, in the 50s, so there were no bugs to contend with. There was only a slight breeze and no moisture in the air. Frequently an outside investigation will find lots of orbs that may be the result of bugs or dust in the air. So we were hopeful that if we did get orb photos they wouldn’t be from dust or bugs.
We began our investigation by breaking into teams of two and working different parts of the cemetery. Each team walked throughout the area taking photos, using recorders, emf detectors, and video cameras. We picked up a few orb photos during this time. Terri got some really strange light anomalies, kind of a flickering red rod shaped object. There may be a normal explanation to this, but it is interesting none the less.
We then gathered in the pavilion to attempt to communicate with any spirits present. We used dowsing rods, an emf detector, audio and video recorders. Karen was using the rods and felt the presence of a small child. The following is Karen’s account of what happened:
While in the gazebo learning to use dousing rods, I encountered what seemed to be an 8 year old female who apparently had drowned in the community swimming pool behind the graveyard. By the answers to various questions, I gathered that she was playing underwater and could not make it to the surface for air.
I had a couple overwhelming sensations during this time. The first was that of feeling extreme coldness in my hands, which later I related to this to being in a cold pool after a long period of time. The other was that of extreme sadness, loneliness or maybe fear that brought me to tears. These are not feelings that I relate to often and really took me by surprise. I am generally a very positive, upbeat and happy person.
I learned that there was an older lady that the girl stayed with. She seemed to be the girls mother figure who may have been extremely protective of her (Terri may have connected with her at some point). There was also the feeling that other children may have been present that were not coming forward. After a while, I also felt tired and drained and decided that maybe someone else should try and communicate with her.
Once I was done, I borrowed gloves and tried to get feeling and warmth into my hands. This did not help. After I returned the gloves, the coldness was not just in my hands anymore but had made the gloves cold as well. I thought that was extremely bizarre. I also had a very uneasy feeling about letting my new friends from SPI see me in such a vulnerable state and wondered that evening about what they must have thought about what they had witnessed. In the back of my mind, I kept telling myself that what happened could not have been real. I am thinking that this must be the way that your mind/spirit try to protect yourself from the unknown.
About the time this was happening we picked up an evp which seems to say “mama”.
After Karen’s experience, Terri said that she was getting an impression of a person named Amanda and we began to focus on trying to communicate with this person. During this period we picked up several evps. Most of these don’t seem to make words, only sighs and whispers that can’t be made out, so they are of very little evidentiary value. While Terri was trying to contact Amanda, she told us of seeing a smoky substance directly in front of her. Unfortunately the rest of us were unable to see this. There were no abnormal photos taken during this time and the emf detector didn’t give any abnormal readings.
Paula was picking up on a woman who was trying to contact a son who died during World War II. We tried to communicate with this spirit but didn’t have much luck. The dowsing rods did give us some response but were not nearly as active as we have seen them in the past. However a review of the tapes found an evp at this time that sounds like “hi”.
This investigation was our first in a cemetery and was a lot of fun. We would like to thank Paula for being our host and guide for the evening.
Pictures
Picture One
Picture Two
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Picture Four
Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVPs)
