The only demons in a cemetery are the ones you bring with you. That's what I've come to believe after over 20 years of cemetery hopping. As a boy, I knew just how to turn the knob with the pressure on the door to keep it from creaking and step out in between Dad's snores. I took the backyards and side streets out to the edge of town. Then slipped across the road when headlights weren't around into the calm and comfort of the nearest necropolis. I wasn't looking for signs from the beyond. Wasn't trying to catch a picture of mists or orbs. Wasn't trying to tape record voices from beyond the grave. I was trying to get away. To find the freedom of the periphery. The company of strangers among whom I suddenly lost the fear of public acumen amid the great equalizer. Somehow, despite the seeming perversity of it, it was by the perspective of the dead that I found the ability to successfully navigate the treacherous waters of adolescence. I left the demons at the gate. After the death of friends and loss of home after home, that desire to simply be in a place and experience what it had to offer changed. The desire rose for something more tangible. Demanding substance and evaluation. I wanted items of proof. Semblances of logic. Something substantial, factual and quantifiable. In short, I became an adult. Shortly after, I began this web-based project. 
Starting last summer, with a trip to Bachelor's Grove, something started to stir. An uncomfortablity with the situation and with my place in it. Something wasn't right, and I was a part of it. My wife and I along with a friend took an excursion there. It was something akin to a Sunday drive. I took them through the Archer Avenue corridor. Showed them the sites: Resurrection Cemetery, Willowbrook Ballroom, Archer Woods and several other places. We guided ourselves with the most up-to-date text books on the subject and followed what leads we could. We were spectral tourists, on our way to Disneyland. After lunch and milkshakes, we eventually arrived at our intended destination in the late afternoon, we parked in the Rubio Woods lot where I've advised so many in the past to do the same. We collected our cameras and recorders and headed down the path into the woods. Our friend was out to get a ghost. Every turn and stone presented a new and stretchable truth to him. Every strange mark came from an ethereal hand. Every piece of a coyote's leftover meal the site of a grizzly and foul deed. We clicked more pictures than a Hollywood tour bus. Ran hours of recorded audio tape trying to pick up Al Capone saying "you dirty rat" while throwing some hapless booze runner into the pond. At one point, we walked through the woods behind the cemetery along the creek. Faintly in the distance, voices could be heard. After an hour of walking, we finally got over the notion that it wasn't Satanists on a holiday. It was the loudspeaker announcing the details of a game at a nearby soccer field. Coming back the way we came, we encountered a man and a woman on bicycles. As they had recently moved into the area, they often came down there. He said he had stumbled across the foundation of a house not too far off the main path complete with an abandoned well. When he tried to lead us to the location, he wasn't able to find it. Every step deeper in looked more to him like he was on the right track, and every five feet he'd be unsure again. I don't doubt that he did find it. I do doubt that he'll ever find it again. Part of me, for his sake, hopes he doesn't. And back into the cemetery. We came
across a couple from the Haunted Chicago Paranormal Research and Investigation
Team. Along came five or six high-school kids. Then a middle We left down the darkened path. There was a feeling of being followed. Not far off as about twenty of us left at the same time. As we crossed the road, I looked over to the tree line. A full moon slid into view through the tops of the branches. The next day I found an anomaly among the images. We had snapped a few shots after hearing twigs break by the east fence at sunset. In a dark twilight shot, I raised nothing more than the brightness. Please keep in mind, this was taken with a digital camera so as evidence it means nothing. I zoomed into the suspect speck and raised the brightness with Photoshop. Here 'tis, my souvenir.
Not to be outdone, my friend went back soon after with an entourage. Too many folks and not much forethought, but the product below is interesting. As they stood on headstones they got the following images with a 35mm pocket camera.
Are we getting the picture? The first time I went there, I wrote a preachy little ditty about how insensitive some visitors had been. Now, only my second trip there, and I had inspired and participated in that very same insensitive behavior. I don't think anyone's in the wrong here, as slanted as this may seem. The chaos of the place can easily incline folks to behave in ways they normally never would. Most of the people who've stood on stones probably never have or would in any other situation. If I knew what the Grove was, I might be in a better position. But I don't. No one does, and don't trust anyone who tells you otherwise. And whatever it is, it's being used as an amusement park watched over occasionally by men in blue. It's only a matter of time before someone gets hurt on a ride. Not good enough. Not nearly good enough. For my part, I'm done with the Grove. For now anyway.
If I do go back, there will be a damn good reason for it. Like maybe
taking a garbage bag instead of a camera. I've not been frightened
by the Grove, but by what I've become. I brought my demons in, and
I'm not proud. Then again, if you've ever felt the change in the air
as the night slips in between the trees on the eve of a full moon,
you might not be as hard as I'm being. I'm going to take a break from
the souvenir hunting. To hell with the ghost pictures and EMF's. The
chaos is inevitable, but not my participation. To close the Grove
would only mask a festering wound. It's got to bleed. It's got to
scream. And maybe it'll get the attention of someone And it should be pretty obvious that I'm a damn hypocrite. I'll still go spook chasing with camera in hand even if it's not in the Grove. Still, there's something else I'm interested in capturing now. The cemeteries from my childhood were full of friends I never met. They gave me a solid ground from which to find the frailty and preciousness of life and yet at the same time the perspective to take it not quite so seriously. It was by my view of death that I was most alive. It's my goal to see with those eyes again. I was wiser as a child.
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aged man and his three kids. The sun started to set. The high-schoolers
chanted in a corner and burned candles. The HCPRI couple set up a
tripod with a camcorder and snapped shots. And the three kids...they
climbed on top of those stones still not turned over. The man watched;
a blank look awash across his face. As I yelled at the kids, a few
more people came in. The sun disappeared behind the trees. The air
became dense and thick. Sensory depravation made the mind swim. There
seemed to be a hundred people in that little enclosure. We stayed
for a while. Clicking more photos. Our friend found a stone he seemed
to feel a resonance from. Within a few minutes, the high-school kids
were done with their chanting and all around the damn stone trying
to catch a whiff. I tried to help a local jock and his girlfriend
get their new digital camera to work. The man with the kids, now having
been told I had yelled at them, came to yell at me. The argument that
ensued was short, heated, but not physical. It ended abruptly when
I asked how he'd feel when they were doing the same to his grave.
wiser
and better trained than I.