Lone Star PS visits Oakwood Cemetery
What a beautiful place. I never knew that we had such a wonderful historical cemetery like Oakwood around here. I don’t know what it was about this place but I was just in awe of all the different headstones and mausoleums. I loved looking at the older headstones… the craftsmanship that went into these is just amazing.
I could easily spend hours in this place looking at all of the creative headstones. Some of them looked like tree trunks with signs on them that were made out of marble. Others were grand and tall, towering possibly two stories high over the others. They ranged anywhere from the smallest and most humble of headstones that only had initials or simply said “mother” to huge marble mausoleums with heavy golden colored doors. The dates ranged from 1879 to as recent as this year.
Well, I won’t ramble on about that but I will say that we will be going back again very soon. We only had one hour left when we got there before the gates would close. I thought that would be enough time since we were initially going to just visit the grave sites of Luke Short, Jim Courtright, Waggoner and a couple of others. As soon as we pulled in the gate I was in awe of the place. I had never seen a cemetery like this before and perhaps I was in awe of this one because I just don’t go and visit cemeteries all that often and the ones that I’ve been to looked nothing like this one.
I took my IR lens with me and took both color photos as well as infrared. I had my recorder with me but I didn’t even bother turning it on until the last 5 minutes that we were there before the gates were closed.
I took over 100 photos in our short time there and we have one that is of interest. We will be returning to Oakwood to that same location to see if there is anything that could have created or given the image that we see in the photograph. We’ll keep you posted on the site on that outcome.
I captured two clear e.v.p.’s and one other that I will have to work with a bit more that I would think is more of a Class B e.v.p.. Oddly, I didn’t even ask questions or anything while I was out there… I basically turned on the recorder when we noticed we had about 5 minutes until the gates closed and I was walking around with the recorder in one hand and my camera and tripod in the other and running to find Jim Courtright’s grave site since that was the only one we hadn’t found yet.
The first semi-clear e.v.p. happened when Mike was trying to help me find Courtright’s grave and he was heading the wrong way. I yelled out to him that Courtright was supposed to be up toward the front and said, “Michael, he’s up front, you’re going the wrong way…. that’s not the front…” and a couple of seconds later you can hear a whispery voice saying, “You’re right, that’s not the front.” Wow. *jaw drops*
The e.v.p.’s that get a big double wow from me are the ones that were captured at Courtright’s grave site. The recorder is still on and I’m not paying attention to it whatsoever because I have like 2 minutes to take whatever photos I’m going to get or we’re locked in over night. So I quickly take my photos, Mike asks me what the story is about Courtright again, I give him the short and sweet version and we had to hurry to the car because the caretaker was shutting and locking the gates. That’s the story as we knew it until we got home and heard the e.v.p.’s.
Listening to the e.v.p.’s, I hear us talking about where I think Courtright’s grave is and then I say, “Oh there it is, there it is, found it! Am I good or what?” (LOL whatever!) And I can hear our footsteps as we approach the grave site and stop for me to take the photos. As soon as we stopped walking and I was about to set up the camera and tripod, you can here a clear whispery voice saying, “Hi, hello, hello.” And the second e.v.p. at his site was right after I told Mike the quick story of Courtright just before we had to leave and at the end you can hear the same voice that was saying hello now saying, “Thank you.” Now that’s a double wow right there and my jaw is still on the floor.
It was totally unexpected to get any kind of e.v.p.’s out there. Even though I had intended to take my recorder with me, as soon as we got there all I could think about was taking photos and just looking at all that scenery. Knowing that we had only a few minutes left, I grabbed the recorder out of my pocket and just turned it on and forgot about it with my focus on getting to his grave before the gates closed.
It was an amazing visit and I look forward to getting back there real soon.
Here’s a video that I put together from our visit to Oakwood Cemetery. Enjoy.