Sunday, May 8, 2011

Some Very Unusual Things Happened on the Riverside Cemetery Tour

      This weekend, we had quite a few guests who wanted to do some "ghost hunting." While I am always curious what might turn up in photos that were taken during the tour, I am too busy just trying to keep up with everything that is going on around me, telling the stories and interacting with the people on the tour. For the most part, people are snapping photos while they are hearing me tell the story of a Civil War soldier, or former mayor or the Kemp family and it isn't until they get home and view their photos on a computer that they discover the unusual things that their photos hold.  
     Friday night though, several of our guests took photos that were very unusual to say the least. Carl Rose snapped two pictures, one right after the other. The first one turned out so strange! It came out with a bluish green color to it and you can clearly see a "mist" in the photo. He saw it on his screen and thought it was strange, so he took another photo right after it within seconds, of the very same place. The second photo turned out perfectly normal. These photos can be seen on my website here http://www.wftours.com/ Click on the link at the top that says, "Photos Taken During Tour."
     Mark and Annette Lancaster were also taking shots around the cemetery that night. Mark is with the Sons of Confederate Veterans GEN. W. R. SCURRY Chapter here in Wichita Falls. Several weeks ago, Mark's chapter put Confederate flags on 120 grave sites in the Riverside Cemetery in honor of Confederate Memorial Day. Seeing these flags waving all across the cemetery is really a sight to see. I don't know what prompted the results from his photo, whether it was coincidence or not, but as I was telling the story of Levi Boone McMurtry, who was in Quantrill's Raiders during the Civil War along with Frank and Jesse James and Allen Parmer, an unusual orb showed up in the trees near McMurtry's grave. This photo can also me seen on my website.
   The strangest thing that happened though was on Saturday night. Mary Kilgo downloaded an app on her Smart Phone that was called, "Ghost Radar" which, if you ever watched "Ghost Adventures" this is similar to the machine that Zak uses that speaks words. Well, I will have to say, I was a skeptic. I didn't see how an app on a phone could pick up on anything at all. But, in the beginning, the app kept putting up the names of Bob and the Dan throughout most of the tour. O.K. so, it pops up a couple of names, not that unusual.  Another time, it said, "company eat" and I am pretty sure it meant "Company E" as in a military unit. At the time we were surrounded by military headstones. Later, it said "elephant" and then "trophy" and "hunter" which seemed very odd to Mary until I actually said all three of those words in my last story. Now I can see maybe this app coming up with the word trophy and possibly hunter but elephant? How often does the word elephant come up in ones conversation? I was completely convinced at this point. If you want to try this app out, you can find out more about it here http://www.spudpickles.com/
     One last photo that I cannot explain is one that Jeff took. He aimed his camera down the pitch dark road with no light of any kind around it and a big, bright, white blob appeared in the photo. Just like Carl Rose did, he immediately took another photo to see if it would show up in the second photo which it did not.
     Whether or not you enjoy ghost hunting, you will enjoy the Riverside Cemetery tour. If our guests choose to use any ghost hunting equipment, they do it discreetly and do not interfere with the other guests who are with the tour. I promise that everyone will learn things you didn't know, hear stories that you only knew bits and pieces of and leave with a greater respect and love for the cemetery than when you got there!