Happy New Hauntings

Good morning and Happy New Year my fellow investigators! Today is a new day, a new month, and a new year. How many times can we say that? (Once a year of course!)

Personally I am looking forward to the new year so much that I can barely sit still. Our plans are to investigate our butts off in some of the most haunted locations in and around Western North Carolina. We have fingers in a ton of cookie jars and hope to have some responses from our cookie monsters in the coming days.

Here's to you and yours on this New Year's day! It is time to make the impossible, possible!

Helen's Bridge - Asheville, NC

Now, as much as I despise being called a "Ghost Hunter" (as you all know), sometimes it's true. It truly is good to have a hobby and just geek out with your friends and do a little hobby time. Being serious investigators all the time can wear a team out. So if you're a team leader or founder of a group take them out for some honest fun once and awhile. That is what I did!

Why is it that in any urban legend or ghost story you only get a general description of where to go for the location? Of course, I only had a general idea as to how to get there and where it was since NO ONE ever posts directions to this sort of urban legend location.

Yeah well, in keeping with tradition...here is a map showing a general road in a general location, this may or may not be the actual location of Helen's Bridge.

(Just kidding! These are the actual directions to Helen's Bridge and the driving directions are posted below.)

The legend is that the Zealandia castle caught fire and a young woman lost her only child in the flames. Helen was so lost without her daughter she hung herself from a small stone bridge not far from the castle. Since then it is said that if you go to the bridge late at night, turn off your car, and call her name you may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of her. Dressed in a long gown, it is said that she may ask you if you have seen her daughter. If it so happens that you do see her your car will be unable to start for a while.

Ghost hunters, paranormal enthusiasts, and teenagers looking for a scare, have flocked to this site for many years. It is obvious that the local teens hang out here with the amounts of litter and trash that lay about and the amount of teens that came to explore while we were there. During the 1940’s there used to be many Indian burial locations and it is rumored that these graves were disturbed. Apparitions and orbs have been documented (ORBS!) and some people have even described being pushed, slapped, scratched, and kicked. It is very possible it is not Helen but another darker entity. Zealandia website owners ask that no one provoke the “spirits” that lurk on or near the bridge.

Being the sort of skeptic's that we are, provoking is our specialty. Don't get me wrong, we respect the dead but stories of slapping, hitting, and scratching, is too irresistible for us. An entity that is willing to do physical harm is not just a lonely spirit and we want evidence of that particular existence.

Look closely above our heads the rocks are shaped like a skull. We thought that was cool, (not paranormal)

We had two recorders running at the same time on opposite ends of the bridge we had been calling for Helen for about fifteen minutes when jokingly a member asked "have you seen my daughter?" This is the response we got. Click Here. We were not kicked, scratched, punched, etc. as we had hoped and expected. The woods are loaded with thorny vines so any scratches we did get was from the greenery.

So go and have fun my paranormal friends! Send us your pictures of Helen's Bridge here and be entered for your chance to win Season 1 of Ghost Adventures on DVD! (The pictures do not have to be paranormal in nature.) You can also be entered to win just by commenting on this post. The winners will be announced within one month of this post.

Please, tell us what you think and leave comment below. Remember to "like" us on facebook by following the link on the right. You can also follow us on twitter @WNCPRS as well. If you would like us to investigate your area, send us an email here.

Veteran's Day

Today is Veteran's Day. For me it is a day of remembrance for all those that I served with in the U.S. Navy. Some are still with us here today enjoying their time still serving this country. Some are proud and retired or honorably discharged like myself. Others gave the greatest gift they could possibly give; they sacrificed their lives for you and I.




Please remember to thank a soldier or sailor today of all days. Thank them for doing what they do and doing what they did.

We are American's because of the sacrifices made by these men and women in the past, present, and future. Don't forget a thanks for those families that wait ever so patiently for their loved ones to come home too.

EVPs from 05/28/2011

(NOTE: I had to delete the original post as to some sort of corruption. This is the original post just moved to a different location.)

Every once in a while I grab my team and we investigate abandoned cemeteries. Not because I believe that there are ghosts there but because it keeps us all on our researcher toes. I use cemeteries to train new researchers, test new devices, and keep the veteran researchers from becoming complacent during investigations. Practice makes perfect and when requests are slow to come in, this is what we do. We are not Ghost Hunters and never will be. We do not actively seek out “haunted” locations we are asked to come and investigate to try to explain what is happening. We are researchers and like every great researcher, we must keep up to date on the latest technology and practices. I do not begrudge anyone who does call themselves a ghost hunter. I respect what you do and I know for a fact, that without the hunters we wouldn’t know what to do with most of the equipment we have. I’m just saying that we do not seek out these locations normally.

With that said: Excerpt from the survey done in 2000 for this particular cemetery just to give you an idea as to how the place looked. Our night vision camera refused to behave so we have no photos but I will go back and take some daylight pictures and update this post as soon as I do.

Though the cemetery is still in use, it is in extremely poor condition, and many gravestones may soon be lost to neglect. At the time of the survey weeds, shrubs, and trees made it difficult to complete the work. Many gravestones are leaning, sunken, broken, deteriorating, or just plain missing. Several graves have only a funeral home marker (marked by the letter "F" to the left of the death date). There are many more graves in this cemetery than the survey shows if one includes the sunken graves, mounds, and the pile of fieldstones found near the back of the cemetery. The church building is still standing, but it appears to be abandoned.

I attempted to do the survey in rows to show possibly relationships, but the rows are very irregular. I started the survey AT THE ROAD and worked back through the cemetery. A date that appears to fall between the birth and death columns indicates that there was only one date on the stone, and I could not tell if it was a birth or death date.

The oldest date on a grave was that of Larence Morrow, whose birth date reads: ___ 24, 1835. His death date was unreadable.

The first EVP we obtained was two footsteps. I hated how these turned out upon upload to sound cloud. You may have to listen to it a couple times. The footsteps are faint but after you hear them, you can clearly hear our trainee say that he is now leaving. It did freak him out a bit but he hung in there.

The second one is a breath or a sigh, none of us were standing anywhere near the voice recorder as it was atop a gravestone alone.

Lastly, this one is the most difficult to hear once it was uploaded and is best heard with headphones. Again, it is barely above a whisper. We enhanced the audio only to make the volume louder; it is clearly audible without any enhancements but the upload completely distorts it. We believe it is saying, "I'm judging you," referring again to our trainee.

If anyone has any recommendations as to a better uploader please let us know! Please, tell us what you think and leave comment below. Remember to "like" us on facebook by following the link on the right. You can also follow us on twitter @WNCPRS as well. If you would like us to investigate your area, send us an email here.

http://snd.sc/l49xNA