Monday, 01 December 2003
Saturday night Janine and I decided to take a friend of ours ghost hunting. We used to do this all the time. We'd look up some nearby haunted place on the Internet, snag the directions from Yahoo, and off we'd go on a spooky night of snapping photos in the creepiest of places. We took countless photographs at grave yards, houses, and bridges. We never saw anything in those photos except for what was supposed to be there. Saturday night was really different.
Our first stop was at the Lagrange
Cemetery in Colbert County Alabama. It has always been a delightfully creepy
place, as there is a half mile drive up a winding gravel road through dense
forest. When we arrived, it was already dusk so we had a few minutes of daylight
left. There is a really nice monument in the back of the cemetery that dates
back to 1791.
We snapped a few photos with my
digital camera and then my battery went dead. Our friend, Christina, mentioned
how these type of places drain energy, and it was not unusual for batteries to
go dead. I nodded and smiled, but inside I was pissed cause these were lithium
batteries that I had shelled out ten bucks for. By now it was very dark, and we
didn't have a flash light with us. We decided to call it quits and headed home.
As my battery was dead, I had no idea what was in my digital camera. It looked
like yet another wasted saturday night. Boy, was I wrong! Here is a pic from
that night.
What are these balls of transparent
light we find in photos taken in cemeteries, haunted houses and other places
involved in paranormal activity? Some say they are the spirits of the undead.
Others have said they are fairies, visitors from another dimension, or psychic
energy that's being released from the nearby surroundings. Whatever you want to
believe, I say they are creepy-cool.
After we
saw these pics from Lagrange, Janine and Christina went totally nuts. They
wanted to go someplace else and see some more orbs. After stocking up at
Wal-Mart with flash lights and more lithium batteries, we finally settled on a
place called Fox Trap Bridge. Fox Trap Bridge is located in Russellville,
Alabama. Janine and I had been there a couple of years ago, and really thought
the whole place gave off a creepy vibe. The legend that surrounds the bridge is
that a long time ago, a black man was falsely accused of killing a white man. A
group of the victim's friends found the unlucky man near the Fox Trap Bridge. He
was beaten to near-death, and then he was drug up a hill where he was lynched
underneath a large oak tree. Supposedly, if you walk up the hill on the night of
his death, you will hear the sounds of his body being drug up the hill alongside
you. Fox Trap Bridge has also been called Cry Baby bridge, but there are
like four or five Cry Baby bridges, (or Cry Baby Hollow) in North Alabama alone.
Anyway, here is a pic from the bridge I thought was very cool!
Our night not quite done, we headed
over to nearby Bethlehem Cemetary, just a few miles away from Fox Trap
Bridge. Here we took the best orb picture of the night.
After we left Bethlehem Cemetery,
we decided to call it quits. It was getting very late, and all the other places
I had been to previously were at least an hour or so away. Looking at these
pictures has definitely given me pause for thought. I don't know what causes
orbs, and I am not sure I really care to know. I can bet some smart ass will
come along with a rational explanation for them, thus destroying the romance and
mystery of the orb phenomena. For now, they remain an elusive yet tantalizing
puzzle, and I hope they stay that way.
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