Halloween Night Ghost Hunt

Potato Creek State Park in north-central Indiana is a wooded area surrounding a huge lake, well-loved by fisherman. It's very evident that fishing is a major pasttime at this park. Signs post the minimum size limit of largemouth bass, boat launches and fishing piers dot the lake side, and a sign boasts the park is open to fisherman at 4 am. Fours trails wind through the woods on the east and north sides of the park offering a refreshing break from city life in nearby South Bend and Plymouth, Indiana. However, hidden at the end of the eastside road lies a rectangular area of woods cut out for use as a cemetery. The reason for the cemetery isn't known, at least not to me. It seems very out of place in a park over 5 miles from the nearest city limits. Tombstones here date back as old as 1860, some so old the writing has been weathered away, leaving only a small white stone marking whoever happens to be buried at that site. Some gravemarkers have begun to sink into the ground. Many families are buried here. They are noted by large tombstones with the family name, usually behind a row of much smaller gravemarkers. One such family site has smaller headstones reading just "Mother", "Father", etc. It was here that me and my friend decided to conduct our ghost investigation on Halloween night, 2000. The weather was just perfect, clear skies, low humidity, a chill in the air, but not too bad. A light jacket with a long sleeve shirt was all that was needed. The air was perfectly still and calm.

We arrived at the park around 6:00 PM, 15 minutes after official sunset, however there was still enough light to see perfectly fine. We drove the long drive until the roaded ended in a parking lot. There were still three other cars in the lot so we decided to start our night by doing a short hike. We got a picture or two of the cemetery before we started though to have a daylight shot. We hiked the trail through the woods, cutting back to the beginning down an old, overgrown abandoned road. By this time, it was dark enough to use our flashlights so as not to trip over any holes in the old worn-down road. Halfway back, we were startled by a deer that had been standing just off the road in the woods. We, of course, never noticed the deer, but it saw us and took off running. We both turned to shine our flashlight in the direction of the rustling leaves and pounding hooves and breaking branches. While we never actually saw what it was, we knew it had to have been a deer.

Once we got back to the beginning of the trail we saw the last of the fisherman pull out of the parking lot in his truck. We walked the short trail past the cemetery to the fishing pier first. At one point we both heard what sounded like a snort coming from the shore behind us, near the cemetery. Shining both our flashlights in the direction the sound came from, we saw nothing. After about 10 minutes on the pier, we walked back and went in to the cemetery. By this time it was totally dark. We had our flashlights on anytime we moved to see where we were going. The cemetery looked like a maze of shadowy tombstones. Two lone trees towered over the back corner. Our flashlight beams reflected off of tombstones in two directions, one on either side of the stone, creating the eerie illusion of the tombstone glowing. The sound of crickets could be heard in the woods surrounding us. Otherwise, everything was still. After taking a couple pictures from the edge of the graveyard, we walked toward the center. I wanted to check out a gravemarker where I had felt a warm spot last week. Walking over to it, I shown my flashlight on it to read the name. It was a tall, family marker. Next to it were four or five, barely readable, smaller tombstones. About that time, I looked back at my friend whos gaze was transfixed toward the back corner of the graveyard. I ask if he saw anything. He just told me to be quiet and asked if I heard something. I stopped and listened and heard the distinct sound of leaves rustling, as if someone were shuffling their feet through a pile of leaves or wind was blowing leaves in the tree. It was an uninterrupted sound and wasn't scared off by our yelling or our flashlight beams. My friend decided he'd had enough and wanted to leave. I wanted to know what it was and started to walk toward the sound, being sure to note that the two trees in that corner weren't moving at all, thus ruling out the possibility of wind blowing the leaves. As I started walking toward the sound, my friend insisted that we leave. I told him okay, but made sure to get off a picture in the direction of the noise. After a few more seconds of listening to the sound and shining the flashlight, we headed back toward the car and left. As much as I would like to believe it was something paranormal causing the sound, I'm sure it was just a beaver or opposom or raccoon digging through the leaves. My friend insists it sounded like something larger, but I don't think so.

The Aftermath (Pictures)

Clicking a picture will take you to a larger version. Stupid Meijer didn't develop them all because they didn't come out perfect so I gotta go get the two they didn't develop developed. But here are these!

This was the first picture at around sunset.

This is the second picture at around sunset!

This is a picture of the fishing pier over the lake obviously after dark. This was right before we went into the graveyard.

This is the only picture they developed of the graveyard after dark. I have to get them to develop the rest.