The Reluctant Medium

By Chris McGill
DimensionsRadio.com

In the fall of 2001, my wife and I made a trip to see her Sister in Southern Illinois. She lives there with her husband and two kids on a farm in a town not far from Murphysboro. Ava is a small town of a little over 500 residents. Not far from my sister-in-law's place, there’s a cemetery that lies off of the road between a cornfield and forest. Some of the tombstones in this cemetery date back to the mid to late 1800’s and many are from the same family. I will not say what the name of the cemetery is in order to protect the privacy of the family’s of those buried there.

We were in town for my wife’s family’s ‘cousin’s weekend’. This was an annual event at the time and this year we were roughing it, camping out all weekend on the farm. After a long day of horseback riding and dinner, we decided to take a little trip up the road and check out the old cemetery. After all, it was late October and Halloween was coming! This would be a perfect pre-Halloween treat. And a treat it was!

Not long after we arrived I started taking video with my brand new Sony Handycam (equipped with night vision). My wife and I had recently gotten into the hobby of ‘ghost hunting’ and I thought this would be a great spot to try out the new gear. Almost immediately I began to see a light in the forest on the outside of the cemetery. The only thing that didn’t make sense was the light wasn’t visible to the naked eye. You could only see it through the viewfinder of the video camera. I brought this to the attention of one of my wife’s cousins that was nearby. Here’s a clip of what we saw.



There was nothing in the woods that should have reflected the infrared from my camera. Not to mention, fade on and off like this ‘Ghost Light’ did! Later that same night I was shooting more video and caught an ‘orb’ of light that kept following me around. At first I thought it may be part of a spider web I had walked through, since that had happened a bit earlier. After a few seconds I realized it wasn’t a web nor was it a bug of any type. It was late in October and already getting down into the low 40’s. Most bugs are long gone in temps like that. This was the first time I had ever experienced an ‘orb’ that appeared to respond to my questions.





Needless to say, this one freaked me out a bit and I wanted to leave right then and there! Another weird thing happened that same night. For several weeks prior to this, I had been experiencing some really bad pain in my right foot. It hurt so bad at times that I could hardly walk. The next day when I woke up, I no longer had any pain in my foot at all! And haven’t since that night almost eight years ago. What was it that we saw that night in the woods outside the cemetery? Was it a ghost light? And the ‘orb’ of light that seemed to follow me inside the cemetery. Was that a spirit of someone buried there, or maybe a guardian spirit that was watching over the place? We’ll never know for sure. We did find out the next day, after talking with residents that lived near the cemetery, that there was a barn that used to be in the area where we spotted the first unknown light. It had burned down decades ago, and the rumors are that at least one person if not more were killed in the fire.

I’ve been back to this cemetery several times since this incident occurred, and have yet to experience anything like we did on that October night in 2001. I’m very skeptical when it comes to ‘orbs’ because there can be so many logical explanations like dust, moisture or lens flare. I’ve pretty much ruled out all three of these particular options in this case. Still, there’s no way to say for sure that what we experienced was paranormal. But it was definitely unexplained.

Every now and then something just inexplicable happens around here. Although, daily life around here would be pretty baffling for most, but sometimes it’s just stranger than the usual activity for us.

It was a regular weekday. I followed the usual routine of feeding the goat in the back yard, putting the dogs in the crates, locking up and heading out to the studio just a short time before my husband, Devo, was due home. The only thing that was out of the ordinary was UPS had delivered a 40 lb bag of dog food that I had left sitting in the living room since it was too heavy for me to take to the dogs’ room. That’s why we have husbands right?

Right on schedule, Devo arrived home shortly after I left. The curious part is what he came home to.

He had trouble opening the front door. He claimed it felt like he was pushing something heavy out of the way to enter the house. We only use the front door since the other doors in the house have slide locks as opposed to keyed entries. After a great deal of struggle, he gained entry and found it was the box containing the 40 lb bag of dog food against the door causing his trouble. For those of you saying to yourselves, “couldn’t it have just tipped over to block the door?”, I say, the box was at least six feet away from the door and would have had to have moved quite a way to get to it’s current location. This was just the beginning of the weirdness.

The next step of his routine was to let the dogs out of the crates I had stored them in while they were alone. When he opened the door to the dogs’ room, he did not find either of the dogs in their crates, but a miniature pygmy goat in the house instead! Luckily, she hadn’t caused any damage or mess so he guided her back out the back door. What confused him at this point was that he assumed I had left the door ajar when doing the pet duties, but the door was securely locked when he went to let her back out. And there were the dogs enjoying the freedom of the back yard.

• Scale the six foot privacy fence to enter the back yard

• Find an unlocked window, which are all at least 8-10 feet above the ground, and enter the house

• Move the 40 lb bag of food so that it blocks entry via the front door

• Stop to laugh at the thought of Devo pushing and pushing the front door to get in

• Let the dogs out of their latched crates into the back yard

• Allow the goat to come in as the dogs are going out

• Relock all doors

• Climb back out the window, somehow reclosing screens and storm windows and jump the 8-10 feet down

• Again, scale the fence to leave the yard

• Laugh all night about the joke played on us while putting away the ladders that were necessary to complete this job