Thursday, Jun. 12, 2008 - 11:23 pm

I went to Oak Hill Cemetery to take some pictures. I have been fascinated by this cemetery my whole life but never had any reason to go there. Now that I’m older, I know that I don’t need to have anyone specific to visit to enter a any cemetery. The residents always welcome respectful guests.

There aren’t really any paved roads aside from the main one leading into the cemetery. I would drive to different spots and hop out of my truck so I could walk around and snap photos of all of the ornate grave markers. I paid especially close attention to the names I recognized. Prominent local family names that eventually would become the names of streets, towns and schools in my little area of the world. Some of the inscriptions on the stones were in Polish, German and one was, I believe, Hebrew.

The majority of the stones in this cemetery are above ground and taller than I am (I check in at almost 6’). Oak Hill is a very old, well kept cemetery but it is, for lack of a better term, creepy. Some of the markers are very tiny and flat and over time have sunk into the ground. The older cemeteries are not mapped out like the newer ones are and you really have to be careful because there are stones pointed every which-a-way and those little sunken ones just pop right up under your feet! In addition to all that, we’ve had a great deal of rain lately so the ground at the cemetery sinks in unexpected places just to add to the creepy. I kept having to apologize to the folks I was stepping on. Apologizing is something my Mom used to make me do when I was little, careless and impatient and running all over stones in "our" cemetery while she and Nana were tending to the flowers and headstone clean-up. “That’s not nice! You show respect here and apologize to the person you just stepped on!” And I would. And I still do.

I was really enjoying my time there. I pretty much had the place all to myself aside from a groundskeeper that was taking care of some weeds around a fence. At one point in the day, I hopped into my car to go to the next spot and I checked my brand new phone to see what time it was getting to be and noticed that it was not on. My phone is never off. I turn it on and in a few seconds, it shuts off again. I look around and I'm all alone. The weed whacking groundskeeper is gone…IF he was ever really there in the first place MUAAAHHHAHAHA. Ahem, sorry. The phone finally decides to stay on and I turn the key to start my car and it does nothing. I turn the key again. It starts, but immediately shuts off. No sputtering, no chugging. Just turns off.

Okay. I get it.

At this point I say out loud: "That is NOT funny!"

I turn the key and the car starts and then immediately dies again.

Again, out loud, I say: "Listen, nobody visits you people anymore. Most of the people who remembered you are here with you. I'm taking pictures so other people know you're here. I'm not disrespecting you, I'm paying tribute to you. I'll come back soon, I promise."

I sat there for a minute or so, turned the key, the truck started and remained running.

Sometimes you just have to come to an understanding.

I didn’t lie to my new friends when I said that I would be back to visit them. I’ll go back and I’m taking Amy with me. Lea says she’ll park outside the fence so that Amy will have a place to run if the ghosts decide to be mischievous again.

I fully understand that all of this is probably just coincidence and circumstance that a brand new phone and a recently serviced truck that passed the emissions test that very morning could act up at the same time in the same place and NOT do it again in the 24 hours that followed. But it is way more fun for me to think of it as my own little Oak Hill Cemetery ghost story.

Here are the photos:

Oak Hill Cemetery

Where I've Been. - What's Next.