2001-10-24 - 1:24 a.m.

I think it all started with "Ghostbusters." When I was three, and "Ghostbusters" first came out on video, it was a major hit. I know this not because of its impact on society, or how many people recognize it and have seen it, but because I can think of two distinct times when it first came out when people in my family had rented it, and it sent me running in fear into another room.

It started at a cousin's house. A bunch of people in the living room of a part of my extended family that we just kind of lost touch with some time within the next couple of years were sitting and watching the movie the first time I saw it. I didn't last very long in that room. I remember it quite clearly, considering how young I was. I remember Ray Stantz screaming "GET HER!" and the once-complacent librarian turning into a terrifying, roaring monster, bathing the soon-to-be Ghostbusters in ectoplasmic light. The next thing I remember is kneeling on a green sofa with a white flowered blanket draped over it, looking through the porch window into the living room, watching my cousin and her friends with the glow from the television, the back of which was facing me, lighting them up as they watched.

After I grew up enough to not be scared so easily, "Ghostbusters" became one of my favorite movies of all time. Somewhere after that, I started really getting into the idea of ghosts. They fascinated me. I used to read up on them all the time. I would have, at one point, been able to give you a list of places I wanted to go visit, known as some of the most haunted places on the planet. Hotels, homes, mansions, all plagued with reports of paranormal activity. I could go all night telling stories people had reported over the centuries from all over the United States and Europe. I knew all kinds of different theories about why they stay behind, what they look like, what they want, what kinds are dangerous and why, and how to protect yourself if they are.

For a few years, starting around when I was five, I had an imaginary friend. He was a tiny little ghost named, appropriately enough, Little Ghost. See, the fact that he was a ghost is what explained that I could see him and other people couldn't. He was a few inches tall, white, and looked remarkably like the ghost in the Ghostbusters logo. In my imagination he would fly around my head, telling me all the things he could see that I couldn't, or sit on my shoulder and just talk. He had the power to make himself visible or invisible if he wanted, and being so little gave him the advantage of being able to sit in my hands to talk, so he could be visible, and then if someone came by, I could close my hands around him while he disappeared so no one would see him. He had a big brother, too, named, as you might have guessed, Big Ghost. He could fly faster and farther than Little Ghost, and he used to fly long distances (or at least, little kid long distances), like all the way to my friend Colleen's house, to find out if she was home. The cool thing is, he was rarely wrong.

For years, one of the many things I wanted to be was a ghost hunter. One of those guys who goes around with all this special imaging technology and go to haunted places and try to find evidence of their existence. Existence? Would that be the right word here? Semi-existence? Eh, depends on how you define "exist" and how you define ghosts. Either way, I wanted to go around with these guys to these dark, haunted places and find proof. I liked the idea that somehow, I could have something and say, even if other people didn't believe me, *I* knew what that was. And it proved it to me. That I knew it was no trick of the light, because even though no one else who wasn't there would know, I would know that there was nothing to cause it. I'd be there, interacting with real ghosts, and I'd come back with proof.

And so, on Sunday night, I tried it. It was a sufficiently spooky night. All night beforehand a strong wind had been blasting through the area, howling through cracks in the windows and pushing my front door open twice. And to add to the mood, I was watching one of the most terrifying movies of all time…

"Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

Man, I'm going to be having nightmares about a raspy-voiced Jimmy Stewart for years to come.

So anyway, as I was watching it, I was following random links online, including one on ghost hunting and ghost photography. I found one that looked really cool that had been taken with an Olympus D-360L digital camera, which is the same as the camera I just bought. I decided I had to go.

And so, as the movie came to an end, at 11:55 PM, I was off. I knew exactly where I was going.

See, a couple of weeks ago, when I first got my camera, I went walking around taking pictures of things left and right, including a really great picture of this rock-wall lined path just down the road from my house. I didn't know what was down it, except that I could see some kind of statue or something. It was situated next to this very large, rather well-groomed yard with a comparably large home on it. I didn't go down the path, because it was gated.

I didn't notice the opening in the wall specifically for walking through. And so, last Saturday, as the sun started to drop in the sky, I went down there to take pictures, not totally sure if that would constitute trespassing or not, since there was a fairly good chance this was owned by the people with the large house and yard bordering it.

I walked slowly down the path, careful not to make too much noise crunching on the leaves in the path. When I got there, what I found, beneath the trees leaning over the wall, was the Carleton family cemetery.

I took a few random pictures, including a rather depressing picture of the tiny water-stained gravestones of three children, named simply Little Guv., Little Cora, and Little Florence.

The graves, for the most part, were enclosed by very short stone walls. I laid back outside one of those, tilting my camera up and moving my legs out of the way so they wouldn't be in the shot, and took a picture of one of the creepiest trees I've ever seen in my life. I couldn't even bring myself to step into the stone enclosure with that tree while I was there that day. One of the big things that I remembered from my childhood readings about ghosts was the idea of perimeters. Lots of stories of ghosts and spirits appearing because of someone invading their defined section of the world. So that was part of what kept me out of them. I couldn't step past certain points throughout the graveyard, simply because I didn't want to be invading any more than I was. The other reasons I wouldn't go past certain points was I wasn't sure where the graves all were, and I didn't want to step on one. That wasn't really out of fear, but out of respect. I always, when in cemeteries, try to avoid stepping on graves out of respect for the people buried there. As this one wasn't the most organized I've seen, and I didn't know my way around, I didn't dare tread on unfamiliar ground if I wasn't sure what was under it.

With my share of decent pictures, I was off, returning home. But Sunday night, as midnight approached and Jimmy Stewart's legs began to give on him, I decided I had to go back. Go back and try to catch something. Part of it was to show that I could do it. Live up to what I'd been thinking of doing most of my childhood. I needed to know if I could.

So I grabbed my hat, my coat, my gloves, and my camera, and out I went. I found myself leaving my kitchen and porch light on, and the front door unlocked. I never do that, but I did it that night, so when I got back I could get back inside as soon as possible once I got back. Onto my bike I climbed, and began the dark ride down the ride toward the graveyard.

With no flashlight, no light on my bike, and my nerves on edge, the ride to the graveyard was a shaky one. There are very few lights in this part of the road, and the night was completely overcast, so I could barely see what was around me. I heard a small animal tearing away through the leaves on the ground next to the road, and it got my heart racing. Next I was spooked by a dark lump on the ground right next to the road where my bike was going, a lump that turned out to be a very dark cat staring at me as I rode by. Finally I got to the building across the street from the cemetery. I leaned my bike up against the fence post there and prepared to go in.

See, I had a plan for various different contingencies here. One of the prevailing themes in the ghost stories, whether they were told to be frightening or told because they were supposed to be true, was the theme of perimeters. Perimeters, borders, all that. Specific areas that, if a ghost exists there, it is quite protective of or at least identifies with. Depending on the story, either that means that it won't leave that perimeter, or it means that if you invade it at the wrong time, some sort of vengeance will be brought upon you, possibly after you leave. I figured, if the former, and I disturbed something by invading its borders, then I'd do my best to get the hell out as quickly as possible.

After taking a picture, of course.

But anyway, there was my bike, ready to go as soon as I got out of that cemetery, no rusty kickstand to deal with, nothing. If an unidentified Something wants me gone, I'm going to do my best to accommodate it. But it's not going to keep me from trying to complete my ultimate goal. Getting the picture.

Since it had warmed up since earlier in the night, I took my gloves off, put them in my pocket, and started up to the path.

The only reason I could see a thing when I got there was from the small lights in the parking lot of the inn next door. Through the trees it gave just enough light that I could navigate using those and my memory from the pictures I'd taken a few days before.

One of the most nerve-wracking things I did was to go up to the creepiest looking tree I've ever seen, and actually touch it.

Everything I avoided doing in the daylight, crossing perimeters of stone and such, I did that night. I walked right up to gravestones, being careful still never to step on any graves. I walked right up to the entrance to the tomb in the center. I took pictures of everything. Sometimes I took pictures of sounds, sometimes of things I couldn't see very well, hoping the flash would help. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't.

I took lots of pictures of random gravestones. I made a conscious effort to get one of Little Guv., Little Cora, and Little Florence.

Finally, having taken my share of pictures, I went home and downloaded them, checking to see if any had anything strange on them. I mean, I hadn't noticed anything myself, but sometimes the camera catches much more than the eye.

At first, I got very excited about one picture I'd found. With phantom blurred streaks of light in an otherwise quite sharply defined picture, I thought that I'd done it. Here it was, I thought. Proof. My first excursion, and I had my proof. Lights appearing not from the physical background, but the ethereal. I was quite excited, until I remembered where I was standing when I took that picture. That was the only picture I'd taken without my back to the inn. That odd, streaky building-thing would be the inn, and the lights were the very ones helping to light my way through the trip. Remembering that, I was quite disheartened about the whole adventure, as happy as I was that I'd actually forced myself to do it.

Saddened and tired, I sat down to write this entry, but was out of energy. Finally, Monday night I started it, after I got home from work. I'd only made it partway through, what with distractions slowing me down, along with taking the time to find and upload and link all the pictures to illustrate it. Finally, tonight, Tuesday night, my writing on it was coming to a close. As I looked for any remaining pictures that looked good at all but I hadn't used yet, I came across one that made me stop and look again.

The gravestone you see right there is in the same stone enclosure as the creepy tree from earlier. That tree is actually the one you see in that picture in the top right-hand corner. When I took that picture, all of the lights from the inn were on my right. There is nothing but trees that stretch for a very long time behind the graveyard in the direction that picture was taking. There was nothing—NOTHING—to create the odd green light just up and to the right of that gravestone.

As I stared at that picture, goosebumps raised up in waves over my whole body. My hair started to rise, and tears started to well up in my eyes. I desperately searched through my memory to find anything that could easily explain where those lights came from. I never found it. Because I know if I'd ever seen lights there, it would have registered. There shouldn't have been anything like that there. I would have remembered it.

And so, after years of dreaming of it, but being too scared to try, I went ghost hunting. And I caught something on my camera that even I, most logical of logicals, trying to rationalize everything in the natural and scientific, have found something that I just can't explain. It's not proof yet.

But it's a start.