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Recently, we had the opportunity and good fortune to spend a day on Cape Cod with Derek Bartlett, President and Founder of CAIPRS (Cape and Islands Paranormal Research Group) and Deb Ahern, CAIPRS Director of Ghosts and Hauntings. Gracious hosts that they are, they agreed to take the RISEUP team on a tour of many of the most famous (and infamous) haunted locations on their home turf, based in West Barnstable, Ma.
(A little background music if you please...)
CAIPRS was founded by Mr. Bartlett back in 2001 and since then has become one of the most highly respected organizations in the field of paranormal research. We actually met Derek and Deb through some rather fortuitous circumstances. A few months ago Dave and myself attended a taping of a local public-access TV show called "Ghosts 'R Near" hosted by Keith, Sandra and Carl Johnson of New England Anomalies Research (NEAR). As you may already know, they have worked extensively with The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) in past years and are well-respected paranormal investigators specializing in demonology and the occult. We had occasionally corresponded with the Johnsons since attending one of their lectures here in Tiverton in October of 2007. By chance, their guest that night was Derek Bartlett (with Deb in attendance as one of the three members of our studio audience). We were immediately impressed by his knowledge, theory and methodology of paranormal investigation. It fell right in line with precisely who we were and aspired to be. We all made some small talk afterwards and Derek offered to take us out there for a look around anytime we could agree on a date. Deb, as usual, was bouncing around snapping pictures and generally cracking a joke here and there. (A portend of things to come.)
Needless to say, we didn't forget about that offer.
We stayed in touch with Derek and his group via email and message boards and managed to attend one of their lecture series, given each month at the Cape Cod Community College. The speaker that night was none other than Jeff Belanger, author of Weird Massachusetts and we had ourselves a great time putting faces with names and meeting their team. Long story short, Derek and Deb were wonderful, down-to-earth folks with a wealth of knowledge and made us feel so comfortable that we eventually dispensed with formalities and got down to what we were hoping for - a group of people swapping questions and stories about our passion - the investigation of the paranormal. We've had the experience of seeing some very territorial, condescending people in this field - these are not those people. They could not have treated us with more respect and courtesy. Later we got the chance to meet Derek's lovely wife Joanne, also an investigator who could not have been nicer and their beautiful little daughter, who even we big lugs fell in love with. We ended the evening on one of Derek's walking tours, which has to be made a priority on anyone's visit to the Cape that is interested in its paranormal history. The fact that CAIPRS has investigated many of the sites you will visit just adds to the creepy vibe. This is the real deal. Anyway...
This is what we did and how we did it. Roll 'em.
After pointing out some local "haunts", history and legends on our trip as we followed the distinctive "CAIPRS-mobile" (below) in our gas-sucking Trail Blazer, our first stop was the Sagamore Cemetery, where smelling cigar smoke and hearing a girl's laughter are always a distinct possibility.
"It's the car.....chicks dig the car."
The Infamous Hanging Tree - Quite the shnozz on it, too. The sounds of female laughter have also been heard around this spot. Could it be the spirit of an 11-year-old girl who was buried next to her husband(!)?
"Wolfstones" - early form of grave security
An eternal restroom?
An elaborate family mausoleum.
An Ellis family monument. A descendant, Jerry Ellis, is the caretaker here and wonders if the odor of cigar smoke that sometimes can be detected comes from Emory Ellis, a cigar lover who once held state officials, dredgers and diggers at bay with a shot gun as they tried to move the original Ellis family plot to where it now stands. The Ellis family plots along with those from the Collins Farm Cemetery had to be moved when the Cape Cod Canal was dug.
Derek Bartlett (partially seen in yellow) leads the group into the most haunted and secluded part of the cemetery.
Dave (partially seen) Ken, Derek and Ryan check out an older family plot.
A more simplistic grave marker
Some other interesting notes about the Sagamore Cemetery:
The graves of Capt. William Burgess and his wife Hannah Rebecca are located here. Hannah once navigated her husband's ship to safe port in Chile after he had died suddenly at sea.
A Mr. Stillman Ellis is buried here. Not much of a story there, except he once was mistaken for presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth.
There is a man named Charles Manson buried here.
One person who very well might haunt this place is Isaac Keith who owned the Keith Car Works, who constructed most of the coffins in which displaced souls were re-buried in the cemetery. Unfortunately many graves had the wrong headstones placed on top and it has been said that Keith roams the graveyard looking to correct the mistakes. Keith was also a big cigar smoker.
The next stop on the graveyard shift was Sandwich Old Burying Ground (aka Old Town Cemetery). This was the most beautiful of locations, situated on the banks of a lake in a quaint part of town. Derek feels this is the perfect location for a horror movie with a mist moving over the graveyard. Don't know how he feels about the whole zombie phenomenon, but he did have a point. Of particular interest were the carvings on many of the older stones there - the oldest tracing back to 1683, although, according to records, burials took place there 20 years earlier. Carvings ranged from winged skulls to cherubs. While there are no reported hauntings - it is a very picturesque location.
These people were not in the picture when it was taken
Same photo from another angle - see what I mean?
A beautiful location with so much history
Of note:
One of the preeminent names in this cemetery is that of the Dillingham family. There is some paranormal history involved with the Dillingham House in Sandwich, which was the home of Edward Dillingham, one of the founding fathers of the town. Police have paid many visits to the house, mainly responding to alarms that go off. While there they have witnessed doors that would not open suddenly do so and lights that were turned off when exiting a room would be on when re-entering. Footsteps and apparitions have also been reported by guests. For some strange reason the activity seems to be at its peak in October.
The next stop was one we had been looking forward to since we first heard Derek and Deb discuss it with us - Cemetery "X" (name concealed out of respect to the location). The place where noted paranormal investigator John Zaffis claims there is an elemental lurking in the woods with unfinished business to attend to with one of the cemetery's residents and where author Rosemary Ellen Guiley, one of the foremost authorities on the paranormal was frightened half to death by a yard reflector (there's more to that story, naturally). An old hag has also been seen crossing one of the cemetery's roadways in shadow form and appears to follow you around the place. We were like kids at Christmas when we got here (but maintained our cool persona).
What appears to be the shadowy outline of a female has been seen crossing the far end of this road.
Another spot where this figure has been seen.
Chris, Derek, Ken and Deb Ahern at "Cemetery X".
Approaching the southwest corner of "X", where John Zaffis sensed an inhuman entity that dwells in the woods. People often experience strange sensations, including nausea and a "heaviness" when standing near the roadway that borders the woods. You will also notice some white reflectors that match the kind that caused Ms. Guiley a fright when mistaken for something "else".
A shot of the wooded area. The pile of debris in the foreground is obviously dead grass clippings and brush cuttings dumped there by the maintenance crew...nothing more sinister, folks.
Despite the cautionary stories, we just had to get right up close. In fact we were looking toward a short walk deeper inside, but one look at the underbrush, and another at the shorts most of us were wearing nixed that idea. For those of you staring intently at this picture and the one below....no matrixing!!!
Derek pointing out a few notable spots to us. About this time I began to have a sort of adrenaline bump with a quickening of pulse and a jumpiness in the chest. I attributed this to the latte I had just finished before we arrived.
The rather serene setting belies more disturbing experiences some visitors have reported.
Of note:
The earliest gravestone here dates back to 1698
There is also a headstone upon which is written a curse directed towards the good people of Yarmouth by a woman named Mary Dolencie who was born in New York on May 14, 1906 and died in Yarmouth on November 9, 1985. It reads:
According to what we have gathered, Mary and her neighbors feuded over, among other things, the number of cats she owned . When this tombstone was erected, the neighbors went to court in an attempt to have it removed, but the stone carver had a paid contract in place and was required to honor it, so it remains in place.
The last stop on the cemetery tour was Cobb's Hill. This was a truly fascinating place and the visit eventually turned into a mini-investigation. While we did not have nearly all our gear, we did manage to bring a couple of digital recorders, a digital camera and two IR cameras. Reports of a shadowy figure known simply as "The Dark Man" roaming the grounds peaked our interest and we listened intently while Derek and Deb told of their own encounter with this entity.
When we reviewed our video and recordings, we didn't catch anything on this particular night, but we did have a couple of unusual things take place. One was Deb's reaction inside the cemetery which manifested itself in a coughing fit. She informed us this was not unusual for her (being a sensitive) and this was how she normally reacts to a presence. At one point, she let us know that "it is not happy we're here".
The other point of note was our digital camera. David was able to snap one picture (of me doing an EVP session on the gravestone of Dr. Samuel Savage, a somewhat tragic figure who Derek feels may be the "Dark Man" who haunts this place). I mention the one picture because after that the camera would not function properly and kept shutting down. The camera would function properly again after leaving the cemetery. This is not an unusual occurrence to paranormal investigators, but was an interesting (if not frustrating) sidelight to the event.
On the trail of the "Dark Man"
This is the clip we caught from Cobb's Hill.
I want to make mention of a similar event we read about a couple of nights later that happened to Michelle Kerr, a dispatcher with the Barnstable County Sherriff's Office, whose family coincidentally owned the house across the street from the cemetery. Michelle has had experiences in that house and in the cemetery that Derek shared with us (we won't divulge them here, but they will send a shiver through you). Here are Michelle's own words in an interview that appeared in the book Cape Encounters:
"It was the year that disc cameras came out.....We decided to go into the cemetery and we brought the camera. . . . It was eerie, but it was calm - very serene. The camera wouldn't work in the cemetery at all. It did work later when we were back in the house."
We finished our walk through the heart of town and visited the sites of some ghostly activity and got a sense of the history of the village. The night ended at the Barnstable House (or The House of 11 Ghosts), the most haunted building on Cape Cod. I cannot do the tour the same justice as our guide did, so it's futile to even try. I urge you to contact Derek through CAIPRS and take a walk with him on the Cape's wild side. We are grateful to he and Deb for their time and we came away better for the experience.
