I had the chance to go on a tour of Big Bone Lick park in Union Ky. I've written a lot about this park and have been there dozens of times. The parks amazing history of being home to ancient animals like the mammoths, giant sloths, and bison made me drawn to this place. Tribes of the earliest peoples from the Pre-Paleo period (13,000 BC) up to the late woodland period (AD 1000) found a endless supply of animals to hunt and the land became a killing grounds for thousands of years. American Indians and early settlers marveled at the "Big Bones" found laying all over the land there, several trips and expedition's happened there, one being commissioned in 1807 by President Thomas Jefferson to find bones and artifacts. Big Bone Lick was also famous at one point for it's salt springs, the waters that once attracted so many ancient animals starting bringing people from all over to experience it's healing powers. Hotels and bathhouses were made and people would enter the waters to heal and be restored. By 1847 Big Bone stopped being a attraction due to more fashionable spas opening up elsewhere.
So as you can see the history here goes on and on. In this post I will focus on 3 different locations where people have reported paranormal sightings and I also want to touch on how these ghosts of the past can be recorded and documented by investigators. The first place we went to was the nature center building next to the museum, here they store bones and other things not being currently used or on display. The story goes that the ghost of a little girl and that of a French fur trader are reported here. Who and how they ended up here is not known but they seemed to make a appearance when we got there.
The tour was lead by Tri-State Shadow Chasers, a group of paranormal investigators known for there professional approach and solid team lead by Eddy Parks. They are really good people and I've enjoyed a few tours by them in the past. To say they come prepared to these tours is putting it lightly as they used so many different gadgets for the purpose of recording ghostly activity. EMF detectors, night vision cameras, full spectrum cameras ( modified by Matt Penick, the teams tech guy) Voice recorders for EVP (electronic voice phenomena) and Ghost boxes to communicate with ghost using sweeping AM and FM radio stations. So with all this arsenal we set out to the storage building and began trying to talk with the ghost there, almost at once the EMF detectors would light up to show the presence of electromagnetic frequencies that investigators believe ghost give off. We asked a series of questions to try and figure out who we were talking to and how they got there. I liked how Eddy and the team encouraged us to talk with the ghost and really let us loose to investigate all we wanted. A little girl and a French fur trader are the ones that people have seen and heard here, so with that in mind we communicated with them and I was able to get a shot of a possible orb above one the guests heads as she asked questions. The two ghost didn't seem to be from the same time and not related to each other.
Next we drove up to the Old Baker Family cemetery. The Bakers owed most of the land there and have several graves of the family including that of a few children. It was cold and rainy out so we didn't stay to long here but one of the teams members starting using dowsing rods to communicate with any spirits. The interesting thing was that as he asked questions the rods would start to move and at the same time the EMF detectors would go off. Dowsing rods are also used to find water and even oil buried deep underground. The accounts here at the cemetery are of spirits voices being recorded and a teen girl seems to be the one that reaches out to people the most in most of these.
Last on the list was Big Bone Baptist church established in 1888. The Methodist building, the upstairs of which was owned by the Masonic lodge, is still standing, and the land is now owned by the park; the building is undergoing repairs. There are a number of cemeteries in the area, the largest being at the Baptist Church. The oldest graves in this cemetery are from the 1840s. So what ghostly activity is reported here? Nothing less then tales of a pastor who committed suicide and still roams the church, piano music heard coming from upstairs where no one is allowed to go, and even bibles opening and closing on there own. We all did our separate mini investigations using the equipment the group gave us and got a lot of hits on the EMF detectors, especially when mentioning the revered Elmer Kidwell who shot him self in his homes bathtub not the church. And when I asked more questions about why he killed himself I got the feeling we weren't welcome there anymore. Most of the EMF hits I got there were next to one of the pianos in the room, the detector was on top and nothing should've been causing it to go off. Once the activity wore down we headed out and now I can cross Big Bone lick off my list of haunted places to visit.
At the end of it all it was a fun trek into the unknown and exciting world of the paranormal. Even if you don't believe in ghost and are a skeptic, I recommend going on one of these tours and just being open to the possibilities.
DID YOU KNOW: 1755
Mary Draper Ingles initiates her daring escape from her Shawnee Indian captors who brought her there on a salt making expedition from their Scioto River village, after taking her captive in July of that year during a raid on the frontier settlement of Draper Meadows in Virginia.
So as you can see the history here goes on and on. In this post I will focus on 3 different locations where people have reported paranormal sightings and I also want to touch on how these ghosts of the past can be recorded and documented by investigators. The first place we went to was the nature center building next to the museum, here they store bones and other things not being currently used or on display. The story goes that the ghost of a little girl and that of a French fur trader are reported here. Who and how they ended up here is not known but they seemed to make a appearance when we got there.
The tour was lead by Tri-State Shadow Chasers, a group of paranormal investigators known for there professional approach and solid team lead by Eddy Parks. They are really good people and I've enjoyed a few tours by them in the past. To say they come prepared to these tours is putting it lightly as they used so many different gadgets for the purpose of recording ghostly activity. EMF detectors, night vision cameras, full spectrum cameras ( modified by Matt Penick, the teams tech guy) Voice recorders for EVP (electronic voice phenomena) and Ghost boxes to communicate with ghost using sweeping AM and FM radio stations. So with all this arsenal we set out to the storage building and began trying to talk with the ghost there, almost at once the EMF detectors would light up to show the presence of electromagnetic frequencies that investigators believe ghost give off. We asked a series of questions to try and figure out who we were talking to and how they got there. I liked how Eddy and the team encouraged us to talk with the ghost and really let us loose to investigate all we wanted. A little girl and a French fur trader are the ones that people have seen and heard here, so with that in mind we communicated with them and I was able to get a shot of a possible orb above one the guests heads as she asked questions. The two ghost didn't seem to be from the same time and not related to each other.
Next we drove up to the Old Baker Family cemetery. The Bakers owed most of the land there and have several graves of the family including that of a few children. It was cold and rainy out so we didn't stay to long here but one of the teams members starting using dowsing rods to communicate with any spirits. The interesting thing was that as he asked questions the rods would start to move and at the same time the EMF detectors would go off. Dowsing rods are also used to find water and even oil buried deep underground. The accounts here at the cemetery are of spirits voices being recorded and a teen girl seems to be the one that reaches out to people the most in most of these.
Last on the list was Big Bone Baptist church established in 1888. The Methodist building, the upstairs of which was owned by the Masonic lodge, is still standing, and the land is now owned by the park; the building is undergoing repairs. There are a number of cemeteries in the area, the largest being at the Baptist Church. The oldest graves in this cemetery are from the 1840s. So what ghostly activity is reported here? Nothing less then tales of a pastor who committed suicide and still roams the church, piano music heard coming from upstairs where no one is allowed to go, and even bibles opening and closing on there own. We all did our separate mini investigations using the equipment the group gave us and got a lot of hits on the EMF detectors, especially when mentioning the revered Elmer Kidwell who shot him self in his homes bathtub not the church. And when I asked more questions about why he killed himself I got the feeling we weren't welcome there anymore. Most of the EMF hits I got there were next to one of the pianos in the room, the detector was on top and nothing should've been causing it to go off. Once the activity wore down we headed out and now I can cross Big Bone lick off my list of haunted places to visit.
At the end of it all it was a fun trek into the unknown and exciting world of the paranormal. Even if you don't believe in ghost and are a skeptic, I recommend going on one of these tours and just being open to the possibilities.
DID YOU KNOW: 1755
Mary Draper Ingles initiates her daring escape from her Shawnee Indian captors who brought her there on a salt making expedition from their Scioto River village, after taking her captive in July of that year during a raid on the frontier settlement of Draper Meadows in Virginia.
Click the image to go to the Tri-State Shadow Chasers website. Contact them: 859-903-2250 or [email protected]