Hey everyone!
Myself, my fiance, and 4 of our friends are new to the Ghost Hunting field. To give you an idea of our ages, they range from the youngest being 27 to the oldest being 42. We are very mature and you're normal everyday folks..with a curiousity in ghosts and the afterlife. So, I figured that I would come on here and share our experience Ghost Hunting at the La Belle Cemetary in Oconomowoc. I had read about it on this site and other sites as well and have been wanting to explore this cemetary all week. Last night, we did just that.
We all met up at the McDonalds on E. Wisconsin St. that was about about a block or two from the cemetary. Once there, we grabbed a little something to eat and went over some last minute details and pictures, gathered our flashlights and digital camera, and off we went.
We entered the Cemetary through the Lapham St. entrance since we were afraid of the other 2 gated entrances might be locked. Before we entered, we all held hands and said a prayer for saftey and asked God to keep us close to him at all times. After the prayer, we walked in and began 'hunting'.
Let me start off saying that we have been to 1 other cemetary a few weeks ago in West Bend and we really enjoyed our time there. We felt very welcomed, very peaceful, and we took our time walking around and taking the experience in...nothing happened on that trip (no sightings, feelings, smells, etc). It was a good get-your-feet-wet kind of trip, if you will.
About 2-3 minutes in walking along a path, I looked to my left to talk to my friend (we'll call her "Crissy") and when I turned to talk to her, she was not there...she was in front of me. But someone (or something) WAS walking beside me. So that creeped me out from the start and got my alerts going. As we walked through, the cemetary seemed very...eery. There's no other way to describe it. Just very eery. As we were walking, I had the strong sense of being followed..closely followed at that. I kept turning around to see if someone was there (I was thinking maybe teenagers could be in there and playing pranks) but nobody was there. The whole group stopped and a few of them had said that they also felt like they were being followed. We stood there and just took in the sights and smells and looked around without talking. I, personally, felt uneasy about being there and just as I was about to say just that, "Crissy" said to us out loud that she was feeling uneasy. That's when I knew it wasn't just me feeling that way and it was validated at that point. For the record, everyone there felt the same way. Some used the words "unsettled", "uneasy", "not welcomed", and "anxious" (in a bad way).
As much as I personally wanted to get out of there (as you should if you ever feel uneasy about a place you are ghost hunting at), I stayed and let the others do their exploring and I "bucked-up" for the ride.
We went around a bend and there was a mausoleum to our left (chains were on the doors). The building itself made me feel very weird inside..not sure how to explain it...kind of like being nervous to the point of being nausiated. As we stood there looking at the mausoleum, someone had mentioned that they smelled smoke. I'm a smoker and had a cigeratte prior to entering the graveyard so I told them it could possibly be me. Now, at this moment, I was already past the mausoleum because of my uncomfortable feeling that it gave me. Someone spoke up and said "No, its pipe smoke. Like, pipe tobacco!" So I walked back over there and it was as if I walked into a cloud of rather-good-smelling pipe smoke! It was VERY strong for me! Everyone there smelled it..some strong, some faintly. I think those that faintly smelled it didn't run into the spot where it was at. That was the highlight of the trip for me. The rest, I didn't like.
There is a bridge by where that mausoleum is and everyone wanted to go by it. Everyone but me and my friend (we'll call her "Jean")..we both have a fear of water at night (I'm not sure why she is, but I have my own personal reasons). So we stayed behind making small talk and just waited for them to be done exploring the bridge (about 3-5 minutes). As they were walking back and they all were within about 6 feet from me, I saw a tall ghostly man walking on "Jason's" right side! All I could see was the torso and up. It was clearly a man, but it was all white. There were no details to his face, only his masculine frame/build. When I say he was white, I mean he was a misty white...not see-thru, but not fully solid either. Very hard to explain. That's when I said "Oh my god, you just had a man walking beside you Jason" and I walked away saying out loud 'that wasn't right...that wasn't right..no..that just wasn't right..to see that..' I didn't feel threatened by this man, and it wasn't like a "Oh my god!!!" shock either..it was there and then it was gone. That's it. Just gone.
As we were standing by the bridge, we *thought* we had seen that famous Lady statue that has been the focus point of all stories about this cemetary. As we walked closer, it wasn't it, BUT it was close by. So we lucked out in finding it about 20 mins into the visit. As we approached the statue, a sense of calm and almost like a feeling of being protected, came over me. I later heard others commenting on how that was the only spot in the graveyard that didn't give them an uneasy feeling. I couldn't agree more.
We took pictures and then went on our way. The statue is beautiful, by the way! Just gorgeous!! The detail on it was amazing. By the way, those who claim that her eyes turn black in pictures, they're wrong. I'm sure some pictures turn out that way because the detail in the eyes are so great, that a flash could easily cast a shadow in the deep points of the eyelids..thus creating a black-like shadow. As you'll see in the pictures, her eyes did not turn black.
We began walking some more. This is when the feelings of being unwelcomed/uneasy started to form again and very quickly. My emotions were all over the place in this cemetary, it was very strange. As we continued to walk, I had voiced my desire to leave the cemetary. I had enough and didn't feel comfortable being there. The others 100% agreed and we began to try to find our way back out...ANY way to get out (not just the way we came in). We walked and all of a sudden, my upper chest started to feel pressure and my breathing started to become a little stressed. Imagine someone pushing on your upper chest with their hands and you had to try to walk forward as they would push back on you. That's what it felt like. As I placed my hand on my chest, "Crissy" who was in front of me said "I'm having a hard time breathing...I'm feeling pressure on my chest." I walked up to her and placed my hand on her chest and said "Like this?" and she looked at me with eyes wide open and said "YES!" Then our other friend "Jean" was pulling out her inhaler because she couldn't breath well. This is when I really wanted to leave!
My fiance and 2 friends were several feet behind us and they hadn't heard about our breathing problems yet. I heard someone call my name (a friend) and that's when all 3 of them ran up to me and said they all felt like their stomachs had pressure on them, as if someone was pushing on their diafram. My friend "Tesa" said that her stomach was in knots, like a stabbing/twisting pressure in her stomach. All 6 of us had the same problem within 20 seconds of each other (even though we were divided up at that point); we all had problems breathing. I think we all had enough at that point and off we went to find that exit! As we were looking for a way out, we noticed that someone in a house was looking right at us and walking around. We were scared that they could call the cops on us, so we hurried up and got out of there. We had to say our "closing" prayer about 100 feet from the cemetary when we knew we were safe.
This cemetary is the first one to go on my "Never Again!" list. I do not recomend it. Not because it's haunted, but I feel and believe that there is/are evil things in that graveyard and I wouldn't want anyone to go there and experience what we did.
We did capture 1 really wicked picture tonight, and I will share it with ya'll. This was captured on our way out (before the breathing problems started and we were just snapping pictures) NOTE: tonights weather was 100% clear skies (the stars looked awesome tonight!), 28 degrees, no fog, no rain/hail/flurries/etc.
Here is the ORIGINAL picture:
Here is the picture lightened a bit:
And as promised, pictures of the beautiful lady statue:
We did catch a few orbs in about 4 pictures tonight, and some other little things such as a photo that appeared to have a shadow profile of a man in it but I can't be certain:
I hope you guys/gals enjoyed our hunt experience, its one that we will not soon forgot (but probably would like to.)
~Babagirls~
