Today’s random Northern Indiana haunt probably should have been the inaugural post because it is where my paranormal adventurers really began.
Oh sure, I’d taken part in seances and creeped around in abandoned barns and farmhouses before this, but my first truly otherworldly experience occurred in 1974 at the Little Pipe Creek Cemetery.
I grew up maybe a quarter mile from Little Pipe Creek Cemetery, the location of one of Miami County’s most notorious urban legends. This small boneyard had been moved there when Converse expanded, its eternal residents having originally been interred on Water Street (where, oddly enough, my family would move when I was a teenager).
The Cemetery I knew was surrounded by a fence, with a wide, gaping maw in the northwest corner of the lot. That’s where the cemetery gate used to be hung. Emphasis on used to.
Legend held that when people came to visit at night, the gate there would open of its own accord for those of the more gentle persuasion — but when a young man would try and enter, the gate would open, only to swiftly slam shut, striking them.
It got so bad that they eventually removed the gate entirely, and then years later, took the entire fence down.
Eight year old me couldn’t resist the temptation of living so close to such a place…
Late at night, after my parents were fast asleep, I would scamper up the gravel road to the top of the hill, enter the cemetery, and climb up into the crook of the old shade tree in the center of my favorite boneyard.
And there, over the course of several weeks, I watched and waited and called out for a spirit to appear. And when one eventually did — a mist-like female form that drifted out of the southeast corner of the lot — my obsession with the paranormal and occult was cemented.
I still live quite close to Little Pipe Creek Cemetery. My house sits along the stream’s banks not quite two miles away. Far less as the crow flies.
I still visit on occasion. How could I not? While I cite 1983 as when I donned my occult detective mantle, the fire that was kindled as a child took to flame one fateful night nine years earlier.
So, where will the Thirteen Days of Occultober take us tomorrow? Visit occultdetective.com to find out.