Haunting Screams From A Graveyard

By James Donahue

A story in the Philadelphia Inquirer about Gloucester County residents hearing shrill screams from a haunted Civil War cemetery caught my eye.

Stories like that are hard for anybody to pass up because they suggest supernatural goings on. And no matter what folks say or believe . . . the subject of ghosts and the possibility that there is a hereafter is of interest to everybody. We all want to know.

What we find chilling is the thought that ghostly screams can be heard in a graveyard . . . or that buildings are haunted by the shadowy remains of some long departed soul. That this might someday be our personal fate is not a pleasant thought.

Back in the days when I attended church and listened to the promise that we all will go to Heaven if we believe in Jesus, the stories about ghosts and spiritual matters troubled me more than they do today. If the fate of all humans is sealed, with an appointment at a great judgment seat, and we either go up to the Pearly Gates or fall into fire and brimstone . . . then how could there be such a thing as a haunted spirit left wandering the Earth?

Since deciding that the Jesus story is a twisted version of who this person really was, like so many other stories dumped into our culture, the probability of ghosts has became much more real to me. Also my wife, Doris, and I have lived in several haunted houses and even a haunted apartment so we are quite aware that entities of some form exist with us, but on a spiritual plane.

Strangely, ghosts don’t frighten us. They interest us. When we discover the presence of a spirit we go to great lengths to try to communicate, be aware of its activities, and even photograph it. The best we have captured on film is a bright light that doesn’t belong in the picture.

Spirits are able, at times, to move objects, flash lights, manifest as shadow figures, and even make sounds. We have heard footsteps on floors over our heads, when we know that no one is there. One evening, in the house we now occupy, we heard the sound of an eerie ringing, as if someone struck the edge of an expensive piece of crystal. It reverberated through the house for a moment and then faded away to be heard no more.

Doris, a natural psychic who can communicate, or channel with unseen forces, communicates with what appears to be the dead. She has talked to her relatives, my departed mother, and on occasion, has made contact with dead relatives for close friends. She doesn’t make a profession out of it, although I think she is as good at what she does as Sylvia Browne and a few of the other well-known mediums.

So what does all of this have to do with a haunted cemetery in Pennsylvania where people hear eerie screams in the night?

All that I can say is that ghostly sounds do occur, although we have never picked up on anything quite like that. Also, we notice, that when the spirits do make sounds, or move objects, it is rarely an event that reoccurs over and over again.

That the people in Gloucester County are hearing the shrill screams regularly suggest that it is something more Earthly that makes the noise.

I recall hearing a similar sound at one rural (and very haunted) house we lived in. The thing frightened us at first. One night we were awakened by the sound coming from something right outside our bedroom window.

I jumped out of bed, switched on a yard light, and there for a brief moment, was the image of a fleeing animal. It was a coyote.