The Eight Legged Freaks of Pitcairn

Alright campers, gather around the fire. Tonight we're going to talk about the apparently haunted entire neighborhood of Pitcairn. Seriously that little town should have it's own separate sub-page on Shadowlands, so many places around there are supposedly haunted.

JOHNS(T)ON ROAD: 

On Sunday August 11, the First Mate and I traveled out on our own without the comforting presence of the Captain in order to seek out the infamous "Johnson Road" where many of the haunted tales seem to center around. I put "Johnson Road" in quotation marks because everyone online seems to call the old, now closed down, road "Johnson," but strangely enough, I've studied Google Maps, and sought out the other "end" of the road up on the Monroeville side near Restland Memorial Park, only to find a "Johnston Road." Tell me, Ghost fans, where'd the "T" go?

As a little back story, Johnston rd. (I'm keeping the "T" damn it) is the site where a three murder victim's bodies were dumped back in the 70's and 80's. You can read through the comments on this page to find a better description of the back story, which is actually legit. You can also see some photos taken by a ghost hunter named Brian up on Johnston rd. They're mostly close ups of some kind of "mist" so don't expect to get too clear of a picture of the actual road.

Anyway. we arrived for the first time in the neighborhood of Pitcairn late in the evening, easy enough to find from the South Hills, and spent a little time circling around the block, trying to figure out where this supposedly over grown, now closed roadway could be entered from. Finally we determined it to be the grassy, weedy little road nestled in the corner of Kenney rd. and Short st. After finding a place to park (there are a surprisingly large number of cars jammed in on the side of those roads), we headed for the road armed only with a couple of flashlights and First Mate's cell phone. I was expecting a much longer, creepier trek to finding the infamous "blue gate" that closes off the road to traffic, since many of the stories online point to a bunch of spooky stuff happening right at this gate. I'd say the gate was probably twenty yards into the trees, in pretty good view of the street lights, cars, and houses of the neighborhood. We weren't feeling the creepiness yet.

So we went around the left side of this gate. Things immediately became very uneven, weedy and rocky. The only way to go seemed to be back across to the right side of the gate and up a pretty narrow goat path where you come out on what I assume to be the old road going off to both the right and left. Its actually hard to even picture this as an old roadway at this point. It's just dirt and rocks and lots of foliage. I mean I guess it has been closed off for 20 or 30 years now. We debated which way to go first, and finally decided to go right. Not far along, things started looking less and less "road-y" and more and more like a dried up creek bed. We decided rather quickly we were going the wrong way when things got so choked up that it looked like we'd need a machete to get through the greenery.

We turned around and went back to where we had come up off the path from the gate. This time we went to the left. It's at this point that it was a good thing I had my flashlight on and pointed in front of us, because we got about five steps before we came face to face with THIS-

Maybe you can't tell through the blurriness that is First Mate's
photography skills. But that's a huge-ass spider!

-One of the biggest ugliest spiders I've ever seen in the Pennsylvania wilds! It was seriously like a mini-tarantula, and its web was spun smack dab right across the path. Lesser men would have given up, but PGS looked for a way around, and in the process found this to the right, a little closer to the trees-

A huger-ass spider! First Mate's hand must have been shaking with
fear as he took this shot. I was trying to hold up the little branch for scale

Welp, that's it! pack it up! Call it a night! Nay, I said! After careful debate and planning, I found a stick and delicately disconnected the web strands holding up one side of the first, slightly less giant and menacing looking spider's, web. It drifted aside and we hurried past, definitely not squealing like pansies and waving jazz hands. Alas, It was basically all for nothing. About 50 yards further down the path, there were big jagged rocks jutting out from the upward cliff to our right, a bunch of twisted branches and weeds and a pile of rocks and metal. There was nowhere else to go. We headed back out, past the spiders, and with no where else to go, back down the path to the blue gate.

The scariest things we encountered there on Johnston road were the spiders, to be certain. We encountered no shadow-men, no eerie feelings of being watched, no ghosts of former murder victims. Maybe if we'd spent a little more time on the road we would have felt/saw/heard something. Upon further review of the map once we returned back to headquarters, we determined that the first way we went (to the right) is probably the correct way to go to head further up the road. Perhaps up there is the red gate and abandoned house that others on the net are talking about. On our next visit, PGS plans to tackle the road from the other end, up near Restland Memorial Park. Stay tuned to see how that turns out.

FAIRVIEW CEMETERY:

PGS wasn't yet ready to call it a night. Next we headed back to Pitcairn's main drag, headed down the road a little further and then up a side street to find a small little graveyard known as Fairview Cemetery. The claims on the net for this place say the cemetery is "always foggy" and "haunted by the elderly." First Mate was instantly leery of being skived on by gay old queens from beyond the grave. Upon arrival at this little un-maintained cemetery we immediately caught the view of 2 deer in the PGS-Mobile's headlights. First Mate pointed out a connection between the 2 spiders at Johnston Rd. and now the 2 deer, and there were 2 of us. I know, SUPER FREAKY right?

So we got out and started investigating the cemetery. There were some fairly old graves there, some from the 1800's. There weren't any very recent ones. It was dark, but not very foggy like the claims. It was also pointedly lacking in the "elderly ghost" department. We weren't getting any activity. We headed out to our final destination.

RESTLAND MEMORIAL PARK:

Picture gotten from here.

Just outside of Pitcairn and up Patton St. is the rather impressively large Restland Memorial Park. It is here that we read on the 'net about a supposedly haunted statue that walks around at night called "Walkin' Rosie" Finding Rosie was PGS's main mission.

We both drove and walked around much of the sprawling grounds in search of the statue, but the fog that was largely absent from Fairview rolled in big time at Restland. Flashlights and headlights were just confusing us more in this fog. Was it supernatural? Or was it the result of certain atmospheric conditions that had to do with changing temperatures and the rains from earlier in the evening. You can be the judge. Finally we caught a glimpse of a statue up on a hill among the grave markers. We got out of the jeep and searched for it on foot, lost it, got back in, drove around, got back out and found it again.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be Jesus, not Rosie. Other than the creepiness of exploring a cemetery in the fog and dark, we really didn't experience anything else. No bad feelings or the smell of gun smoke like I've read online. Definitely couldn't locate any walking statue ghost girls. It just mostly seemed like a graveyard at night to us, full of the sleeping dead. We did stumble across this "hedged in" area that we didn't find out until we came home and did some more research is where some other investigators apparently felt all kinds of bad feelings and what not. We didn't feel anything in that area.

All in all, PGS had fun exploring Pitcairn and the surrounding area. We look forward to heading back and especially trying to tackle Johnston road and getting further into it. But the night was definitely lacking in anything paranormal. I guess our search continues!

Please if you have any personal experiences from this area, leave a comment, or send me an e-mail. We'd love to hear about it.

UPDATE: I'm reading some reports that this walking statue was removed from the cemetery some time ago. That would explain why were couldn't find it, probably. Claims, however, apparently do persist about a woman in a white dress roaming around the grounds at night. *INSERT SPOOKY MUSIC HERE*

Quaker Church!!!

Alright fellow GhostFacers and GhostFacettes! Gather 'round. Today we're going to talk about good old Quaker Church and Cemetery, which is on, oddly enough, Quaker Church Road in Perryopolis, PA. For those of you living under a rock who've never been- here's a fairly non-threatening looking shot of the old church or meeting house that sits in the middle of the cemetery.

The Infamous one room church, reported "Devil Worshiping"hotspot,
and apparently good place to leave your empty energy drink cans and candy
wrappers.

I do need to mention, the above photo is not the property of PGS and was not taken by one of our members. I got it from Jim's Paranormal Destination. I don't know if Jim took this picture himself or if he took it from another site, but I've done my citing duty.

So anyway, yeah, Quaker Church is an old standby for The Pittsburgh Ghost Squad. We've all been going there separately for years. Back in May we took two different trips up there as a group. Unlike a lot of the reputedly haunted places in the area, there is a good bit of information floating around out there about this place. There's a lot of goofy legends about things you are and aren't supposed to do when you go here. One of the weirder ones I've been hearing since I was a teenager says that you're apparently not supposed to step on the wood or concrete slab or whatever it is that runs across the ground at the break in the fence that you walk through to enter the Cemetery. Apparently if you step on this plank, you're going to have terrible luck follow you home or your going to die or something.

PGS is proud to reveal to you that this curse simply is not true! I have personally stepped on this plank, jumped up and down on it, did cartwheels over it. I didn't die and my life hasn't started sucking any more than it previously did. BOOM! Myth busted.

The other major legend about Quaker Church revolves around the inscription on the infamous Lynch headstone, seen below in a wonderfully and totally legible photo taken by PGS's own First Mate.

It reads: "Remember youth as you go by. As you are now so once was I.
As I am now so you shall be. Prepare for death and follow me.

Creepy poem, for sure. But supposedly reading it out loud will summon the lady's spirit to follow you home, or give you bad luck, or crash your car or something equally as horrible. We've all stood there and read it out loud and didn't get so much as a bad feeling in our stomachs. Another myth bites the dust.

So apparently, inside the church itself is or once was a favorite meeting spot for local Devil worshiper cultists. I've read people saying they've gone here before and found dead dogs hanging inside the church and what not, I can not confirm or deny such stories.

Devil Worship HQ, apparently. Cultists are also litter-bugs.
Photo Credit: came from this page

The first time PGS visited the church, I spent a good bit of time trying to "communicate" with any spirits or entities inside the church. I tried the fool-proof technique I learned from Ghost Hunters of asking the spirit to finish my knocking of the "Shave and a Haircut" knock. *Knock-knock-knockknock-knock* on the slats of one of the boarded up windows. The spirit is supposed to finish with a *Knock! Knock!*. Unfortunately, to my embarrassment the spirits left me hanging numerous times.

I even let my fellow Squad-mates take a stroll around the cemetery while I spent some time sitting alone in the church. I didn't feel, sense, or hear much of anything. Bored, I decided to pick up a little rock on the floor and toss it over by one of the fireplaces. A few moments after the rock landed, I got a response- a clattering from over near the fireplace, possibly up in the chimney. Hole-lee-sheet! This was it! I'd made contact! I remained calm and waited for the sound to repeat itself. My team members returned and I told them what I'd heard. I showed them how I tossed a rock towards the chimney. The commotion started up again in response. We all stood holding our breaths as a spirit or maybe a demonic non-human entity was about to reveal itself to us. Then, out of a hole in the rotting ceiling over near the chimney, flew out a cute little bird. It flew around, disoriented and probably pissed that I'd woken it up at One in the morning. After flying around for awhile it found it's way back up through a hole and back to it's nest. I mean I guess there's a small chance the bird was possessed by a demon conjured up by the Devil worshipers.

We left, feeling defeated soon after. First Mate and D. had a feeling that it "wasn't the right night" for anything to happen. The moon was way too bright, to the point that we didn't even really need flashlights. It was really killing the creepiness factor. I mean everyone knows ghosts like it to be dark and creepy before they show themselves.

The second time we made the trek out to Quaker, I made a stop at Toys R Us and came prepared... with a Ouija Board! *Dramatic music* I know, I know, are we crazy!? You shouldn't mess with those Ouija boards maaaan, They're not a toy! That's how you end up possessed by Captain Howdy! Well, we did it anyway. The board was actually glow in the dark, and First Mate charged it up with a flashlight in the back of Patty (My jeep, AKA the Ghost Squad Mobile) on the way there. So we didn't even need flashlights to see the letters. We sat down right in the middle of the Church and I proceeded to ask all the standard questions. "Are there any spirits here? Any demons? Anyone that wants to communicate with us? What's your name? How did you die? What's your favorite color? Who's your favorite Spice Girl?" I mean, We practically did everything but invite the spirits and demons to come home and have tea and cake with us. Much to our disappointment, we didn't get a single response. I guess we forgot to decide which of the three of us were going to be in charge of fake-moving the pointer. Whatever those Devil Worshipers were up to, it doesn't appear they were successful in summoning forth any entities that have remained there in the desecrated church.

The closest thing we had to anything, was what sounded like something like a rock dropping on the roof of the Church. There are no trees anywhere near directly over the church, so we weren't sure what that was. It only happened once so we couldn't conclude anything. Soon after this some jokesters pulled up to the side of the road and stopped. Unsure if it was the Po-Po (there aren't any No Trespassing signs anyways, actually), we stayed in the church with our lights off and watched out the windows as the vehicle sat there running for quite some time. Someone yelled "Hello, anybody up there?" a bunch of times and then they finally drove away. We got up and decided to walk around the cemetery for a while, when the car came back again. This time we stayed on the far side of the outside of the church and peered around the corner as apparently the same car did the same thing for another five or ten minutes, sitting there yelling up into the field asking if anyone was there. PGS grew tired of this nonsense and decided we were going to just leave, and stop and say hi to whatever chuckle-heads were sitting there on the road waiting for us.

We walked over to the gate without turning on our flashlights. Once we got close to crossing through the gate we turned on our lights, revealing us in the darkness for the first time. The people in the car promptly screamed in terror and sped away like ass-clowns. Idiots. So we headed back to where my jeep was parked on the side of the road. It was at this point that we heard a rather loud, mysterious scraping noise. It was like something metal being dragged across the pavement. Despite it sounding like it was happening right there on the road in front of us, there was nothing there and nobody else around. We chalked that up as strange, can't really say it was paranormal but we certainly couldn't think of what it could be. We got in, and after we turned around to head back to 51, the same car drove past us again heading back towards the cemetery. So if you are thinking about heading out to check out Quaker yourself, I'd be more prepared to be interrupted and annoyed by kids goofing off, not Devil Cultists.

THE VERDICT:

Unfortunately, at this time, after all of our combined trips to Quaker Church we can't say that it is haunted or that we experienced anything definitely supernatural. Is that an absolute fact, then? No. Maybe it's haunted as Hell when we aren't there. It is certainly a creepy little building and cemetery, but nothing that's going to scare three Bad Asses like the Pittsburgh Ghost Squad.

WHAT'S NEXT:

Coming up next on this blog, Ghost Fans, I will summarize PGS's most recent trip out to the various haunts of Pitcairn, while the memories are still fresh in my noggin. Thanks for reading! Please comment with any of your own experiences at Quaker Church. And if you have any concrete photo or video or audio evidence that we are wrong and Quaker Church IS haunted, e-mail them to me. I'll post 'em and give you the credit you deserve.

-Michael Dynamite

GHOST.... GHOSTFACERS!!!

"Stay in the kitchen when the kitchen gets hot!"

Hi there guys and ghouls (wow let the cheesy lines begin), we are The Pittsburgh Ghost Squad. (Informally also known as The GhostFacers, but since we aren't sure if the TV show Supernatural has that name copyrighted, we decided to be original for a change and come up with our own name. Yeah, I googled it and "Pittsburgh Ghost Squad" is not already a claimed paranormal investigation team.) And I, the author of this, and probably all the other entries in this already AWESOMELY awesome blog, am Michael Dynamite (my self appointed code name), AKA the Admiral AKA Mike Eyes AKA Mike Hives #inside jokes, #Hashtags. We have a lot of aliases. Deal with it.

I guess I'll start this thing off with a kind of mission statement. Ehrm-

The Pittsburgh Ghost Squad's Mission Statement:

The PGS's mission is simple. To travel around to various reputably haunted locations in and around the southwestern Pennsylvania region to find out for ourselves whether or not said places are actually haunted or host to any "paranormal activity." We currently don't have any fancy video equipment or scientific ghost hunter tools (though we might get real serious real soon, and order a kit off of the BIO channel or something). What we do have are our personal experiences and our pledges to "stay in the kitchen when the kitchen gets hot." We will not run screaming out of the cemetery at the first sounds of a twig snapping. We will not succumb to "bad" feelings that we are being followed, watched or aren't wanted wherever we are. We will not automatically cry "three-headed Hell dog!!!" when we hear a bark in the distance.

We start out with a healthy dose of optimistic skepticism. We want more than anything to believe in ghosts and spirits and non-human entities and "the paranormal," but we can't take other people's words for it. We believe that seeing and hearing is believing, and we want very much to see and to hear and to believe.

Our group is new, but our interest in these things is not. We have been causally exploring supposedly haunted places individually for quite some time, and just recently decided to band together and give ourselves an official name because, well, it seemed like the cool thing to do!

The Purpose of This Blog:

We intend to use this blog as a means to keep track of the various places we visit, and to keep track of what we experience at these locations.

It is also our hope that this blog (if anyone happens to ever stumble upon it and follow it) can act as a place for people to discuss their own successes and failures in casual and/or serious Ghost Hunting. A place to hear about and discuss locations that are worth a visit and ones that aren't worth the time. Are we the only ones who are sick of hearing about a haunted place, going online to search more about it or where exactly to find it, and every freaking link in the search engine either takes us to Shadowlands or another place that has just flat out copied and pasted the same 2 sentence descriptions from Shadowlands? Don't get us wrong, it's a great starting resource, but it just frustrates us a tad when we just want a little more information and there is none to be found anywhere. We know there are people out there going to these places late at night, having experiences, just like us, and for some reason it's so hard to find anywhere on these world wide interwebs where people are talking about this stuff in any amount of detail and specifics.

So it is our hope that people see this and have comments to add and stories to share. If you have stories or pictures or you know, the EVP to end all EVPs, that you want to share, e-mail them to me and I will gladly get them on this blog and give you the credit. If you have an interest in this stuff- if the idea of driving out to an old unmaintained cemetery 45 minutes away in the middle of nowhere to poke around in the dark sounds fun to you, and you aren't a total weirdo (better yet, if you're a really hot chick) hit me up and maybe you can join the Squad!

Lastly, I feel the need to briefly introduce the other major players...

PGS's Other Founding Members:

D. , AKA The Captain: Our registered Atheist, Realist, the really logical one.

The First Mate AKA the Old Dude Magnet (haha okay we really don't call him that... to his face): Our biggest "believer", the young gun, the one that spends too much time at the gym. The closest thing we have to a Zak Bagans in PGS. Except a Zak Bagans that you don't want to punch in the throat.

Okay, I'll be honest I haven't really talked to either of these guys about how they want to describe themselves. So I'll have to flesh out their profiles in future posts after they have some input. You already have probably figured out more about me than I could comfortably describe about myself based on the last 10 paragraphs you've valiantly sat through.

What's Next?:

Well now that I've got this rambling introduction post out of the way here is what you can look forward to in the near future- Awesomely detailed descriptions of our first few hunts which include:
1) Quaker Church Cemetery
2) Dead Man's Hollow (a valiant attempt, anyway)
3) Taylor Cemetery, Forward, PA
4) Johnson (Johnston?) Road, Pitcairn, PA
5) Fairview Cemetery
6) Restland Memorial Park

Yup, we've been to each of those places and we live to tell the tales. Click on those links and you'll see that I've gotten Google maps as close as I can to each of the locations for you, since it's always such a bitch trying to find exactly where these places are. Any suggestions on where we should go next, hit me up!

Now I leave you with photographic proof of PGS's Badass-itude. We're so legit, that J.C. showed up at our latest hunt to give us the thumbs up and let us know he endorses our mission. As you can see, I too was shocked by his appearance.

Oh, and before someone starts saying there are orbs or something floating behind my right arm... Get a clue, those are just little lights that marked some of the gravestones.

-The Admiral

"Spin the tires and light the fires!"