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