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