Paranormal investigation: Oak Hill Cemetery in Prattville provides some uneasy moments | Arts & Culture

Oak Hill Cemetery in Prattville in one of the oldest in the area, and is the final resting place for some of the earliest settlers and lfounders of the community. It is the final resting place for Civil War soldiers, and others who died well before the Civil War.

The site is known for reports of a mysterious mist and of a little girl playing in the cemetery.

Shawn Sellers, a local man who founded Southern Paranormal Researchers, looked into happenings at the cemetery. Here is a report of what he and his team experienced during one visit there:

I am not a big fan of investigating cemeteries. I always heard stories about Oak Hill Cemetery and I wanted to check it out myself. We obtained permission and scheduled the investigation.

Any time you investigate a cemetery, it is important to practice a little extra protection. I do not believe Earth Bound Spirits hang around cemeteries unless there is a very unpleasant reason.

We began our investigation with a protection prayer. Oak Hill is a beautiful cemetery surrounded by railroad tracks and greenery and black gates at the entrance. This cemetery had a personality of its own. I have personally always loved to investigate and explore cemeteries from childhood through adulthood. It contains graves of Confederate soldiers and some other graves dating back before the Civil War.

It was investigated previously by another paranormal group and they obtained some interesting photos one supposedly of a mist or an apparition. I have never viewed this information personally. There have also been reported sightings of a little girl playing in the cemetery and the police were called and responded and the little girl would be nowhere to be found. The other paranormal group mentioned seeing an apparition of a little girl in the cemetery.

We began at approximately 9:30 p.m. We sat up a camera facing at northwest angle toward the area were the little girl was sighted. We then split up into two teams, making sure we covered the entire cemetery.

We took many photographs and we did EVPs in total darkness and silence.

During our EVP work, we monitored the EMF and the temperature. The temperature remained between 78.8 and 80 degrees. The EMF meter at that time did not exceed anything out of the norm.

We invited the little girl to come out and make herself known and asked if there was anyone there to please give a sign. We heard some noise to the west of the cemetery toward the railroad tracks. Wen we asked for a sign and/or asked to see something, we would hear a noise from that same area. We can’t say for sure if it was actually the entity, someone in the woods or just some collateral noise coming from the train tracks. We then faced our camera toward the southeast portion of the cemetery, its oldest part where the Confederate soldiers were buried. We were outside and we took into account the environment, but there were some occasions when temperature would drop unepectedly.

We walked south up the railroad tracks that run the length of the cemetery taking many photos, and obtained a mist in that area that looked almost like a figure. At that point we all experienced an eerie feeling and one of my investigators jumped and, with a startled look, told us that he felt something touch his arm. At that exact time, we recorded an EMF spike.

In summation, we experienced environmental changes, all experienced an eerie feeling, and one investigator claimed to have been touched. We recorded a voice through our EVP work each time we asked someone to make themselves known.

There were occasions throughout our investigation when the batteries would go dead in our cameras -- and we had put new batteries in all our equipment beforehand. We also experienced other malfunctions with our equipment.

Unanimously, everyone on the investigation team felt there is paranormal activity in this cemetery.

I personally felt there is an entity present in this cemetery for some strange reason. It is very unusual to have a cemetery haunted due to the fact the deceased do not tend to remain where they are buried but return instead to places where they were happiest or to a home, object or place to which they have some connection. 

My team and I felt that the entity in this cemetery relates to railroad tracks due to the feeling we all experienced in that area. The train tracks are believed to run to the old Prattville Cotton Mill that dates back to the Civil War era. I wouldn’t be surprised if the entity I picked up on was not seen or felt in several of the houses around the cemetery.

This was my team’s third official investigation. You truly have to love what you are doing to spend four hours in a dark spooky cemetery.

Here are links to other SPR investigations in other communities:

Rawls Hotel, Enterprise: http://enterprise.wsfa.com/content/notes-paranormal-investigation-rawls-hotel-enterprise

Bear Creek Swamp, Autaugaville: http://prattville.wsfa.com/content/paranormal-investigation-bear-creek-swamp-near-prattvilles-definitely-creepy-it-haunted

Nobles, Montgomery: http://centralmontgomery.wsfa.com/content/paranormal-invstigation-among-eerie-presences-nobles-restaurant-one-hank-williams-ghost

Talisi Hotel, Tallassee: http://wetumpka.wsfa.com/content/paranormal-investigation-fire-razed-it-hotel-talisi-famous-great-fried-chicken-ghosts

How to get in touch with Shawn Sellers:

http://www.shawnsellers.com/

http://www.southernparanormalresearchers.org/

Do you have a story of a similar experience? Do you have a photograph of a creepy place in your neighborhood? Please leave it as a comment.