A funeral for ghosts

When Ellie Davis explained how she'd be spending her weekend, her daughter had a question. 

"So, you're doing a funeral for ghosts?" 

Davis's answer was, basically, yes. 

Davis, other members of the Ghost Walk Crew and the Sweetwater County Library Foundation, and friends and supporters gathered at Riverview Cemetery last Saturday morning for a special ceremony. 

"I am honored to be here today with all of you for the dedication of these plaques," Davis said, taking a moment to gather herself as she got emotional, "in remembrance of the individuals from the original Green River cemetery."

Davis spoke to those gathered to explain the history behind the event, which dedicated two plaques marking the sites of mass graves for individuals who were originally missed when the cemetery was moved. 

Cemetery relocation complications

A little over 100 years ago, it was decided that the Green River cemetery needed to be moved from its original location to the spot on the hill that is now Riverview Cemetery. One of the reasons for the move was because the original cemetery was running out of room. But with the move came some difficulties. 

"When they decided to move the cemetery, they couldn't find everybody, and one of the reasons was because that cemetery was established before there were national regulations about having to have graves six feet deep," Davis explained. "That was one thing. It's on a hillside, for another. And there was little to no record keeping in the very, very beginning. And then the records that we did have were lost in a fire in the courthouse in the early 1920s." 

The difficulties of the move resulted in headstones being transferred without bodies, headstones being lost, and bodies that weren't found being left behind.

After the cemetery was moved, the land where it had been located was used to build veterans housing for soldiers coming back from World War II. After that was torn down, a playground was put at the location. Then, in 1979, the ground was broken for the library building, which was built in 1980. 

"When they were working on constructions, they found some of those folks that had been missed originally," Davis explained. "So they were put up here in mass graves." 

After learning that there were unmarked mass graves at Riverview Cemetery, Davis and others started to have the idea to do something for the people who had been missed. 

"We felt it would be appropriate to have something in memorandum," Davis said. 

But apparently they weren't the only ones thinking about the grave markers. 

"The spirits themselves let us know that they were interested in this project," Davis said.

Connecting with the spirits

Davis and many other past and present library staff members have had strange experiences in the library built over the old cemetery site, which many believe to be interactions with spirits. What started with documenting these events turned into more thorough investigation and the formation of the Ghost Walk Crew. This ultimately led to an interaction that Davis believes indicated the spirits' desire for grave markers to be placed at the cemetery. 

One of the main leaders of the Ghost Walk Crew is Micki Gilmore, who first began documenting paranormal experiences at the library in 1993. 

"Not only employees were having experiences, but many library patrons as well," Davis explained.

These occurrences led Gilmore to create the "Ghost Log," which eventually became the "Ghost Blog." Ultimately, she had so many stories that she decided to write the book "Spirits in the Stacks" to share them. 

The library's paranormal investigations went a step further, and originated with an idea Davis had. Around 2004, she and another youth services librarian decided to do a teen activity that would involve telling ghost stories in the library at night, including sharing people's real experiences with the library spirits in the spots where they occurred. They expected to talk about the spirits, but didn't expect to interact with them. 

"We started having things happen right then," Davis said. 

One such event that night was when they heard three loud knocks from inside a locked maintenance closet that only a handful of people have a key to. They all moved away from the door, thinking one of the teens had knocked to scare everyone. But with all of them looking at the door and no one touching it, they heard the knocks again. 

While the librarians weren't expecting it, Davis was happy about the strange events.

"We were just honestly really excited to have contact," she said. "It sounds creepy sometimes but it was really extraordinary when they started to reach out to us."

Interested library staff and volunteers started investigations using flip phones to take pictures and record audio. Eventually they started gathering more official ghost hunting equipment, with one of the first pieces being a Mother's Day gift Gilmore received. 

"From a ghost story tour, it quickly turned into a paranormal investigation, and it has evolved from there," Davis explained.  

One of the pieces of equipment the staff eventually got was an Ovilus. The device is said to take environmental readings that spirits can manipulate to select individual words which are pre-programed into the device. 

Davis and others were experimenting with the Ovilus at the library one night when the device said the word "outside." They hurried out to the front, heard nothing, and decided to try the back of the library. Once there, they heard the words "apple" and "tree." An apple tree was planted there, so they stood under it. Then they were given the words "Nicholas," "grave," "marker," "priest" and "highway."

"We got cold chills," Davis said. 

She admitted that using a device like an Ovilus requires a lot of guesswork, but they started to conjecture that someone named Nicholas or something similar "was perhaps buried under that apple tree, and had been relocated by the highway, and was concerned about not having a grave marker or a priest."

Later in the week they used the Ovilus again and had the same experience with the same words in the same order, which they took as further confirmation. While they didn't necessarily have a priest, they figured they could at least help with the grave marker. 

"That's when we first started talking about trying to raise the money to get some markers put together to mark these graves," Davis explained. "That's the one thing we could do for them."

A personal project

Getting the markers together and in place was a more complicated project than expected, with many obstacles along the way. But those behind it remained dedicated until they saw it finally come together. 

The plaques are now in place at Riverview cemetery at the two mass grave sites, each with the inscription: "We dedicate this site as that of a mass burial of remains found on the grounds of the old Green River cemetery at 300 North 1st East. Your names may be lost to time, but we honor you nonetheless. We hope you rest in peace."

As they unveiled the plaques and shared information at the cemetery, then had refreshments and shared even more stories and personal experiences at the library afterwards, many of those in attendance expressed their excitement to see the project finally become a reality. 

"It's a big day," Davis said. "It's taken years." 

Gilmore felt the same way, saying "it's been a long time coming." She later spoke to how personal the project was. "It's really emotional when you put that kind of effort into something," she added. 

"It's just very meaningful to at least be able to mark where they are and have a place where other people will see that, like it says up there, even though they're gone they're not forgotten," Davis said.