A NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN...

During my recent trip home to CO, I spent a few hours walking a couple of old cemeteries.  At the first, I was on a mission to find the final resting spot of one of CO's most historic couples Horace and Baby Doe Tabor, at Mount Olivet Cemetery, outside Golden, CO (home of the Rocky Mountain Spring Water, Coors).  Wandering about for an hour, afforded some beautifully peaceful sights...including a private Italian marble mausoleum, erected in 1923, and housing the Reed family - and it truly was the size of my own house.  All photos here can be enlarged by clicking on the mosaic (and then clicking again, if you get a little magnifying glass with a + sign).

And yes, being ever fascinated by ghost stories and horror films (I DO watch the ridiculous ghost hunter shows on occasion, and must admit that I take great, silly delight in it all...I do believe, I do believe.  Ahhhh, don't judge - I could have far worse vices), I have to admit the last two photos here, of the massive bronze doors on the place, caused my heart to flutter a bit.  There was no reason for the pinkish/blue streak of light in the middle photo, that moved across to the left side, in the second one (unseen except on the camera when I got back)...that side of the mausoleum was shaded when I stopped to snap those shots.  To you naysayers...let me have my fun here.

A few days later, during my trip with the girls to Central City and Black Hawk, my niece just happened to be at the same hotel, celebrating her birthday with her own set of girlfriends.  A call from them at 11:30 pm, found us grabbing our jackets and heading 2 miles up a long, bumpy, dirt road to a cemetery in the woods, dating back to the mid 1800's.  Ah...youth!  We would have probably just sat around that evening and done adult behavioural things, were it not for the girls.

Bald Mountain Cemetery - the name alone should have probably stopped us, as creepy as the segment from the old Disney movie, "Fantasia", set to the Wagner classic was!  And anything that starts out with one of you looking eerily like the movie trailer from The Blair Witch Project should be a tip off, as well!

 I MUST PREFACE THIS BY SAYING THAT WE WERE VERY RESPECTFUL OF EVERYTHING WE SAW THAT NIGHT!  That being said...orbs...I got ORBS!  Please just indulge my quirky little obsessions - I got orbs in my Day of the Dead photos from a few years back, for those that read along and remember THOSE photos.  All of the photos taken that night were under the same conditions...and I made sure I walked away from the "masses" and any chance of tiny little flashlights, when I was taking photos.  Away from the dirt path, and onto grassed in areas.  Held my camera up into the dark, and just pulled the trigger and waited to see what developed.

We could see nothing unusual, until we got back later.  Some pictures showed nothing, while others had anomalies galore...all under the same conditions, and some snapped within seconds of each other.  Yes, I used my flash when I walked into the dark and pointed the camera - I am not a professional ghost photographer, by any means (not that anyone would confuse me with one, either)...however, same conditions on all photos should have produced same results - in my goofy mind, at least.

For you skeptics who are thinking pollen - riddle me this...why would some of the photos have orbs, and others not - if it was truly pollen, wouldn't it be in all of the photos?  I think so!  Look carefully - I have included both non-orb and orb photos (the upper right photo actually has a beautiful LARGE orb in it but translated poorly here), so you can see what I'm talking about (in fact, the last two cemetery pictures here are of the same spot...see the orb in the center of the last one that was not there a second before).  Look...look with your special eyes!

The last three photos were taken in Nevadaville, an old ghost town that is being brought back to life...just a hop, skip and a jump from the cemetery.  A few old buildings still stand, along with the walls from the old jail...no orbs, and the same conditions for the photos.  And yes, we were extremely creeped out by the end of the evening...one of us was more than a little carsick!

Which brings me to this.  Our mode of transportation up the mountain that evening was Jessi's SUV...filling up the front and back seats of the vehicle, left us with one spot empty...in the back of the back...across the top of the large speakers.  I volunteered (car sick, as I get)...by the time we arrived at our destination, I was as green as my coat, and stepped out of the totally dark car (believe me, there were no running or brake lights on to light my way) into pitch blackness, landing in a small ditch we had parked atop.

One amongst us snapped this photo while I was still on the ground, and laughing about it (at that point).  The hardhat that came out with me found it's way onto my head for the cemetery crawl.  That aside, my niece and her friends had told us the main reason for going up there was they had been before, and had encountered a small boy ghost on two separate occasions.  We asked her if he had ever shown up in their photos, and they claimed that he had, indeed...AS A RED FLASH.

You be the judge...try not to burst my bubble orbs!