As the years went by things have changed, but not for everyone and not everywhere. There is a 1997 federal law which bans burying convicted criminals at veterans' cemeteries. So what happens when one slips through and ends up getting buried in a graveyard among other veterans? They get dug up and turned over to family, if there's one, other wise it's a pauper's grave.
It was said that he was an assassin who acted at the behest of Catherine de Medici, whose own family of origin was notorious for dark political machinations, when she was the Queen of France. Not surprisingly John the Scourge as he was also known came to a violent end, but not before promising to return and carry out his deathly curse.
The initial assessment of the archaeologists is that these were plague victims that died during several times the Black Death came to Paris, however it was during the French Revolution that the bodies should have been moved, and it appears that those who were alive thought it was expedient to just leave them where they were.
Contrary to the stories appearing on film, in Hugo's novel Quasimodo is a gypsy changeling who is exorcised and then left as a deformed foundling at Notre-Dame. The gypsy Esmeralda is ultimately executed by hanging at Montfaucon, Paris' most famous gibbet which was usually covered in carrion crows who pecked at the various corpses left there to rot.
In 1999, the discovery of a diary in Cornwall appears to reveal the real-life inspiration behind the character of Quasimodo the deaf bell-ringer of Notre Dame, and his tragic, unrequited love for the gypsy girl Esmeralda.
He was the only one to die in a fire, that was rumored to have been started by the curse a disgruntled mason left behind when he carved a small, demonic looking face into the wall near the Great Western Staircase
Such is the story of the Crawford Ghost, which was reported in the newspapers of that time.
A small group of nuns and priests met the woman in the chapel of a house one June evening. Though it was warm outside, a palpable chill settled over the room.
They pray over a woman who appears listless, than her movements becomes agitated. Different voices come from her mouth. One is masculine and throaty, another high-pitched and the third speaks in Latin.
More than forty years have passed since the skeletal remains of those teenage girls were recovered, but just as the years passed so did the tales of paranormal events and sightings of hooded figures increase.
How much of these tales are urban myth, and how much is the truth?
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Zak Bagans the host of Ghost Adventures had bought the house in 2014, and during 2015 had filmed a documentary in the home about the events that had transpired there. He claimed that there was something powerful, dark and intelligent haunting the small structure.
Originally this site was called Hatch’s Camp or Pine Glenn Cove. It wasn’t referred to as St. Ann’s Retreat until after 1959 when the Sisters of the Holy Cross would come to the camp for respite. Due to the presence of the sisters, it came to be called the Nunnery as well, and throughout the years different stories have abounded how the ghosts of nuns roam the ground, but the truth be told there are much more likely candidates that might walk the paths of the now derelict campsite inside Cache National Forest.
You would be surprised how many other more plausible sources for the haunting are present, especially in an area which is adjacent to U.S. 89 which for years has seen horrific accidents, ending lives under violent and sudden circumstances which is one of the main ingredients identified as the trigger for a haunting.
The initial and most important step in investigating stories about a haunting or an urban myth, is to go back to the when humans started inhabiting the area, bringing with them their drama, dark deeds which many times ended in murder.
Any historian will tell you that despite the golden patina of yesteryear memories, people committed horrible acts to others and themselves, leaving heartbreak and unanswered questions in their wake. Midnight burials in unhallowed ground, kept killers safe and victims rotted in secret graves, never receiving justice or resolution. The families or communities when faced with scandal, did not want to be tainted with the occurrences and would hide them, and just not talk about it anymore.
Most paranormal investigators eventually encounter stories of injustice and hidden truths, and identify them as the catalyst for full-blown intelligent hauntings.
So let’s go back to the beginning…
For many years the Dominican sisters ministered to those who had been exiled to this island due to having contracted leprosy.
The echoes of the past are easily envisioned among the ruins where so many came to live and die.
For many years there have been reports of ghosts, especially the White Lady of Chacachacare, who is supposed to be the apparition of a nun who committed suicide. There are other reports of supernatural encounters since at least 2,000 lepers lived on the island during its 60 some years as a Hansenian Settlement.
READ MOREInitially it was suspected she was an “abandoned woman” from Cincinnati, and law enforcement was unable to find her head, despite bringing in bloodhounds to find it. A soldier in Ft. Thomas reported seeing a man and a woman walking out late at night along Alexandria Pike close to where the body was found, and a sergeant claimed he had heard a woman scream around midnight.