Dartford Cemetery Debunked Discovery's "A Haunting", page 1

Our impression of the cemetery was that of a peaceful yet inactive one. Honestly we appear to have more activity at our own hometown graveyard than this Hollywood inspired thriller. Rather than a sensation of being watched followed we had a very calm and relaxing feeling throughout the investigation. Another claim as shown on the Discovery channels show was that the gravestones themselves will glow. This was easily debunked as there is a highway which runs parallel to the graveyard and as a car drives by its headlights reflect off of the gravestones generating a unique but explainable glow like effect from one gravestone to the next. The street lights will also cast there brilliance off a stone here or there further perpetuating the glow myth.

The show also claimed that the teenagers were constantly being tripped or as if something were grabbing their feet. This was quickly experienced by our team, unfortunately the headstones are VERY old and many of them stand less than half a foot tall. As one walks through a dimly lit "graveyard" you are constantly tripping over the damn things by accident. Furthermore due to the age of the stones some were covered by a dark moss and were so dark as to blend into the foliage.

Noises and conversations were also purported. This one too was easily dismissed. The SMALL graveyard is surrounded by houses, and one of hte homes had a television on which we could clearly hear in the graveyard itself. The wind tended to carry a quiet conversation between our team members quite a far distance. We ourselves unfortunately never experienced anything any of us would consider paranormal in nature concerning audible noises.

The mausoleum itself was the big deal breaker. The claim is supposedly by sitting on top of the children’s mausoleum the sprits will become angered and will "push" you off. We sat our cold Wisconsin butts on top of this damn thing making routy noises, provoking, and kicking the edges of it only to have absolutely no response or spiritual activity what so ever, much less a aggressive push. The roof of the mausoleum is slanted and it is very difficult to find a stable position to just sit, it is our opinion that part of the reason for witnesses claims of being pushed is rather the witness attempting to move and slipping as a result of losing the very narrow point of stability the roof of the mausoleum offers. We sat there for well over half an hour freezing with no so much as a accidental nudge...

At no time did any of our team members experience a full body apparition or shadow like people. There are LOTS of shadows moving in the graveyard, however none of them move independent on their own accord. There are lots of large trees throughout the graveyard and the street lights surrounding cast a very clear shadow from the limps of the branches which when windy (like it was last night) tend to sway and bend. This movement looks as if the shadows themselves are moving (which they are!) but there is nothing supernatural about this common occurrence. All in all i was very disappointed and think the Discovery Channel tends to over dramatize stories, rather than to depict the mundane nature of real events.

[edit on 19-11-2007 by hiii_98]