Date: Saturday, June 2, 2007

Team Members Present : All investigators accounted for-   Laura, Steve, Matthew, Nichola, Melissa

Location : Abandoned town of Grant, Just outside Limoges, Ontario Canada.

Background on Location:

 Built in 1869, the town of Grant Ontario was once a thriving farming community until soil erosion forced the farmers to move on to more fertile land.  The once fertile soil fast became sand creating an area known as the Bourget Desert until foresting was begun to reclaim and rejuvenate the land in 1921. The area now known as Larose forest has since become the second biggest man made forest in North America.

 In 1897, a massive fire swept through the Ottawa Valley ( originally set by railway workers clearing brush) and almost destroyed a total of four towns. These towns are Limoges (known as South Indian at the time), Casselman, Grant  and Cheney.  Three people in Grant , and many others from the four other nearby communities, died from this fire.  These victims  were all buried in Grant, due to the proximity of the town . 

Unrelated to this fire, there are rumors that several children drowned in the nearby river, and were buried in Grant Cemetery.  How much of this is factual remains to be seen. 

 http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/so05/indepth/soc_grant.asp

 http://www.ghosttownpix.com/ontario/towns/grant.shtml

The Investigation

On June 2, 2007 Ghost Central decided to take a trip to Grant Cemetery, in the abandoned town of Grant, approximately 32 miles away from Ottawa, just outside of Limoges, Ontario. This involved the whole team traveling the 45 minutes to Limoges with Steve acting as both team leader and guide. We arrived at Grant at around 11:30 pm (noting a very prominent blood moon that evening) and began to explore the area of Larose forest as well as the field that used to be the town of Grant Ont.  Noticeably by passing a fence that contained the area, GC began to explore the ruins of what used to be both the local schoolhouse and the local church. The foundation of both structure are still quite in tact, despite years of abandonment. Steve set up a motion tracking device to pick up any activity present while we were exploring the cemetery.

Grant cemetery is of a fairly small size, encompassing the area of a small football field with many of the graves, roped off or co-coordinated by family. Many of the tombstones have been neglected (despite a county project to keep the cemetery well maintained) and have fallen over, or sunk into the ground. Many are also so old, the dates and names are unreadable, having been bleached by the elements. Also smaller tombstones may indicate children or infants, Graves placed alone, off to the sides of the cemetery could indicate criminals or suicides, or even space issues.

 Steve set his camera up on top of a tombstone to catch any motion that might occur while the rest of the team spread out to explore the land.  Noting that several tombstones have logs on them, it can be seen that the area must have had woodcutters as tradesmen, thus the unique tombstones are a trade mark or symbol of status. As I walked the parameter of the cemetery, I noticed a bank of smaller graves that on I believe on closer inspection could be children or infants. If there were drowning in the river, this would make sense. Also given the high infant mortality rate at the turn of the century, it makes sense that a rural cemetery would have a higher rate of young graves.

The general air of the cemetery is one of neglect, and sadness. Its seems to be a place that’s been forgotten along with time. One grave in particular stands out, off to the side of the cemetery and alone.   Matthew gets a bad vibe off this one and so do Laura and I, its seems isolated, like it’s been ousted from the rest of its community. I’ve been walking around with my tap recorder going and asking questions such as “Who are you?”. “What do you want?” “Tell us you’re here” and later once the tapes was analyzed we caught positive EVP of a male screaming in what sounds like rage or pain. It’s a very primal sounding scream, scary and raw. This area bodes further investigation and a possible return trip to look into the area more.

As Laura and I were investigating this tombstone, we heard footsteps coming towards us. This is strange, since it sounds too heavy to be an animal and both Steve and Nichola are visible behind us. We did the smart thing, we ran. Returning after the noise had stopped, Laura and Nichola went to investigate the woods while Matthew, Steve and I continued to walk around, checking the dates on tombstones and getting thermal readings. As its growing later, we collected Laura and Nichola, took photos for the website and departed