I was in the electronics section of Walmart checking out digital recorders. Not knowing anything about them I started to classify them by how cool they would look in my new toolbelt. Actually, they all looked pretty cool so I decided on the lowest price recorder. It was an RCA and it cost me about thirty bucks. Cool - I'm well on my way to being official. now I have a camcorder, a digital recorder...hmmm, something was missing - oh yeah, I needed a flashlight. So I took my digital recorder and flashlight to the register and became the proud owner of a brand new ghosthunting kit!

John and Patrick had contacted me the day before to set up a time to investigate Annie Purl Elementary (this was my son's school while he was in kindergarten and 1st grade) and Water Park Road. There is said to be the spirit of a girl at Annie Purl. The story claims that the girl's mother killed her because she could no longer afford to care for her. There have been reports of the little girl swinging on the swingset at night singing "ring Around the Rosie" softly in the breeze. This is kind of an urban legend around here, so I wasn't sure what would come of that other than disproving the legend.

An old railroad track runs along side Water Park Road and sitting just feet away from the tracks are huge blocks of pink granite. This railroad was used to transport these huge blocks of granite to the building site of the Texas capitol and every now and then a block of granite would slide off the car and kill some misfortunate railroad worker. The granite sits there as a memorial or headstone of those who died in the accident. This seemed more promising.

Our first stop - Anni Purl Elementary. We arrived at around 10:00 p.m. It was warm and windy. As we approached the school the red glow of the exit signs gave the abandoned halls an eerie feel. All of a sudden I could understand why someone might be kind of creeped out by the place. We trodded on over to the playground where the ghost is said to play. I took out my camcorder and started to record but only captured a few seconds of footage before the battery went dead. That frustrated me because I had just charged those batteries. Well, I still had the recorder and now I can act like a real Ghost Hunter!

I whipped out my digital recorder and started recording, making verbal notes of every sound that I could explain. The wind was pretty strong so I wasn't hoping for much. We sat in front of the swing patiently asking this "spirit" if she wanted to swing - nothing. I started to feel kind of silly, sitting there in the dark with my recorder in hand hoping to see a swing move by itself. This lasted for about an hour then we decided to move on.

As we drove up to Water Park Road I did feel the atmosphere grow heavier. Perhaps it was the fact that we had some historical knowledge of the place. It also could have been the pyschological aspect of being out in the woods at midnight. Or maybe it was the quarter-pund cheeseburger meal I devoured just hours before. Whatever it was - the atmosphere was different.

We unloaded our gear. I checked my camcorder again - no battery - damn! Well this lightened my load a bit - so I carried my brand new Ghost Hunter flashlight (the thought occurred to me to paint a little ghost on the handle of the flashlight - but maybe that was too much) and my RCA digital recorder. There were the huge granite blocks I had heard about. Yup - I could see where those blocks  could crush a man and indeed, they were the same granite that built the state capitol. So far, the history lesson added up. John snapped some pictures where the granite lay and I started recording, then we ventured into the woods. It was very quiet except for what I detected as kind of a whining type noise, not a human whining, just a steady high pitch noise.

We walked around a bit, snapped some photos, recorded some EVPs, and then walked back to the cars. Understand, out of the places that we investigated thus far, this was by far the creepiest. I reached into my pocket for a lighter and a cigarette as we shuffled back. As we were walking back a voice cut through the still night air. We all froze. (Again, had I been on top of my game I would have exclaimed "What the Frig?" but I was a bit startled) We heard voices. They were muffled but they were there. The hair stood up on the back of our necks and I could see the goosebumps poke out on our arms. then suddenly I noticed that John and Patrick were staring at me. "What?" I inquired. They told me that the noises are coming fom right around me. Suddenly I felt a slight tugging or vibration coming from my pocket. I reached in and pulled out my digital recorder which had started playing. Apparently I had accidently touched the play button as I reached into my pocket for a lighter.

Well, I hate to say it, but that was the most activity we had all night. So it was back to the house to review the evidence. Since I didn't have any video evidence to review I started listening to the vocie recorder.

The recording from Annie Purl Elementary was difficult to sort through. It had been so windy that part of the night that was all I could hear. Aside from the incessant white noise generated by the wind and the shuffling of feet, I heard nothing.

As I listened to the Water Park Road recording, something instantly caught my ear. The sound of a train, very clearly, could be heard in the background. This interested me because we were right off the train tracks and not a single train passed us that night. Further more, had I heard a train that night, I would have made a mental note because we were so close to the tracks, I would have made a conscious effort to put some distance between us and the tracks before the train moved closer.

I e-mailed John and Patrick the recording and asked them if they remember hearing a train. John did not remember whether he heard a train or not, but the odd thing was, that in his review of his own recording, there was no train on it. Patrick distinctively remembered hearing a train.

The next day I conducted a little research and found out that there were indeed parallel tracks just a couple miles southwest of where we were investigating, so there was a possible explanation for the sound.

All in all, though it was an interesting night, I wasn't convinced that I had experienced anything that couldn't be explained. I was 0 for 2 and becoming increasingly skeptical and wondering if the experiences I had as a child and in Georgetown were valid experiences or just my imagination.

Part 3 tommorrow

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