Charlottsville Hanging Tree & Cemetery Investigation

The hanging tree near Charlottsville Cemetery is a Live Oak that was used for several hangings in the mid-1800s. There are these rumors but with no documentation to support those claims. This tree is located on a dead-end, little used dirt road near the Ambraw River.

A local man, Billy Ray, who owned a nearby farm, was a horse thief and nearby neighbors began to notice that Ray was in possession of horses that did not belong to him. He was housing these equines in his farm. History is unsure of the circumstances but perhaps Mason Goff had approached Billy Ray for stealing horses. Perhaps Ray had shot and killed Goff for discovering his illicit practices. The date on Goff’s grave attests that he was killed on April 7, 1854.

Perhaps later on, more neighbors approached Ray for being a horse thief and hung him from the large Oak Tree without any trial. That was sometimes alluded to as “frontier justice.”

Both Mason Goff and Billy Ray were later interred in Charlottsville Cemetery in nearby Flat Rock, Illinois. Ray was buried outside of the gates of the cemetery and the fence line because he was a criminal. His actual burial location is beyond the cemetery’s boundaries and in the trees which border the grounds. There used to be a stone marking his grave but others have not been able to locate his grave. Local historians once knew the precise location, but perhaps the stone was carted off by souvenir hunters.

Address: North of 1800N and west of 870E, Lawrence County, Flat Rock, Illinois 62427

Hauntings: A lot of strangeness happens in the cemetery after the sun goes down considering the victim and the perpetrator are buried near to one another. Perhaps they are still fighting and quarreling with each other even in the afterlife.

Local residents recalled a story where late one evening, the locales living on the house on the hill witnessed the silhouette of a man swinging from the hanging tree by the light of torches.

Others see dark figures at night within the confines of the cemetery. It is not known if these dark figures are ghosts or intrepid ghost hunters hard at work, collecting evidence and attempting to communicate with spirits in the dark.

The Ghost Research Society investigated the Charlottsville Hanging Tree and Charlottsville Cemetery on August 29, 2020 and the team members included: Mike Rosario, Kelly Griffey and Dale Kaczmarek, with help from Jason Snider, Jason Dickerson, Courtney Mendenhall and Ed Reese from Crawford County Illinois Ghost Hunter's Society

Equipment setup: Besides having a camcorder on a tripod and recording during our daylight visit to the cemetery, our team used hand-held equipment such as digital recorders and cameras, camcorders, Melmeters and the ParaTek app.

Experiment performed: An old-school EVP session was conducted by the Hanging Tree and a ParaTek session was performed near Mason Goff’s grave.

Personal experiences:

Mike Rosario: I actually didn't get any evidence at Charlottesville Hanging Tree where Billy Ray was hung for his crimes, but I do remember some of the incidents at the Charlottesville Cemetery (Flat Rock, Lawrence County, Illinois) where whilst you were doing an EVP session near some of the stones there, but nothing really clear or significant came through except a few names, which I tried looking for on foot around the cemetery, but never found. Plus, there was a lot of disturbance/evidence contamination due to the other group's investigating.

Dale Kaczmarek: Nothing felt or recorded at the Hanging Tree but it was a fascinating location! At the cemetery however, there were some interesting words that came through on the ParaTek app like: “Debbie teacher for industry” and “cousin Joshua nephew.” These were single words that were generated from the app but when you splice them together in sequence they can make some sense. The app doesn’t allow full sentences so it’s like using the Ovilus X in dictionary mode and putting together a series of single words to combine into sentences.

There was some background talking when we were attempting to conduct this EVP session. We were there to investigate and background talking and whispering can sometimes be misconstrued as spirit voices.

Evidence collected: Nothing! Even though there were single words and when combined they could have been interesting sentences. No direct responses were collected from questions asked.

Words spoken by the ParaTek app: keeping, open, Debbie, teacher, from, industry, use, orb, best, fame, normal, cousin, Joshua, nephew, report, money, shake and fifteen.

Conclusions: This was another daytime stop and investigation and it wasn’t particularly active upon our arrival. Some other investigators say that after dark is the best time to investigate this location due to the shadow figures seen in the cemetery and at the Hanging Tree.

The history is interesting of perhaps many people being lynched at the Hanging Tree and even the interaction between Billy Ray and Mason Goff in the cemetery. A follow-up to these locations after dark could yield more results.