Evergreen (Southwest City) Cemetery Investigation

I first visited this cemetery back on May 17, 1983 after hearing of some reports of paranormal activity while investigating the Joplin Spooklight. It was called Evergreen Cemetery but has been renamed Southwest City Cemetery.

Address: Rt. 43, N. Main Street and Cemetery Lane in Southwest City, MO 64863

Hauntings: There have been reports of a lady in white that has been seen on almost a nightly basis wandering the cemetery. I tried to track down some first-hand reports but was unable.

The Ghost Research Society investigated Southwest City Cemetery on May 16, 2022 team members included: Paul Adams, Charles Williams and Dale Kaczmarek.

Personal experiences in 1983: While looking around the cemetery around 8pm, I suddenly noticed a white foggy area near a tree. It wasn’t the proper temperature for fog, it had not just rained and conditions were not correct for any other type of atmospheric phenomena to form

Some parts of the fog were translucent while other parts were visually opaque. It also seemed to be darting around a lot and was not stationary. I had some color Ektachrome IR film in my 35mm camera at the time and took a couple of pictures. When I removed the camera from my eye, the fog began to dissipate in a most unusual fashion. Instead of blowing away or burning off like ground fog would have, it was as though someone plugged a cork out of a bathtub.

The mist began to spiral down into the ground and disappeared.

When the film was developed, it did not show any fog or mist but the entire area where I saw this image, the entire area was bathed in an eerie blue light which is quite uncharacteristic for the type of film I was using. (That image is the far right photograph at the bottom.) The image across from it on the left is the same area where the mist was seen and attempted to photograph. The left photo was taken when we visited the cemetery in 2022.

Was this the so-called white lady that I saw? I can only say, in the strictest sense of the term, it was a “ghost” due to the fact that it was an unrecognizable form and disappeared in an other than natural way.

Equipment setup: Hand-held equipment was used such as digital recorders, cameras and camcorders, Melmeter, Tri-Field Natural EM Meter, full-spectrum camera, Ovilus V and K-II Meters.

Experiments performed: One single Ovilus V session was conducted by the tree where the strange photograph was taken in 1983. We videotaped the session by the tree also.

Personal experiences:

Charles Williams: Equipment: Go Pro Camera, Zoom Recorder, Melmeter, Tri- Field Meter, Full Spectrum Camera

Personal Experiences: None

Investigation: Dale did Facebook Live. Had an EVP sessions using the Ovilus V. No voices were heard with naked ears, No sighting of the lady in grey.

Dale Kaczmarek: After driving around the interior of the cemetery for a bit, I was able to find the exact location where I had visited before and taken the strange color IR photograph. We conducted an EVP session there, took pictures but did not feel anything out of the ordinary.

During my 1983 visit, I wasn’t able to determine exactly where in the cemetery the strange lady had been seen. I could not find any eye witnesses but I believe I had some weird paranormal encountered that was documented on color 35mm infrared film.

Evidence collected: Nothing.

Words spoken by the Ovilus V: sad, Paula, crayon, hunting, mad, sift, poverty, eye, puncture, themselves, puddle, pounds, Pam, last, bright, sacrifice, truck, west, American, period & call. Ovilus V in phonetic mode: help and yeah

Conclusions: It was a beautifully sunny and warm day but a little windy which led to some noise contamination with the digital recorder’s microphone. It was very quiet and peaceful here and no real intelligent responses were recorded from the Ovilus V.

There were some random words and two female names which was interesting. Were either of those two names the identity of the female ghost seen here in the past? The word “pounds” came through and that is what British citizen’s use for currency. American also came through as though to differentiate between Charles, Paul and I?

On later comparison of the 1983 photograph and where we were conducting our investigation, we determined it was the exact same spot. Paula and Pam came through and when Paul searched the nearby tombstones for those names, they were not to be found.

Further study and eye witness interviews would be necessary to conduct further research and investigation of this unusual location.