Pierce Cemetery Investigation

The earliest gravestones date back to the 1840s, even though the cemetery actually dates back to the 1830s and many war veterans are buried in the cemetery. The Battle of Tippecanoe wasn’t far from this Civil-War era graveyard. There is a number of war veterans buried here. Harrison Cemetery is also known as St. Joseph Cemetery or Lafayette Catholic Cemetery.

Address: behind William Henry Harrison High School located at 5636 N 50W, West Lafayette, Indiana 47906

GPS coordinates: 40.4989014, 86.9116974

Directions: Go North to Prophet Street (Prophet’s Rock Road), Right on E600N, Left on N50W, Left towards Harrison High School, 5701 N 50W, West Lafayette, IN 47906, off CRN50W.

Hauntings: Visitors have heard crying and moaning and had an eerie feeling that something is watching them. A few have been touched by something unseen or have had things thrown at them by invisible hands. Gravestones are said to move around here as well. Some visitors say that feel like they’re being followed or watched whenever they go to pay their respects.

Shadows can be seen stalking through the site and distant voices are occasionally heard. Most disturbing here is the personal and strangely violent nature of the residing ghosts. Visitors have had things thrown at them while in the cemetery, and some have even felt the touch of hands.

There is a place in the southwest side of the cemetery, nicknamed “Hell’s Hole.” Some have caught an EVP saying, “I’m from Hell” at this location. Others have challenged the ghost to knock their digital recorder out of a tree; and a few seconds later they claimed their recorder flew out of the tree and landed on the ground! Others have caught the sound of gunshots during EVP sessions.

Some visitors standing in the center of the cemetery have heard the sounds of Indian drumbeats.

The GRS investigated Pierce Cemetery on May 15, 2021 and the team included: Chuck Williams, Mike Rosario and Dale Kaczmarek

Equipment setup: Digital recorders, Phasma Box app on laptop, REM Epod, full-spectrum and IR camcorders were used.

Experiments performed: A single ParaTek app session was conducted. Inclement weather prevented us doing much more as we wished to keep our equipment dry.

Personal experiences:

Mike Rosario: Equipment and Initial Investigation: Our investigation at the Pierce/Harrison Cemetery in West Lafayette, Indiana took off at approximately 3:15pm with Dale Kaczmarek, Chuck Williams, and Mike Rosario on Saturday, May 15, 2021. Weather was warm, but was slightly drizzling a bit (on an off) during the day. Equipment used was my K-II meter; a Philips VoiceTracer Digital Voice Recorder; a DVC 4K Ultra HD 48mp Night Shot Digital Video Camcorder; and an Apple iPhone 8-Plus 256GB Smartphone for exterior HD pictures and videos.

For this investigation, I was accompanied by Dale and Chuck, and we pretty much stuck together as one group for this investigation. I began by doing my usual K-II sweeps in and around the cemetery grounds, and my base reading was low (around a constant 1.3-1.8 mG). It was quiet and calm outside with very little disturbances.

The three of us stayed for a short while, and had asked some questions about the cemetery in general, and who was with us in spirit form whilst we were there. Many graves belonged to soldiers who fought in the battles of 1811-1812. The Pierce Grave was prominent there, near the center of the cemetery. That family name was probably one of the first settlers of the land back during the wars of the era. Mostly made up of only limestone and rusting rebar. It was a disappointment as many of the names and dates have since eroded away on the stones as time progressed, but beautiful nonetheless.

Evidence: upon reviewing all of my evidence, I didn’t have any visual evidence on my DVC camcorder or any audible evidence. This definitely warrants another investigation for sure. A really great site!

Charles Williams: Small, old cemetery behind Harrison High School, in W Lafayette, IN Mild paranoia with crew noted, 1hour here, 30 min. investigation. No evidence recovered.

Dale Kaczmarek: A very interesting rural cemetery located directly behind a high school but still isolated enough. There were some very interesting stones including a family plot that had a small metal fence surrounding it. The almost constant rain became a problem causing us to cut short our investigation here. Only a single ParaTek session was conducted with an interesting reply.

When I asked how many people are here at this cemetery, the reply was, “buried.” Several names were also mentioned including Hailey, Michael, Elizabeth and Norman. It is interesting that one of our group members is named Mike. Both the Ovilus X and Phasma Box malfunctioned while we were here but worked fine in the investigation earlier in the day and afterwards which I found to be very suspicious.

Evidence collected:

Buried Pierce.MP4 – while conducting a ParaTek session, a question was asked, “How many people are in this cemetery right now?” The device responded with, “Buried.”

Words spoken by the ParaTek app: hear, vanguard, orange, afterlife, flower, fate, I am, pattern, angel, indicate, abrasive, nine, reason, vote, rest, play, buried, oil, across, interest, Hailey, wild, Michael, colour, Elizabeth, scary, one, Norman, girl, five, spot, idiot, information and sack.

Conclusions: This would be an interesting location to try some additional experiments especially here the southwest corner called Hell’s Hole where others had some significant experiences. The rain curtailed a lot of what we wanted to do that afternoon. Perhaps a nighttime investigation could be in order.

Some of the equipment malfunctions could have been caused by the damp weather and not paranormal at all. Wi-Fi was very sketchy here for me and I wasn’t able to conduct a live Facebook session here but Williams was able to get a signal so he ran the session instead.

Thank goodness for Mikey’s rather large umbrella that kept all the equipment safe and dry. I had brought some rain gear and smaller umbrellas but the large one was surely welcome! During the course of our EVP session, we had a few visitors to the cemetery that apparently were there for the haunted history. Some cars from the nearby construction site rolled past slowly, never stopped or paid us any mind.

I think another investigation, possibly at night would be warranted.