Location Description and History

As this booming mining camp became a more permanent settlement, the need arose to establish a cemetery. Beginning in the 1860s, a wide variety of fraternal, civic and religious groups established burial yards on the hillside including the Masons, Pacific Coast Pioneers, Knights of Pythias, Firemen, Wilson and Brown, Improved Order of Redmen, Roman Catholic, and the city and county. Nearly every plot is fenced or bordered, a typical practice of the Victorian period. The characteristic features of this burial place reflect the breadth of styles and designs popular during its long history. Grave markers range in materials from wood to metal to cut stone. The inscriptions on the markers give silent testimony to the social and economic fabric of Virginia City. The majority date to before 1920. Very few of the adults buried in these cemeteries were born in Nevada. The birthplaces noted throughout the grounds provide a glimpse of the scope of immigration and the makeup of the settlement that supported the Comstock mining industry.

This cemetery, or more correctly cemeteries, is large and stretches many acres. There are probably thousands of graves throughout them.

The Virginia City cemeteries are accessible from Reno via U.S. Highway 395 south to Nevada 341 east. As you descend into the north end of town, the cemeteries become visible.

Reported Phenomena

There have been reports from visitors to the cemetery after dark, of a certain gravestone that emits a strange light from far away. When the people try to find it, the light disappears. There is also a man's gravestone that moves from his gravesite frequently, although the guards report that no one has entered the cemetery, and it is a rather large piece of stone for a normal human to move, and it requires three people at least to move it back.

This particular investigation centered on the many old cemeteries in and around Virginia City. Although our main focus was to simply check out many of the locations for future investigations, we ended up doing an impromptu investigation of several locations.

Approaching thunderstorms made it difficult to obtain accurate EMF data, but we did manage to capture some interesting phenomena on film.
We looked at a total of 9 cemeteries and believe that at least 3 have a very good potential for possible paranormal activity.
It should be noted that we seemed to get more activity as the storm moved closer to us and then again after it had passed over.

Photographs

Click on the thumbnails to view the larger image

As the storm passed over us, we took shelter in the car, watching the graveyard as the storm rumbled by. The most interesting photo that we took seems to show the apparition of a man standing near some of the graves. An enlargement of the photograph shows several details including a jacket and tie. The photograph was taken just after the storm had passed with a standard 35 mm camera with no flash. During the storm, Shadow was most insistent that he saw "someone" walking around the cemetery. However when Cody looked, no one could be seen.