Case 6: Return to the Volendam Lutheran Church and Cemetery

On the night of April 7, me, Marie, and Jared began our group’s first revisit of the site of our first investigation. With more experience under our belt, more equipment to work with, and now actual permission to enter the church, we intended to do a more formal investigation than our last visit. Yukiko and Ashley skipped out on this one this time, but we figured that given the relatively small size of the church and cemetery, it would not be an issue to only have three of us.

Going into this investigation, we were all worried about the apparent spirit attachment that Marie had experienced, but she insisted that she could deal with it on her own without us getting involved, and that at this time, it only seemed to manifest when she was around other spirits, and had not affected her at her home yet. Regardless, however, I made sure to keep an eye on her, and through talking with Ashley, we both agreed that we would take action if it got to the point of physical violence against Marie, no matter what her wishes were.

As Marie and Jared were setting up two video cameras and a digital voice recorder, I was writing down notes at Jared’s truck, which we had taken to go to the church, when I heard what sounded like whispering near my ear. While this itself was not captured on video or audio, my reaction was. I dropped my notebook and ran as fast as I could to Marie and Jared. “Guys, guys!”

Marie turned to me and asked just as she started up her video camera, “Takeo, what’s up?”

“I just heard someone whispering into my ear,” I explained, still shaking a bit from how close whatever this thing was had gotten to me. “Like, it was literally right there, right next to me!”

“We haven’t even started yet,” Jared remarked. “Didn’t you say spirits could remember people who visit?”

“Yeah,” Marie confirmed with a nod. “Maybe the spirits here remember us.”

“They definitely do,” I interjected. “There’s no way they don’t.”

With this early scare out of the way, we all decided to head into the church first. After opening the front door, we walked past the rows of rustic wooden pews within the small Lutheran church and set our equipment down at the pews up front. Marie remarked as she handed a digital voice recorder to me, “I’ve never been in a church at night before. It’s so weird seeing everything here in the dark.”

“My family’s gone to this church plenty of times,” Jared replied. “And yet I’ve never been here at night, especially not in total darkness like this.” My own family was never really religious. I had been in churches before, but like the others, I had never been in one in the dark. Marie, meanwhile, was from a Catholic family, and had only set foot inside a Protestant church a select few times. Jared would have to be our guide, as none of us had attended services here aside from him.

We noticed that a piano was sitting near the altar, the cover still on it. I decided to use it as a platform to keep the digital voice recorder on as I began an EVP session. “Okay, so… Is there anyone here? Do you remember us?” Pause. “We came here earlier in the year, but we didn’t go into the church. We’re here now, though. Is there something you want to say to us?” Pause. “Did you attend services here? Did you work here?” Pause. “Were you a pastor here?” Pause. “Do you like people being in here?”

We got what was probably an answer to our last question when we heard a door open up near the front of the church. We all looked and found that the door to the main hall had opened by itself. Marie observed to us, “There’s definitely someone here now. I feel like it’s an old man.”

“You can sense who it is?”

“Yeah. They seem to be annoyed that we’re in here.” She then spoke to the spirit that she sensed, “We’re not here to bother you. We’re here because the church let us in. They say they can see and hear you. We want to know why you’re still here.”

After another pause, I stopped the recording and told the others, “Let’s review the session.” I then began playing back the recording. Incredibly, we got zero replies to any of our questions until the very last one, which had a voice that was captured right after the door opened: ‘Why are you still here?’

Jared remarked, sufficiently creeped out by the voice, “They don’t sound happy we’re here.”

“They’re not,” Marie confirmed. “There’s another spirit here now, but… I don’t think they’re from the church.”

“Are they from the cemetery?”

“No…”

Realizing that whatever had attached itself to Marie had seemingly appeared again, I told her, “This has to be the spirit attached to you from that house in Leesville.”

“I think it is…” Marie sighed in annoyance, “God damn it. Not again.”

“Let’s head to the offices.” We then walked to the offices of the church, which were in the rear behind the main hall. As we entered, I asked Marie, “Are you sure you’re alright? I know you keep telling us you can take care of this on your own, but me and Ash are worried about you.”

“I’ll be fine,” she insisted. “Look, this is my problem. I can solve it on my own. I don’t need you guys to drag yourself into this. I’ve dealt with the paranormal my whole life, so I know how to work around this.”

Realizing I was not going to convince her to get help at this point, I sighed in defeat and replied, “Okay, okay, fine. I trust you.”

Marie then pulled out the EMF meter and turned it on, seeing if she could get any readings as she walked around the entirety of the main office. “Nothing so far.”

“They said they sometimes see an older pastor around here,” Jared explained. “A good friend of my parents saw him here a few years ago right before COVID locked everything down. He was volunteering here at night when he saw a pastor walk down the hall despite no one else being back here besides him.”

“Do they know who it is?”

“I think they said it was a guy who worked here years ago. He died shortly before my parents were born, so it’s been a while, since at least the 1970s.”

“Maybe we’ll run in-“ Marie them stopped upon seeing that the meter was spiking. “Woah, guys, the meter’s going wild.”

“Right as we mentioned the old pastor,” I realized. “Maybe he’s here.”

“Wait a minute,” Marie then said as she looked up at several framed pictures on the wall of old pastors at the church. “This is the guy I saw. Right here!” She pointed to one picture in particular, which was of a pastor who had died in 1971. “I swear, it was this guy. This was the first one I saw in the main hall.”

“What was the second one?”

“I couldn’t really perceive him,” Marie replied, shaking her head. “But I could feel that he was there.

“Anyone else?”

“Not in the main hall, but…” Marie then looked out into the hallway and then quickly backed away. “There’s someone else in the hallway.”

As soon as she said that, we all heard a male voice from down the hallway, which was different from the voice we had recorded earlier. We could not discern what this other man had said, but his tone of voice sounded confused, as if he did not realize we were here. “Holy shit,” I whispered. “That was right down the fucking hallway.”

“That was him,” Marie whispered back to me.

I entered the hallway and turned on the flashlight on my cellphone, asking as I turned toward the direction the voice came in, “Who’s in here? We know you’re not the pastor. Who are you? Who’s making all that noise?” Despite my questions, we got no response, and as such, I walked back into the office. “Whoever it was, they’re gone now.”

“This is wild,” Jared said as he aimed the camera out of a window towards the cemetery. “We haven’t even gone outside yet, and already, this place is getting active.”

“I guess people weren’t kidding when they said Volendam is one of the most haunted places in Upstate New York,” I chuckled. “Think about how much we’ve captured just in our town up to now.”

Marie then set down the EMF meter and picked up a photo camera, handing it to me while she grabbed the video camera. “I got an idea. I’ll stay in the church. You guys go into the cemetery.”

Feeling uneasy about leaving her alone given that she was sensitive to the paranormal, I replied, “I don’t know. Given everything going on, I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”

“We can cover more ground that way. Besides, the church isn’t too big, so we won’t be missing much. The cemetery is much larger.”

“I think she’ll be fine,” Jared interjected. “She’s got a point about the cemetery, too.”

Reluctantly, I agreed. “Alright, let’s go. Before we do, though, I’m gonna take some photos around the church.”

“That’s fine,” Marie replied as she turned on her video camera. “I’ll stay here.”

Me and Jared then made our way back to the main hall. As we did, we began to take photos of the inside. I ended up taking forty-four pictures, making sure I captured as much of the main hall as I could in great detail. As I took the last of the photos, I began to notice the church feeling a little colder, but I made no mention of it as me and Jared exited, leaving Marie by herself.

Now by herself, Marie began to walk around all of the office rooms, asking several questions as she did. “I’m here by myself. I’m not here to cause any harm. I want to talk to you. Can you talk to me? What keeps you here? Did you love this church so much you wanted to stay behind? Are you buried in the cemetery?”

Having found nothing else in the offices, Marie decided to take a break for a bit. Thankfully, the church had given us access to and permission to use the bathrooms, which she took advantage of after setting her camera down on the ground outside. After about a minute, however, something very odd began to happen that quickly caught her attention.

The piano out in the main hall began to make noises, as if someone was randomly tapping on the keys. Marie ran out of the bathroom and picked up the camera, whispering to herself, “What the Hell…” She then crept up to the ajar door to the main hall and peered through the crack, seeing a black shadow standing near the piano and quickly shutting the door as the sounds of an actual song began to come from the piano, indicating whoever was playing it was no longer just pressing random keys. She took several deep breaths to calm herself as she prepared to take another look.

She opened up the door again, being as quiet as she could as she aimed the camera through the gap. The camera captured the black shadow sitting down at the piano, the cover of which was now on the ground. For half a minute, she continued to film the black shadow playing the piano until it suddenly stopped midway through the song it was playing, prompting her to shut the door and lock it from the inside as she began to panic, thinking that the black shadow had noticed her.

“Jesus, please help me,” she quietly begged as she wondered what the black shadow would do next. After a few seconds, the piano began again. “Okay, so he’s back…” Marie decided to walk to the back door to get out of the church, but when she walked up and tried to open it, she found that the door was in fact locked from both the outside and the inside. “God damn it. Why is it locked from the inside too?” She realized that her only way out would be through the main hall and past the piano, which would mean getting up close and personal to the black shadow playing the piano.

She walked up to the door again as the piano music stopped. When she slowly opened it, she saw that the black shadow had disappeared. Thinking she was in the clear, she took a deep breath and bolted for the front door.

However, as she ran past the pews, she saw the same black shadow standing next to the right wall of the main hall and walking towards her. She screamed in fear and ran faster, reaching the front door and flinging it open before then slamming it shut and sprinting away from the church. Once she was by the parking lot, she stopped and turned around, catching her breath as she looked at the church. “Holy shit… Holy fucking shit…” She then walked back up, taking a deep breath as she did, and opened the front door to walk back in. “I won’t run away,” she said to herself. “I won’t run away… I won’t run away…”

Back inside the church, she pulled out the EMF meter and flipped it on with her free hand, seeing if she could get any readings. As soon as she turned it on, it spiked, indicating that whoever had been playing the piano was still inside. She then walked to the piano, which was still and silent, and set her camera and the meter down on a pew to pick up the cover and put it back on. Once she was done, she walked to the altar and knelt down in front of it, saying a short prayer to protect her. Even though she was Catholic and was not particularly devout by any means, she could still find comfort in any church regardless of the denomination. She would later recall that that night was the first time she had prayed in a church aside from weddings and funerals since she was in elementary school. She also told me that she felt as if an evil presence had begun to occupy the church, perhaps the spirit that had attached itself to her.

Once she was done, she stood up and picked up her camera and meter. She then said to the spirits within the church, “I won’t be scared of you, especially the one who’s attached to me. You can’t scare me away from doing what I love with my friends.” In response to her defiance, the door to the offices, which had been left open by Marie, slammed shut, startling her. “You can’t make me leave! If you don’t have any connection to this church, get out! No one wants you here! Not even the other spirits want you here! Get out now!”

A low-pitched snarl was heard a few pews behind her, causing her to turn around: ‘Leave now.’ Immediately after, one of the knee rests for this pew in particular fell into place, causing Marie to hyperventilate as panic once again set in. Another voice, similar to the one first recorded early in the investigation, then was heard by Marie, this one seemingly giving the other spirit a warning: ‘You go! You!’

Marie realized she had found herself in the middle of a conflict between the two spirits. Her EMF meter by now was going wild, registering readings that we had never seen go so high before. “Oh my God… Is this… Is this because of me?” Then, out of nowhere, she felt what she described as a soothing hand on her head as she knelt down once again in front of the altar and set her equipment down. Her fear had begin to dissipate as a wave of calm swept over her. While none of this was captured on her video camera, she did pull out her cellphone to begin taking a few photos of the area around her. Once she was finished, she put her cellphone away and put her hands together in prayer once more, closing her eyes and remaining silent as this soothing and ethereal presence continued to stand by her.

…

None the wiser to what was happening in the church, me and Jared had been taking photos in the cemetery, intending on reviewing them all later rather than reviewing them on the spot. As we went to the back of the church, I began to recall to Jared what had happened to me and Yukiko earlier in February. “So back here,” I began to explain. “We were asking questions and taking photos when we felt a giant gust of cold wind hit us. Like, it hit us hard.” I used my hands to explain visually how much of an impact it had on us. “I think it knocked Yukiko back a little bit.”

“No shit,” he replied. “And then she got her hood pulled on?”

“Yep,” I replied as I pointed to the exact spot where it happened. “Right over there. I had taken a photo of a ghostly face and we were looking over here to see if we could debunk it, which we couldn’t of course, when her shirt and hood got pulled on. It scared the shit out of us, and we made a run for it.”

“Jesus Christ… I can see why you guys want to return here.”

“Yukiko was pissed she couldn’t make it tonight, but I promised her I would get a ton of good evidence if she wasn’t here.” I then pointed to the oldest section of the cemetery, explaining some of the history of the cemetery to Jared and for the sake of the video we were recording. “Those graves date back to the Revolution. There was fighting in the area between pro-British Native American tribes and a pro-American tribe, with some limited involvement from British and Patriot forces. A lot of people don’t realize the American Revolution led to civil wars within several Native American tribes, including the entire Iroquois Confederacy. It’s crazy, actually.”

“Well, you certainly paid more attention in history class than I did,” Jared joked. “Anyone in that section get killed in action?”

“Quite a few did. There’s a battlefield not too far from here. Maybe we could do an investigation of it later, but a lot of it’s private property now, and I don’t feel like getting arrested over that.”

“Fair enough.”

I then pointed to a spot in the cemetery with no graves and just open grass. “So this is something I didn’t realize until later. That over there was a potter’s field.”

“A potter’s field?”

“That’s where they buried the poor and destitute. Those who could not afford proper graves or had no family were buried in a common grave there. They tend to be hotbeds for paranormal activity.”

Jared then aimed his camera over at the potter’s field. As he did, his eyes widened and he remarked, “Takeo, look at this.”

“What’s up?” I looked over and noticed a faint light hovering over the potter’s field. “What the Hell is that?” Seeing if I could get a better look through it, I looked through Jared’s camera and saw that the night-vision made the light clearer to see. “It looks like a ball of light…”

This white ball of light moved slowly above the ground, almost as if it was watching the potter’s field. We both watched in silence as the ball then stopped above a specific spot. Perhaps this was a spirit whose body was buried in that spot, restless due to the fact that their body was disposed of in an unmarked common grave. At this point, I turned on my digital voice recorder to see if perhaps we could record any EVPs as this was going on. Finally, after about a minute of this, the ball of light wandered away from the potter’s field before disappearing from view.

Seeing it go away, I asked, “Are you buried in the potter’s field? Can you tell us who you are?” I then stopped the recording and told Jared, “Let’s see what we got.”

“It’s worth a shot,” he replied.

I began playing back the recording, and we got responses to both questions. First, in response to the question about being buried in the potter’s field, a male voice replied, ‘Yes.’ Then, in response to being asked who this spirit was, the same male voice gave us a name: ‘Thomas.’

Jared replied after hearing the spirit say its first name, “Thomas… Holy shit, it gave us a name.”

“Yeah. Sadly, I doubt we could ever find out who Thomas is. Record-keeping for places like this sucks. This recording may be the only evidence we have today he ever existed.”

“Man, I hope I never end up like this. Dying alone must suck.” Both me and Jared felt bad for this spirit apparently named Thomas. “I hope Thomas finds peace, wherever he is.”

From this point on, we did not capture any further evidence in the cemetery. It was as if Thomas’s departure had caused all activity to cease. We stayed outside for a little while longer, exploring the different sections of the cemetery and taking mental notes in case we ever decided to go back for a third visit in the future. After a while, we decided to head back into the church to check on Marie.

…

Upon entering the church, we found Marie sitting in a pew, apparently taking a break. We asked her what had happened, and when she told us, we were shocked. After discussing it further, we theorized that either the ghost of the pastor or perhaps even some kind of angelic entity had provided comfort to her in a time of need. We halted our investigation temporarily to go over what had transpired and review some of the evidence we had captured, including the photos we had all taken.

“I still can’t believe all that shit actually happened,” Marie remarked to me as we sat on the pews and began to look over the photos on our cameras. “It’s crazy. I felt like I was gonna get attacked before that… Whatever that thing was comforted me.”

“I’m glad you’re alright,” I replied to her as I flipped through the photos on her camera. After going through about twelve with nothing out of the ordinary on them, I noticed something unusual on, of course, the thirteenth photo. A more stereotypical number could of have been chosen. “Hey, look at this.”

“What is that?”

The photo was of the altar, specifically with the cross in the center of the photo. Unseen to Marie when the photo was taken but seen on the photograph itself was a white figure floating next to the cross. It was not totally defined, but it was in the shape of a person. It appeared to be at least five feet off the ground, and seemed to be watching Marie from above. “Wow… That’s… Is that what comforted you?”

“I think it is.” Marie took a deep breath as she studied the photo, taking it all in as she saw what was possibly her savior from whatever had almost attacked her within the church. “You know, I’ve never been religious, but… This is startling to make me think.”

Jared then walked over, having started to review my camera, and told us, “Take a look at this, guys.” He then showed us a series of three photos I had taken of the cemetery at large from the front door of the church. In all three photos, two black figures were seen apparently passing by several graves from a distance. Due to the distances involved and the fact we were in a rural area, we could not entirely rule this out as being actual people just walking through, but the images still creeped us out nonetheless given that this was late at night and there was seemingly no reason for anyone to be walking through the cemetery besides us.

After this review wrapped up, we captured no further evidence at the church or the cemetery, and soon headed on home. Our return to the site of our first investigation was fruitful, and it would be the last one we did for a while as we focused more on schooling, the impending summer break, and my family’s trip to Japan, the latter of which would prove to be very successful in terms of ghost hunting in ways we never thought possible.