Trips for YouTube (just still not posting to YouTube)

#1 and #3 - Elmwood Cemetery

I have to learn to edit videos, so as of now, they are just sitting on a hard drive doing nothing, but I have been taking my trips to start my YouTube Channel. In the meantime, I thought I'd give some highlights here with my pictures. I didn't do a very good job with taking pictures because I was so nervous...it's been a LONG time since I've been out anywhere, but I guess time will tell if the video is better! Considering the quality of these pictures, now I'm a bit nervous for the video quality!

The first trip I took was to Blytheville, the town of my birth, the town where my father lived for most of my life, and the town where my grandparents spent most of their lives (and are buried). I have never been to their graves and I had no clue where to look, so the first time I went down there, was a bust. I'm not much on the whole "visiting family graves". I don't go to funerals, I'm the person who stays home, takes care of the family dogs, and collects the casseroles. Not only do I not understand the whole practice of talking to dead relatives (or our burial practices in general...no one will be fawning over my dead body), but I have other reasons.

The MAIN reason, is because of this particular grandmother (my Nanny). I know I've told this story before, but when this particular grandfather died, my Papa, (I was 11), Nanny decided I needed to kiss him goodbye and she picked me up and tried to make me kiss him in his coffin! I will NEVER forget Papa's waxy face covered in makeup and the smell of formaldehyde. I was screaming bloody murder in the funeral home until someone came and rescued me (I don't even remember who, I just remember being snatched from her grasp and her reaction "I was only trying to help her say goodbye"...she always treated me differently after that, but that's a different story). Granted, for most of my life now I've worked in a place that smells like formaldehyde and dead bodies have been known to cross my path upon occasion (although it's mainly just body parts), but still...that situation was different, I was a child, and that was family. It was something I never got over and I never went to another funeral again.

Anyhoo, the first time I drove up to the graveyard, I left work early, so I didn't even leave until about 5 pm. It's a little over an hour away, so I was pushing 6:30 pm when I got there. I had no clue where to look. This was also my first time filming in a location. Thankfully, there was no one around and I had the run of the place, but I had no luck. I walked around FOREVER! Come to find out, I walked past them numerous times, but that's for later. I saw a lot of my uncle's relatives (my aunt's husband, so not blood). I also wasn't too good at taking pictures that first night...I only took phone pictures while walking, which didn't turn out so good because my hands were shaking:

I did stay well past dark, which probably wasn't good legally...the cemetery is known to be haunted (although the vibes I felt were minimal and easily ignored, at least that night). I can't even believe that me, the biggest supernatural chicken in the world, was wandering around a cemetery at night by myself! But anyway, the older part of the cemetery is called Maple Grove, and I got some shots of it:

This one was actually taken with my camera and still didn't come out so good...I really was nervous that first night!

It took me a few weeks to actually get over that trip. The following day I was practically bed-ridden (thankfully I did it on a Friday, so I had the time to recover before work) and I was not much better the day after that. I had the same issue when I went to Kansas a couple of weeks later. I'm not sure why I had this after reaction to either trip...I didn't run into a soul, but it may have just be pure agoraphobia and the after effects from it. Brave in the moment, sick afterwards.

It was a few weeks after Kansas before I went back to the cemetery, but this time I had a better plan. I went to FindAGrave.com and got the phone number for the cemetery, not really sure if I could get a person. Well, the number was to the main funeral home in town, I wasn't expecting that. I kind of stuttered out, "where are my grandparents", like an idiot! Thankfully, the nice lady on the other end, got me to talking enough to give her their names although my suttering was HORRIBLE, but she understood me enough to tell me she could send me a map if I would give her my email address or my physical address. I opted for email since I was going the next day. But the map turned out to be uselesss. I noticed there were alphabetical markers in the rows, so they had a system in the field, but the map had blocks of numbered sections. I'm not sure where the numbering system came into play. I even asked her about the letters on the phone, but she said she didn't know anything about them. Thank goodness I have footage of them. The map was bad enough, but my grandparents defintely were NOT in the section the map said they were in. So, there was more wandering the second night.

I also had another issue with the second trip that was unexpected...I was more acutely aware of my surroundings and I ended up more scared this time. It was another Friday night and I arrived about the same time, but the neighborhood was more active. Blytheville is not a safe town on the best of days. Actually, on the second trip, that afternoon, someone was shot in the Wal-Mart parking lot for no reason. I didn't know that until later. At that point, I was still alone in the cemetery like the first night, but I was being watched by the neighbors, and I'm sure my "camera work" seemed incredibly odd. There was a house party at the end of the street and I heard more than a few calls in my direction. I ignored it. I know that's a bad neighborhhood, I knew it the first time I was there too, but this trip I was more jumpy...I think the first trip I was just mission-focused and maybe ignored the surroundings, because I'm sure all this was going on that first night too. The video probably shows it. This time, I didn't stray far from the car, moving it with me if it got too far for this overweight asthmatic to run to (whereas, the first time, I moved it maybe once and walked all over the place). I kept the picture camera in the car, as well as my bag, only walking with the video camera, and every sense was super-heightened. I was almost agitated with myself for not being more aware the first time. But I also noticed the "whoo-whoo vibe" was also stronger this trip and I wondered if I was causing it or it was just a more heightened night.

According to the map, they were supposed to be here, but they weren't.

I just kept pacing the rows (and, although I'm sure grave etiquette means you don't walk across them horizontally, I could NOT figure out how to look en masse if I didn't, so I was walking on the graves and it was freaking me out!). I kept appologizing..."sorry, sorry, I'm stepping on your head", "so sorry, I don't mean to step on you", "don't get up, I'm sorry", "I don't mean any disrespect, just looking for my grandparents". I think once or twice I even (softly) hollered out "Nanny, Papa, I'm getting tired, where are you?". Eventually, after finding some really interesting tombstones (those are in the video, not in picture-form), I found my great aunt first (I didn't even know she was dead):

And beside her I saw another name I recognized, but I don't remember...Ollie Barnes, so probably another great Aunt, athough she died WAY before I was born, so I'm not sure:

And then, viola, directly behind them, my grandparents! There tombstone is in SERIOUS need of cleaning and I immediately wanted to do that, but I didn't have the supplies.

Then things got REALLY weird. I didn't know what to do. Like I said, speaking to dead relatives isn't my style, although I did try (it was awkward and weird and I won't be doing it again). Despite my weariness at being in a bad neighborhood in a cemetery at night, I was kind of enjoying myself up until I actually found my grandparents. Then it got weirder...right next to their grave, I found this:

They apparently had another child! If I knew about this, I didn't remember it and then I got SUPER weirded out because Elizabeth is my middle name (although I'm named after my maternal grandmother). I just kind of stood there, in this weird state of awkwardness, not really knowing what to say or do. I eventually realized that he didn't have his military marker, so I went looking for it...I found it at the foot of his grave, basically at the backside of Aunt Ollie's grave...again, weird!

So the family was just positioned like this, Nanny and Papa with the baby to the left, with Aunt Ruth and Aunt Ollie to the right:

Like I said, it got really awkward, really quick, so I hightailed it out of there pretty quick after that. I tried to drive by the house my father lived in for a long time, but that neighborhood had gone downhill and it wasn't safe for me to linger. In fact, I couldn't even film because there was a guy standing in the driveway digging in the trunk of his car with a gun in the back of his pants! He turned and stared me down as I drove by, and part of me really wanted to just say, "hey, sorry, my dad used to live here", (my window was down), but I kept my mouth shut and drove on. Ironically, two doors down, there was another guy, leaning in the trunk of his car, with a gun in the back of his pants, who turned and stared at me as I passed him too. That was it for me. I did have the camera mounted on my windshield, but I'm not sure if I caught them or not. I'll have to watch the footage and then I'll have to decide if I want to post it, especially since YouTube changed their rules about posting images of someone without their permission. I definitely did NOT have permission to film them.

So, that was my two cemetery trips. Like I mentioned, I took a trip to Kansas, and there was a trip I just took this weekend that was a bit weirder. Those stories are to come if you guys are interested. I have another Kansas trip in the works as well that will be really exciting...based around the show Supernatural, so Lawrence, Lebanon and a few other surprise stops! But it is safe to say, there won't be a trip to the other cemetery where all my other grandparents are buried and I probably won't go back to Elmwood (unless I just really get itchy to clean their tombstone...that really is bothering me, but I can see myself tipping the stone over or something...I'm pretty clumsy, especially when nervous!).

Oh, and as a side note, I made my first Instagram post today! Like most social media, I'm not sure how long I'll last, but we'll see!