Excerpt

An Excerpt from Ghosts in the 'Ville:
"The Union Cemetery"

Growing up, we often played the child’s game Ghosts in the
Graveyard and walked about the old cemeteries in town. Sometimes I
did both together. There was nothing more intriguing and more
eerie, than running about the old moss covered tombstones or going
up to the windows of mausoleum doors and peering inside, hoping to
catch a glimpse of bones or something equally as frightening.
There’s something about a cemetery that either draws children to
explore it or creates such fear in them that they never want to be near
one again.

I’m not sure what the outcome of the experience was on the children
involved in the following graveyard story, but it surely fell into one of
these two categories. It happened in the Union Cemetery in
Riegelsville and is one of several ghostly tales told from within its
walls.

The cemetery was formed by the Lutheran and Reformed
congregations in town in the late 1800s. Buried within its green fields
are many of the historically significant individuals of the town’s
history.

One day in the early nineteen eighties, either in mid-morning or late
afternoon, a group of children were playing along the north to south
path in the graveyard when they were startled to come upon two little
boys dressed in overalls and seated on a bale of hay along the path.
The boys said nothing but seemed pleasant. Nonetheless, the children
were startled by their presence and ran back to tell their teachers what
had happened. The teachers then followed the children into the
graveyard and to the spot where the two little boys were sitting.
However, now in the place of the hay bale was a pink tombstone and
no sign of the children except, perhaps, their names inscribed in the
pink marble-- two young twins who had died within a day of their
birth.

It has also been said that further down that road and outside the
cemetery walls, one can hear the sound of the clip clop of horses’
hooves if an attentive ear is given in the still silence. This was the case
for one town person as she sat on her porch in the late evening
hours. Just barely audible, the sound of horse hooves could be heard
traveling toward the cemetery along Edgewood Road. The pace was a
gentle clip clop easily recognizable by the person’s experience with
horses. The ghostly procession continued for a short time and then
faded away.

Could this be the phantom sound of horses as they carried the dead to
the cemetery for their burial?

Walking along the cemetery wall after dark, one can never be too sure
that the lights reflected off the tombstones, or the dancing mists
floating in the fields, aren’t something more animated…something
more lively…something spirited.

The Grave of
Mary Louise Aughinbaugh,
erected by the congregation of
St. John Reformed Church in 1867.

Mary Louise died on
September 19, 1867.
Many believe her spirit still walks
on the church's properties!

MORE PICTURES...

Orb Photos from 2005: