mind, can “earthbound spirits” be explained away with science? And what if we are some other parallel universe’s ghosts? What then?
“The theories of parallel universes, alternate dimensions, the multiverse, and the holographic-universe model all point to the possibility that somewhere, out there, copies of you exist and that somehow you get an occasional glimpse of them—perhaps even in a doppelgänger experience,” says Marie D. Jones, author of PSIence: How New Discoveries in Quantum Physics and New Science May Explain the Existence of Paranormal Phenomena. “You cannot in one reality be two places at once, but on another level of reality, your mirror image may reside, doing exactly the same thing at the same time you are doing it in your reality. The multiverse theory opens the possibility for an infinite number of yous to exist out there, each with its own conscious awareness of the reality it exists in, yet also possibly able, at times, to breach the barriers between realities and show up as your eerie double, or even as a déjà vu event.
“Maybe time travel is possible, then, if we believe in these theories, because although we are met with numerous paradoxes and limitations in our own reality for going back to the past or forward into the future,” Jones continues, “those paradoxes may not exist in the multiverse, or in another dimension, where the laws of physics may look to us like magic.”
One instance that illustrates Jones’s theories beautifully is that told by Debbie Senate, paranormal investigator and medium—who for a few moments had an experience that allowed her to see through the window in time … literally.
“We [she and her husband, author Richard Senate] had been investigating a place for almost a month. The husband had said there had been a moon shining through a window that woke him up. He’d walk over to shut the window—there was no window there. Richard was downstairs, and I was upstairs with two other people. And there it was—the window! I put my head through it—everything looked very two-dimensional; I was nauseous and moving around like I was in quicksand. It really took effort to move. Outside it was like I could see back in time; there was a sawmill—where there really wasn’t a mill—and girls jumping rope. The girl looked up at me, and her mouth opened and she said, Oh! Like she’d seen a ghost—like I was her ghost! She was frightened. But I didn’t hear her; there was no sound on the other side of the window. The two people who were with me had a hold of me from each arm—they saw me going through the wall. I was getting really sick, and it was all I could do to nudge them—and they pulled me back in! Just as they did, the window disappeared, which led me to ask, what if I’d still had my head through it when it disappeared? I wonder now if that little girl grew up thinking she’d seen a ghost?
“Richard did some research and found that there had been a window in that spot, and it had been built over in the ’40s,” says Debbie of the affirmation of the time-traveling experience. “He also found a sawmill right where the one I’d seen had been—it had burned down in 1939!”
Downtown San Diego and Surrounding Area
Chula Vista
San Diego
Calvary Cemetery/Pioneer Park (5)
CHAPTER 5
Calvary Cemetery/Pioneer Park
SAN DIEGO
Medium and Roadside Paranormal member Jennifer Donohue takes readings at the active area around the handful of tombstones that remain from the four thousand bodies still buried in the park.
WHEN YOU VISIT THE BEAUTIFUL tree-filled park at 1501 Washington Place in San Diego, your first impression will probably be how peaceful the park looks and what a caring city dedicated this space for its children. That is, until you realize there are roughly four thousand decomposed bodies under the lovely green grass that many use as a soccer field and dog park. This certainly accounts for the overwhelming paranormal activity that abounds in this location. One thing is certain: It doesn’t need to be dark for this park’s residents to reach out beyond the grave.
The Mission Hills neighborhood used this property as a burial ground named Calvary Cemetery from 1875 into the next century, when the last body was buried in 1960. A decade later, the city decided to sweep the surface clean of the unsightly markers for the dead, plant grass, and turn the former cemetery into a park.
The exact boundaries of the cemetery were uncertain, and many neighbors have reported finding pieces of headstones—and, occasionally, human bones—when digging in their yards to bury water pipes, cable, and electricity lines.
A cluster of gravestones, mostly of priests who were buried in the cemetery when it was used as a Catholic cemetery from 1875 to 1919, still remains in the farthest corner from the parking lot. The rest of the headstones were collected and disappeared. There are also plaques placed in the cemetery with the names of the dead, although the list seems to be incomplete; the Internet is full of posts from people asking for information about how to get their loved ones’ names placed on the plaques. Others post asking where they can get a complete map, as they can no longer find where their loved ones are buried. It breaks my heart to read these comments.
In an odd move by the city, many of the seven hundred headstones were taken to the Mount Hope Cemetery (see Mount Hope Cemetery chapter), another of the city’s properties. Eighteen years later, after much public outcry about how the whole situation was handled, a handful of monuments were unearthed and cemented into the ground in Mount Hope’s gulley, where the city trolley slides (an area pretty much hidden if you’re just visiting) next to the monuments (and through the middle of the cemetery).
There was a long history of the city desiring to reclaim the cemetery property for other uses, including an action in 1942 that allowed the U.S. Navy to use it as a temporary observation point. In 1948, the city went about trying to prove that the property was abandoned by letting go of the caretaker and pressuring the Roman Catholic bishop to sign the papers of quitclaim, releasing itself from any responsibility or liability for the grounds. The city worked with Democratic Assemblyman Michael Wornum, a man who was “in the doghouse” with his constituents after a story broke in the press in 1988 criticizing him and his wife for building a $15,000 four-bedroom doghouse complete with a tiled bathtub and TV for their ten Salukis. He was clearly a man who cared for his dogs and would have liked to make dog runs of all the state’s property; he was infamous for his dog-friendly legislation. That’s a great thing (I have spoiled dogs; I get it)—unless your family burial plot with interred members going back more than a hundred years gets in the way of city “improvements.”
Wornum introduced legislation that allowed California city governments to take over any cemetery property and do anything they wished regarding the bodies buried on the property once it was declared abandoned. From there, it was a slippery slope. Literally. Much of the debris that used to be the cemetery was bulldozed down the hill that slopes down to Washington Street. People today are still finding pieces of broken
