Milan may be known to history buffs as the birthplace of Thomas Edison, but to ghost hunters it is best known as the final resting place of the Abbotts. Wander off the main section of the cemetery, towards the murky green swamp, up to the cold stone door overgrown with vines, and peer in through the rectangular screen that has been peeled away from the crypt. People say you will find an empty old rocking chair, slowly rocking back and forth by itself between two decrepit wooden caskets. But be careful not to stay too long. Legend has it that if Ben Abbott catches you peeking, he’ll chase you out of the cemetery, regardless of the fact that he has been dead for almost 150 years.
The Milan cemetery sits on the corner of Broad Street and South Edison Drive in the picturesque Erie County town. But stories about one of its permanent residents are anything but quaint. Set far back in the older section of the cemetery, where the tombstones are worn and barely readable, and most seem to lean, slightly askew, testifying to their years of slow movement in the night, a mausoleum has been built into the ground sloping to a small swamp.
The tomb is turned in the opposite direction of the other headstones. If someone were to walk straight out its door, they would step directly into the gloomy swamp. Vines grow wildly up the stone door, stretching to the name etched deeply in the stone above it: ABBOTT. It is almost hidden and easy to miss. Surrounding trees block it from casual view. But, it is said, that is the way Ben Abbott wanted it.
Ben W. Abbott was born in the late 1700s, and died on May 6, 1854. According to legend, he murdered his two granddaughters and buried their bodies in his garden. When the children’s bodies were later moved to the family mausoleum, Abbott was said to guard their grave and his secret by chasing any who dare disturb his vault.
Todd Lavey buries bodies at Milan Cemetery. “The story goes that he killed the two children that are buried there,” he said. “That’s not true either. At that time, children died quickly of common childhood diseases. His two grandchildren died of one, and it was legal at that time to bury family at your house. The children were buried in the garden. When people bought the house, they had the remains dug up and given a proper burial.” Lavey added that Abbott and his wife are no longer buried in the mausoleum, but they do rest close by the site. He said the only objects in the crypt now are the two old caskets housing the children’s remains and a rocking chair in which Abbott used to read stories to the girls.
Eventually the original wooden door to the crypt had to be replaced by concrete blocks due to vandalism. In the door, however, a small iron screen was placed to give just enough area to still see a little bit of what is within the Mausoleum. Legend had it, that if you knocked on the door three times, the Abbots would chase you. It is reported that you can also look into the screen window and see the chair rocking on its own from time to time. Some visitors have told of a face looking back at you from within the crypt close enough to touch. The face itself seems to come out of no where.
OUR INVESTIGATION: (6/25/05)Next to Franklin Castle, this cemetery has turned out to be one of the most active – and productive – locations we’ve yet visited. The Abbot Mausoleum is there all right, as these views approaching the front door show.
These are some of the creepiest views I’ve yet taken, showing the inside of the crypt and the two remaining coffins of the Abbott children. Nothing actually remains of the rocking chair but a rusting metal frame. One of the coffins appears to have split open, or rusted away, along the bottom, partly exposing the interior. One interior wall also seems to be covered with some type of slugs or other night crawlers. One image obtained shows the presence of some orb activity.
In this view backing away from the opening, one can just make a single orb emerging from the crypt. Not an especially impressive photograph, but the night was just beginning. Both video and audio taken of the inside of the mausoleum turned up nothing unusual.
After exploring the mausoleum, we decided to explore other nearby parts of the cemetery, being careful not to stray into the nearby swamp! Things started getting interesting when I took this shot looking back towards the crypt from where we had just come. The crypt itself, being built into the hillside, is level with the ground and one can walk across the top of it, with only a vent from inside sticking up through the roof. In this view I caught a glowing ball of energy or light hovering just above the top of the crypt. The object is clearly glowing of its own, and not a reflection from some outside source. There were no lights in the cemetery, nor other cars present at the time, and nothing we can come up with matches this object. Did something come up out of the crypt after we had been poking around?
As we started back towards our parked car getting ready to leave, orb activity started to increase rapidly. As I took shots of the nearby headstones while moving away from the mausoleum, I began picking up some images showing a lot of orb activity. Some of the usual suspects were eliminated – it was a clear, dry night, with no rain droplets or snow particles. As for dust, it’s interesting that the orbs would suddenly appear in one photograph, disappear totally in the next, and then reappear again in the next. If it were dust particles floating in the air they would be unlikely to appear and then disappear at will, as many images taken during this same sequence show not a single stray orb at all, as you would expect there to be if it were random dust in the air. The orbs clearly are perfectly symmetrical, and some even show an internal structure of some sort. The show immediately to the left shows an orb actually caught in motion.
Our last shot is the most amazing: just before packing up to go, with the orbs clearly following us away from the mausoleum, we were literally surrounded by an orb “storm”. There are literally too many to count. None of these objects were seen at all with the naked eye, and none appeared in the light of the camera flash as actual physical objects just inches from the camera would if they were anything natural. I can only imagine what would have occurred next if we had stayed a little longer! Needless to say, some day we will definitely make a return visit and conduct a more thorough investigation and the results will be posted on this site!
APRIL 2006 UPDATES: A sharp-eyed visitor to this site (Marti) recently brought to my attention two anomalies he noticed in the photographs above. In the first, the shot taken inside the crypt with the orbs present, he noticed what appeared to be a face of some kind in the upper right hand corner, which he took to be a woman's face. The area in question is outlined in the white square in the photo (click to enlarge).
Here is that same area enlarged and enhanced. In the first photo (left) is that area enlarged but not enhanced. One can begin to make out certain face-like features. The middle photo (center) shows that same image slightly enchanced in contrast and color balance, to try and bring out more detail. The face is easiest seen in the last enlargement (right) shown as a black and white image with all color removed. The detail is somewhat sharper and cleaner. The final image (right) is a drawing of the same face making it easier to see the features. Depending on the quality of your monitor, what seems apparent is a perfect symmetrical, perfectly proportioned, almost skeletal face with two eye sockets, nose, lips (or teeth), cheekbones, hair or long winding locks falling across one side of the face, as well as a hood or shroud covering most of the face, dark underneath the hood and with a peak of some sort outside. The face is looking down into the crypt from above, as if watching over events, and blots out detail behind it, giving it a three dimensional look. As far as we can determine, if it were a trick of light and shadow it would repeat in other views of the same area, where the lighting and angle from which the image was taken had not changed. The same would be true if it were some kind of paint or other substance peeling from the wall, or a stain of some kind. But this is not the case, other views show the corner empty and the image does not reappear in any other view - oddly enough, it is only present in the same view in which the orbs appear. Is it an illusion or was it really there? You be the judge.
In the second anomaly, a plaintive, almost mournful face appears in the cement surface outside the crypt, just below the Abbott name and above the opening as we were leaving. The first photo (left) shows the area outlined for orientation (click to enlarge). The second photo shows the area in question enlarged and enhanced, the third image (right) also shows it more clearly in black and white. Is it a trick of light and shadow? What do you think?
Here’s another image that was brought to my attention by Marti – this one from the very same photo, in the upper part of the mausoleum right near the orb! The area in question is highlighted by a white box. The next photos are enlargements of the area as the photograph originally is, without any enhancements.
The next photo (left) shows the image with the colors reversed (as in a negative) so it comes out black and white, the second is that same image with the contrast changed to bring out the object more. The last photo (right) is an artistic interpretation on my part of what you are seeing in the photograph.
ANALYSIS: The object in questions appears to be the head, neck, shoulders or upper torso of – something, looking down at one of the children’s coffins. Again, rather than random spots or stains on the wall, the image here is not only perfectly proportioned but symmetrical as well, as in a human being. You can make out some shading on the left side of the face, shoulders, neck, beneath the chin, even the shadow on the cheek besides the nose, and a faint trace of a mouth. There seems to be two white spaces right where the eyes sockets would be. For those who might say it's something actually on the walls, I would first like to point out two very important observations: First, the “head” or “torso” is totally transparent - you can see that dark strip or seam where the back wall of the crypt meets the roof, and it clearly passes through the object without affecting it in any way. Second, the object keeps its shape. If it were a stain on the wall and roof, then it would change its angle where the wall and roof meet and totally distort the shape of the object, which clearly does not happen. The “head” retains its appearance both beneath the seam where the back wall is, and above the seam, where the roof meets at a right angle to the wall; the image, however, is not affected by this in any way.
It is also of interest that these “images” only appear in the same photograph in which the orb is also present and no others, so are they connected? Rather than random markings on a wall could they be evidence of some type of increased paranormal activity or energy caught at the same instant? What they actually are remains open to question and will probably always remain so, but one thing is clear, we sure got more than we bargained for at Milan cemetery!
