In the colorful halls of the elementary and middle school building, there exists a dark rumor that James H. Haldane haunts our campus. I initially heard the legend when I was in Mrs. Wilde’s first-grade class, and it shook me to my core. Even now that I’m older, the question remains: Is Haldane actually haunted?

Two anonymous partners and I visited The Old Cold Spring Cemetery, neighboring Haldane, searching for answers. The 230-year-old cemetery next to the school goes by many names: Mountain Avenue Yard, Davenport Cemetery, or God’s Acre Cemetery. All of them are equally spooky. Surely, if anyone were to know if James haunted Haldane, it would be his local ghostly peers. I brought along my trusty EMF reader (Electromagnetic field reader, used to pick up on ghostly activity), a flashlight from Home Depot, dowsing rods (long copper rods that are able to spin so the ghosts can answer yes or no questions), and my phone, to record. There was a chill in the air, but with no wind, and the dark environment was perfect for communing with spirits. My partners and I went in with high hopes but were quickly disappointed as we started our investigation on the first grave we came across. It was the grave of someone named Ellen, whose last name was unreadable, and we could barely make out her birth and death dates. We placed that EMF reader on the grave and whipped out the dowsing rods to attempt to get answers. While the dowsing rods moved ever so slightly in response to our questions, we did not get any activity on the EMF reader.

As the night went on, my partners needed to go home, leaving me alone in my investigation. The second grave read “Mary Bridge and Margaret Bridge.” I did the same process as I did with Ellen’s grave but got no response and no reaction from the EMF reader or dosing rods. Just plain silence. It made me uneasy, so I moved on to another grave. “Debrah Ann and George Nelson” also had the exact same response…nothing. It was strange to me that my partners and I got some semblance of communication from Ellen, yet not from the others. Perhaps they preferred larger groups or felt threatened by our presence. We will never know.

Overall, you can put your mind at ease. I conclude that Haldane is not haunted by James or any other ghost. Even though the dowsing rods gave us a slight response, there is no hard evidence that Haldane or its neighboring cemetery contains any restless spirits.

But the elementary schoolers don’t need to know that…