Inquisitive Minds

You never know what you're going to see at the Lincoln Home. A typical hour-long shift as the ranger stationed at the visitor center information desk usually consists of counting people who come through the door, scheduling tours of the home, and issuing tickets to cute little families. On a normal day, the visitor center shift provides a nice break from the craziness of trying to keep 8th graders from stepping off of the blue carpet inside the house, thus setting off a series of alarms. Today, however, my visitor center shift proved to be a bit more eventful than usual.

At about 3:25 this afternoon, I was standing behind the visitor center desk with one of our volunteers, Paula. Paula is a sweet older lady who comes to the park once a week to help us manage visitor center traffic by providing directions to visitors. We were chatting about something when two black guys came storming into the visitor center. One of them said very forcefully, "Hey, we wanna file a complaint." I asked them what their complaint was about, and they said that they had just been kicked off of a Lincoln Home tour by their ranger guide. I tried to get a clear story from them (and quickly realized they were drunk), but all they kept saying was, "That ranger should be fired! We wanna see him fired right now!" After about a minute of talking in circles with them, I finally just asked, "Why did he kick you off of the tour?" They both stopped talking, looked at me, and one of them said, "Because we're black. We was the only black guys on that tour, and we was the only ones who got kicked out." I guess I looked skeptical because then the other one said, "Come on, man. We're just two guys from outta town wantin' to learn 'bout Lincoln. We was just askin' questions in there. We have got in-quis-i-tive minds, you know?" He seriously emphasised "inquisitive minds."

Strike one for them: they said they were from out of town, but I recognized them as guys who walk through the neighborhood on a regular basis. Strike two for them: they were really beginning to appear to be very drunk. One of them especially was starting to look very uncomfortable. Anyway, I told them that I would pass on their complaint to my supervisor. But they said, "No, man. We wanna get that guy fired right now. We want this in writin'." I then told them that I would call my supervisor and they could give the complaint directly to him. By this time both Paula and I were getting pretty uncomfortable. I called Jason and told him that we needed him at the front desk pronto. He came over and talked to the guys, but they started really tearing into him. Jason looked over at me and mouthed the words: "CALL DAVID" to me (David was the law enforcement ranger on duty this afternoon). One of the men saw Jason mouth something to me, and then the guy really started to freak out. He yelled, "Whoa, what's goin' on? What did you just say to her? Are you guys turnin' on me here?" We assured him that nothing was going on while I discreetly called David and gave him the code word to come to the visitor center immediately.

I think the guys could tell that something was up because they started to make their way to the door. But it was too late for them--David, who loves a good adventure--was already on his way. David stopped them just outside the visitor center and asked them what was going on. They started acting really strange and would not cooperate with him. He called in backup from the Springfield PD, and when the Springfield Police pulled up, the guys decided to act like they were going to cooperate. One of the guys gave David a name, but David looked up the name and found that it was not a real person. So David started pressing the guy about who he really was.

Meanwhile, the other guy walked over to the Springfield Police car and proceeded to urinate on the car. Bad idea--especially when there is a group of 7th grade kids standing right there. Before anyone could even blink, the urinator was on the ground in handcuffs and was promptly thrown into the back of the police car. Back to the fake name guy: after seeing his buddy get taken down, he gave David a different name. At least this time it was a real person, but it wasn't him. It was his cousin's name. When David finally got the guy's real name, it turned out there there was a warrant out for his arrest. So, he got to go into the back of another police car. And, they both went off to jail.

Wow--it was crazy. How did they even get tickets to see the house in the first place is what I want to know. So now I have to send a report of the incident to the police and might have to testify at a future court case. At least justice was carried out, and tonight there are two fewer creeps out on the streets of Springfield. Oh, and why did they really get thrown off of their tour? It was because they started making the other people on the tour uncomfortable by arguing with the ranger about Lincoln owning slaves. They were absolutely convinced that Abraham Lincoln owned slaves. Hmmmmm, have they ever read the Emancipation Proclamation or the Thirteenth Amendment? With such inquisitive minds you think they would know stuff like that.

Happy Hollaween

The other night at the Lincoln Home we had a string of Halloween lights hanging on the fence in front of the home. Nobody noticed until later in the evening, but instead of "Halloween," the lights said "Hollaween." :-) But anyway, we hope everyone had a Happy Halloween. We had a fun Halloween here in Illinois. Our friends David and Teal came up to Athens, then we all went on a ghost hunting adventure! David and Teal have a cool infrared camera specifically designed for taking photos of paranormal things. David also has a metal detector, so we wanted to find a place to go where we could use both instruments. I did some research and found out about the Old Union Cemetery located in The Middle of Nowhere, Illinois. It is a really remote cemetery which is supposedly very haunted. And, supposedly an old church foundation was located near the cemetery--a good spot for metal detecting. I was afraid that we wouldn't be able to find the cemetery, but we did! The headstone pictured above sits next to where Amos Ferris is buried. I found an old article about him that said he killed himself because his girlfriend didn't want to marry him. Nobody found his body for four months--yikes. So we thought that this would be a likely-haunted spot, but we didn't pick up anything abnormal with the cameras.

And this headstone belongs to the founder of the church that once stood near the cemetery. His name was Hughes BOWLES! The cemetery was full of Bowles, but we don't know if we're related to any of them. There wer a lot of old, broken headstones in the cemetery. I read that the last burial in the cemetery was in 1924, but we found a headstone from 1947, so that was kind of weird.

It was a very spooky cemetery--especially with the Halloween moon. We searched and searched around the outskirts of the cemetery but couldn't find the rumored church foundation. We still had fun using the metal detector outside the cemetery and found a number of vintage beer cans and shotgun shells.

We also didn't find anything really noticeable in the pictures. In fact, all I captured with my camera was this one orb (which you can see a little better in the negative version of the photo). We haven't seen David and Teal's photos yet, but they said they didn't capture anything on the infrared camera either. It was still a very fun and Halloweenish evening though. We all had a yummy dinner at the Boar's Nest before going to Greg's funeral home to try once again at some ghostly photos. David and Teal did get one interesting photo there, but we decided that the anomaly in the photo might have been caused by light reflecting off of the lens. It was a very fun ghost hunting evening!