Just outside of the city of Jamestown is a small cemetery in which rests about twenty-five graves. There is nothing great or even remarkable about this final resting place last used about 1890. It has sat for over a hundred years watching time pass and along the way certain stories have cropped about around this little plot of land called Hollenbeck Cemetery. The www.shadowlands.net states that sightings of a headless horseman, of animal bones, calls for help, babies crying, and even of a strange knocking like someone trying to escape their ghastly tomb have all taken place over the years. What they do not mention is the sightings of strange hovering balls of light within the cemetery and the odd disappearance of most of the tombstones in July 1995. Placed in the middle of the cemetery is a memorial dedicated to those laid to rest beneath the earth.
It states:
MEMORIAL PLACED BY THE TOWNSHIP OF ELLICOTT
ON FEB 8, 1996 TO REPLACE THE ORIGINAL 19TH CENTURY
GRAVESTONES THAT WERE STOLEN JULY 1995
The odds are vandals desecrated the tombstones but what of the other occurrences? What of the sighting of a ghostly woman in white around and in the cemetery itself. When you read the message at the bottom of the memorial it makes you wonder are we alone in this world and if not what awaits us on the other side?
As you are now so once was I
As I am now so you will be
Prepare to die and follow me.
I went to the Hollenbeck once , but it was during the day, and I felt a sadness, which was very strong. I am sensitive where I can go into a place and feel if it is haunted or not. Sometimes I get this just walking through the front door, sometimes its certain rooms. I did live in the Hollenbeck family house for a year or so in Fluvanna. A few strange occurances happened there. I would be in the house alone, in an upstaires bedroom, and hear talking coming from downstaires. I would think it was my then boyfriend and our friend M____ talking, that they came in and I didn’t hear them. So I would walk down the staires, and as soon as my foot hit the bottom step, it got dead quiet. I walked out in the kitchen where the talking was coming from and nobody was there, nobody was in the house but me. This occurance happened more then once, and I got so I quit going downstaires to investigate the voices. Everytime I hear it though, it sounded like people having a conversation, but it was so faint you could not make out what was being said. This also happened to the guy who moved there after we moved out.
D.
Story submitted by a reader on Sept 2010
My wife and I checked out Hollenbeck cemetery this afternoon. (In the effort of full disclosure, I knew nothing of this site, or the myths surrounding this cemetery. I went to test out a newly purchased film camera.) My wife was using a digital camera, I was using 35mm film. In one picture my wife took while I was taking a snap of one of the few remaining headstones, my head is obscured by a white fore-ground, in that fore-ground the number 16 is clearly visible. In a shot seconds prior to this one, I show up clear as day. Subsequent shots of the area show no white area.
Tonight we are going back, so we can eliminate the possibility that it just a matter of contrast, or reflection. I plan to bring our digital recorder, and place it on the memorial stone that the town put up after the headstones were stolen. We saw many strange things in her digital pics, but the only one I cannot discount as sunlight/shadow, or contrast issues is the number 16. (disclaimer, I am not a ghost hunter, and can explain most things as shadows, or imagination,) I am intrigued, and have marked the calendar for 16 days, and 16 weeks, so we’ll see if there is any meaning.I’ll let you know if we see or hear anything tonight.