Chestnut Grove Cemetery - Ashtabula Train Disaster of 1896

On Saturday, March 21, 2015, we traveled to Ashtabula, Ohio to the Chestnut Grove Cemetery in order to perform some research and a small investigation.   The reason for selecting this locations, there is a mass burial located here of the victims of the Ashtabula Train Disaster.

The Ashtabula Train Disaster

The Ashtabula River railroad disaster (also called the Ashtabula horror or the Ashtabula Bridge disaster or the Ashtabula train disaster) was a derailment caused by the failure of a bridge over the Ashtabula River about 1,000 feet (300 m) from the railroad station at Ashtabula, in far northeastern Ohio. On December 29, 1876, at about 7:30 pm, two locomotives hauling 11 rail cars of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway carrying 159 passengers plunged into the river in deep snow when the bridge gave way beneath them. The wooden cars were set alight by their heating stoves, but no attempt was made to extinguish the fire. The accident killed 92 people, including the gospel singer and hymn-writer Philip Bliss and his wife, and was the worst rail accident in the U.S. in the 19th century and until the Great Train Wreck of 1918. (Wikipedia)

Our Haunted Travels Experience

Our adventure began trying to locate the cemetery in the first place.   Although it is located close to downtown Ashtabula, it is somewhat off the beaten path down two side roads.   Once we found the cemetery, we then drove up to the top following the signs to the Ashtabula Train disaster monument.

While we were at the monument, we conducted an EVP session and an Ovilus session.   You can find some of the EVPs and Ovilus recordings we captured within the PANICd.com database under the evidence section for this location.

We also took several photographs of the cemetery and one of the photos that was taken during the EVP session shows a small orb in the right hand corner of the photograph.   The photo taken before and after this photos does not show any type of lens contamination, so the fact that this might have been any type of rain or dust on the lens has been debunked.

We also took some pictures of the Collins Mausoleum that is located just feet from the Ashtabula Train Disaster Monument.   We also found it extremely eerie that you can very easily hear the sounds of trains running close by on a continual basis.  We wonder if it is possible that the sounds of the trains going by the cemetery could trigger the paranormal activity and reports that we have found about the location to occur on a regular basis.

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Ashtabula Train Disaster Marker and Audio Memorial

After leaving the cemetery, we headed out on a quest to locate the historical marker and audio memorial for the disaster.    It was reported on the Internet that the location of this marker was only six blocks north of the actual disaster.

The audio marker is located within a memorial garden that is in front of the medical center that was built six years after the disaster when the city realized that they were not properly equipped to deal with another disaster in the future.

The audio recording will explain more details of what was the cause of the train disaster and how it took so long for rescue teams to reach the remote location.   Emergency team as far away as Cleveland, Ohio and Erie Pennsylvania were called in, but by the time they arrived, it was too late.

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