Blog Archives

Historic Haunts Investigations

9/4/2014

Historic Haunts Investigations founded by Jamie Roush Pearce in 2004 has conducted investigations in over 15 states. Located in northeast Florida in beautiful Jacksonville (only 30 minutes from St. Augustine, the nation's oldest and possibly most haunted city), Historic Haunts has helped many clients across the U.S. by conducted investigations FREE of charge, analyzing photos, video, and audio records for hundreds of clients.
Pearce not only conducts investigations but has also written three books on the paranormal with a fourth book coming out in Fall of 2014.
You may email them with any of your paranormal questions and they will respond asap and try to help you with your paranormal needs.

9th Annual Ghostly Photo Contest

9/3/2014

Historic Haunts Investigations has held an annual ghostly photo contest early in the year for the last eight years. Well, we are going to have a 2nd contest of 2014 to rearrange the contest time to the Halloween season.
So, this is the 9th annual Historic Haunts Ghostly Photo Contest. The Historic Haunts team led by Jamie Pearce will be choosing the top 3 photos and post the winners on www.historic-haunts.net and the winners will receive full credit for their photos and links to their website (where applicable).
Also, the 1st place winner will receive a ghoulishly great gift. Please send your photos in no later than October 5th and the winners will be announced on October 15th. All photos must be sent to [email protected] and you may send as many as you wish.
Please no CGI or Photo Shopped pictures.

Good luck to all and Ghoulish Greetings!
~Jamie Pearce
Author/Founder Historic Haunts Investigations

The Meaning of Headstones

9/3/2014

Headstones actually do have meanings. Here are a few of the most popular stones that you will see in a cemetery.

Anchor - Steadfast hope
Arch - Rejoined with partner in Heaven
Birds - The soul
Cherub - Divine wisdom or justice
Column - Noble life
Broken column - Early death
Conch shell - Wisdom
Cross, anchor and Bible - Trials, victory and reward
Crown - Reward and glory
Dolphin - Salvation, bearer of souls to Heaven
Dove - Purity, love and Holy Spirit
Evergreen - Eternal life
Garland - Victory over death
Gourds - Deliverance from grief
Hands - A relation or partnership
Heart - Devotion
Horseshoe - Protection against evil
Hourglass - Time and its swift flight
Ivy - Faithfulness, memory, and undying friendship
Lamb - Innocence
Laurel - Victory
Lily - Purity and resurrection
Mermaid - Dualism of Christ - fully God, fully man
Oak - Strength
Olive branch - Forgiveness, and peace
Palms - Martyrdom, or victory over death
Peacock - Eternal life
Poppy - Eternal sleep
Rooster - Awakening, courage and vigilance
Shell - Birth and resurrection
Star of David - The God
Skeleton - Life's brevity
Snake in a circle - Everlasting life in Heaven
Swallow - Motherhood
Broken sword - Life cut short
Crossed swords - Life lost in battle
Torch - Eternal life if upturned, death if extinguished
Tree trunk - The beauty of life
Triangle - Truth, equality and the trinity
Shattered urn - Old age, mourning if draped
Weeping willow - Mourning, grief

Jekyll Island Ghost Ship

9/2/2014

An occurrence that happens often happened to us while on a family vacation. We spent an afternoon on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia. As we were driving over it started to pour something awful. We pulled in to an old house, well over 100 years old that is now a book and antique shop. As we went up to the porch the rain started coming down harder and the thunder and lightning got even worse. As we started roaming from room to room looking at all the cool stuff we learned about it has at one time was a sanatorium.
As we left the antique/book shop we decided to eat at a local restaurant called Blackbeard's which was right on the water. As we were having dinner, another storm rumbled through. Finally the skies started to clear and we decided to walk the beach. My mom and I were looking out at the water and saw what appeared to be an old pirate style ship way off the coast. We could clearly see 3 large masts and it was moving at a slow pace. We turned to tell my father and when we turned back around to look at the ship, it had totally vanished!! There was no way it could have just sailed out of sight. We even got in the car and drove around the island, with no ships to be seen anywhere.
We headed back to the car and decided to play tourist and head for some of the shops. As we looked through one of the shops we heard him talking about what the storms always bring to the island. I went over to him and asked if he had ever heard anyone report a ghost ship? He asked me what we had seen and I recounted the entire story and as I finished it up he took me over to some matted photos they had for sale and said, "Did it look like this?" I said, "Holy crap that is it!" He started telling us that after every storm many people report seeing a ghost ship off the coast in the area we saw it in. He said apparently in the mid 1800s a three massed ship lost its way during a horrible storm and wrecked.
I wondered if this really was its ghost ship?

~Jamie Pearce
Author/Founder of Historic Haunts Investigations

History of the Hearse

9/1/2014

A hearse is a funeral vehicle, a conveyance for the casket from e.g. a church to a cemetery, a similar burial site, or a crematorium. In the funeral trade, they are often called funeral coaches.
Hearses were originally horse-drawn, but silent electric motorized examples that were used in Paris were reported in the pages of Scientific American May 1907 and petrol-driven hearses began to be produced from 1909 in the United States. Motorized hearses became more widely accepted in the 1920s. The vast majority of hearses since then have been based on larger, more powerful car chassis, generally retaining the front end up to and possibly including the front doors but with custom bodywork to the rear to contain the coffin. Some early hearses also served as ambulances. A few cities experimented with funeral trolley cars and/or subway cars to carry both the casket and mourners to cemeteries, but these were not popular.

Hearses of North America and Europe
Normally more luxurious brands of car are used as a base; the vast majority of hearses in the United States are Cadillacs and Lincolns. In Europe, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Opel, Ford and Volvo are common contemporary bases, and in the past, Daimler and even Rolls-Royce limousines were converted, though their cost is generally considered prohibitive.
Cadillac produced what it termed a "commercial chassis". This was a strengthened version of the long-wheelbase Fleetwood limousine frame to carry the extra weight of bodywork, rear deck and cargo. Designed for professional car use, the rear of the Cadillac commercial chassis was considerably lower than the passenger car frame, thereby lowering the rear deck height as well for ease of loading and unloading. They were shipped as incomplete cars to coachbuilders for final assembly. A commercial chassis Cadillac was little more than a complete rolling chassis, front end sheet metal with lighting and trim, dashboard and controls. Rear quarter panels and sometimes the front door shells were shipped with the chassis for use in the finished coachwork. Today, most hearses are made from converted sedans on stretched wheelbases. The fleet division of Ford Motor Company sells a Lincoln Town Car with a special "hearse package" strictly to coach builders. Shipped without rear seat, rear interior trim, rear window or deck-lid, the hearse package also features a heavy-duty suspension, brakes, charging system and tires and was once offered on a modified Ford Expedition SUV chassis with the Triton V10 truck engine. Hearses and other funeral service vehicles are often equipped with light bars and other flashing lights similar to those found in emergency vehicles in order to increase the visibility of the vehicle while in processions.
Since the working life of a hearse is generally one of light duty and short, sedate drives, hearses remain serviceable for a long time; hearses 30 years old or more may still be in service, although some funeral homes replace them at least once a decade. As of 2004[update], a new hearse in the USA usually costs in the range of $40,000 to $65,000.
Two styles of hearse bodywork are common. The older style is the limousine style; these have narrow pillars and lots of glass. These are more popular in the United Kingdom, among others. More popular in the United States is the landau style, with a heavily-padded leather or (later) vinyl roof, and long blind rear quarters, similarly covered, and decorated with large metal S-shaped bars designed to resemble those used to lower the tops on some horse-drawn coaches. It is common practice in the USA for the windows to be curtained, while in the UK the windows are normally left obscured. Hearses resemble station wagons strictly because of the shape of the rear ends of conventional ones.
Until the late 1970s, it was common for hearses in the USA to be combination coaches which also could serve in the ambulance role; these were common in rural areas. Car-based ambulances and combination coaches were unable to meet stricter Federal specifications for such vehicles and were discontinued after 1979.
Due to the costs of owning an expense custom vehicle that sits idle "80 to 90 percent of the week", individual funeral homes reduce costs by renting or utilizing a shared motor pool.

*This information was obtained from Wikipedia*

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