In summer of 1995 I took Leigh (then an acquaintance) on a late night excursion to the Todd-Merryman Cemetery in the Loch Raven reservoir area of Towson, Maryland. I went hoping to record E.V.P (disembodied voices). I had done this twice before but with no success. Leigh came along because she likes cemeteries. I think this (plus a few other things) explain how we ended up married four months afterwards.

As you can see from these pictures, many others have visited this place and were not very respectful of the remains of the Merryman family. The grave of the Reverend had been dug up and his body stolen sometime around 1987. All of the taller stones had been toppled from their bases, the smaller ones defaced, and trash was strewn about. If any dead people had reason to complain to the living, I'd imagine it would be these.

The few monuments not uprooted from the ground had been chipped and defaced. Even the footstones had been smashed. Judging from the number of beer cans in the grass I'd guess that this is a favorite spot of the local teens. The cemetery is about a half an hour's hike into the woods surrounding the reservoir, so it is very secluded. One could do almost anything there and not be seen. While we were traipsing about in the dark, looking for ghosts something much more sinister was happening, unbeknownst to us.

We hiked out to the center of the small graveyard and got a good look around. Previously I had placed the recording equipment on the base of this toppled center monument. In all prior attempts at this I have never gotten anything on tape. Nothing unusual showed up on the photos either. The only thing we ended up with were some wild strawberries that we picked from the graves.

The excursion proved uneventful until the next night when it was announced on the news that two people had been murdered and left in the reservoir. I have no idea how close we were to the murder site, but I'm glad we didn't finish our cemetery trip with a residency there. I didn't find any ghosts but I am happy I did find my wife.