08 Oct A Spiritual Experience
Often at the end of a cave tour I will have people approach me to tell me how much they enjoyed their time in the cave. Surrounded by the earth, with no sounds from our everyday life they appreciate the way the cave touches their soul. It is a spiritual experience. This month we took those sentiments to a new level.
For years I have heard from several of our guides, and the occasional guest, that they are having a different type of spiritual experience in the cave. They are feeling a presence. Often this leaves them with a sense of uneasiness and dread. I have had guides that refuse to go into the cave alone to clean for this reason. While I have never personally had these experiences, I do appreciate them.
This year I decided it was time to investigate these claims in more depth (pardon the pun). I directed my Cave Manager, Kevin, to contact Black Hills Paranormal Investigations. They are a local team of paranormal enthusiasts that have spent years developing techniques to investigate a large array of mysterious happenings. After a preliminary meeting with Scott, their Case Manager, it was decided the first step would be to bring in the group’s Medium, Danielle.
Danielle, Scott and Kevin spent an evening walking through the cave. I was not able to join them during their tour but was able to catch up with them when they got back to the surface. The energy from the group was palpable. It was obvious they had experienced more than the average tourist. Danielle had sensed not a single entity, but seven separate spirits. She had felt their presence and heard their voices. Even for someone with her years of experience, this was profound for her. It was decided the group would take the next step and do a full investigation of Rushmore Cave.
The group, along with a few of our own staff, headed into the cave late one evening. They brought along several of their investigative tools that would allow them to sense, hear and even see spirits in the cave. I must confess that I am a skeptic and I doubted they would find anything. I was wrong.
While they had several experiences, two stand out. The first happened in the back of Big Room. The group set up an SLS camera. This is the camera that a Kinect gaming system uses. It tracks us by identifying our joints. When the camera was used in the back of the cave, something could be seen entering the area in front of the camera. While it shows up as a stick figure on the monitor, the investigators could see nothing in front of them. It is truly bizarre.
Later, they used a ‘spirit box’ to initiate a conversation with the spirits. This box works with radio waves. The experiment was done 150 feet underground and there was no reason it should have worked at all, but it did. To lend veracity to the experiment it was done in two separate areas by two separate investigators at the same time. One investigator asked the questions, while another investigator in another room listened over the headphones and recorded the responses. The two could not see or hear each other. During this experiment, both male and female voices were heard, and intelligent answers were given to questions. This was the most significant finding for me, because my name was spoken. I was called out by the ghosts in our cave.
By all accounts this was a memorable and important investigation. If you would like to see more of the results, go to the Black Hills Paranormal Investigations page on Facebook and search for Rushmore Cave. If you want to have a chance to experience these things for yourself, stop out and take a tour. We are open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through October.
Story by Tom Hagen, Owner/General Manager