Paranormal Investigators urge visitors to Soules Chapel to respect site

May 28—Last month, a team of paranormal investigators took time away from their weekend to spend time in the old Soules Chapel cemetery — not to hunt for ghosts, but to clean up the overgrown area.

Karen Miles and Sandra Hughes from ParaScience Investigations went out to the remote cemetery with a few pieces of equipment with the aim of mowing the entire area. Hughes said that between them and another gentleman that came out to help, they were able to get most of it in an afternoon's time.

"With just two weed eaters and a push mower, it made it very difficult," Miles said.

But along the way, while picking up branches and trying to set right some of the knocked over headstones, Hughes came across a sunken-in grave that had remnants of burned wood and trash in it — a sign that someone had been using the grave as a fire pit.

Miles also said she had found candles and salt circles in and around the ruins of the old Soules Chapel Church.

It saddened them, they said, that some of the living visitors of the cemetery would treat it so disrespectfully.

Just a few years ago, Soules Chapel was vandalized in a more destructive way, with headstones broken, turned over and, in some cases, spray painted.

Miles said she wanted people to be more respectful to the old cemetery, and to all of the county's other historical or partially abandoned cemeteries.

"It is somebody's resting place," she said. "I hate seeing it the way it is, the destruction that's been going on out there. Those headstones are not cheap, and I hate that the damage is being done, and there's people that have to pay for that. They shouldn't have to replace those as often because somebody wanted to go out there and have fun."

But there's also a more sinister background to some of the vandalism going on out there.

The documented history of the area shows that the original church, called Gragg's Chapel, was dismantled in 1857 when John P. Ridings bought the property.

The cemetery connected to the church is considered to be the oldest Methodist cemetery and the second oldest cemetery in Pulaski County, Miles said.

A new church was built, becoming the oldest Methodist church in the county. It was named after its bishop, Bishop Soules.

Soules was one of the original 13 circuit riding Method pastors for the area, according to Miles' research.

Those pastors would travel to areas that were difficult to people to travel out of or areas where people couldn't access the neighboring town's church, she explained.

Miles said that during the Civil War, Soules Chapel may have been used as a field hospital, although that information isn't certain. However, the battle between the Union and the Confederacy may have caused a rift in the church's congregation. Just as the Civil War was said to be fought "brother against brother," the Union sympathizers were said to have left Soules Chapel and created their own church, Bradley's Chapel, two miles away.

Miles said that Soules Chapel church closed its doors in the 1930's, and the building was damaged in a fire in 1973, but was saved from complete destruction. That is, at least, until another fire on October 21, 2003 burned it down completely.

Now, while the site is popular with paranormal investigators such as ParaScience Investigations who simply take readings and look for phenomenon — like recording Electronic Voice Phenomena, or EVP — it also seems to be growing in popularity with those who are taking a more direct approach in summoning otherworldly entities.

Hence the candles and salt circles found in the ruins of the church, signs that someone may have been trying to call up a spirit, or even a demon.

According to Miles' research, despite rumors of demonic worship among the chapel's original congregation, there was no evidence of that. It was just a normal Methodist Church, she said.

"Seriously, I don't think in the beginning Soules Chapel had any type of haunting to it, but those rumors caused people to go out and start doing things which can bring that in. And they've just really opened it up out there, because you never know what you're going to encounter," Miles said.

And dealing with spirits is nothing to take lightly, she said.

"Anything can happen," she said. "We were at Soules Chapel — this has been several years back — and we were walking through the cemetery, and I got hit in the back. It wasn't something that I expected but it was definitely different. And it makes you rethink things, sometimes. Sometimes, if you get just the EVP or some type of activity, most people are happy with that. But you can get demonic interactions. that's not such a good thing."

As an example, she offered a story of something that happened within her own family. It wasn't here in Pulaski, but in Arizona when Miles first started as an investigator.

A team she went out with had gone on an investigation and brought young children with them, something Miles said is highly frowned upon in paranormal ethics.

One of the kids became violently ill after that, and then Miles' own 16-year-old daughter started to experience problems, such as seeing something "dark" in her room.

One day, Miles was out with someone when she received a phone call from her daughter.

"And she's just screaming. She was in the bathroom saying, 'Mom, I can't get out. Come help me. I cant get out.' The dogs were barking and going crazy. And underneath the dogs were barking I heard this low guttural growl, and I knew it wasn't one of the dogs. I told (the person I was with), we need to go back there right now."

They ended up contacting a Catholic priest to pray over her daughter, because she had picked up some kind of "attachment."

"The priest had warned to watch her for a few days because of the severity of what she had experienced," Miles said.

"...I was able to do a house cleansing and bound it back to where it came from," she said.

It was enough to almost make her take a break from investigating for a while. So why did she continue?

"Because I want answers, just like the next investigator does," she said. "We know there's something more than just life and dying. So we look for those questions to be answered. All the what if's. How they feel and what they see. Who they were. It's always been a really big interest for me."

But it is not something to play around with if you don't know what you're doing, she said. She has been an investigator for 16 years, while Hughes said she has been working about the same amount of time.

The women said they wanted people to know that they are available to do investigations.

"If anybody wants any kind of investigations done, they can contact us at our ParaScience Investigations site on Facebook. We do get those messages, so they can feel free to contact us that way," Miles said.