Here we are at the start of a barrage of ill fated trips. Nothing bad happened to us, but nothing happened to make for a memorable trip either. I got a wild spontaneous hair to load up with my wife and head out for my old home town of Florence, Alabama to visit some of the old haunts that I would often visit and one that I had never heard anything about. I am talking about ghost bridge, the forks of cypress plantation and the Cloverdale lights. Ghost bridge and the forks of cypress were the well known ones,but the cloverdale lights I had never heard a thing about. I do my internet homework before we depart and find all the info I need on the cloverdale lights and the other two I know like the back of my hand, but I print things out for Linda to read about the locations to bring her up to speed on them and we head out. The first day we get into town late, so we got something to eat and went to the location of the lights. We drove up and down that road for hours and sat all over every inch along the shoulder of the road and saw nothing. We went to the flea bag hotel on florence blvd. and got rest for the next day. We head out the next day and went to check out the surroundings at the forks of cypress and the bridge and found disturbing information. Contrary to what you find on the internet, and contrary to the past, we were not going to either of these after dark. They are both on posted private property. Being out of luck on both of our cool adventures, we made one more visit to the site of the lights and turned up nothing once again other than strange looks from the locals. In our opinion the cloverdale lights is a bunch of bunk, not worth the waste of time.
 As for the Forks and ghost bridge, I can only say that back in the day when you could still drive across the bridge I never had any personal experiences. I made lots of trips to it and never had one thing happen. The Forks I have never had the honor of exploring. Maybe some time in the future.
     

Greetings everyone!
 It has been an event filled 2009 and from us at PORT, Welcome to 2010!
 There haven't been very many updates toward the end of '09 due to dead end after dead end. Not having much good to talk about, we chose to not update at all. We will, in the coming months, publish all those nasty stories but for now we would like to focus on the positive and the year to come.
 PORT staff

               THE SPRINGVILLA MANSION
               
The Springvilla mansion is a location rich in history as well as being VERY haunted. There is no question about this place, it is for real. We have been to it twice and while we got no evidence with photos or video the personal experiences and EVP's are all we needed to deem this one as being haunted.
 To start, we would like to thank the Opelika parks and recreation department for granting us permission to investigate there. As well as the ALABAMA PARANORMAL RESEARCH TEAM, which you should all check out there site, for all the hard work they have done to help us get in the Springvilla Mansion. Thank you Faith and team we couldn't have done it with out you guys.
 For the story on the Springvilla mansion please see the APRT page. They have done a lot of research on the history of the location and can tell the story better than I.
 Upon entering the house we felt a creepy feeling that we don't normally feel at the locations that we go to so we thought that we would have luck here and we did.
 We spent several hours here snapping photos, shooting video and capturing audio. At the time we had only one night vision cam and we had it on the stairwell. Linda and I where walking around the house when we were drawn to a small closet that was at one time a bathroom. The room felt really weird as if someone was hiding in it. As I am rolling audio Linda started saying something that I was, at the time, oblivious to. As I step out of the small room I hear that she is saying "close the door more". When I turn and look at the door I just exited from the door is moving. I mean it is moving allot, visibly in the dark! There is no window behind the door and it has to be pulled up on to be able to move it. The floor is gouged from the movement of this door. But we didn't get evidence of this. Here is a pic of the door. To say we were bummed out about not getting video of this is a big understatement. But when we got home the audio files made it a better day. It seems like while I was in this closet that I was not alone as the first EVP captured is heard to be saying to me" come alone" and this was right before the door started moving. Here is that audio file:EVP#1
 The second evp was what sounded like the same male voice only it was captured in the stairwell as I was going down the stairs. Linda had been having strange temperature fluctuations downstairs. She had been asking that"if anyone is here can you lower the temp in this room". The infrared thermometer was going down 5 degrees at a time. She told me of this on the walkies and I proceeded to the stairwell where this EVP was captured. It sounds like the voice is saying,"I'm cold" as it passes me in the stairwell.EVP#2
 We hope to return to Springvilla Mansion soon and hope that this case file will spark interest in a really cool place that needs help from you and I to remain a treasure of the past.

                             





                              
                      China Grove Cemetery
The China Grove Cemetery was a place we had seen on another groups web page and it was close to home. So, we headed out with our equipment.
 We arrived during the day and did our walk around. We photographed the entire cemetery from outside the fence so we could see all the tombstones and there exact locations. The first odd thing that we noticed was an outhouse in the back of the fence of the cemetery. It has no hole, it just drops to the concrete pad that it sits on.
 There are stories of a dark figure that lurks around in front of the outhouse at night, and of an evil feeling inside the cemetery itself. This is what we came to here in hopes of finding.
  We went back much later that night. Upon entering the cemetery we felt no heavy or evil feeling any where just peace and calm. The dark figure that is spoken of was thought to be seen a time or two but it was a dark tombstone that sits oddly in front of the outhouse that causes this effect. I know some are not going to want to hear that, but we looked at the day time pix for confirmation of this. We did have some luck however and we thought an answer to the haunting. As we were doing the investigation Linda kept seeing small flashes of light with her naked eye. There were only two of us and we were side by side and neither one of us were using any form of illumination, not for video or stills. So, she started snapping frames with NO flash. Here are the thumbnails for the resulting photos there are 7 here:

 So, after getting back home and looking at the stills and seeing these we had come to the conclusion that these were plasma flares. A plasma flare is much like the spark that comes from a piezoelectric lighter. The ones that click, not the one with a flint wheel. This happens when you have quartz crystal that are under stress and a dry humidity. We saw quartz and limestone, which others have commented on, and the humidity was at 43%. No doubt that these were plasma flares. To back this theory up we returned when it was 60% and photographed no flares. We thought that was the end of the story until I was looking at the day time pix to find a good one for this write up and discovered what appeared to be a ghost of a woman close to the outhouse. Here is the thumbnail for that one: 
  And then I saw this other picture in which Linda and myself can see 4 to 5 children of various ages looking at us from outside the fence at the back of the cemetery. Two are VERY easy to see. The first one on the left appears to be wearing a dark hat and the one in the middle looks like his eyes are just above fence level. Here is the thumbnail for that one:  
 So, in closing we know we have plasma flares at this location and as far as the other photos we are going to leave that one up to you to decide. We try to keep an open mind and present the evidence as it is. We feel we have done that in this case and in our opinion this cemetery IS haunted. Please leave us feed back on this blog and the photos to let us know your opinion.

                                                         
LOVE LADY'S BRIDGE IS A STORY THAT WE DIDN'T HAVE MUCH FAITH IN GOING INTO IT. YOU KNOW THE BRIDGE THAT EVERY TOWN ACROSS AMERICA SEEMS TO HAVE. WE WERE BORED ONE NIGHT AND MADE THE CALL TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE AND GO CHECK IT OUT REAL QUICK. WE ARRIVED AND ARMED WITH STORIES OF ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT FAILING WHILE ON THE BRIDGE IT SEEMED LIKE A QUICK AND EASY RECON MISSION. wE GET OUT WALK THE BRIDGE AND ALL OF OUR EQUIPMENT IS IN GOOD WORKING ORDER AND NO BATTERY DRAIN. WE REACH THE OTHER SIDE, TURN AND START BACK. MID WAY OF THE BRIDGE I STOP AND ASK IF ANYONE WANTED TO SPEAK OR COULD THEY MAKE A SOUND. AT THAT TIME I HEAR A FAINT KNOCK ON METAL UNDER THE BRIDGE. I THEN ASK IF IT COULD KNOCK AGAIN AND THEN I HEAR A LOUD BANG RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. THIS PART IS WHAT YOU CAN SEE ON THE VIDEO BELOW. AFTER THIS WE THINK WE NEED TO SPEND MORE TIME ON DOING A GOOD INVESTIGATION OF THIS BRIDGE. MORE TO COME........................... 
 
                                                                       

Download | Duration: 00:00:02

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               The Pickens County Courthouse
              
Since I was a child I had heard about the face in the courthouse window. I had been by it when I was young and saw the vision from the backseat of the car.
 So the PORT team went to Carrollton, Alabama to see if it was still there and if we could get in to do an investigation. We got there, got out and walked across the street to start shotting pictures and there it was. Right in front of us, we could see the arrow pointing to the pane of glass where the face was. We shot our pictures from many different angles and the face is visible from all of them.
                                                      

                                        
So after that we submitted a request to investigate and are currently awaiting an invitation.
 As far as "is it haunted or not" we can not say until after a complete investigation. There is something odd on or in the window but that is all we know at this time.
 For more information on the Pickens County Courthouse check out the WIKI page on it here: Pickens County Courthouse