My father spent a long period in his early adulthood working in television. I often learn new and unexpected things about this trip. I recently learned about his encounter with this “Cemetery of Communication” during his work and travel.

Tell me about your encounter: “I was doing a reality show special called Life Hereafter and they said that there was this Irish cemetery in Pasadena somewhere that was filled up and closed off. No one had been buried there for years. There was this theory that there were frequencies we can’t hear that dead people talk on. Sounded ridiculous, but we went because it had to be this cemetery. We thought it was going to be complete garbage. He had a machine that adjusted the frequency of radio signals, a pure radio receiver with a much wider band of frequencies. We had to check it out. THe guy from CBS was there to verify it, but we thought it was another b******* story. So we go out there, I wanted to go at night, but we had to go during the day. The guy turns up his machine and it’s hooked up to our system, but we don’t hear a thing. He keeps adjusting the machine, and we’re trying to figure out how to save the piece, but we suddenly hear a sound. We hear a shrill whisper. We realized we were in the wrong spot. We moved to the newer side, and we start hearing people talking Irish. We don’t know what they’re talking about. If the guy was faking, they’d be speaking English with an Irish accent. The guys walking around with the microphone, and he found some kid who died as a teenager and it was silent (he’d obviously done this before) and his sister was buried three or four rows down and she’s talking and suddenly, her brother says, “I’m looking for me stone.” The host of the thing starts talking to the ghost of the boy, who reveals everything that’s written on the gravestone (his name, birthdate, etc.). He’s asked what it’s like to be dead, and he says he didn’t know he was dead. After about 20 minutes, everything stopped. We went back and we looked and checked the tape, and there was NOTHING on it. We always tail-check after we stop the tape to make sure we recorded anything, and all the logs were there, but all the audio was gone and the video was milky. Very strange. So they took volunteers to go back a second time-none of us went-and they got nothing the second time. They had the guy on the show and the host explained it, and we got hundreds of phone calls from Irish people who said they knew about ghosts and knew exactly what he was talking about. They used to bend metal a certain way to get the correct frequency.”

What’s your opinion of this story?: “One of two things happened: it’s very possible the guy set us up somehow in some technical way we couldn’t figure out, because it was so resolute and and distant enough to be freaky (it was really freaky to hear the boy question his death). The video crew was mine, I had stuff on the tape, everything got wiped, maybe they used a magnet, which can jumble up the picture and get rid of the audio. I can make a valid claim for any of the false things, but I can just tell you that, if you do enough of these shows, you get something extraordinary. This was a really old cemetery-old markers that were huge everywhere-and it was all Irishmen, and I don’t know. Very few people went to this place anymore. Very, very lonely, run-down kind of place, and it had the feeling when you went in that there was something going on there. I’ve shot in graveyards, but this one was really eerie. It was alive with stuff, I can’t explain it.”

My opinion: This is a really, really weird story, and I’d love to track down the special and visit the cemetery. In my opinion, this is a very realistic, “only people who were there completely get it” kind of story, and I’m super-curious.

My sister was super-curious, too, and she researched and discovered a long tradition of Irish communication with ghosts. Go figure.

I decided to ask members of my family to volunteer the story of our family’s ghost. There is a lot of controversy within the family about the use of the term “ghost”; nonetheless, several people came forward and offered to share their experiences. My mother agreed to participate first, and this is her account of our family ghost.

Tell me about your encounter: “My mother was an avid listener to talk radio. She enjoyed listening to the radio because, at a certain stage in her life, she lost her vision and was unable to see, so she focused all her spare time and energy on listening to the radio. She was such a lover of listening to the radio that, upon her passing, we decided the one personal item we would include in her casket was her radio. I didn’t think much about it for a while after she passed away, but then one day, I went to my brother’s home, which is where she lived immediately before passing. While alone in the kitchen at my brother’s house, I heard people speaking. I knew that I was alone in the home, so I couldn’t understand why I heard people speak. I walked through the house and tried to figure out why, when I realized I heard talk radio. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. I realized that it came from the speaker where the doorbell was located. That was my first encounter with my mother, which I felt was her ghost coming back to me to let me know that she was there with me.”

What is your opinion of this encounter?: “People gave me logical explanations (radio waves being picked up), but I don’t believe that: I believe it was my mother’s spirit, indicating to me that she was there and doing well and looking out to see that we were well. I don’t always hear the noise, but there are many occasions where I hear it.”

My opinion: This ghost has intrigued me since we first discovered her existence a little over a year ago. My grandmother and I were very close (she was close to all of us, actually), and her death was very sudden (even though she was 92 years old). She initially surfaced when my mother was setting up for the High Holidays, which tended to be my grandmother’s big activity every year. Knowing her obsession with family, I firmly believe that this is my grandmother. After all, given the timing, it makes sense that she’d want to come back and make sure we did the Holidays right, even if she was gone. The sound tends to be programs she enjoyed and tends to surface at family events and special occasions (ie during holiday preparations).