A team of paranormal investigators who visited Fremont’s Barnard Park on the night of Saturday, July 29, allege that they caught on camera an otherworldly spirit walking by the park’s bathroom building.
The Rev. Dave Christensen and his team of three other paranormal detectives were at Barnard Park on Saturday for their third visit in five weeks, having previously investigated the claimed-to-be haunted park in late June and also on July 22.
Barnard Park, located off Military Avenue at the intersection of Clarkson Street, has long had a reputation as being haunted. The land the park sits on was a cemetery in the earliest days of Fremont’s existence in the 1860s and 1870s, however the deceased that were buried there were exhumed and relocated to what is now Ridge Cemetery as the town grew larger and more residents arrived.
The local legend surrounding the allegedly haunted park centers on the claims that five to eight bodies of the dead were not recovered and moved, and the spirits or ghosts of those former residents are who now patrol the park in the dark of the night.
Those spooky suspicions were what drew 28-year ghost detective and founder of Phantasm Paranormal, the Rev. Dave Christensen, to the park with his trusty detectives of deceased debauchery.
The four-member team, which comprises only a portion of the Phantasm Paranormal ghost-hunting operation, claimed they struck the jackpot again on July 29, catching an alleged unknown spirit on camera adjacent to the park’s public restroom.
“Here is a picture from Saturday night that will blow your mind,” Christensen stated in an email sent to the Tribune after his efforts on Saturday.
The presence of the alleged ghost on July 29 came five weeks after Christensen and his team claim that a spirit talked to the paranormal detectives via what’s called an “electric voice phenomenon recording,” during their visit to the park on June 24.
Leslie Christensen, Dave’s wife, was present again with her husband on July 29. She explained what the team experienced a week earlier — on July 22 — claiming that the team’s high-tech digital cameras caught a male ghost on film, an apparition that nobody saw until they watched the video of the evening later at home.
“We set the static camera facing (southeast) toward the entrance of the park … it caught a spirit walking into the park. It disappeared as it walked toward us,” Leslie said. “It looked like a man in the camera. We didn’t see it visually, but the camera picked it up. I was very surprised to see it, I was like, ‘wow.’”
On the latest Saturday visit, Dave Christensen arrived at the park at about 8:45 p.m. Saturday and immediately began setting up his high-tech camera systems as well as an enhanced microphone which recorded — he said — sounds and possible voices not able to be heard by human ears.
Toking off a cigarette and wearing his trademark “FBI” logo baseball cap, Dave diligently set up digital cameras and tiny lighted balls around the park. The lighted balls, he explained, only glow when something touches them. Because he strategically places them in spots where nobody is present, when they begin to glow — he claimed — that signals a ghost is with them.
“You have to gain their trust,” he said, explaining the secret to connecting with the ghosts.
“That is the hard part. When we tell them, ‘We know you’re here,’ it kind of throws them off, like, they think, ‘how do you know we’re here. You can’t see us,’” Dave said of the potential spirits and ghosts he meets on his adventures.
A 28-year veteran of spiritual sleuthing, Dave said his most memorable experience with the dead came during an exploration of a haunted house in Kansas.
“We ran across a woman down in Atchison, Kansas, and she was on the second floor and had a white nightgown on. When you enlarge the picture, you can see through her,” he said.
Dave said the reason he and his team showed up in Fremont was because of the reputation Barnard Park has as being extremely haunted.
“I heard it used to be a cemetery, and they were going to build houses here, but people said, ‘No, we’re not building here,’” he said of the park’s history. “Neighbors have been reporting seeing strange things over here, and that is what brought us in. The first visit (June 24) was better than the second one.”
Also present on Saturday were Dave and Leslie’s daughter-in-law, Angela McIntosh, and grandson, Will Ferguson, making for three generations of ghost hunters on the prowl for paranormal personalities.
Ferguson was armed with a fancy, and expensive, super-sensitive microphone, which he had attached via Bluetooth to his cell phone. On his phone is an app that deciphers and shows the sounds that the microphone is picking up which human ears cannot detect.
After only a few minutes of the microphone being activated, Ferguson expressed amazement at the digital display, which showed some sort of sounds being detected.
“One of them is talking,” Ferguson said of the readings on his cell phone app.
Dave said his passion for connecting with the otherworldly spirits and ghosts of deceased people has helped him communicate with his parents and ex-wife, all three of whom died decades ago.
“I’ve been able to talk to my mom and dad, who both passed away in my early 20s. I’ve been able to communicate with my ex-wife, who died seven years after we were married,” Dave explained. “I help people communicate with deceased loved ones … I teach them how to do it.”
To check out the team’s discoveries and read their full report on the three visits to Barnard Park, visit https://www.phantasm-paranormal.com and click on Barnard Park entry. The team welcomes new members, and a form for interested paranormal detectives is available on the website.
A team of paranormal investigators who visited Fremont’s Barnard Park for the third time on the night of Saturday, July 29, allege that they caught on camera an otherworldly spirit walking by the park’s bathroom building. The Rev. Dave Christensen sets up his high-tech digital camera system which is used to film the spirits he locates.
The Rev. Dave Christensen, a ghost hunter with Phantasm Paranormal, provided this image to the Tribune on Sunday, July 30. Christensen claims the shadow apparition inside the circle he created is the ghost of one of the alleged spirits that haunt Barnard Park in Fremont. Christensen and his team were at the park for the third time in five weeks on Saturday night, July 29.
Will Ferguson, left, and Angela McIntosh, right, are team members of Phantasm Paranormal investigators. Both were on hand on Saturday, July 29, in Barnard Park in Fremont as lead ghost hunter, The Rev. Dave Christensen, spearheaded the search for otherworldly spirits that allegedly haunt the city park.