James Dean

My family and I love to go on our family trips (investigations) whenever we can but when the weather doesn't cooperate we stay close to home. Thankfully, we live in Indiana (whoops! Cat's out of the bag on that one!) which is exactly in the middle of everywhere and not without some great haunted places of it's own to check out. On a recent outing, we decided we would see what was going on at the grave site of '50's icon, James Dean.

It was a pretty chilly night a couple of weeks ago but we geared up all ready to go. Our research was done, and boy was there a lot out there from supposedly smelling cigarette smoke and seeing the lit end of one as if someone were smoking, to hearing the revving of an engine and even seeing old James himself leaning on his own stone. It was a perfect night for investigating...chilly but not too cold to slow you down, and very, very clear.

Fairmount Indiana is a very small town (VERY). We drove through it a couple of times and there was a gas station or two, a dollar store but mostly farmhouses. NOW to be fair, we were only driving on the side of town that our GPS system referred us to. For all I know it could be a huge metropolis on the other side of nowhere, but anyway, it was a small town.

The cemetery was good size for small town, situated right next to a corn field full of dead and trampled corn stalks which gave everything a nice ambiance.

We didn't find the grave right away, although there were some small markers pointing to it. Surprisingly there was no monument, no large gravestone, nothing special at all. Just a regular old gravestone. One thing is for certain. Jimmy's still got plenty of fans. There were some dried flowers laid for him and quite a few items that must have been made by his fans. There were rings, key rings, crocheted roses, dog tags, curled ribbons pinned into the ground and so much more. It was nice to see that no one had looted them out.

At any rate, we stayed for sometime. We did not hear any car engine. We did not hear nor see anyone other than ourselves in the graveyard, but as we watched and waited in the cold, dark night, the faintest smell of cigarette smoke passed by us on the wind. Only once, and only faintly. We all looked at each other at the same time, knowing we were surrounded by corn field and the wind wasn't blowing toward us. We all had the same feelings. We'll mark this one down as a positive investigation.

If any of you have visited the site, we'd love to read about your experiences.