Beale AFB German POW Camp Haunting Investigation

Now, let’s move up to Sunday. 7pm, I arrive to the Countess’ home. Yep, I’m talking about Countess Shannon McCabe. Rolling in was Tim Hawkins in his VW Golf he calls the ‘Blue Orb’. I look at Tim, I look at Shannon and tell them both, we are not rolling in Shannon’s Ectoplasma Mobile and we”re not rolling in Tim’s Blue Orb, we’re rolling in the Ghost Tracer, my car. Shannon looks around for another team member. Jennifer Baca was missing. I told Shannon that Jennifer has fallen ill and won’t make this investigation. She is disappointed that she got sick, but I promised I would keep her appraised of our investigation. Tim and Shannon with their cases filled with equipment pile in my car and we head up I-5 North towards Marysville/Yuba City to meet up with Randy McCuddy, who is in the Air Force and his wife Alexis McCuddy. They brief us about the haunting activity at the former Camp Beale POW Camp that held German and Japanese prisoners of war. At one time this camp held 1000 prisoners. The POWs would provide agriculture labor to the nearby farmers. For recreation the POWs played soccer. There was tragedy at these POW camps. There were suicides and there was retribution by other POWs, In 1944, the POWs did other side jobs like mending clothing. In 1946 the camp closed. The POW cemetery was moved from Beale AFB to a site in San Bruno. Randy in his Mustang Cobra leads us to the base, Beale AFB. We check in with the guards, they take our identification and they take my registration to my vehicle and my insurance information. I guess they were checking that we weren’t Al Queda. The security guards were looking me over and looking over my documentation real carefully. Since, I can pass as an Italian, as a Mexican or someone from the Middle East, due to my olive dark complexion, I started feeling nervous. I started hearing the theme song to Midnight Express and at any time I would have machine guns pointed to my head, as my arms are being raised over my head. Finally with a sigh of relief, they gave me my passes to enter the base. The Midnight Express song started to fade away as I re-entered my vehicle and got the go-ahead to move on.

We didn’t see any paranormal activity with our own eyes, but we did manage to see a ton of black birds hanging around one particular tree, some bats flying in and out of the POW camp and of course some rabbits. We ended the investigatin at the POW camp and stopped over by some reconnaissance aircraft and took some pictures by the aircraft. Randy lead us out towards Marysville and Yuba City. He took us to places that may be haunted, or the local people say that these places are haunted. We arrived at the abandoned Marysville Hotel, built in 1872 and took some pictures. We checked out the abandoned State Theatre and took more photos. There were not findings at either location. Our final stop was the Yuba City cemetery. We captured some orb activity at the cemetery and one orb was a bright red in color. It seems like I get a lot of red orb shots at cemeteries for some reason or another. After this long night, we took off and headed back to Sacramento. Shannon needed something to perk her up, so she started playing ‘Chase Me – Confunkshun, Bodytalk – The Deele, Make That Move – Shalimar, Good Times – Chic, I’m Every Woman – Chaka Khan, Theme from Shaft – Isaac Hayes, Superfly and Pusherman by Curtis Mayfield, Double Dutch Bus by Frankie Smith.’ Before I knew it Shannon was rocking out in my car. Then Shan looks at me and said…’Paul, I don’t believe you were ever a dancer!’ I have told Shannon I used to be a professional dancer with Jeff Kutache’s Dancing Machine in Lake Tahoe and that at one time we were the first number for Cher in 1979, when she went solo. Shannon scoffed. I told Shannon that I was the 3rd and 5th Disco King of Sacramento and won dance contests that were judged by Wolfman Jack and Monterock III (who played the DJ in the movie Saturday Night Fever with John Travolta). More scoffing. I then got so irritated that she was debunking my claims of dancing, I pulled the car over and turned the bright lights on myself and Shan threw on Meeting in the Ladie’s Room. I did some freelance dancing on the side of the road, while Shan video taped it and said that this made her whole night. Tim clapped enthusiastically. Yep, I still know my dance moves, don’t ever call me out Shan! You’re talking to the former disco king of Sacramento! This ended our evening and our investigation of Beale AFB.

Findings:
No EVPs recorded. While we had some interesting responses during the dowsing sessions, we were able to debunk some of the information given.

Conclusions:
This place certainly is an interesting part of history. Whether it is haunted or not is inconclusive just based on what we gathered on this evening. Our host was scratched or burned by something that we can not explain, and some of us felt some strange energies around the cellblock. The dowsing sessions repeatedly identified energies in a particular area, but when it came to answering questions, the rods moved slowly at times, and we were able to debunk some of the information given. It would seem that with such conditions and tragedy surrounding an area, that there would be some haunting activity. While we didn’t gather conclusive evidence on this particular night, this would certainly be an interesting place to re-visit.

Paul Dale Roberts,
Jazma Freelance Writer
H.P.I. Ghostwriter/Paranormal Investigator
www.jazmaonline.com
[email protected]