THE EPISODE OF ELIJAH RANDOLPH In April of 1997, I was giving access to the internet at work and at home from my employer. I instantly found a clean, beautiful genealogy channel, and have never left. There are about 150 that come on the channel from all over the world. There are just a hand full that stay on the channel most of the time, and that one of them is me. There was a woman -- she is called Rose and I don't even know her real name, since we use only nicknames on the channel. She is from Oklahoma, but lives in St. Louis, Missouri. She and I have become very good friends, she has a beautiful site on the web site full of roses. One night she said, "I have a friend called mobob that lives in Ohio, that has a relative buried in Stuart, Oklahoma." She wondered if I might be able to go find the grave (since I lived in Oklahoma) and take a picture and send it to him. I was more than happy to help, and did so. I found out the information that the person I was looking for was Elijah Randolph, and only information that mobob had was the death date. They asked me to do this around the middle of June. On the 7th of August, on a very unusually cool, very foggy, raining day for the month of August, which is normally a very hot, dry month for this part southeastern Oklahoma, I left for Stuart, Oklahoma. I live almost due east of Stuart about sixty miles, in Wilburton, Oklahoma. When I was driving through McAlester on highway 270 heading west towards Stuart, I thought "egads, what am I doing?" Here I am alone, on a raining, foggy, horrid day, going to Stuart to find a cemetery and was a stab-in-the-dark on where to look. When I got to Stuart, (I have never been there), I stopped at the Chamber of Commerce to find out there are four cemeteries, one west of town the other south and close to town, and one north of town and one in another town. I choice the one in south of town and I thought, oh well, I have all day. I drove to the where the first one was described to me to be and couldn't find it -- I was out in the middle of nowhere in a very rural countryside. I turned around before a huge hill and went back to town to the post office, and the kind lady gave me directions, and if I had kept going the first time -- the cemetery was on the top of the hill from which I had just turned around. I drove into a beautiful, well-kept cemetery, stopped at the gate and thought ‘I am surely crazy'. Oh, where do I look? I broke the cemetery mentally in my mind into four parts. I drove down through the middle and around to the back up to the middle of one side, stopped the car and got out. Leaving the camera in the car for it was raining; infact the only sounds you could hear was the rain hitting the leaves on the trees and tombstones. Visibility was very poor, the clouds seemed to be right on the cemetery. I walked to center of the cemetery and saw that the old tombstones were mixed with the new tombstones and is funny I felt no despair -- just really can't describe what I felt -- I was not hurrying, just walking looking side to side looking at the names on the stones heading to the center. I turned around to head back to the car to look at another row - a sound went off - the most beautiful Indian chant, not once, nor twice, but several times, and then some..enough for me to turn completely around in a circle, slowly..trying to see where the sound was located. To this day, I cannot mimic the sound. When I looked down, I was standing on the grave of Elijah Randolph. The sound was very beautiful. I can't even began or try to sing the chant I heard, no words, but a beautiful Indian melody. The sounds I couldn't find out where they were coming from, can only describe them as " just where ever you were looking at the time, is where the sound were coming from". I walked back to my car -- not scared -- but very peaceful. I got the camera and my umbrella and walked back to the grave -- took several photos. Did a look around and got in my car and drove back home. All of this took maybe a little over two hours. Like I was guided out of my door to my car, to Stuart, to the cemetery to the grave, and back home again. I thought I would be gone all day, especially when I found out there were four cemeteries in this little town of Stuart, Oklahoma. When I contacted mobob on the internet, I asked him was Elijah a native American. He didn't know. Young Sis on the internet suggested that I put a note on the tombstone of Elijah with name an address of mobob and also my address. My sister and I drove to the cemetery about two weeks later (I wasn't going alone) and put a note on the tombstone and within three week, mobob had a message, several lines of genealogy and a photo of Elijah Randoph, his wife and four of his children. Elijah was not native American, but his second wife was. I wonder -- where did the sounds come from, why was I able to find the grave so fast, why was it a gloomy, foggy day in August when I decided to go find that grave, why did I go alone, ( I would never do that), why, why, why. I do think the spirits that are gone are trying to tell us, here we are -- do help us, if we will only listen, we can hear them, feel them and know that they are there. Is a feeling I hope to never forget -- and I don't think I will. (Note: I never ever believed in ‘ghosts' until this unexplainable incident happened. Cannot describe in actual details the feelings that transpired, but hope it happens again one day. AND, you can believe it or not....) Here is the photos of Elijah and his Native American wife... http://w3.one.net/~tandp/tree/Elijah_Randolph_1853.html And photos of the graves found that that... http://w3.one.net/~tandp/tree/Elijah_pics.htmlhttp://w3.one.net/~tandp/tree/Randolph_hdstns.html