Service Church, 1790

This is the historic Service United Presbyterian Church, founded in 1790.  Service Church is located in southern Beaver County.  In 1794, a Presbyterian seminary was created at Service Church, under the auspices of a scholarly-but-socially-awkward Scotsman, the Rev. Dr. John Anderson...who is buried in the adjacent cemetery.  The institution that Dr. Anderson founded is still in existence on Highland Avenue in Pittsburgh.  Don't tell Princeton, but Pittsburgh Theological Seminary is the oldest Presbyterian divinity school in the United States, and arguably the third oldest seminary of any denomination on the continent (outside Mexico).  

The cemetery at Service Church is a favorite with ghost chasers.  Some of the graves here date back to the last decade of the 1700s.  Veterans of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War are buried here, as are some fairly well known figures in Western Pennsylvania religious history.  Modern lovers of the "paranormal" claim to experience every kind of ghost and mysterious presence here: absurd animals, hooded figures, a silent "watcher in the woods."  

I don't mean to sound judgmental, but I suspect that anyone who senses a ghostly presence in this place is merely a noisome soul who doesn't know what to make of silence.  There's a deep and sacred hush here, and many people don't know how to interpret an absence of busyness and clamor.  Far from the eeriness described by many lovers of the paranormal, I felt an intense peace in this place, almost a reverent calm that spoke of holy things.  It was similar to the feeling I've experienced on old battlefields and in the cathedrals of Europe.  Early in the 20th century, Rudolph Otto studied the phenomenon of "daemonic dread," and he called it the most primitive precursor of religious feeling.  Now, it's true that some religious feeling can be downright creepy.  The trances, the glossolalia, the ecstatic utterances of the mystic or Pentecostal.  These religious states can be found on the outer fringes of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.  But I suspect the seeming creepiness at Service Church is merely the "daemonic dread" that descends on noisy souls who find themselves in a profoundly silent place.