Can a church ‘owned’ by God have spirits roaming?
“Absolutely,” says Robert Rodriguez, a service advisor at Del Rio’s Brown Nissan and once worked inside First United Methodist Church as a painter.
“Not so fast there,” says Rev. John Fluth, former pastor at Del Rio’s First United Methodist Church and a member of MENSA, the organization for those who test out as geniuses.
Rodriguez first became convinced that it was haunted when he was working for Rodriguez Painting after hours remodeling in 2007.
“The piano would go off on the top floor when we were working,” he wrote.
Rev. Fluth, now retired and living in Lufkin said he experienced the same thing. Except, the man of the cloth investigated.
“I heard a piano playing on the upper floor, walked quietly up the stairs and found that someone who was not supposed to be there was playing the piano, I asked them to leave,” Fluth said, and that took care of the “piano-playing ghost” 10 years after Rodriguez had heard it..
However, Fluth doesn’t totally discount that there are things going on with the House of Worship.
“There is a legend that there was an old cemetery that was moved in order to build FUMC Del Rio. When the cemetery was moved, there were a few graves that were left. The legend is that where the current pastor’s office is, there was at least 1 grave left. I found an old map that shows that there was a cemetery there at one time,” Fluth said.
Although he never saw a spirit, never felt something grabbing at his Santa-like beard, there was something off sometimes, maybe due to the fact there could be a body buried six-feet below his chair?
“In the pastor’s office, at times, I felt a sense of great peace, and a sudden coldness,” he wrote.
However, Fluth kind of shrugs over the fact some have concern over a church being on a cemetery.
“Many churches have consecrated burials within their walls and on their grounds, and I have never heard a documented story of ghosts on consecrated ground in churches. Several people told me about the cemetery. Several people told me that the cemetery was consecrated. Nobody ever told me about a ghost in the church,” he said.
However, Rodriguez is sticking to his guns, or in this case, his brushes.
“On the stairs we were working there and you would hear random gasps, but the 2 craziest I have, cause after about a week of working there I decided to record when stuff would start happening, we were on the top seat balcony and I captured an old lady saying ‘siiiiiiiiiii’ clear as day, also in the very lower storage area in the bottom of the church we were getting supplies out of there I was recording myself because I kept hearing stuff moving, I asked if someone was with me and you can hear a bell and a chime and you see an orb float in front clear as day,” Rodriguez wrote.
If you agree with the pastor or the painter, you have to admit, there’s plenty of grounds for at least a good ghost story at one of Del Rio’s oldest churches
