As Halloween draws near, we’re diving into the world of the paranormal with an investigation into Little Rock’s Natural Resources area.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – The home of the Arkansas State Crime Lab is bound to have a few spirits lingering around, but Sweet N Sour Paranormal uncovered the stories buried below the surface.

A full moon shined down on the Arkansas State Crime Lab, the home of investigations into unexpected deaths across the state, just as Sweet N Sour Paranormal began their investigation into what or who could be hiding around the corner.

The paranormal hunters were called by a family who lives in a home that backs up to the crime lab after they experienced a few things that could not be explained.

“That’s where I was when I saw the bottle of cleaner, it had been on the counter against the backsplash. I looked up and it’s sitting upright in the middle of the kitchen floor,” the homeowner, who wanted to remain anonymous, said.

It didn’t take long for the spirit seekers to start experiencing the supernatural themselves. Early on, Michelle Martindill said she saw a ghost outside. Inside the home, the hunters saw a figure of someone on a tool called an SLS device, which they say picks up humans and those that can’t be seen.

Martindill calls herself the clairvoyant of the group and said the spirits just want to share their stories. While some of those tales can be traced back to the crime lab, others were buried underground before the buildings ever existed.

Before crimes were solved there, it was a home for the troubled

The property housing the lab has had a somewhat nefarious past, opening its doors off Markham in 1883 as the Arkansas Lunatic Asylum.

“Into that mix, you also throw folks who were suffering from addiction. You had drug addicts, alcoholics,” State Historian David Ware said.

Ware said mental health care was held to the same standards as today, meaning the asylum was constantly overcrowded.

“When you have hundreds of people confined, you’re going to have deaths,” Ware said. “Of course, they were simply buried on the grounds.”

As the asylum expanded and became the Arkansas State Hospital of Nervous Diseases and then just the Arkansas State Hospital, those bodies needed to move.

“At some point in the 20th century, most of the graves were relocated to a site further out Markham street,” Ware said.

That site is now known as the Natural Resources area.

“Something like 4,000 burials were relocated out to that area,” Ware said.

By the 1970’s it was growing rapidly and again the graves needed to move.

“But approximately 1500 to 2,000 burials were left in place,” Ware said.

Walking through the grass, some markers remain.

As Sweet N Sour finished their investigation, they left the family with a better understanding of the souls lingering in the shadows.