Category: Reviews

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Kickin’ it with the Katherines—the Roswell Ghost Tour, Roswell, Georgia

Katherines (with a “K”), and I suppose Catherines, figure heavily in the Roswell, Georgia Ghost Tour. I recall at least three stories, among many, where the name came up. A friend of mine set up a private tour and our group of thirteen set out on what would become a three hour tour, a three hour tour. The weather did not start getting rough and was absolutely lovely; a cool, autumn evening with the slightest of nips in the air. As a private tour, our guide, Jonathan Crooks, departed from the usual script and provided us with literally masses of information including personal experiences he has had.

Ranked among the top ghost tours in the nation, it’s not difficult to see why. This tour departs from the usual ghost stories and historic lectures regurgitated by bored guides in dreadful costumes with spooky voices. The guides here provide just enough history and tell only stories when they are related to documented paranormal activity at each location. The guide did not attempt to scare the group with gimmicks; the tales of activity did enough by themselves and a few times I had chills up my spine. Even more haunting, at each location, much of the discussed activity was fairly recent and included much that had taken place on previous tours.

The facade of Bulloch Hall. Photo by Lewis Powell IV, all rights reserved.
The well behind Bulloch Hall that is a center for paranormal activity. According to the tour,
a young slave girl may have died here. Photo by Lewis Powell IV, all rights reserved.

The tour met on the square and traveled first down Bulloch Avenue towards the fabled Bulloch Hall, a home that is both important historically and paranormally. The tour walked around the house with the guide pointing out a window where a number of odd photographs had been taken. Behind the house he pointed out a reconstructed slaves quarters and a well which both had paranormal activity connected with them. The tour continued up the street stopping in front of Mimosa Hall where phantom smells were discussed.

The park on Sloan Street where swings sometime swing on their own accord. The tour also pointed out that psychics have seen an African-American man join the tour at this point. One psychic claimed he said, “You white people are crazy!” Photo by Lewis Powell IV, all rights reserved.

We crossed over the square again heading for the “other side of town.” Historically, the other side of the square consisted of the mill village. We walked along Sloan Street all the way to the Founders Cemetery which we visited in the dark. All along Sloan Street there were many reports of activity ranging from swings swinging by themselves in the park to the doors of mailboxes opening one by one up and down the street as a tour group passed by. Houses along the street, particularly the line of brick townhouses, known as The Old Bricks, are known for activity as well as the homes surrounding the cemetery which are most likely built on graves.

Looking towards the grave of Roswell King in the Founders Cemetery. Photo by Lewis Powell IV, all rights reserved.

As we crossed over the square and were waiting to cross busy Atlanta Street, three in our group saw a man standing on the corner opposite us across Sloan Street. One group member described him as a large man, possibly African-American, standing in front of the building with his back to the group. He was hunched over and standing very still. Interestingly, no one else noticed him. I’m sure I looked in the man’s direction and most likely would have noted someone standing there. The guide also saw the guy and said that he thought the man was wearing a blue Union Army-style jacket, though this immediate jump to a Civil War connection bothered me.

The back of the “Creepy House,” a location known for intense energy.
Photo by Lewis Powell IV, all rights reserved.

The tour wound past a law office haunted by a woman who was upset by “the fire in the walls,” known in modern terms as electricity. We were guided into the backyard of the “Creepy House,” an old home with a ghoulish reputation. According to our guide, psychic members of tour groups always sense a number of spirits here including a certain negative energy. It was also here that participants on previous tours have been attacked with one young girl feeling like she had been punched in the stomach and a woman being scratched on her back. Frankly, the house is very creepy, particularly at night. The tour ended at the square with a rundown of the hauntings of many of the buildings there.

Overall, the tour was astounding and incredibly informative. My one complaint was that it was too long, but then again, we had a private tour. The regular tour lasts two hours. The concentration on paranormal activity rather than history and stories, made the tour particularly interesting and his knowledge of and passion for the paranormal was particularly refreshing.

My thanks to my friend Chris who set this up and with his partner was a marvelous host for the evening. Also thanks to Ben who first suggested the tour and all the tour participants who made for a wonderful weekend.

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Blazing Trails Through History and Lore—Review of “Haunted Chattanooga”

Research is a form of trailblazing. There are mountains and unexplored regions of data and information. A researcher combs through this wilderness, marking the trail and finding their way to the most scenic and interesting vistas. In publishing, the researcher is publicizing that trail and permanently marking it for their readers and other researchers to follow. In publishing a book, a researcher is establishing a grand trunk line that many will follow and they enable those other intrepid explorers to blaze their own trails from that.

Chattanooga, Tennessee stretches out before Lookout Mountain along the banks of the Tennessee River. Photo 2077, by Lewis Powell IV, all rights reserved.

When I first started researching the paranormal a few years ago, I was amazed to find that there were many places where authors had blazed few trails. Major Southern cities like Chattanooga, Tennessee; Montgomery, Alabama; Jacksonville, Florida and Columbia, South Carolina, among others, lacked books and in some cases, even basic resources on their ghosts and hauntings. However, that list has recently gotten shorter with Jessica Penot and Amy Petulla’s recently published Haunted Chattanooga. A trail has finally been blazed through Chattanooga, a city whose ghosts had, until recently, not been fully explored in print.

Penot and Petulla are marvelous guides to Chattanooga’s spiritual side. Among the the locations they discuss are places that have been explored elsewhere, but they include quite a few locations that I’ve not seen discussed. They explore Hales Bar Dam which has very recently become a hotspot for paranormal investigation along with the ghosts of the Chattanooga Campus of the University of Tennessee which could be just as much a hotspot. Here the Hunter Museum’s elderly wraith is documented with a singing spirit in the Thurman Cemetery.

The authors have done a good job at plumbing the depths of Chattanooga’s history of hauntings as well. Legends and stories of haunted places that no longer exist are woven in with modern experiences. Stories of the old Hamilton County jail, which no longer exists, rub shoulders with modern hauntings in the Raccoon Mountain Caverns.

Both authors have a marvelously readable and relaxed writing style. This contributes much to the readers’ journey through the text. Overall, Penot and Petulla have carved a wonderful trail to be followed by future researchers into the haunted heart of Chattanooga.

Haunted Chattanooga By Jessica Penot and Amy Petulla is a part of the Haunted America series by History Press, $19.99.

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A Garden of History—Pamela K. Kinney’s Virginia’s Haunted Historic Triangle

Virginia’s Haunted Historic Triangle: Williamsburg, Yorktown, Jamestown, & Other Haunted Locations
Pamela K. Kinney
Schiffer Publishing, 2011

A paranormal researcher and writer is like a gardener. They tend to stories that have been cultivated by others; they add and correct facts; update reports of paranormal activity; and generally maintain stories. They also seek out seeds of information and work to grow these into full stories. If a story isn’t tended it may simply pass into the realm of legend.

Pamela K. Kinney works hard tending the large garden of ghost stories that abounds in Virginia’s Historic Triangle. Her recent book, Virginia’s Haunted Historic Triangle: Williamsburg, Yorktown, Jamestown, & Other Haunted Locations, covers a region that has served as a cradle of the nation, and a burial ground for so many who fought to create and preserve this union. Here are found battlefields and plantations, taverns and churches, historic hotels and Holiday Inns; all replete with a palpable sense of deep history. This is a region where spirits swarm over the land, reminding us of the lives they once lived.

Pamels K. Kinney Virginia’s Haunted Historic Triangle: Williamsburg, Yorktown, Jamestown, & Other Haunted Locations

This spiritually fertile ground has been well tended by other authors from the aristocratic Marguerite DuPont Lee in her Virginia Ghosts (first published in 1930), to the prolific L. B. Taylor, Jr. and his many volume Ghosts of Virginia. Kinney endeavors to tend stories that were first documented by these authors, adding new reports of activity as well as her own impressions and experiences at each of these locations. She covers such notable hauntings as Shirley and Berkeley Plantations, Williamsburg’s Ludwell-Paradise House and Peyton Randolph House, the Yorktown Battlefield, and Fort Monroe.

But Kinney does a good job tending to much lesser known locations as well, including the modern hotels along Richmond Road, Rosewell Plantation, and Bluebird Gap Farm. I was particularly impressed by her chapter on the Crawford Road Bridge in York County. It’s a somewhat forgotten place with a chilling history. I know this is my first introduction to this story and I cannot locate another published source on this location. Kinney has taken a location that’s poorly documented online, and grown a wonderful chapter on it.

Not only does Kinney cover the spiritual side of the area, but she includes chapters on Sasquatch sightings, UFOs, and the Cohoke Light. This a marvelous guide to the supernatural in this extraordinary region. With her previous books on Virginia ghosts, Haunted Virginia: Legends, Myths and True Tales, and Haunted Richmond, Virginia, I hope Pamela will continue her marvelous work in this state’s spiritual garden.

I have reviewed several of Ms. Kinney’s books including Paranormal Petersburg, Virginia & the Tri-Cities Area and the 2nd edition of this book.

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Review of Barbara Sillery’s ‘The Haunting of Mississippi’

While the initial mission of this blog has so far been to explore haunted locations, I think it’s very important to also cover the sources for much of this information. This morning, I was very excited to discover a package in the mail from Amazon.com. Finally, Barbara Sillery’s The Haunting of Mississippi, published just this month by Pelican Publishing, had arrived!

For those long-term readers of this blog, you will be well familiar with my complaints about the lack of books about Mississippi. So far, I’ve only been able to find two books: Kathryn Tucker Windham’s 13 Mississippi Ghosts and Jeffrey, published in 1974, and Sylvia Booth Hubbard’s Ghosts! Personal Accounts of Modern Mississippi Hauntings, published in 1992. So basically, a book has been published every roughly 20 years.  While there is other information available in other books and sources, these are the only books devoted completely to the Magnolia State.

I must confess, I’ve only had this book in my hands for a few hours and have only had a chance to read the first two of twenty-four chapters, but what I’ve read is excellent. Skimming the table of contents, I do see many locations that I’m already familiar with and that Windham and Booth have covered, though, judging from the first two chapters, Sillery explores these subjects far more in depth than I’ve seen elsewhere.

Among these familiar hauntings are Vicksburg’s McRaven House and Anchuca; Natchez’s King’s Tavern, Stanton Hall and Linden; and Columbus’ Temple Heights and Waverly. While information on these hauntings is widely available, Sillery provides well-researched history as well as reports of recent unusual phenomenon.

haunted McRaven House Vicksburg Mississippi
McRaven House, Vicksburg, Mississippi, 2016, by Zamburak. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

But there are some locations that have not been on my radar such as Tupelo’s Lyric Theatre (which I have since covered here), the ghosts of the city of Greenville and the old state capitol building in Jackson (I’m beginning to think ALL state capitol buildings, old and new, must be haunted). Sillery has done well to add to the list of Mississippi’s hauntings.

I’m very excited to continue my reading!

Barbara Sillery. The Haunting of Mississippi. Pelican Publishing, Gretna, LA, 2011. $17.95.