by Groff, Nick
…and sometimes, if your gut tells you to, you run! Fight or flight is a powerful human response to danger. I know we’ve been teased about making a run for it, but I won’t apologize. When my body tells me to run, I’m going to run.
Always keep your guard up. Always.
CHAPTER 11
POSSESSION IN SAVANNAH
When I arrived in Savannah, Georgia, to investigate Moon River Brewery, I already thought this was one of the coolest cities in the world. The place is so rich in history: pirates, the Civil War, old shipyards, creepy old cemeteries. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil got it right. Cities have a vibe—you can feel it as soon as you walk down the street. You could be in a place for just two minutes and not even speak to anyone yet and just know—there’s something to this place.
There was a time in my life when I had the opportunity to move to Savannah, but it fell through. Some cities keep calling you back. Maybe this trip back to film the Moon River Brewery was my destiny in some way.
I don’t really believe in past lives, but Savannah has always seemed familiar to me. It’s comfortable, but there is also an element of something dark hanging in the air. It’s almost like being comfortable around your family while at the same time knowing their secrets.
My first impression of the building was, Oh, boy. A restaurant. How haunted could this place be? Maybe that’s why I was so caught off guard during the lockdown.
ABOUT MOON RIVER BREWERY
The Moon River Brewing Company is in one of Savannah’s oldest and most haunted buildings. Originally the site of the city’s first hotel, the structure has survived hurricanes, the Civil War, and many angry ghosts who still roam free, attacking the staff and scaring those brave enough to enter after dark.
Built in 1821 by Charleston, South Carolina, native Elazer Early, the City Hotel was also home to the town’s first branch of the United States Post Office and housed a branch of the Bank of the United States.
Though the City Hotel served the finest and most expensive wines, whiskeys, and brandies around to an affluent clientele, there was little to stop a patron from defending his honor to the death if he felt slighted. Southern honor was sacred, and duels were not uncommon. In the spring of 1832, a local undesirable named James Jones Stark was drunk and publicly insulted physician Dr. Philip Minis, calling him a “damn Jew” among other things.
Once again, on August 10, Stark began questioning Dr. Minis’s honor at the bar in City Hotel. Dr. Minis walked into the bar, saw Stark, and claimed he saw the drunkard reach for his gun. So Dr. Minis drew his pistol and shot James Stark dead at the bar.
When Dr. Minis went to trial for the killing, it took the jury little time to acquit him of the crime. It seems locals were happy to see Stark gone, and they respected the doctor enough to keep him out of jail.
Another tale of mayhem involved a Mr. James Sinclair of New York City, who, according to a November 1860 New York Times article, headed south to Savannah aboard a steamship. He was out of work and hoped to find employment in Georgia. He was staying in the City Hotel when locals decided they didn’t want some Yankee in their town. Sinclair was told to leave, but when he refused, he was dragged out of the hotel by a lynch mob, stripped, and beaten near to death.
Though locals weren’t always friendly to City Hotel customers, the business remained in operation. The bar was full of fights and violence. The hotel finally closed in 1864 when General Tecumseh Sherman and the Union army marched through Georgia during the Civil War. There are rumors that the hotel became a makeshift field hospital for the retreating Confederate army, but by the time Sherman had reached Savannah, the town was mostly deserted and most of the buildings had been spared the Union’s wrath. During Reconstruction, the former hotel sat unused and empty.
By 1900, the building was used as a lumber and coal warehouse; as the region’s demand for coal diminished, the large building was used for more general storage. During the 1960s and ’70s, 21 West Bay Street was an office supply store, until Hurricane David blew the roof off the building in 1979. In 1995 renovations began on the abandoned building and it saw new life as a brew pub when the Moon River Brewing Company opened its doors four years later.
Since its opening, the staff and customers of the restaurant and bar have encountered many unexplained and sometimes violent occurrences, including bottles being thrown at them by unseen forces. People have been touched, pushed, and slapped by the dark spirits who dwell inside. One of the most prominent ghostly figures is that of “Toby,” a shadowy figure seen around the billiard room. This dark entity has been known to push patrons and staff.
The third floor isn’t open to the public. It remains unfinished and untouched because, according to staff, construction workers are too scared to venture up there to renovate. A glowing white apparition has reportedly been seen on the upper floors and is believed to be that of a hotel worker who perished there many years ago.
During one attempt at renovation in the mid-1990s, a worker made up stories about the ghostly figure to scare the other workers, telling them she was a voodoo priestess. While he’d just fabricated the story, the spirit on the upper floors didn’t take kindly to the tales. When the worker’s wife came to visit the job site one afternoon, she was attacked and pushed down the staircase. The worker reportedly put in his resignation on the spot and fled the building. To this day, the upper floors remain in decay.
My first impression changed quickly when we took a daytime tour of the brewery’s upper floors. I saw the decrepit hallways, the paint peeling off the walls, the dusty floors, and I thought, Okay, this place has got a dark side too.
The more we talked to employees, the more it became obvious that something bad was in the basement. Folks were afraid to go down there. Some of the female waitstaff had had their hair pulled by an unseen force, and other workers had seen dark shadow figures that scared the hell out of them. This place was getting more interesting by the second.
Walking around that building, I could sense the Civil War history, the battles, the turmoil. That stuff is soaked into the walls at the Moon River Brewery. But the basement… it was just weird down there. But I love being scared. I know it sounds odd, but I was getting psyched for the night’s lockdown.
The restaurant closed early the night of our lockdown, which meant we would have the entire building to ourselves. Right after the manager locked us into the building, we headed in to set up our central base camp.
We were getting situated, unloading our gear, and I was filming the setup. Aaron and Zak were talking about the equipment when suddenly we heard what sounded like something heavy being dragged across the floor. It was loud and distinct, like a big chair or maybe even a person. Some old buildings creak and rattle on their own, but this wasn’t like that. I’ve been in enough old structures to know the difference. This sound was unexplainable—and we hadn’t been in the building more than a few minutes. I was kneeling down getting a shot of Aaron and Zak, and I almost fell over backward when I heard the sound.
We jumped up and I was pointing, Go, go, go! We all headed for the noise to check it out.
This was already an intense investigation. When the building acts up as soon as we walk in, it’s going to be an interesting night. Little did I know just how interesting it would be for me personally.
As we got up to the second floor, where the sound was coming from, we couldn’t find any cause for it. That’s when we heard the same dragging sound coming from the third floor.
This was wild. My mind was running through all kinds of possibilities. Did someone from the restaurant stay behind and sneak upstairs to try to mess with us?
We raced up to the third floor now, looking for the cause of the dragging sound. When we got up there, the sound was gone and there was no sign of anyone. There’s no way someone (living) could have snuck by us undetected. We hadn’t been locked in more than ten minutes yet and already the building was acting up.
A short while later, when we offici
ally started the investigation, we rolled our digital recorders and caught a sinister laugh right where we’d been standing before. Stuff like this freaks me out. It’s validation that what I heard and the feelings I was having were real.
It seemed like the more we reached out to this entity, the more it reached back out to us. The feeling around us was intense. There was a kind of resonance to the building. It felt like there was the slightest vibration all around you, in the same way that if you’ve ever visited a battlefield or a murder scene, you can feel that something bad happened there.
That feeling got heavier and heavier around me. It was so slight that at first I didn’t notice. I knew the presence was there, but it came on so slowly that I didn’t feel it inside me yet. Only now with the benefit of hindsight can I see I was falling under the influence of this thing—whatever it was—in the Moon River Brewery.
We made our way down to the basement, where employees had been most afraid. I was already feeling drained, as if I’d been up for twenty-four hours. I shouldn’t have felt this way—I was well rested and it wasn’t that late yet, but I felt weak. Something was draining the life out of me.
In the basement I saw something white—like an old-time wedding dress, glowing—run by a doorway. I was feeling so tired, I accepted that maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me. But when you added everything up that had happened in the building already, you saw something really strange was occurring.
I can look back at the raw footage now and relive all of those moments. I can watch myself slowly come under the influence of whatever was there in the brewery.
By the time we got near the pool table in the basement, I was really distracted. We had already talked to people who had seen dark shadows down here, and the words of those employees were running through my mind. I thought about the devout Catholic woman who was down here screaming because of her experiences. The more uncomfortable I got, the more I felt myself slipping away.
I heard a scratching noise coming from right behind us. We all jumped. Next we heard the sounds of someone running toward us at full speed, getting closer and louder. It felt like we were about to get jumped by something. Suddenly I didn’t care if it was a spirit or some living person who’d snuck into the building. We were about to get attacked. Zak and I were freaking out. But I was also just confused by the sound and entities surrounding me. I was dizzy, I was scared—and that was when my memory slipped away. From this point forward, I know only what you saw in the episode. It’s me, but it’s not me.
The best way I can describe this is that it’s like one of those nights when you’re totally exhausted and you go to bed. You lie down and fall asleep as your head hits the pillow. Suddenly your alarm goes off and it’s morning. To you it feels like only a second has passed, though the clock shows it was eight hours. That’s what I went through. My head was foggy; then it was over. When I came back to myself, all I could think was, Shit! What just happened?
When I watched the footage, I could see I was breathing heavily and my eyes looked different. It just wasn’t me. I looked seriously pissed off. There was some other energy controlling me, but I was fighting against it inside—and I eventually won that fight, because the spell ended.
The entire event lasted maybe forty-five seconds. I came out of it confused, like I’d just woken up out of a deep sleep. I was groggy and bewildered. Forty-five seconds: not much time at all when you consider how much this changed the game for me.
The strangest part of watching the experience on-screen was seeing what looked like a shadow figure move out from behind me and then away. At the same time we captured an unexplained voice on the audio recorder. Right after Zak says, “They’re right behind you,” it sounds like a deep, hushed voice says, “I know.” These three things—my blackout, the shadow figure, the disembodied voice—happening at once is more than coincidence.
What happened in the basement of the Moon River Brewery scared the shit out of me. The more it sank in, the more the whole thing unnerved me.
Many people have called this a possession, but that’s not really how I look at it. I’ve done some research since then, and I believe this was more of an attachment.
People who study demons will tell you there are various types of ways entities can interact with living people, from mild influence to a full-on demonic possession (think of The Exorcist as the most extreme example). Some of these ways are:
Influence: An entity can influence our lives. It can offer temptations, and can even try to put thoughts into our heads.
Oppression: Oppression means that an entity has targeted a specific person and is not only trying to influence through temptation, but is also putting thoughts into our heads and trying to motivate our actions.
Attachment: The entity is now staying with us and tempting, oppressing, and even tormenting us. It can cause physical illness—something doctors can’t cure—and it can cause depression.
Possession: Possession happens when the living person turns over control to the entity. This part is important—we all have free will. The only way a demon takes control is by invitation. Maybe the demon has promised money or fame or some other thing. This is the most rare phenomenon.
Looking back on Moon River Brewery, I feel that I went through a temporary attachment. I was an unwilling channel for the entity. That attachment didn’t last for just the forty-five seconds or so that you saw; it went on for more than a week after.
This is the part of the experience we couldn’t show on the episode.
Right after I came out of it in the basement, Zak and Aaron dragged me upstairs to where we had all our equipment. They were both freaking out. Aaron said, “What the fuck just happened?”
“Jesus, man, are you all right?” Zak asked.
To me, this was the most frightening part of the experience. All I was thinking was, Kill you, kill you, kill you guys. Zak didn’t look like Zak to me; he was this weird figure. As drained as I was, I was also enraged. I looked at Aaron and I could think only about killing him. I told them both what was going through my head and they backed away from me and left me alone by the equipment for a minute. I’m sure they weren’t far from me, and I’m positive they didn’t have their backs to me.
Then Zak and Aaron heard something and moved toward the bar area.
That’s when I snapped. I knew those thoughts I was having weren’t my own. I knew I had been taken over by some entity in that building, so I grabbed my camera and started rolling as I made my way to the bar. “Fuck you!” I yelled. “You’re going to do this shit to me?! I’m coming to get you now.”
It’s irrational, I know. I couldn’t see this thing, but I knew it was around me somewhere. I wanted to fight, but on terms I could understand. I wanted to hit this thing and hurt it. I headed back downstairs to near the pool table. I went down alone. I didn’t care—I wanted a piece of this thing.
I had never felt so violated in my life. I wanted revenge. Pure rage consumed my mind. From the stairway I heard both Zak and Aaron yelling at me: “Nick, get back up here!” A second later I heard them running down the stairs—they both knew I shouldn’t be down there, especially alone.
They grabbed me and dragged me back upstairs to where I was able to get ahold of myself. The sun was going to rise soon; we had only about forty minutes before they were going to let us out. So from around two a.m., when I was overtaken, until about four a.m., all this crazy stuff was happening, but none of it made it into the episode.
Zak, Aaron, and I have had a lot of discussions about what we do as investigators. I’m not a big believer in cleansing yourself or anything like that. In my experience, you need to leave these things where you find them. But I also got to thinking after Moon River that we go looking for these evil and dark entities at locations all over the place. When you do that, when you dance with the devil over and over again, eventually these things are going to take an active interest in you. This negative energy was starting to surround me. What happened in that bas
ement was just the pinnacle of what I’d been doing for over a year at that point.
If we put out positive energy from ourselves, it forms a bubble that keeps the bad stuff out. I’m human, I don’t feel positive all the time, so sometimes that positive energy I try to put out gets weaker and the bad stuff seeps in like a virus.
Now I know to work hard at putting out that positive energy, especially right after we finish a lockdown somewhere. Those are the days I need it most, so I can leave the bad stuff behind. Moon River Brewery taught me this tough lesson.
Up to that point, I thought this stuff couldn’t happen to me. I wasn’t even sure I believed it was possible at all. When I saw other people get overtaken, I thought they were either just faking it or under some kind of delusion. But this happened to me. If these entities can jump into my body, what else can they do? This shook me up, and it didn’t end when we left the building.
Being locked in a morgue or sitting alone in a solitary confinement cell is just a scary dare. Having an unseen force take control of me was fucking frightening.
When I got home from Savannah, I felt nauseated for days. I was still shaken up and processing what I had gone through. Veronique noticed I was distant. I tried my best to explain what I had gone through, but that would take time. I was still too close to the event.
Each day I worked to get my focus back—to try to increase that positive energy bubble around me. It seemed like each day was half as bad as the day before. After a little over a week, I could say that the attachment was over.
This wouldn’t be my last brush with an entity trying to take control of me, but it taught me valuable lessons about staying focused during these investigations.
After Moon River Brewery, I have an understanding of how we can fall under the influence of entities that are out there around us. I was lucky because I had a strong will, mind, and spirit. Under different circumstances I may have needed some serious help fighting this thing.
