by Rich Newman
This audio clip, along with the personal experiences we had while we there, make the Old Talbott Tavern one of our most memorable ghost hunts. And I learned a few valuable lessons during the trip, too:
Even though you think you are ready for an otherworldly encounter, you’re probably not.
There really is no way to prepare for such a thing.
As long as you remain relatively calm, you can overcome fear. You may get startled, you may even get frightened, but take a deep breath and remain calm. If necessary, calmly leave the area. Just don’t panic.
You can have some of the best personal experiences ever and still leave with very little actual evidence. During the heat of battle in the Concord Room, we had neglected to turn on our camcorder to record the events. We got it all on audio, but the video would have been much better in this circumstance. So after all that had happened, all we really left the tavern with as evidence was the EVP captured in our bedroom.
Regardless, it was a great trip and an even better investigation. We left the tavern ready for more. I would have to apply this enthusiasm to my ongoing investigation of the Martin home.
Though I had already experienced a few things in the trailer—specifically the loud rumble and the shadowy figure—the potential for more startling events was ever present. There was no way to know for certain whether Tim had actually experienced possession while living in the home, but it was quite obvious that at least one spirit present could actually touch people and move objects. Thankfully, my time at Talbott Tavern prepared me for just such instances.
Magnolia Manor
After spending an evening in the Martin home, one thing was certain: I would be going back. Having personal experiences during one short investigation is a rare occurrence—and is usually a sure sign that ongoing paranormal activity is most likely happening. Because of this, I knew that I would be making several more trips into the Mississippi delta in the near future (a thought that drew a sigh of resignation from me as I drove back to Tennessee).
Over the years since we first decided to relocate and base our group out of Memphis, Tennessee, we have spent a lot of time at a number of local haunted places. And this is a good thing. One thing we have learned during our investigations is that maintaining a good relationship with clients is essential if you plan to have a good, local reputation—and if you want to make a second trip there.
In addition to this, there are some places that we just plain love! Such is the case with the haunted bed-and-breakfast in Bolivar, Tennessee, that’s known as Magnolia Manor. Besides being honest about their haunting, the owners actually host haunted tours in the fall (leading up to Halloween), and welcome ghost enthusiasts who want to rent a room in the B&B.
We have had the pleasure of investigating this wonderful and historic antebellum home many times—and it is easily one of the most active haunted places we have ever been to. In fact, we have stayed in the home (as well as the small cottage out back) more than ten times and we have always come away with great evidence—and, on occasion, significant personal experiences.
Magnolia Manor, in its own way, has also been a sort of school for learning about the paranormal for us. Since we now know the place so well—and have learned to even recognize certain ghostly voices via EVP—we have been able to do far more experimenting here than at any other location. Typically, if we want to try a new investigative technique, we go to Magnolia Manor. Why? Because if we don’t get a reaction there, we probably won’t anywhere!
It was through our investigations at this home that we also formed and developed “DICE,” our basic method for conducting an investigation. DICE stands for “Detect, Interact, Capture, and Escalate,” and it is the foundation for everything we do. It’s just one more reason why we love this location.
Magnolia Manor was built by Judge Austin Miller in 1849 and it served as the Miller family home until the 1970s. And though Judge Miller is, himself, quite a famous person in his own right, the home is mostly known for four other important people: Generals Grant, Sherman, McPherson, and Logan.
Prior to the battle of Shiloh, the Union generals stayed in the home despite the misgivings that Mrs. Miller may have had at the time (members of her immediate family were in the Confederate Army). It’s thought that they may have even planned the Battle of Shiloh/Pittsburg Landing from there. But, unfortunately, the ghosts at the home are none of these men. More than likely they are members of the Miller family who passed away on the premises over the years.
Visitors who have stayed at the home have reported seeing spirits that match the descriptions of Lizzie Lea Miller and Annie Miller—and they are most likely not alone, since a male spirit has also been documented there, too!
Guests who stay at the B&B have four rooms to choose from—and we have had experiences in all of them—as well as the cottage behind the house. Here are a few of our more dramatic moments in this house (and what we learned from them) …
Our first big experience happened while we were shooting a segment of a documentary called Ghosts of War in the house. We were filming in a room called the C. A. Miller Suite next to a rocking chair that’s said to often have a spectral woman sitting in it. I was asking some EVP questions and attempting to get the woman to appear for us. Of course, this was not happening.
Mike then suggested that I actually sit in the chair, thinking this might provoke the spirit into appearing, since I would be sitting in “her chair.” So we pointed our cameras at the chair and I did just that. No sooner did I sit down that I noticed a pale, wispy figure beginning to appear in the far corner of the room. It actually looked like the upper torso, one arm, and the bald head of a man!
I immediately leaped from the chair and began pointing at the figure. The cameras spun around, but it was already gone. Just like that. But the story doesn’t end there. Because we were also doing an investigation (not just shooting a movie), we had audio recorders running in the room.
Right after I had seen the partial apparition, we were discussing moving the cameras once again so that we could get in frame the area that the apparition had appeared in. When we reviewed our audio recorder from that moment, there was an interesting EVP. Immediately after it is suggested that we move the camera, a strange male voice says, “Put that sucker over there!”
The entity was actually toying with us! And, possibly, even avoiding us to an extent. That simple EVP taught us that, try as you might, you can investigate in the most haunted of places and still possibly walk away with nothing. Why? Because if the spirits are intelligent, they may actually be avoiding you. This also teaches us that just because nothing paranormal is happening at a particular place during your investigation, something could very well be happening somewhere else.
Another significant moment we had in Magnolia Man-
or happened in what is known as the 1849 Room. It had already been an active night with several small occurrences, so we had migrated into this room to take a break. As Mike and I sat in the room and talked, it became apparent that we were not alone.
At one point, both of us stopped talking because the crystal clear sound of a woman laughing was coming from just outside the bedroom door! I quickly got up, went to the door, and opened it. Nothing. Nobody in sight. So I closed the door and returned to the bed. A few moments later, the same thing—only louder and more sustained. Again, I got up and checked the hallway. Nobody was there. In fact, the only female in the entire place was the owner, and she had already turned in for the night downstairs.
Later, when we reviewed all of our audio and video recorders in the house, the disembodied laughs were recorded on a whopping three devices. Not only were the sounds loud enough for us to hear in real time, but they were of a volume significant enough to be recorded two rooms away. That’s a heckuva disembodied voice.
So what did this teach us? A strange but true lesson: sometimes the best way to get a spirit to pay a
ttention to you is to ignore it. Though we’d had some activity at Magnolia Manor earlier that evening, it wasn’t until we stopped and did our own thing that the spirit felt compelled to do something dramatic—almost like a child who has been ignored. As strange as that sounds, it worked at this location and has worked many times since.
The final incident I want to mention at this home involves the cottage that’s out back, behind the house. Today that area is a self-contained mini-house that visitors can rent and stay in. But in past years, it was the servants’ quarters. Over the years, various paranormal groups have stayed in the cottage and gotten some great EVPs. So, knowing this, we spent a lot of time in the cottage attempting to do the same thing.
Since we had already heard evidence caught by other groups from the cottage, we were able to skip the preliminaries and go straight to asking questions directly to the spirit that we had heard recorded by others. This saved a lot of time and got us some great interaction with the spirit. Once we started hearing some odd sounds coming from the little kitchen in the cottage (Mike and I were sitting in the living room for the EVP session), we decided to implement a technique called Singapore Theory.
Basically, Singapore Theory involves playing music from the era that you think a ghost once lived in. It’s thought that this might entice a spirit to participate with investigators—or at least come in to check out the music! We started by playing old songs that would have been around in the late 1800s—mostly Civil War-era songs. Nothing happened.
After a few tunes, we moved forward to some circa 1920s jazz and big band tunes. This hit the mark. Not long after the first song started, noises in the kitchen started getting louder. At one point, it actually sounded like a heavy person suddenly stepped on the metal furnace that was in the floor directly behind us. Now that we knew we had the attention of whoever was there, we started trading songs for activity.
In other words, we would turn off the music, ask if we should play another song, then ask for a tap or knock response. When we managed to get those, we then started asking for the entity to speak to us. A review of the audio we captured in the cottage that night was amazing. Not only were we getting the knocks and taps we requested, but a mysterious male voice (possibly a young boy) was actually imitating us.
Several times over the course of the investigation, I would say something and, immediately after I said it, the strange voice would try to repeat what I just said. And the voice had an eerie quality to it—like it was spoken through a mouth full of food or something. At one point, the spirit even said Mike’s name.
We learned that night that experimenting with new techniques like Singapore Theory is a must—and that we can’t give up on something just because it isn’t immediately working. The spirit didn’t want to communicate with us initially, but once we found the right combination of requests and songs, we got more than we bargained for.
Another point worth noting is that investigators should always pay attention to what is reported at a location. It would have been easy to blow off the reports of other paranormal groups (or even the residents there), but paying attention to their information, as well the hot spots pointed out to us, allowed us to spend our time concentrating on things that would be successful, rather than fumbling to do something/anything randomly that may or may not work.
Looking back at cases like Magnolia Manor, the Old Talbott Tavern, and even way back to Devil’s Backbone, one thing is crystal clear: we must never stop learning! There is no single way to perform an investigation. While we at Paranormal Inc will always approach a case scientifically, there are many ways to do this—and, I’m sure, many ways that have yet to be discovered.
I only hoped that my past experiences and methods that I learned from cases like these would help me out with the Martin family. After one evening in the trailer, I was already experiencing some new occurrences, so I just hoped that I would find the right combination of techniques and approach to bring about some resolution for everyone there.
Much like with Magnolia Manor, I would have to pay attention to the hot spots of the Martin home and not be afraid to try some new techniques and to experiment. Also, I would have to pay attention to any evidence that I managed to capture during my first visit. Of course, I would have to finish the long drive back home before I could review anything I had captured during my first investigation …
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5
Examining the Data
It was now time to go over the massive amount of photographic, audio, and video evidence that I had collected during my night at the Martin residence. This is the work that separates the recreational ghost hunters from true paranormal investigators. Over the course of my six hours in the home, I had used two camcorders, three audio recorders, and a still camera in almost constant operation.
This meant I had over 300 photographs to review, 18 hours of audio to listen to, and 12 hours of video to watch. And this didn’t include the DVR system (with multiple camera angles) and audio recorders that the Mississippi group had rolling during the evening. My only consolation was that they would be reviewing that footage.
With a recreational ghost hunt, like those listed on the Paranormal Inc website, our team may take up to
several weeks to go through this much data. This is because there is no immediate need to assist anyone. (Recreational ghost hunts usually take place at museums, bed-and-breakfasts, etc., that typically just like having evidence of their haunting for publicity or for personal satisfaction.)
But with a case that involves a private residence and actual, concerned residents, an effort has to be made to wrap up a review as quickly as possible. Joanne and her family would be sitting on pins and needles until we informed her one way or the other about what we did or didn’t find during our visit. And who could blame her?
After informing my wife that I would be locked away in “the cave” for many hours (possibly days) doing a review, I settled in with my headphones and fired up the computer. Thanks to today’s technology, the information gathered at a typical ghost hunt can be scrutinized with a fine-toothed comb without ever leaving the comfort of your home workstation.
Photos would be dissected and analyzed with Adobe Photoshop, audio with Audacity and Soundforge, and video with Sony Vegas (my nonlinear editing program of choice). Even the notes taken during the investigation could be transcribed and saved in a Microsoft Word document for archival purposes.
Performing a review in this manner is great because it’s straightforward, allows for easy archiving, and makes sending a copy of the entire data (including notes, findings, etc.) to the owner of a property as easy as burning a DVD-ROM or just emailing the files.
With all the footage now lit up in front of me on my monitor, I took a deep breath and waded in with more than a mild expectation of finding something extraordinary. I started with the photographs. I carefully scanned each photo taken for anything that appeared to be out of place.
Beginning with the upper-left corner of each photo, I would slowly pan in a clockwise circle around the image, slowly working my way toward the center. This allows me to check every pixel for anything untoward.
Looking at some of the rooms for the second time, I was still amazed by the level of sheer mess that lay about the place. Fortunately, though, mess is not paranormal! Nothing immediately jumped out at me as I reviewed the photos. In the end, though I had taken numerous photographs, only one seemed to contain something of an odd nature.
I had taken a series of photographs outside the front of the trailer using the “night shot” feature of my Sony still camera. The perk of using this feature is that you need little to no light to get a great shot—and you also capture a portion of the light spectrum that is usually not visible to the human eye (infrared). Many investigators believe that
the energy needed to facilitate a haunting—and possibly even an actual ghost—can be visible in the infrared spect
rum.
In this case, I had snapped a photo of the trailer’s front window, where the television had made its impromptu exit, and then I took a step to my right and had taken a second photo of the same area by the front steps. The first photo contained nothing. The second, however, appeared to have a strange bearded face peering from beside the steps. I zoomed in on the photograph and took a closer look. It definitely appeared to be someone, or something.
Of course, I have been fooled by such photos in the past. When human eyes look at a picture that contains little to no obvious features, the mind tries to form recognizable images from that nothingness. This is called “matrixing.”
Looking at the photo in front of me, my mind was now matrixing a strange, bearded fellow. Or not. It was entirely possible that this was a photo of something paranormal. I suddenly wondered what John or Keith looked like—though this looked more like an aborigine from Australia than an American male living in Mississippi.
For comparison, I pulled up the reference photos that I had taken of the trailer to see if I could discern what the face could possibly be. Though I had not taken a second photo from the same exact angle, I had plenty of shots of the front of the trailer. I found nothing that would explain the face.
I would have to send the photograph to the folks in Mississippi for a second opinion and give them the chance to debunk the photo. Often, returning to the site of a photograph can assist with this. I cautioned Terri and Patricia, though, to keep the photograph to themselves. If Joanne saw the photograph, no amount of debunking, explaining, or reassuring would keep her from believing that this was, indeed, a photo of one of her ghosts. Setting the photo aside for the moment, I moved on to review the video I had captured.
Reviewing the video from the Martin investigation was like watching the world’s most boring reality television show: people would occasionally shuffle in front of the camera and say something, dust would fly by, and objects that were in frame simply refused to move of their accord. Damn them!
