I consider myself pretty grounded in reality. As a pilot an systems instructor for jet aircract you would have to be. But over the past ten years I constantly wonder about my own mortality. Maybe it is because as I get older, it is only natural to contemplate what happens when we die. Do we go to this magical cloud heaven if we are “good?” If we are “bad” then do we go to a firery hell and have to listen to fiddles and screams? Or do we plip out like turning off the TV? Just like everything in my life, I over analyse this to the point that I need proof there is something else beyond death. So when ever I have a chance I check out supposed haunted areas with the hope I can see something to help me answer my question and start worrying about something more normal like who will be in the play-offs or who has the best yard on the block. These are the places I have been to and things I have seen.
First on the list is The Pirate House in Savannah, GA. Believe it or not the oldest house in Georgia is inside the Pirate House, the original print of Treasure Island is in there and a tunnel that leads to the Savannah River where real pirates would drug unsuspecting bystanders and shanghi them to there boats for slave laybor. That’s quite a lot of history for one building. It is also one of the most documented haunted houses in America. So I went there, hung out at the bar and talked with the owners, manager and bartender. Every single one has had an expirience of some sort. Some of the expirience were little and some were down right distrubing. The owner told me that a paranormal investigator stayed up in the bedrooms on the second story and had to leave less than a few hours later only to check himself into the hospital for a week on anxiety medication. He was very vague but he said he saw something so evil he will never investigate again. I don’t want an expirience like that. I just want to see a floating sheet.
If anyone has seen the show Ghost Hunters, they have probably seen the episode when Jay and Grant go to the St. Augustine lighthouse. What they document on that program was enough to get me off the couch and book a hotel room in St. Augustine. It was a trip for the girlfiend but I had to see this lighthouse for myself. We spent an afternoon hanging out in the museum and climbing all the way to the top of the lighthouse. I still didn’t see anyhing crazy even though the girlfriend swore she could smell cigar smoke in one of the old keepers bedroom. They say that his ghost is present when you smell cigars. Personally, I think it was the old guy that passed by the room.
The Bonaventure Cemetery, also in Savannah, is the coolest but also the creepiest place I have ever been to. When we went there it was a sunny spring day but when we entered the gates of the cemetery it was as if it was night. We could hardly believe how dark and gloomy it was and when we parked the car and walked out it was clear that this was no ordinary cemetary. There was no breeze and it was so silent it actually hurt your ears. There were thousands of Confederate graves and hundereds of statues like the one pictured here. While we didn’t witness dissembodied voices or shadow figures you could feel the overpowering presence of something. That feeling stuck with us for the rest of the night and in the middle of the night I woke up numerous times from the feeling of people standing over our bed.
I have been to more including private homes that I can not believe people sleep there alone but I still have not seen the existance of the afterlife. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in ghosts because I know people who are very credible and they claim to have seen paranormal activity. That is almost good enough but I will do anything to see it for myself.
If you have personal expiriences I would love to hear them. I can promise to be very jealous.
Casserole of Disaster 
The creepiest place I’ve ever been was an old farm house in the middle of the North/South Carolina border. We were filming a slasher movie down there, and a very nice family let us use their house and stay there too. As we drove down from Washington, D.C. it began to rain heavily. We left the interstate and began our journey to the house, down the back roads, past a prison and through an all but abandoned town. Lightening, thunder. the works. The house was in the middle of nowhere.
It was a run down place, whose windows were covered with all manners of giant, back woods spiders, webs and assorted bugs.
The house had a pool room containing a mish-mash of junk and “collectibles”, a nursery that had wallpaper ripped off, a hole in the ceiling, a study with dusty old books and shelves…in short a mix between the houses from “Nothing But Trouble” and “Tales From the Crypt.”
Between the creaks and groans and giant bugs, I barely got any sleep.
In Nashville, Tennessee there are a lot of places like these. I travel a lot for my job and one year we had to go to Nashville. So two co-workers and I ate dinner one night at this place called the Stockyard. It was a steakhouse. Delicious. So mid-meal, I excuse myself to use the lady’s room and am directed towards this stairway and told it was on the second floor. I go upstairs and immediately get the chills. I feel like someone is watching me and I really had to look at this chair that is across the hall from the bathroom to make sure no one was sitting there. The upstairs was dark as it was used for private parties and stuff. No one was up there that night. I use the washroom and it is a bajillion degrees cooler in there than the rest of the place. I go back downstairs to my table with hairs not just standing up on the back of my neck; no, these hairs were shivering in their little roots and crying for their mommy.
I tell my co-workers and how creepy it was and we finish eating. Then as we wait for the hotel shuttle after dinner, we tell the host we were going on a Ghost Tour the next night and they start telling us the Stockyard was haunted. I am like, no shit. They give us a tour around and take us upstairs where all the action happened. Apparently, the owner of the Stockyard – when it was actually stockyards for cattle – hung himself upstairs in one of the private rooms. He has been seen by other patrons and employees sitting in the freaking chair across from the bathroom. Sometimes people eating in the room where he hung himself see him hanging there. Other employees have seen doors opening and closing by themselves in the kitchen while they cash out for the night. Others just feel cold spots as they walk through the restaurant. I looked at my co-workers after they told us that chair bit and their eyes bugged out of their heads. That is my experience. If you are ever in Nashville – eat at the Stockyard. It truly is completely haunted and I believe it!!!