Ghost Hunters of the South

Georgia

Georgia This page intentionally left blank Blairsville Paranormal Research Team BLAIRSVILLE, GEORGIA Joel Goyne and Sean Rice, Directors The Blairsville Paranormal Research Team is one of the newest—and youngest—paranormal investigating groups in the entire South. It was founded by three high school students—Sean Rice, Joel Goyne, and Matt Prentice. Sean Rice says that he and Matt Prentice became inspired to start their own group after he and Matt started surfing the Internet and found the “Shadowlands” Web site, which lists haunted sites in every state, including Georgia: “Some of the sites around Georgia were pretty close to us, so we started going to them. It was interesting to see if we could find anything. We started our team in September 2004.” At the time of the interview, three of the members were in the eleventh grade, one was in the twelfth grade, and the remaining three members were in college. Joel Goyne believes that exploring the Web sites of other paranormal groups helped make them better investigators: “We are really skeptical when it comes to this [field] because we saw stuff on the Internet that can’t be real. We didn’t want to be a group like that, spreading false information.” The group’s first order of business was to accumulate the equipment recommended by the Web sites they examined. They now have two EMF detectors, two 83 voice recorders, a night-vision camera, a few digital cameras, and a 35mm camera. The directors of the Blairsville Paranormal Research Team claim they learned everything they needed to know about ghost hunting from the “Shadowlands” Web site: “Their Ghost Hunting 101 course tells you what you need and what to do,” Joel says. “They also tell about some of their own investigations .” The group also learned the importance of praying before all their investigations from the “Shadowlands” Web site: “They said there’s no proof that this helps, but it takes five or six seconds to do it, so what’s the harm? We pray when we start out. It’s not a formal prayer; it’s just, ‘God, protect us.’” Joel added that even though harmful spirits interfere with investigations only about 5 percent of the time, he and the other members still believe that praying before all investigations is a good idea. The Blairsville Paranormal Research Team’s first investigations were a couple of haunted locations in Fannin County, right across the border from Union County. The Tillybend Church Cemetery was the site of their first investigation: “We investigated outside at the cemetery. What’s weird about it is that 70 percent of the people buried there are children one year old or younger. There’s a legend that a witch around here caused the kids to die. We didn’t collect too much there. We got three pictures of a golden streak above our heads.” The second place they visited was the Chastain House, an abandoned plantation house which has been declared a national historic site. The Chastain House has turned out to be the most productive site—evidence-wise—in the entire county. Sean says that the group decided to investigate the old house on the recommendation of one of the members, who had gone there on his Georgia 84 own a few months earlier: “He and a close friend were walking up the stairs, and they saw a light flashing on the inside, and they stopped and ran back to their truck.” The members assume that the ghost haunting the house is the spirit of a little girl named Sarah, whose identity they discovered on a tombstone in the cemetery. The group was also attracted to the house by a local legend regarding the death of the child: “Other people say if you walk around back and look in the kitchen window, you see a replay of a past memory of a lady killing a child.” So far, the group has visited the Chastain House three times. The first time the members visited the house, they were impressed with its historic look: “The house is fascinating. The last time it was lived in was the 1950s. The downstairs looks like a normal house with white walls, but when you go upstairs, it’s totally different. It looks like a log cabin upstairs.” Sean admits that all of the members were scared as they walked into the house because they...