(pensive music) - The fear I experienced in that basement is gonna stay with me for quite some time.

- It would definitely get your attention.

You know, it'd make the hair stand up on your arms from time to time.

- Honestly, don't like to be in here alone by myself at night.

I just feel like I'm being watched.

- You know, I walked in the door and as soon as I walked in the door, I like looked back because it just felt like somebody was standing behind me.

- So, I'm not normally afraid of haunted spaces because I can communicate with spirits.

So I have kind of a different experience of them.

But this place is definitely creepy.

(spooky music) Yeah.

- Are you feeling okay, Joann?

Joann?

(music continues) - Throughout history, cultures have told tales of hauntings, visitations from beyond the grave.

Whatever your beliefs, it cannot be denied that the dead outweigh the living.

The stories we are about to present are actual stories by the people that witnessed them.

Is there another dimension?

Dare we pull back the veil?

(pensive music) (music continues) (music continues) - Hello, my name is Ed Laughlin, and I'm the founder of Ghosts of Georgia Paranormal Investigations.

We've heard rumors that they've seen apparitions, that doors have opened and closed on their own, that there's phantom footsteps in the building here.

So we're here to try to record or get any evidence of such activity.

- The oldest landmark in Oconee County, Georgia is located in downtown Watkinsville.

The Eagle Tavern hosts thousands of visitors every year.

This magnificent building was built around 1801.

For 225 years this structure has been here, predating much of the downtown area by well over a century.

- I'm Pam Coronado.

I am a psychic detective.

I've been working in the field for 26 years.

And I have had various TV shows where I went to locations and recreated crimes that had happened in a location.

So, I love history.

I absolutely love the opportunity to walk into these buildings that are rich with history because I feel like they are so full of stories and experiences, both good and bad.

That's, I think, the thing for me is that, you know, they can hold tragedy and they can hold happy times.

And so for me, when I think about this building, I just feel this sense of importance and how it was such a hub.

It just feels like an really important hub to me and how it was so important to the community.

- The Eagle Tavern was integral to this community.

It was a stagecoach stop.

It was an inn, a mercantile facility, and of course, a tavern catering to early American travelers and the local community.

In its heyday, this tavern hosted raucous events with rowdy patrons.

It is said that it was not a place for the faint of heart.

- So the big thing that we look for is natural causes when we're doing an investigation.

So we are checking CO2.

We have devices that will check temperature.

We have, as I mentioned earlier, a device that shows electromagnetic fields.

Those are how we check the environments.

The real fun part comes into some of our other toys.

This is known as a REM pod.

The REM pod itself, when it's on, which I'll turn it on real quick.

As things get near the antenna and touch it, you'll see they go off.

When this is sitting in the middle of a room and it's going off and nobody's near it, something is touching the antenna.

Whether we see it or not, it's a whole 'nother story.

But that is what this is used for.

It's called a REM Pod.

It's looking for electric magnetic fields as well as touch.

- So when I walk into a location like this, there's layers and layers of history.

So there's hundreds of years of history.

And I can tune into various timeframes and different scenes and different things that happen throughout time.

You know, I may pick up on some small, mundane type event, and I may pick up on some sort of a bigger tragedy.

So I can kind of pick up on all different things that were happening within this building.

So I'll have mixed feelings about a building because maybe there's a trauma there, but maybe there's a lot of partying and good times and revelry.

So when I first walked into the tavern, I got in right in the front door.

As soon as I walked to about where I'm sitting right now, I started feeling a lot of anxiety.

My heart started pounding.

And for me, that usually signifies some sort of trauma has happened in this location.

So this is how it happens when I do crime work.

- Probably the most controversial device that is out there.

And that is the SB11.

And it stands for Spirit Box.

What it does is it generates white noise.

(loud static) 50 stations per millisecond.

When you get a full sentence, it's enough to make your heart stop sometimes.

- Although the building has not been used for decades and last call was well over a century ago, it seems some of the patrons refused to leave.

- So I was working patrol with the City of Watkinsville police department one night, and I was sitting over on Third Street facing the Eagle Tavern and happened to look up and I saw this male silhouette in the window.

Shoulders and saw the hat.

When the hat turned kind of towards me, I could see that it was pinned up on one side.

Pretty clear and distinctive.

And I kind of thought to myself, did I really see that?

- So I've been giving tours here at the Eagle Tavern since about 2018.

I've witnessed things being in a different place.

Like, I would close up the tavern, go back across to the welcome center and come back over and, oh, well, did I leave that piece of paper there?

Did I leave the quill over here?

What is it doing there?

So there have just been, you know, some different things that have kind of been moved around.

I've heard some footsteps.

Been downstairs from time to time and sounds like someone's walking above me.

I've also witnessed from time to time just like, door slamming.

And I know that there's not.

I go around and look and all the doors are open, there's not anything.

So just really mostly noises, things being moved.

I kind of felt for a while that they really didn't like me.

I've heard other people say that they saw things, they actually saw a ghost.

They saw, you know, the apparition or whatnot.

I didn't have any of those feelings until last fall.

I was in here actually doing a little photo shoot for a social media post that I was doing.

And I'm looking out the window, lining up my shot with the right light, and I felt someone walk behind me.

And I thought, did I just really feel that?

It was very definite.

I knew someone was behind me.

I even felt the breeze.

And, was someone behind me?

Oh, okay.

And then I said, is there someone here?

And at that moment, the floorboards on the other side of the room creaked.

- So I'm gonna set up several devices here so that you have the ability to communicate with us.

(distorted static) Just a reminder, if it's too hard to talk, you can twist the end of that light stick, touch one of the cat toys, get near the device.

Heck, you can knock on a wall like this.

(Brian knocking) So how should I address you?

Are you Mr?

How about Mrs?

Would you like me to be quiet?

Would you like to talk to one of the ladies instead?

- Yes.

(dramatic music) - [Brian] Okay, well that was pretty clear, huh.

- Are you glad that we're here?

- [Device] No.

- We just want to visit for a little bit.

So when we did our investigation here, I was really surprised by the responses that we got to the devices that we used.

We had many responses.

And we had clear responses, especially on the spirit box when it was the spirit attempting to communicate with us.

One of the questions I asked was, are you glad that we're here?

And it promptly said no.

But we forged ahead and kept going.

It sounded like the voices coming through were from a number of different spirits.

It wasn't just one.

If you want us to go downstairs, touch one of the cat toys on the dresser and light it up.

(loud static) - Whoa.

- That didn't sound happy.

- We did a little walkthrough.

We were upstairs, we were looking at all the super cool historic stuff up there.

And we started to hear a knocking, and we couldn't tell where it was coming from.

The floors are creaky, so we kind of just blamed the dog, Matt, at first.

And so we eventually made our way back down the stairs and we went into the front room.

And we were looking at some of the stuff in there, and we began to hear that knocking again.

And so we kind of looked around the room and then we like, slowly turned behind us.

And as we turned behind us, I started to get this little bit of a hot flash or what felt like a hot flash.

And then we looked down at one of the chains, and it was knocking against the wood as if somebody had actually picked it up and was knocking it.

And we realized that's what the knocking was the whole time.

As soon as we walked in, it definitely did not feel like we were there by ourselves, I would say.

- When we got down to the basement, that was the area that affected me the strongest personally.

- Employees venturing down here have reported an ominous feeling, the feeling of being watched and objects moving, sometimes thrown as if by an unseen specter.

- Whew, yeah.

So I'm not normally afraid of haunted spaces because I can communicate with spirits.

So I have kind of a different experience of them.

But this place is definitely creepy.

He's not even, I don't think he even wants us in this space right now.

(chuckling) I just got an image of a body being drug in here and thrown on the floor.

So that's what I'm seeing.

I just got this image of somebody dragging, literally dragging a body in here and just unceremoniously throwing him in here on the floor.

So that's kind of the image I'm getting.

- A man's final desperate moments occurred in this basement.

His death was as tragic as it was sad.

Stories persist that his bones remained here for many decades after his demise.

Some say those bones are still beneath this earthen floor.

- Many years ago I came across a book.

It was a family genealogy.

And they had written about the family and all the different branches of the trees.

But what intrigued me was it popped up in the search because it said that their great-grandfather had been killed in the very early 1800s at a political rally at the Eagle Tavern.

(gunshot echoing) - I've starting to get that upset, nausea, anxiety, all the stuff that I got upstairs where the shooting took place.

So I'm getting a lot of that kind of feeling down here too.

- I had been in the basement of the Eagle Tavern before a few times over the years, but it was always during the day.

And you know, a basement's not the most pleasant place to be, but I was never really afraid of it.

But this time was different.

The minute that we went in there, I was immediately pretty terrified.

- Hello again, it's Brian.

We were down there earlier talking, do you remember?

- So you definitely do have some sort of angry energy down here.

We do, for sure.

- In 1958, the "Atlanta Journal Constitution" interviewed Julia Johnson, who grew up in the Eagle Tavern as a child.

And she told a story that she remembered there was always a skeleton in the basement of the Eagle Tavern.

Julia said that the skeleton was better than burglar bars because everyone in town knew about the skeleton and they wouldn't come within 10 miles of that basement.

In theory, the bones of the skeleton were from a man named Henry, who was hung at the courthouse across the street.

- And he just doesn't want to be messed with.

It's a male.

And he does not want to be messed with.

So any paranormal people who are coming down here and taunting him, he's gonna have a strong, strong reaction.

- So I was down there when Brian had set the spirit box up on a shelf.

- If you'd like to... - Are you okay?

- Me?

Yeah.

- What happened?

- [Brian] This just went off the shelf up there.

- Something threw it at you?

- Away from me.

- Oh my goodness, are you serious?

- [Brian] Now I gotta hold it 'cause you knocked it off that thing.

- Whoa.

- And the battery just went completely dead.

- Okay, so.

- And shortly after he did that, I didn't realize what happened at the time, I just heard a noise and saw something move and hit the ground.

And he told us that the spirit box had flown off the shelf where he had put it.

- So this was even before I knew, you know, the history of the Eagle Tavern or that there was, you know, supposed like hauntings, paranormal experiences.

As soon as we walked in, it definitely did not feel like we were there by ourselves, I would say.

And then as soon as she explained to me the history, it made a lot more sense.

But again, yeah, it definitely did not feel like you were there by yourself.

It felt like somebody was maybe following behind you.

Even when I walked in today for filming, it felt very much, you know, I walked in the door.

And as soon as I walked in the door, I looked back because it just felt like somebody was standing behind me.

- And to my right here is Brian joining in.

And we're here to talk with you tonight.

Is that okay with you?

We have multiple devices around the room.

You have probably seen it before with other people here trying to talk with you and communicate.

We're here to discuss, you know, your story.

We'd like to find out why you're still here.

- [Device] Hello.

- Hello!

- It sounded like the voices coming through were from a number of different spirits.

It wasn't just one.

And we heard words like hello and hi and please.

- Did you stay at the jail across the street when it was there?

(loud static) - Yeah?

- Yeah.

- All right.

- I'm Joann.

Have you seen me in here before?

Do you see me bringing in people and giving a tour?

- [Device] Yes.

- Okay, would you like to talk to us today?

- No.

- Nope.

- That was a very big no.

- Definitely, yeah.

- One volunteer told me an incredible story.

He was coming to the tavern as a reenactor for an event that was going on at the Eagle Tavern that day.

And he was the first one to arrive.

So when he got with the tavern, he unlocked the door, he walked in, he went over to the security panel and pushed the buttons to turn off the alarm.

And then he turned around and there was a woman standing there.

And he was surprised by this because he thought he had been alone in the building.

And he was also surprised because she was wearing a long kind of antebellum dress.

But he realized that she must be one of the reenactors that was there for the event that day and that she was just early.

And so he started to say hello.

And just as soon as he said hello, the woman disappeared right in front of him.

- Here, knock on something.

Get near one of those devices and then we can start doing yes or no questions, how about that?

And then that way you don't have to listen to that box go tick tick tick tick tick.

I even have some toys here that, if you want to get near, you can touch 'em.

See?

All right, so, sorry.

I know I was messing with the cat toys and you were using one.

Didn't mean, hopefully, ooh, I'm just getting chills on my left side.

All right here.

- First time tonight?

- First time.

- I felt that too.

- You felt the cold?

- Cold, yeah.

- So do you follow one of us around?

Are you attached to one of us?

You just passing through?

(dramatic music) - So when we were in here with the Georgia Paranormal investigators, we went through the investigation.

I really didn't know what to expect.

I mean, honestly, I've been in here, and I've known that there's spirits here, I've known that there's things here, but were the ghosts really gonna come out and play?

Honestly, I was just a little skeptical about what we would experience or have happen that night.

- Would you like us to leave this room?

Do you want us to leave the building?

- Upstairs, when the paranormal investigators were talking to the spirits.

- Are you just maybe too tired?

If you're too tired, can you take all of your energy and give us one more sign that you are tired?

Whatever energy you want.

- All of a sudden, I am standing there, I'm trying to be quiet, I'm trying to let everybody do what they need to do.

And so but all of a sudden I started feeling very nauseous.

I felt like I was gonna faint.

- Are you feeling okay, Joann?

Joann?

- Just got a little dizzy.

- [Ed] Wanna sit down?

- And then I thought, you've been standing here, you've been quiet, you didn't move.

So you've locked your knees, Joann.

Just so unlock your knees, take a deep breath, bend down, take a deep breath, and you'll feel better.

Well, I did that and I actually felt worse to the point where as I bent down, I thought it was gonna fall over.

I'm gonna sit on the floor for a second.

- [Ed] Did it just come on over here?

- And I had to sit on the floor.

I couldn't stand up anymore.

Had to sit on the floor.

Once I sat on the floor and everyone around me, are you okay, are you okay?

I was fine.

It was that quick, it was gone.

- [Ed] Joann, can you walk?

We probably need to get you outta here.

- [Speaker] Yeah, we should probably go.

- I can't explain it.

I don't know what happened to me that night in that room.

But I'll tell you, it's something I'll never forget.

- I myself personally heard a couple disembodied voices.

Another team heard a lot of knocking noises, popping noises that they couldn't explain.

- I do think something's here.

There is something in this house, we're just not sure what.

But we're gonna be going through all of our materials to discover exactly what we saw or heard.

We feel like there is paranormal activity here.

And with all the stories and reports from other people, we do feel like the tavern is haunted.

(spooky music) - You've watched the stories of eyewitness accounts, stories of phantom voices, apparitions, footsteps when no one is there.

Are these ghosts?

Ethereal apparitions from another plane?

Scientific evidence suggests that there is another plane, one that we know very little about.

It's said that ghosts are all around us.

Whether we choose to listen to those ghosts is up to us.

Thanks for watching.

(pensive music) (music continues) (music continues) (music continues) (music continues) (music continues) (music continues) (music continues) (music continues) (music continues)