TIFTON — Two years ago, Philip Hitchner went before the Hahira Historical Society with an interesting business proposal.

The historical society occupies the front of what is left of the former Smith Hospital on Lawson Street. The small museum also serves as an election polling location for Hahira.

At the society’s regular monthly meeting, Hitchner asked if he and his team from Cross The Line Paranormal could investigate the back portion of the remaining hospital to find evidence of the paranormal and create a paranormal investigation tour.

“It’s almost a given. Almost all hospitals are haunted,” Hitchner said. “They kinda didn’t know what to do but after it was all said and done, we gave them about a $700 check so they were all fine with it.”

One of the earlier experiences the team had in the hospital came with some verification.

Investigating in one of the bathrooms with a voice recorder, they asked, “Is anyone in this room with us?”

“We got a clear as day ‘Roland,’” Hitchner said.

Later, while looking through the museum in the front of the building, the team came across some death certificates.

“The first name that we found was Roland.”

While confirmation is preferred for the sharing of stories, personal experiences are the ones that stick with investigators. When Hitchner was about 15, he walked into his room after school and saw his grandfather sitting on his bed.

Hitchner’s grandfather, however, had recently passed away from cancer in that room.

“I could see every outline of him and knew exactly who it was,” he said.

After that experience, Hitchner has continued to wonder what happens to us when we pass away. Living in the Bible belt, Hitchner often hears that the afterlife comes down to heaven or hell.

“That doesn’t mean that there isn’t some energy or an echo of that person’s being still here,” he said.

Every town has its share of ghost stories. The SunLight Project coverage area –  Tifton, Valdosta, Thomasville, Dalton, Moultrie, Milledgeville, Ga., and Live Oak, Fla. – is no different.

For this Halloween, the SunLight Team plunged into the spooky and unexplained with paranormal investigators, haunted houses and local Halloween events.

Local Haunts

Since its creation in 2010, CLP has investigated the old Smith Hospital numerous times.

The remaining portion of the Hahira hospital has features that showcase its age.

While the front of the building is air conditioned, carpeted and used regularly by the historical society, the back portion has the uninviting feeling of an abandoned hospital.

The lack of any air flow leaves the rooms stuffy and hot, even in late October. A musty, unpleasant smell envelops visitors and is especially potent in some corners.

The beds that have been placed throughout were retrieved from the landfill by the CLP paranormal investigators after the historical society cleared them out for space.

During the Hahira Nights tours, CLP uses a wide range of equipment to give ghost seekers the full experience.

They have a DVR security system with night vision cameras set up throughout the building, K2 meters that read electromagnetic fields, a light grid that makes moving shadows easier to see in dark hallways, thermal imaging cameras and voice recorders.

An REM pod is built specifically for the paranormal field to try to communicate with spirits that may be around. The experimental device creates its own field that, when a person or spirit gets close to it, lights up and makes a loud noise to indicate something is near.

Another tool they use is called a “spirit box.”

The box works by running through radio channels, producing white noise that spirits can manipulate to speak through and respond to questions. The antenna is removed to cut down on actual radio interference.

While attempting to reach out to a Hispanic male spirit during an investigation on Friday, Oct. 19, The Valdosta Daily Times employee Sarah Warrender said, “Hola, donde estas?” or “Hello, where are you?”

A quick “Hola,” or “Hello,” in response was heard through the box.

Later, Cummings asked, “How many people are in this room?”

While there were two investigators from CLP and two VDT employees shadowing the investigation, the response that was heard was “seven,” the same number of spirits the paranormal team has heard during their many investigations of the old hospital.

A few more responses were heard throughout the night, but the spirits were otherwise relatively quiet. But that’s just the way it goes sometimes with investigations.

“We call it ‘paranormal fishing.’ It’s not ‘paranormal catching,’” Hitchner said.

Suwannee County, Fla., historian Eric Musgrove was contacted several years ago by professional ghost hunters interested in investigating the old McIntosh House in Luraville, Fla.

The house, which sits at the corner of State Road 51 and Luraville Road, is said to be haunted by Lura Irvine, who the town was named after.

Irvine was born in October 1873, the daughter of Washington Lafayette Irvine, who established Luraville around 1878 along with a ferry just downriver from the current Hal Adams Bridge on Highway 51 and named it after his daughter.

He also ran other businesses, including a steam sawmill, grist mill, ginning establishments and a post office. Lura’s parents died while she was still young and she was cared for by Dr. Perry McIntosh, a cousin on her father’s side and uncle by marriage on her mother’s side, who were the famous Iveys of the Branford area.

Unfortunately, Lura was horribly burned in a girl’s dormitory fire in 1888. According to one source, she stepped on a lit match in the school dormitory and her dress caught fire. She was brought back to Luraville and cared for by Dr. McIntosh, but died of her injuries Dec. 26 of the same year.

It is said her ghost roams the old McIntosh house.

Lura Irvine’s ghost isn’t the only ghost wandering old halls.

Along with having subfloor secret passages, missing evidence in a murder case, knocks on doors, doors that close for no reason and unexplained sounds, Thomasville City Hall, constructed in the 1930s, has a ghost who goes by the name of Reginald.

Thomasville Police Department was housed in the building for many years with a jail out back.

A bicycle that was evidence in a murder case disappeared from the basement.

“Maybe Reginald rides it around the auditorium when we’re not here,” said Sherri Nix, city marketing department project manger, whose office is at city hall.

The basement has secret passages. A hatch in the floor of the reception room opens to the basement.

Nix found the back hall door, which has a dead-bolt lock, to the basement open one day. A staircase that begins at the door winds back and forth down to the incinerator.

“We have never figured out how that door got unlocked — who or what may have opened it,” Nix said.

Nix hears things in the auditorium on the second floor of the building.

“It sounds like a ghost to me,” she said.

Felicia Brannen, city clerk at the municipal building on Victoria Place, previously worked in the Main Street office at city hall and managed the auditorium.

She was walking across the stage one day with stage lights on. The auditorium seating area was dark. Suddenly, she heard something that sounded like someone putting their hands in a bag of chips. She stopped and listened, then began walking across the stage again. The sound returned.

“To this day, I don’t know what I heard,” Brannen said. “He (Reginald) would make things happen unexpectedly to the point you would ask, ‘What was that?’”

Sheryl Sealy’s communications office is directly across the hall from the door leading to the basement.

She sometimes hears someone knock on her office door, but no one is there when she responds. Doors in her office also close without explanation.

Blame it all on Reginald, who is seen more as a Slimer than a Zuul from “Ghostbusters.”

“So far, he’s been a friendly ghost who enjoys playing tricks,” she said.

It is believed Reginald moved the evidence bicycle from the basement.

“We just haven’t found it yet,” Nix said.

More lonely than Thomasville City Hall is the Thomas A. Berry House, which stands stately and proud on Dalton’s East Hawthorne Street.

Built in 1882, by the Rev. David P. Bass as a wedding present for his daughter, Mary Elizabeth, and her husband, Thomas A. Berry, the house is one of the few remaining late Victorian-style homes remaining in what was once an affluent section of the city. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The family sold the home in 1945. It once served as a care facility for the elderly and now houses the Carter Hope Center, an agency that provides residential and outpatient substance abuse treatment.

It may also host a ghost or two.

“The Georgia Ghost Society (which investigates paranormal activity) received a letter back in 2007 saying there was a lot of odd things going on there,” said Connie Hall-Scott, author of “Haunted Dalton.”

Those odd things include hearing footsteps and feeling that someone was watching them, Hall-Scott said.

She went along with the investigators and one resident said he’d seen ghosts there.

“He said he saw a little girl on the front porch,” Hall-Scott said. “Several people who have lived there over the years say they have seen the little girl with an estimated age of 8 or 9. Others report seeing an old man.”

She said ghost hunters using electronic recording devices that catch sounds that can’t be heard by the human ear claim to have captured sounds they believe are a little girl singing.

Who you gonna call?

Paranormal investigators have found their field being more accepted with the prevalence of shows such as “Ghost Adventures” and “Ghost Hunters.”

The CLP team has found that these shows can also confuse the public about what is really happening behind some potentially haunted doors. One of the main complaints Hitchner and Cummings have concerns the validity of orbs as paranormal evidence.

“They’ve blown that up so much that people think every orb is a ghost,” Cummings said.

After being called out to a store to investigate some security footage, Hitchner was quickly able to dispel the claims.

“One of them was a moth or bug,” he said. “It flew right to the camera.”

Clients may be relieved to hear their ghosts are debunked, but others may be offended.

“Some people might get mad, but we’re probably never going to be on TV,” he said. “There’s no reason to lie to you. It gets some people scared and we’re just going to go about our day.”

Another misconception is every experience is negative or demonic.

Cummings has only experienced one “attack” in his years of investigating. While walking through the old jail in Jennings, Fla., he felt what he thought was a bug bite or sting at first that then spread across his back. He realized the next morning there were two marks. Even being touched, he wasn’t convinced it was anything malicious.

“My wife thought that it wasn’t so much as an attack as it was someone just reaching out and trying to grab me while I kept walking,” Cummings said.

Jails and hospitals in the regional area aren’t the only places Cross The Line has investigated. It has visited national haunted hot spots often featured on paranormal shows such as Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Kentucky, St. Albans Sanatorium in Virginia and the Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah.

Locally, the group has investigated the Bell House, formerly Vito’s Pizzeria, in Valdosta and a few businesses that would prefer to keep their hauntings quiet.

Cross The Line also does home investigations. The team will enter a home and do an initial “sweep” walkthrough to ensure there are not natural forces at play.

“One of the theories is high EMFs from your appliances will cause headaches, will cause you to feel paranoia,” James Cummings, a CLP team member, said.

During the Halloween season, the CLP sees an increase in paranormal claims that are usually written off as hyped-up stories among friends. Sometimes the claims seem more credible due to the amount of fear the people involved have about spending time in their own homes.

Most clients don’t ask much more than validation they aren’t crazy.

A recent investigation in a home in Valdosta led Hitchner and Cummings to evidence of a young girl’s spirit.

“She wanted attention. She wanted a friend. She was alone and 3 to 5 years old,” Cummings said.

The revelation of this information to the tenants of the home relieved their fear and made them more sympathetic to the incidents they experienced in the home.

“We don’t know why they’re still here but sometimes you just have to think of them as a person without a body.”

Trick or Treat

Milledgeville and Baldwin County’s ties to Georgia history serve as a unique backdrop for the area’s Halloween festivities.

Georgia’s Old Governor’s Mansion offers a mystery dinner theatre that is wildly popular each year. The event, hosted at the historic mansion that once was the residence of Georgia’s governors and their families, is always a sellout.

It centers on a historic event and characters with a twist.

“Last year was a complete success and a complete sellout,” said Kierstin Veldkamp, curator of education and public engagement for Georgia’s Old Governor’s Mansion. “This year is the same. We’ve completely sold out, even though we’ve expanded from doing two games to four. Last year, we did about 60 people, but this year we sold tickets to about 140.”

This year’s story is different, but the outcome the same.

Someone has been murdered on the mansion grounds and the audience must follow clues to find the culprit. The title of the upcoming mystery is “The Case of Laura Cobb.”

She was the daughter of Georgia Gov. Howell Cobb, the state’s political leader from 1851-53. Laura and her recently-wed husband were at the mansion celebrating the Fourth of July when she suddenly fell victim to an asthma attack and died the next morning before her mother, Mary Ann Lamar Cobb, discovered foul play.

The characters are all real, though the story is different from what actually occurred.

Laura Cobb was born in the mansion in the mid-19th century, and, like many of the Cobbs’ children, did not live past childhood as she passed away at only 9 months old.

“I call it fact-based fiction because we take something that is real and then sort of just mold it into a new story,” Veldkamp said.

The Georgia College History Club offers “The Haunted Cemetery Tour” through historic Memory Hill Cemetery, highlighting some interesting locals.

The students have spooked peers and residents on the tour for 20 years. It started with Georgia College historian Dr. Bob Wilson, who dug up the original facts and myths on local townspeople buried there.

From Dixie Haygood, the “Witch of Milledgeville,” who became an illusionist to support her family and was known for her amazing feats of strength to Patrick Kane, a plantation overseer, who was said to be drunk when Gen. William Sherman’s troops came through town.

A little Halloween embellishment gets people interested in what happens in Milledgeville, Wilson said.

And the Convention & Visitors Bureau offers its Haunted Trolley Tours each year at Halloween, where local thespians dress up as historic locals and highlight tales of Milledgeville’s past as the trolley takes participants through town.

A special night-time trolley tour is wildly popular, but is recommended for adults-only.

Thomas Lynn is a government and education reporter for The Valdosta Daily Times. He can be reached at (229)244-3400 ext. 1256