March 25, 2007

The Beaver House Inn & Restaurant

Posted by Leila Tubbeh at 8:12 PM 1 comments  

Labels: food, meeting facility

Is Beaver House haunted?

Ghost hunter tests Boro landmark for lost, restless spirits

JAKE HALLMAN/staff

The exterior of the Beaver House Restaurant is bathed in light at night. Owner Clay Beaver said that a couple of pictures taken of the exterior of the restaurant have shown ghostly images of people in old-fashioned dress in the windows.

By HOLLI DEAL BRAGG
hbragg@statesboroherald.net

Walking through the Historic Beaver House Restaurant, Pennsylvania resident Holly Metcalf wore an intense look on her face. It was obvious she was searching for something, but in most cases, the objects she sought cannot be seen.

She was looking for spirits – what some call ghosts – in the house. The Beaver family said the house is haunted with the spirits of ancestors and a little girl who died after an accident there - long, long ago.

Metcalf is a “sensitive” – a person who is highly in touch with what she calls the sixth sense.

“We all have the sixth sense when we are born,” she said. “We breed it out of our children. We breed it out of ourselves.”

Metcalf said she can hear spirits.

Walking around the property, she explained how today’s society discourages sensitivity to spirit energy and other supernatural occurrences. When children speak of an imaginary friend “We say ‘you don’t have an imaginary friend,’ but maybe they do have a friend or see someone we can’t see.”

Metcalf used digital cameras and an electromagnetic sensor to detect the presence of spirit energy. The sensor would sound an alert when passed along light sockets or where wiring ran through the wall, but was quiet as Metcalf’s assistant walked into the center of a room.

Then, the red light flashed and the machine began to beep feverishly. It was nowhere near any wiring. When the sensor stopped, the assistant took a step forward. The alert resumed. The magnetic field making the sensor sound off was moving. The group followed it around the room, changing locations when the sensor stopped until the alarm resumed.

In one room, the alarm beeped rapidly. Metcalf walked into the dark room then swiftly returned, saying it was hard to breathe. Others - believers and skeptic alike - noted the heaviness of the air and a distinct change in temperature from comfortable to chilly.

Spirits pull energy from the atmosphere and from living creatures as well. An unexplainable cold spot could indicate the presence of a spirit, Metcalf said.

As she took a break from her search, the sensitive talked with Beaver outside the house, describing what she was hearing and feeling. Music no one else could hear was coming from a building nearby, she said.

“Who’s John?” she asked. Beaver said it was his late father’s name.

“No, this isn’t your father,” she said. “Grandfather? Great grandfather?”

Beaver said he did have a great grandfather by that name. “He was in government,” Metcalf stated.

Beaver looked at the others in the group. “He was mayor,” he said.

When Metcalf called another name, Beaver was visibly startled. It was the name of an aunt who had died suddenly.

Metcalf could not have known her name, he said later.

“She is still here,” Metcalf said. “She did not want to leave.”



Spirits in the house

Beaver said there are six “ghosts” that haunt the Beaver House Restaurant. One is his grandfather, Roy Beaver, a big man who stood 6’6” and weighed 480 pounds, he said.

A few years ago a psychic attending a seminar at Georgia Southern University dined at the restaurant, he said. As she paid her bill, she asked about “the big man who walks the house.”

“She said he was sitting in a red chair with a green ottoman listening to a radio,” he said, pointing to one of the restaurant’s dining rooms. “There was no way she could have known Granddaddy was a big man, and he sat right there - “ he pointed - “in a red chair with a green ottoman, and he listened to (a poplar radio program).”

Beaver’s great grandmother Ruth McDougald is also a presence in the house, as are two uncles, his aunt and a small girl named Annie who died after a fall out of a tree that stood behind where Pizza Hut is today, he said.

Employees - including some who claimed they did not “believe” in ghosts - have seen evidence of these spirits or caught glimpses of them, he said.

Annie is “most prevalent,” Beaver said. He has seen her twice.

The spirits like to play jokes, such as opening doors that had been locked; moving furniture and stealing silverware form place settings, only to replace them later, he said.

Seeing spirits or evidence of their presence is not unusual, Metcalf said. “They do say there is a very thin veil between our world and their world.”

Why are they here? “No one knows,” she said.

A ghost is like “a rut in a mud road,” she said, “the same thing over and over. “The spiritual body doesn’t realize the physical body is gone.”

Spirits are energy from previously “living” things that walk the earth.

Metcalf said she believes our lives are “specks” in the big picture and that we live multiple lives before we reach Heaven. Lives are recycled, she said.

Spirits could be lives that have not been “reassigned” to earth as we know it, and are suspended between worlds, she said.

“I believe in God and I believe there is life everlasting,” she said. “And I don’t think this is it. I believe this, life here on earth, is hell. Here, where fathers rape daughters, people kill strangers, people snort stuff up their noses - what can be worse than this?

“We are all here to learn,” she continued. “We are His students. Those who don’t choose His way are recycled.”

As she moved through the house, Metcalf and others snapped digital pictures, especially in the areas where the electromagnetic sensor went off.

The result were shots with “orbs,” - circular spots of light. While one photographer discredited many of these orbs as reflections off the camera lens, one particular shot of a dark bedroom was unexplainable.

While perfectly circular orbs were seen in this shot - explained as lens reflections - there were also two oddly-shaped light mists that could not have been lens reflections, the photographer said.

The unexplainable clusters of light were situated directly over an area where the electromagnetic sensor had sounded frantically.

There was a great deal of activity in one particular room, Metcalf said. “I just felt compelled to go there.”

Beaver said the room Metcalf was drawn to had been his aunt’s room.

Metcalf isn’t a psychic, she said. She doesn’t predict the future and cannot read minds, but she is sensitive to spirit energy.

She understands and even encourages skepticism. “You have to be skeptic,” she said. “You have to look for rational explanations first.”

But it’s when the rational explanations do not exist - as in the photos with the oddly shaped orbs of misty light -that one could believe spirits are present, she said.

Beaver said nothing seriously spooky has ever happened at the restaurant, and said no customers have ever reported strange or unexplainable occurrences while they dined.

Still, it is interesting to have a few family ghosts around, he said.

Holli Deal Bragg may be reached at (912) 489-9414. Section/Page: Front Page posted by Jamie Caskey | 12:53 PM