Unknown Unseen

Category: Hauntings

  • Calhoun Square: Savannah’s Haunted Heart

    In the shadowy depths of Savannah, Georgia, lies Calhoun Square—a place where time folds in on itself and history lingers not just in the stories passed down, but in the air itself. Among the city’s 22 iconic public squares, Calhoun bears the weight of a particularly troubled past. Unlike the manicured charm and polished façades of its sister squares, Calhoun is steeped in silence, its beauty masking a deeper unrest. Here, the past isn’t past. It walks with you.

    Flanking the square are two homes steeped in supernatural lore: the Espy House and the infamous 432 Abercorn Street. Each has its own tale, chilling in its own right, yet both seem bound to the same uneasy current that runs beneath the square’s ancient cobblestones.

    By day, Calhoun Square is an image of Southern grace. Spanish moss drapes from aged oaks. Tourists drift by, snapping photos of the Wesley Monumental United Methodist Church that looms with Victorian elegance over the square. But as dusk deepens into night, the square shifts. Locals report a sudden drop in temperature. Lamps flicker. Whispers curl through the trees. It is then that Calhoun Square begins to speak.

    What lies beneath the surface, quite literally, is the source of much speculation. In the early 2000s, a discovery was made that would cast a new light on Calhoun’s quiet corners. During utility work, unmarked graves were uncovered beneath the square’s soil. These were the final resting places of enslaved African people, interred without ceremony or record. It is believed that many of these graves date back to the 19th century, though their exact number remains unknown.

    This discovery collided with another grim detail: the building that once stood adjacent to the square was Savannah’s first public school for white children, which was later repurposed as a makeshift hospital during the Civil War. Imagine the layers of suffering: enslaved individuals buried in silence, wounded soldiers gasping their final breaths, and children taught atop the dead. The square is more than haunted; it is saturated with unresolved grief.

    These stories are not just historical footnotes—they seem to manifest. Witnesses recount shadowy figures drifting across the square at night. Some report hearing cries in a language they cannot identify. Others describe a sensation of being watched, even when the square appears empty. Paranormal investigators have registered anomalous EMF readings, inexplicable cold spots, and disembodied voices caught on recorders.

    And then, there are the houses.

    The Espy House, a dignified antebellum structure on the edge of the square, is home to a tale of forbidden love and brutal retribution. The legend centers around a young man named Wesley, said to be the son of the home’s original owner. Wesley fell in love with someone deemed inappropriate by his father—a servant or possibly someone of mixed race, depending on the retelling. When the relationship was discovered, the father is said to have reacted with violent fury. Wesley was either killed or driven to suicide, and his spirit never left. Visitors to the Espy House report strange thumps, flickering lights, and the occasional apparition of a young man staring forlornly from an upper window.

    A few blocks away sits one of Savannah’s most infamous addresses: 432 Abercorn Street. This home has been the subject of ghost tours, documentaries, and endless online speculation. The most persistent legend involves a young girl who lived there in the 19th century. After disobeying her strict father’s orders, she was allegedly confined to a sunless room as punishment. The story goes that she died there, malnourished and alone. To this day, some claim her face can be seen peering from the window. Others report lights turning on and off in an empty house, voices murmuring from behind locked doors, and the chilling sensation of a child’s presence brushing past in the dark.

    Skeptics dismiss these tales as urban legend, but the persistence of the accounts is hard to ignore. More intriguingly, some theorists suggest that the two houses—Espy and Abercorn—may be linked not just by location but by the spectral residue of trauma. Could these hauntings be expressions of the same deep wound? Could Wesley and the girl be bound not just by their tragic ends, but by the very earth that holds the forgotten dead?

    Calhoun Square, with its unmarked graves and eerie echoes, might well be the heart of that wound. It is a place that forces us to confront uncomfortable truths. The ghosts here are more than echoes; they are reminders. Of injustice. Of sorrow. Of the people history tried to forget.

    Today, visitors stroll through Calhoun Square, unaware of the layered tragedies beneath their feet. Children laugh near benches built over burial grounds. Brides pose for wedding photos in front of the Wesley church. But those who know, those who have heard the whispers or felt the cold brush of something unseen, walk with caution.

    For in Savannah, the veil between the past and present is always thin. And in Calhoun Square, it may be nearly gone.

  • 1974’s Paranormal Panic: The Culver City Case

    Half a century ago, something strange stirred in a quiet home in Culver City. And what followed would haunt not just the house—but the very halls of UCLA. In the 1970s, universities across America flirted with fringe science. But at UCLA, one lab went further than most. Tucked away on the fifth floor of the Neuropsychiatric Institute was a modest parapsychology unit, led by Thelma Moss—a psychologist, former actress, and early advocate for psychedelic research. Between 1966 and 1978, this shadowy lab became a hub for those brave enough to study the unexplained. Moss attracted not only students but Hollywood stars and even covert visitors from the intelligence community. There were whispers of experiments designed to weaponize the mind, of consciousness projected across distances, and of the dead speaking through static and film grain. Among Moss’s closest collaborators were Barry Taff and Kerry Gaynor—two researchers whose lives would be forever altered by what came next.

    The story begins with a chance encounter. In the summer of 1974, Taff and Gaynor met a woman named Doris Bither at a bookstore in Los Angeles. She was anxious, guarded, and claimed to be under attack—by forces she couldn’t name. Her Culver City home, she said, was alive with hostile, invisible entities. Skeptical but intrigued, the two investigators agreed to visit. What they encountered was more than just creaky floorboards or a distressed homeowner. Doris’s house felt wrong. A tension hung in the air. And when a frying pan launched itself across the kitchen unprovoked, they knew they had stepped into something much bigger than a simple haunting.

    For ten weeks, the house became a focal point of intensive observation. Taff and Gaynor documented cold spots, luminous orbs, disembodied voices, and, most famously, an eerie green mist that seemed to float through the air. Attempts to photograph or record the events often failed. Batteries drained. Equipment malfunctioned. And always—just before the activity peaked. The phenomenon seemed to center not on the house, but on Doris herself. When her teenage son played music, the activity intensified. Objects flew. Lights flickered. Shadows danced across the ceiling. The researchers noted that the house didn’t seem haunted—Doris did. Some began to wonder if she was a psychic catalyst, generating these events unknowingly. Others speculated about darker possibilities: trauma, poltergeist manifestations born from stress, or even interdimensional disturbances drawn to human energy.

    Despite their efforts, Taff and Gaynor were unable to collect hard evidence. Photographs came out blurred or empty. Instruments captured anomalies, but never consistently. Skeptics dismissed the case as hysteria or confirmation bias. Still, those who were there speak of the events with a haunted certainty. Was Doris a victim of a classic poltergeist case—where unconscious psychic energy manifests physical disturbances? Or was something more ancient and malevolent at play? Some have compared the case to historical “entity attacks” described in folklore, where a person becomes a lightning rod for dark spirits. The truth remains frustratingly out of reach.

    Doris herself remained a cipher. She resisted deep questioning, offered little about her past, and was rarely seen outside the investigations. What little is known paints a picture of a woman battling invisible enemies—both in the walls of her home and, perhaps, within herself. She died in 1999, never fully understood. Some believe she suffered from undiagnosed mental illness. Others argue she was highly sensitive—psychically open to realms most of us will never perceive. The case inspired the 1982 film The Entity, though the real story remains far stranger than fiction.

    By 1978, the parapsychology lab at UCLA was shuttered. Officially, it was due to funding issues and a shifting academic climate. Unofficially, some believe the university grew uncomfortable with what the lab was discovering—or failing to explain. Taff and Gaynor continued their work independently, but nothing they encountered again ever matched the volatility of the Doris Bither case. Even today, Taff insists that what he witnessed in Culver City defies rational explanation.

    Why did the phenomena intensify around Doris? Was she truly the source—or just a conduit? Could intense emotional trauma manifest as physical events? And why did so many of the recordings and photographs fail—almost as if whatever was there didn’t want to be seen? Fifty years later, no one has solid answers. Just fragments. Just shadows. But sometimes, that’s all a mystery needs to survive.

    Have you ever felt watched in an empty room? Heard a sound you couldn’t explain? Perhaps the walls remember more than we do.