Ghost Hounds dig up stories behind some local ‘hauntings’

By Sheri Kasprzak
sheri.kasprzak@gwinnettdailypost.com

Gwinnett Daily Post/Anthony Stalcup
Little Mill Cemetery in Buford is one of Gwinnett’s “haunted” cemeteries. Members of the Lawrenceville-based Ghost Hounds say they have recorded paranormal activity here.

LAWRENCEVILLE — If you listen carefully, you can probably hear the sounds of Howling Curtis echo through the alleyway off of Crogan Street.
Curtis had been the town drunk back in the days when the Lawrenceville Jail was set back beyond what is now Crogan Street. There were three or four cells and Curtis was often tossed into the tank to sober up after his nights of debauchery, according to a legend told to Patrick Burns, founder of Ghost Hounds, a Lawrenceville-based paranormal investigation service.
“The whole time he was incarcerated, he would howl at the top of his lungs until they let him out,” Burns said. “If conditions are right, you can still hear old Curtis still howling in his jail cell.”
Burns had investigated the old jail cells before, but because of a buzzing streetlight, he wasn’t able to hear anything or find any paranormal activity there.
Burns started Ghost Hounds in August of 2001, but his interest in the paranormal didn’t begin then. He had previously belonged to the Georgia Haunt Hunt Team in Athens, but founded Ghost Hounds after losing touch with the GHHT’s founder.
Burns said he is skeptical of most supposedly unexplainable phenomena and his organization tries to find a logical explanation for those things that go “bump” in the night before attributing anything to supernatural beings or paranormal causes.
“First off, we try to always rule out false positives,” Burns said. “We always strive to find the logical explanation for a quote-unquote unexplainable event. Most of the things people report do have a logical explanation.”
The group, which consists of about 160 members throughout the country with most residing somewhere in the metro Atlanta area, works with 35 mm, digital, infrared and video cameras, electromagnetic field detectors, digital thermometers, and digital and analog voice recorders.
The recorders are used to capture what is known as “electronic voice phenomena,” Burns said.
“We record audio in an area where hauntings or ghostly activity has been reported,” Burns said. “On playback, most of the time, we’ll hear voices we did not hear ourselves at the time of the recording. We will typically walk around an area and ask ‘Is there anybody who would like to talk to us?’ We’ll pause between questions, wait for an answer and occasionally, when we play back the recording, we do get answers.”

Lawrenceville’s haunted past
The group received an unprompted response during their latest meeting at the Gwinnett Historical Museum, a building that housed a women’s seminary in the 1800s.
“During our last meeting, two or three weeks ago, one of our members had their digital voice recorder on, recording audio and we were all talking amongst each other,” Burns said. “(On the tape) there is this ear-piercing scream. I just kept talking so we knew it wasn’t a sound that was made while we were talking.”
There are two legends associated with the museum, Burns said. One theory is the place is haunted by a former headmistress. Another story tells of a woman who was killed in the courtyard by a lightening strike.
Burns said actually seeing the full body of an apparition is very rare.
“I have actually experienced that phenomenon myself, but only three times in my entire life and two of the three were before I became a paranormal investigator,” Burns said. “Since I’ve been doing this four years, I have seen exactly one full-bodied apparition or what I believed to be a full-bodied apparition. Some people are more sensitive to this phenomena than others.”
Even so, Burns said he is skeptical of people who call themselves psychics and who claim to see ghosts around them at all times. He feels in order to categorize an inexplicable sighting as an apparition, other scientific methods should be used.
“People will see things because they want to or believe they should,” Burns said. “I tend to believe my instruments more than I believe my own eyes.”
At the Historic Lawrenceville Courthouse, two men were hanged — one legally and the other lynched.
Charlie Hale, a black man, was lynched and was hanged from a tree in the courthouse square in the early 1900s. Around his neck a sign was placed that read “Please Do Not Wake Him,” Burns said.
The second hanging was of a man tried for murder in the courthouse. The man was subsequently strung up at the gallows and hanged for a crime he swore he didn’t commit. He died pleading his innocence to the crime.
“Anytime we find a place where there has been sudden death or traumatic event, an unjustified execution or a lynching, that area is usually ripe for investigation,” Burns said. “Some of that energy lingers behind. In some instances, we can actually detect that energy. When I was still a member of the Georgia Haunt Hunt Team, we went out there and took a bunch of photographs. It was fairly quiet and we didn’t see anything out of ordinary. But in the northwest corner, where the lynching took place, around the hanging tree, the tree I believe Mr. Hale was hanged from, there is a strange white mist in the photograph. We weren’t getting this anywhere else in courthouse square.”

A very active cemetery
Just down from the courthouse is a cemetery. It’s at this cemetery that Burns has experienced strange phenomena almost every time he’s visited.
“It was the first cemetery I’d ever conducted an investigation in and without a question of doubt, it is the most active cemetery I’ve ever been in,” Burns said. “I’ve been out there three dozen times in last four years and every time we’ve been out there, maybe except for two times, we’ve gotten some activity.”
Two years ago, a news crew from a local television station came along and captured some ghostly voices on audio.
Burns had just been asked by the reporter to explain the electronic voice phenomenon. When the tape was played back, a woman’s voice could be heard talking faintly in the background.
“It was impossible to pick out what she’s saying,” Burns said. “She was just chattering away. And we were oblivious to this and didn’t hear the EVP until we went back and reviewed the footage.”
Ghost Hounds, Burns said, embraces both hard-core believers and hard-core skeptics, and the group is open to the general public.
For more information on Ghost Hounds, visit http://www.ghosthounds.com/.