The Many Mysteries of Octagon Hall

Location: Octagon Hall; Franklin, KY

Date: July 2, 2011

Samantha and I made the trip to Octagon Hall, along with my parents, Don and Beverly, and my sister, Hayley. 

        The Hall was built in 1847 for the pro-Confederate Caldwell family, and is now a Civil War museum.  This strange-shaped building has many ghost stories attached to it, the most famous being that of Mary Elizabeth, one of Mr. Caldwell’s daughters, who burned to death in the basement’s winter kitchen.  She had apparently been playing near the fireplace and caught her dress on fire.

         There are numerous gravesites on the property.  The Caldwell’s plots are the most prominent.  They lie behind the Hall, not far from a crude, separate building that served as slave quarters.  Mary Elizabeth was buried here, along with her parents and little brother.  Mr. Caldwell’s body was later removed at the request of his last wife.  From the Caldwells’ plots, down a short section of trail, you come to a slave cemetery surrounded by out-of-place bald cypress trees (These trees typically grow in swampy or wetland areas, not in the middle of corn fields as they are here).  Also here are the graves of two unknown Confederate soldiers.  Paul Browning’s book Hauntings at the Octagon Hall states that at least three Confederate soldiers died on the property.

         When SPI arrived, we met the director of Octagon Hall, Billy Byrd.  He gave us a tour of the grounds and described several of its most recent—and prominent—phenomena, including a “seven foot shadow figure” that was captured in a photograph.  The figure is standing in a window near the Hall’s back entrance.  After the tour, we went for a meal and some last minute supplies, and then came back to set up.

         We began by placing infrared cameras, wired back to a DVR, at four different locations: the winter kitchen in the basement, the dining room on the main floor, the children’s’ room on the second floor, and the soldiers’ room (where Confederate soldiers were treated) on the second floor.  We also set up a video camera in the slave quarters and an audio recorder in the winter kitchen.

One of the few photos featuring the "mist."
It should be noted that this mist occurred
at a time when we were also getting strong K2
readings in the cemetery.

          The night did not begin slowly.  While investigating the slave cemetery for the first time, Hayley noted what looked like a mist surrounding our dad in a couple of pictures.  Whether this was paranormal or some photographic flaw caused by the late hour’s low light is hard to say, but it does not occur in all the pictures from that setting.

Returning to the Hall, we immediately encountered strange activity with the K2 meters.  My mom, Hayley, and Samantha found strong K2 activity in the soldiers’ room upstairs.  The meter’s rapidly flickering lights abruptly halted when they left the room.  My dad and I had a similar experience.  While trying to contact Mary Elizabeth in the children’s room, his K2 meter began lighting up all the way across.  The presence obliged his request to “step back till there’s only one light shining.”  This calmness lasted for several seconds, and then the meter started flashing rapidly again.  When we left the room, the meter darkened and never again went beyond one light.  The presence in this room, and I will write this assuming it was Mary Elizabeth, was also interested in playing the flashlight game (video clip below).  For at least ten minutes, she turned the flashlight on and off while it was lying untouched in the middle of the floor.

This photo stumped us as well. The mysterious blob above Don's
 head only occurred in this one shot and looks almost like a mangled face.

         We gathered two quality EVP occurrences.  While in the dining room, my mom mentioned to Samantha that she thought she heard something.  A voice can be heard on her audio recorder muttering, “Doubt that.”  In the basement’s winter kitchen, we captured something apparently saying “Hold on” as my mom described what she thought was a shadow in the shape of a large coat standing in the doorway. Both of these EVPs are posted below.

                

         The night’s most puzzling phenomenon also occurred in the winter kitchen, in front of the fireplace where Mary Elizabeth died. 

         I had gone with Hayley and my dad to the cemetery.  Upon returning to the house, we found Samantha and my mom staring into the DVR monitor outside the gift shop, apparently dumbfounded.  The object of their attention was playing on Camera #1, the one aimed at the winter kitchen’s fireplace.  This object, captured in still, complete darkness by the infrared camera, was a broken, vertical strip of light.  It looked vaguely like a piece of filmstrip, or—for a more morbid analogy—a spinal x-ray.  Lingering close to the ceiling, it danced across the front of the fireplace for approximately five minutes.  Its movements were abrupt, as it would be relatively still for several seconds, then move again, occasionally spinning in circles or creeping close to the camera. 

          

         Hayley and I went down to see if we could find this phenomenon’s source.  We reached the winter kitchen’s door and found the room dark and still.  There was nothing coming through the window (which faced the back of the property).  I called up and asked if they could still see the object, and yes, they could.  But right before I mentioned that I was about to turn on my flashlight, the object swept around the table and left the room. 

                

          Each of our infrared cameras recorded hours of video.  This phenomenon was nowhere to be found before this occurrence, and it never returned after Hayley and I apparently ran it off.

          

          There is no rational way to explain what we captured on video, which can be seen below.

               

          The phenomenon seems to be energy, as it appears in the video like light, but there was no light in the room at all, none coming through the window (and keep in mind, as seen on the video, that “artificial” light, like flashlight beams, displays with a yellow tint).  Hayley and I could not see two inches in front of us when we went down to investigate, and the phenomenon was still appearing on video at that time, practically right in front of us.  The infrared video obviously changes the appearances of some things; insects occasionally appear as balls of light.  But if it was something “innocent”, like a cobweb, how and why did it leave the room, why did it never appear again, and in a completely still room, what was causing its dance-like escapade in the first place?

           

         It should also be mentioned that, throughout the night, most of us noted strange lights while investigating the basement’s rooms.  On one occasion, I thought Hayley was coming down the stairs taking pictures—but she wasn’t.  No one was.  My mom described something similar. 

       

        After the winter kitchen object departed, Octagon Hall quieted for us, and the rest of the night was uneventful.  But it was a quality pursuit.  We all, at some point, experienced something.  And the basement light has to be regarded as one of the most bizarre and unexplainable pieces of evidence we’ve ever obtained.  I’m sure a return visit lies in the not-too-distant future.

Mitch

This is the full length (approx. 5 minutes) video of the basement phenomenon:

The following is a shorter (approx. 2 minutes) version showing the highlights of the event:

Here is a couple of minutes of video footage from Mary Elizabeth's room showing how she turned one of our flashlights on and off multiple times. There is no audio to go along with the video.

Below are the two EVP's we captured during our investigation. The first was captured in the downstairs dining room after Beverly thought she had heard movement in the room , and the second was captured in the basement kitchen after she had seen a shadow in the doorway.