Saturday, December 7, 2013

The 17 Hundred 90 Restaurant & Inn - Savannah, GA - Savannah's Haunted Bed & Breakfasts Part 3

In a previous blog about the hauntings of Savannah, I mentioned the three haunted bed & breakfasts that my wife and I stayed at during our two visits. The Marshall House, The Kehoe House & The 17 Hundred 90 Inn & Restaurant are all three fine places to stay and each has its' own collection of legends.  In fact, these three bed and breakfasts are known to be the most haunted places to reside while staying in Savannah, and each proved to have its' own unique character and supernatural surprises in store for us during our stay.

In this blog I will be reviewing the paranormal encounters that we experienced during our stay at The 17 Hundred 90 Inn & Restaurant (click this link for the history of The 17 Hundred 90 Inn & Restaurant hauntings).

17 Hundred 90 Inn & Restaurant
17 Hundred 90 Inn & Restaurant

On our first  visit to Savannah we stopped into the bar at the 1790 during a  Haunted Pub Crawl. led by James Caskey of Cobblestone Tours (author of Haunted Savannah: America's Most Spectral City Haunted Savannah one of the best books in existence concerning the legends of Savannah).  I remember walking in and ordering a drink for me and my wife and noticing that the EMF detector that I had placed on the bar had shot up to 14.9 milligauss (the highest reading I have ever received on a ghost hunt).  The readings remained over 12 milligauss until the moment we left the bar, when it once again went back to 00.0.  I was so amazed by the initial reading that I snapped the photo below of the EMF detector that had been sitting on the bar for about a minute.


14.9 Milligauss EMF Detector Reading At The Bar Of The 17 Hundred  90 Inn & Restaurant
After all of the ghost hunts that my wife and I have been on over the past several years, I have never seen an EMF detector go above a 5.0 since this time at the 1790.  When we went outside, we began to take photos and captured the orbs seen appearing and vanishing in the pictures below.

A single bright orb moving out of camera view in a matter of a few seconds.

Now you see it..............................
Now you don't.................................
Two bright orbs and one faint one.

Now you see it...............................
Now you don't...................................
One of the highlights of our second visit to Savannah was our stay in the notoriously haunted Room 204 of 17 Hundred 90 Inn.  The 1790 has the most basic accommodations of the three bed and breakfasts that my wife and I have stayed at in Savannah, but when it comes to paranormal activity, it is second to none.  And of all of the ghost stories you will hear in Savannah, none is more ubiquitous than the story of Anna Powell (or Powers depending on the version of the story that you hear).  Basically, it is a tale of a young, married girl who falls in love and has an affair with a sailor who hits it and quits it, causing Anna to throw herself (or her jealous husband to throw her) out of a second story window onto the sidewalk below. Well, as the story goes, Anna's Room was 204 and she still haunts it to this day.

Room 204 at the 17 Hundred 90 Inn & Restaurant

Me posing with the Anna doll that stands watch at the hallway window just outside Room 204
Locals believe that Anna likes to mess with women's clothing when they are staying in the room.  The two most famous stories are of the two women who came back to the room after being out all day to find their underwear hanging from the hotel's Christmas tree, and Miley Cyrus finding one of her boots placed on top of her suitcase with a hand print on it after she arrived back at the hotel.  At the time, Miley & her mom were staying in Room 204 while Miley was filming The Last Song in 2009.  When Miley returned to her room one evening after filming on nearby Tybee Island, she found the boot with the hand print and tweeted the following message:

mileycyrus uploaded a photo.
mileycyrus tweetd: Look what Ana did(ghost in room 204)
My boots were put on top of my suitcase & left with a handprint while I was out.

Even though Miley's word is usually good enough for me to believe just about anything (please read as extremely heavy sarcasm), I figured it might still be a good idea to check it out for myself.

During our two day investigation of Room 204, we captured some extremely fascinating evps, but as usual most of them did not correspond with one another or the legends that I had heard about the location prior to our stay. However, this first audio clip does seem to relate to what was playing on the television as we unpacked. In this sound clip, you can hear the voice of a man and some gun shots coming from the television program that we were watching at the time.  After the man on the television show speaks, you can hear a gasp and the words "GUARD ME" come through in a very creepy, but clear voice as the gun shots are heard from the television in the background.  It would seem to be a natural response to gun shots, but it wasn't part of the television program and it didn't come from me or my wife.



The following photos were taken while we were conducting our first evp session in the bedroom.  The first two show an orb moving from the mantle of the fireplace (in the first photo) to the television (in the second photo).



The next two photos also show anomalies on the same side of the room near the fireplace.



We recorded the next two evps while we were sound asleep.  The recorder was placed on the dresser all night.  When we listened to the recordings there was almost total silence until, at some point in the middle of the night, a voice (not mine) says in a very rough voice "I CAN'T SLEEP", which is followed by a strange groan.

Soon after that, you can hear the sound of the metal handles on the dresser being jiggled, followed by the sound of a loud door (or drawer) being slammed inside the room.



This recording was very surprising to me when I reviewed it for the first time since neither my wife nor myself were woken up by the loud noise.  This is why I can be pretty sure that the door/drawer slamming was an evp.

The next morning, we were a bit rushed because we had scheduled an early tour (and I hate to be late more than anything else in the world), so I was saying to my wife, "got to go".  However, I guess I said it a bit too abruptly based on the response that I received  from the woman and the man in the following audio clip (when ghosts call you out you know you have to slow your roll :).



That night, we decided to do an evp session in the room.  During this evp session I received the following recordings as my right arm began to tingle, goosebumps began to form and the hair on my arm stood straight up. This kind of personal experience had never happened to me before (or since), and the strangest thing about it was that it only happened to my right arm and the room was warm.  My left arm looked and felt perfectly normal at the time.





However, of all the evps that we captured during the two days that we spent investigating room 204, the one that I feel could potentially relate to the story of Anna Powell (Powers) more than any other is the one below.  Similar to the legend surrounding the suicide of Molly (the slave girl who was found hanging from the rafters of her room at The Sorell Weed House), Anna's death is believed, by many, to be a murder committed by her husband when he discovered that she was having an affair.  If this theory is correct, and Anna did not jump but was thrown out the window of Room 204 by her jealous husband, then this evp captured on our last night at the 1790 might just be Anna's husband's confession.



Hard to believe even for me (I just hit the record button).  I still don't know if these are random, residual voices or if they have a specific story to tell (maybe both can occur depending on the location and the timing). Your guess is as good as mine.  Leave me a comment and tell me your thoughts on the matter.  I would really be interested to hear other people's opinions because it is a question that I have had since the first evp I recorded.

In my next blog I will be focusing on the extremely haunted Moon River Brewing Company in Savannah, Georgia (and they brew some mean beers there as well).

See my other posts at Savannah's Haunted Bed & Breakfasts Part 1 - The Marshall HouseSavannah's Haunted Bed & Breakfasts Part 2 - The Kehoe House.

1 comment:

  1. My sister and I stayed in Rm 204 we tried to sleep but there was this pressing feeling so strong on us every time we drifted off.
    Finally left at 4:00 am talked to Anna a minute.I did take a photo before leaving and over the bed was an Orb.
    On the way home to Atlanta I kept feeling a residual feeling. It finally dissipated.
    But a week later home in bed, the bed began shaking and woke me up, again I felt that pressure feeling on me. I told it to leave, and have not been bothered since.

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