A historic Gainesboro property opening its doors for a community Halloween party to help raise funds for critical structural restorations.
The property stands as the oldest house in Gainesboro, with construction beginning on the first section around 1832. Gaines House Association Vice President April Norrod said the property previously yielded authentic Civil War bullets and medical devices from underneath the floorboards. Saturday’s event include a paranormal investigation.
“We’re going to have different stations where each station will have a different type of paranormal experiment using the scientific methods that we use when we do the investigations,” Norrod said.
The association plans to use the proceeds generated from the seasonal tours to overhaul the exterior siding, reinforce the roof, and paint the entire structure.
Norrod said her team will guide guests through the rooms to test high-tech equipment like REM-pods, K2 meters, and spirit boxes that cycle backwards through AM and FM radio frequencies.
“The military would come in and basically commandeer any house and turn it into a makeshift hospital,” Norrod said. “And so the Gaines house is the only one still standing that they did that with.”
Norrod said visitors and investigators have reported disembodied voices, shadow figures, door knocks, heavy footsteps, and full-body apparitions throughout the rooms. One prominent presence, known as Mr. Putty, frequently triggers equipment responses when investigators play music inside the building.
“We have found that Mr. Putty and and some of the other folks like music,” Norrod said. “We’ll play music and a lot of our devices will start activating will like go off and stuff and then when we stop it’s almost like they get agitated and they’ll activate more until we start playing the music and then they’ll slow down again.”
The Saturday event will feature a community wide trick-or-treat at 5pm followed by an interactive public paranormal investigation starting at 8pm.
“We’re going to have to kind of do little bits at a time throughout as we as we’re able to have the funds to do that,” Norrod said.