Haunted Courthouse?

Saw this article late this morning. Interesting enough this is said to be a reoccurring haunting.
I’m sure we will be seeing more investigations from this place from local ghost hunting teams.

Richmond County has broken ground for a new judicial center on Walton Way and James Brown (Campbell/ Ninth streets) Boulevard.

It’s a tricky location with the canal and railroad tracks nearby.

But the real problem could be that the site comes with the documented history of a ghost on Talcot Street — a small thoroughfare that could vanish beneath the courthouse development.

Talcot has always been one of Augusta’s smallest streets. Named for a Mexican War hero a century and a half ago, it runs between Ninth and 10th streets.

But it achieved some notoriety in 1885 when The Chronicle reported one of its rooming houses was haunted.

The identity of the ghost was suspected. An old man, who rented rooms in a tenement house on Talcot’s south side, had died a year before in “acute agony.” He was buried and new boarders — a widow and her children — took his rooms.

Soon after, the newspaper said, he returned.The woman said she was sewing one July night when she saw the form of a man, about 50, moving silently around the room. As she watched, he walked up the stairs and soon she heard the sound of a bed falling overhead.

A short time later, the image appeared again. This time walking closer to the woman still sewing by lamplight. She described him as stern, smooth-faced, gray-haired, slightly stooped and wearing the clothes of a workman.

Her son saw the image, too. He was upstairs in the bed as it moved about the floor. He also heard the ghost mutter, “Oh, Lord,” several times before it left.

The ghost, the newspaper reported, came back often, once walking in on some neighbors next door. The widow (whom the newspaper refused to identify) said that after each visit, the doors and windows were checked and found secure. Locked and bolted.

“The family in the upper tenement where the ghost has appeared regularly nearly every week will remain for the present,” The Chronicle reported.

“They are not afraid, although considerably annoyed by the continued visitations.”

The reporter or his editors probably thought this whole episode was going to raise doubts.

“We are not detailing an imaginary affair,” they wrote. “The details as given above were narrated to us by the widow, herself, whom we called on yesterday afternoon, after hearing a rumor in regard to the matter.

We suppress the names by request, but give the true location. The occupants of the house are intelligent people. They declare they don’t believe in ghosts but … the neighbors have heard the stange noises and … some of them have seen the mysterious visitant.”

Full source: Augusta Blog

Written by Javier Ortega - javier@ghosttheory.com
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