Light anomalies caught in doll room. It appears something caught the attention of our investigator as one anomaly came through. A second follows coming right to left across the bottom of the video.
Caught in waiting room. Claims are that shadows are seen crossing the doorways.
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History: According to his own biography, David Watson Houston, commonly referred to as DW, was born in 1827 in Ohio. He moved to the Kansas Territory in early March 1859 and then on into Garnett. He built a small log cabin as a temporary home on 4th street and in June 1858 he built a much larger home next door on the corner of 4th and Walnut streets. His wife, Mary Agnes, didn’t like the house because she felt the upper floor swayed in the wind. DW then built a third home next door. The original second home – now known as the Garnet House Hotel, is thought to be the only surviving antebellum structure in the town of Garnett, Kansas.
Between 1859 and 1910 the building had several manager/owners and it was used in a variety of ways. There is documented evidence that it was used as a type of boarding house and doctor offices. Shorthand was taught there in 1892 and ladies hats were sold there in 1895. There is one documented occurrence of 4 teenage boys being held there because there was no heat at the jail and Sarah Phillips, charged with first degree murder in the death of her husband, was held for 3 months at the hotel. In 1910 Col. Houston and his daughter Grace returned to the home and he died there in 1915. In the early 1950s, the building became the office of Dr. Robert Stevens and his wife Dr. Julius-Stevens. They treated patients in the old hotel up until the early 2000s. It is claimed that the abolitionist John Brown hid escaping slaves in the attic and that can account for some of the paranormal claims. While it is documented that Brown was in the area during the Bleeding Kansas crisis of 1856, he was back in West Virginia by 1859 where he died in December 1859. While not impossible - It appears that the documented timeline does not allow time enough for Brown to have been in Garnett after the Garnett House was built and then make it to West Virginia in time to participate in the Harper’s Ferry raid, so we have discounted this claim until further proof is offered. Claims: There have not been any paranormal claims until the building was purchased by Elite Paranormal of KC in late 2016. Since the purchase, claims of a child laughing in the lab, hearing voices, the sound of footsteps upstairs and the sound of water splashing have been made. Also, in the doll room, it is claimed that the dolls are pushed off the ledges where they are perched. Our Findings: We investigated the Garnett House Hotel on October 7, 2018. It was a stormy night, with rainfall of just over 2 inches during our investigation. The temperature stayed in the low 60s throughout the night. While the hotel was free of trash and debris it was obvious the building had not been maintained for many years. It was as you would expect, peeling plaster, warped floorboards, with the smell of mold throughout the building. Initially it was very difficult to investigate. The pounding rain, thunder and lightning made capturing any audio nearly impossible and we were not having any personal experiences. That started to change as it got later into our investigation. We set up four static night vision cameras with audio (second floor doll room, stairway, waiting room and attic) and did capture several light anomalies. During our live Facebook feed followers commented that they saw an orb on camera. We did not see this at the time. However on replay of our static night vision camera we caught not only what the viewers saw but also 3 light anomalies that occurred several minutes before. It is also claimed that the attic is very active. John Warren, servant for the Houston family lived in the attic space. In 1864 he was taken from the attic and hanged when he confessed to the brutal murder of local woman Adeline Duren. Due to the pounding rain we were not able to capture any audio. However, our static night vision camera did capture 2 light anomalies. We had two personal experiences that were caught on audio. The first experience occurred at nearly 3am as we were entering the building after taking a short break and the second experience took place at about 4:30am. Both EVPs were caught on the audio of the waiting room static camera. Is the Garnett house Hotel haunted? While we can debunk the footsteps as just sounds of the building, the water splashing – we heard it running between the walls due to the rain, and even the falling dolls – they were perched on very small doorframes and fell every time we walked by - we have no explanation for the voices we caught on audio. There were no living people out on the street the night we investigated due to the weather – and the voices were so clear they can’t be mistaken for the sound of the rain. We believe there is someone still lingering at the hotel – who it is we can’t say. But it’s worth the trip to check it out for yourself. |