Take the recently discovered spirits believed to reside at the 1870 Octagon Mansion History Museum in Wytheville, which inspired the 2019 short film, A Haunting at The Octagon Mansion.
Unlike other specters, which have been rattling around for centuries, the Octagon’s spirits—a 12-year-old girl named Audrey and the reverend who built the mansion in 1870—were only discovered after Debbie and John Cushman bought the long-empty building in 2018.
“What we have at the mansion seems to be very cordial,” Debbie said. “They’re not evil, nothing demonic. That’s after over three years of investigations.” She says her 4-year-old granddaughter has befriended Audrey, and the minister seems to be content as long as there’s bourbon on the dining room table.
The mansion hosts paranormal investigators—essentially real-life ghostbusters—who regularly rent out the space for overnight hunts, using electronic sensors and recording equipment to track spirits. Similar gatherings are held at Belle Grove Plantation Bed & Breakfast in King George, whose spectral residents have been featured on the Travel Channel’s Kindred Spirits and SyFy’s Ghost Hunters.
Pirok isn’t surprised by the findings: New ghost stories are emerging all the time, she says. “Human beings tell ghost stories. This is part of who we are.”
And the professor, who has made a career of studying the supernatural, says she’s not immune to getting the heebie-jeebies herself at the end of an evening ghost tour. “If the story’s told well, and it’s a crisp night, it’s contagious.”
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