Seeking Beyond Paranormal

Gaines House

July 26, 2025 | 7:30pm — 12:30am

The Claims | Equipment and Setup | The Investigation | Our Results

The Gaines House sits delapidated and unassuming in the historic district of Gainesboro, a small town in central Tennessee east of Nashville. It's only indicator that something is different about the house is a placard to the side of the house explaining that it's a former Civil War field hospital, along with information on the preservation effort by the Gaines House Association. Beyond that, it's not immediately apparent that this house ought to stick out from its surrounding houses.

The accepted story is that the Gaines House was constructed sometime during the 1830s (often cited as 1839 but some sources claim earlier in the decade) by Major Gaines, a veteran of both the Revolutionary War and the French & Indian War. Like nearly all other houses in Gainesboro, it was converted to a field hospital during the American Civil War, treating Confederate soldiers for their combat wounds from nearby skirmishes. It's not known how many of those soldiers died in the house, but given the Civil War's reputation for inflicting grizzly and often fatal injury, it can be assumed that significant wounds, amputations, disease, and deaths all occurred in the house with regularity. Over the house's remaining history, multiple families have owned and lived there. It's now owned by the Gaines House Association, and efforts to restore its structure and preserve its history are currently underway.

The Claims

Regardless of the unknown number of deaths in the Gaines House, the number of claims of paranormal activity are numerous. It's often cited that footsteps can be heard in other rooms, but disappear when entering those rooms. Adult voices are also often heard, both in EVP and disembodied forms. Additionally, the sounds of items moving, crashing, and banging together while the room remains otherwise untouched are also cited. Electrical anomalies and EMF abnormalities also occur in the house, along with temperature changes. On occasion, shadow figures and a misty apparition can be seen throughout the house. Finally, there is one specific chair in the house that is supposedly tied to a spirit and is the source of quite a lot of activity.

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Equipment and Setup

This location was pretty standard fare for us equipment-wise. No new tools were implemented here beyond our standard kit (REM Pod, flashlights, EMF meters, catballs, SLS Camera, Spirit Box + Estes Method), but oddly our EMF meters didn't make it out of our equipment cases this time around.

For setup, we determined there to be three primary investigation areas of interest for us: The central "chair room" (that is, the room with the paranormally-active chair in it), the downstairs front room, and the upstairs room. We investigated each room independently, so our setup was wholly in each room instead of spread out across the whole house. In each room, we ran both of our voice recorders, set out our REM pod, deployed catballs throughout, and conducted Estes Method sessions. In the chair room and upstairs room we also set out flashlights for spirit interaction. The front room was also our HQ for the night, and with our equipment cases taking up the majority of the available table space, we just didn't have enough vantage points to utilize the flashlights in this room.

There were two rooms in the house that we didn't really investigate: the back room, and the middle room (?). It's not that these rooms didn't have any activity in them, it's just that the rooms we operated in had more stories associated with them, which warranted more of our attention. That being said, we did deploy a catball in each room and noted catball activity in each of those rooms throughout the night. So all in all, every room was paranormally active in some manner during our investigation.

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The Investigation

We began our investigation in the chair room with a quick voice recorder session. As we've learned on prior investigations, our voice recorders' speakers are not powerful enough to replay the audio in the moment, so we aren't able to tell which sessions return results as we conduct them. So in the moment, we just conduct the recorder session and move on to the next investigative method. However, after the fact, we learned that nothing came of this first voice recorder session, which is likely par for the course as we are still new strangers to the house.

Next, and still in the chair room, we conducted a pair of Estes Method sessions, with Grant going under first and Jecca going under second. Grant actually went under twice in a row, as we learned that the Spirit Box was just putting out pure static during his first session and thus wasn't operating correctly. However, his second session was just as quiet even with the Spirit Box operating correctly. Objectively speaking, it's often rather difficult for the listener to pick out words/responses — the Spirit Box has multiple speed settings at which the radio stations can cycle through, and even if the speed is adjusted to the listener's preference, it's not always terribly clear with half-words just barely cutting through the static. Even for veteran listeners who can listen under the static and pick out the non-radio responses, it's still terribly difficult. However, when we swapped out Grant for Jecca, the responses started coming in. Lots of "help" and similar responses, which made sense for being a Civil War field hospital. At one point during Jecca's session, the responses seemed to even request the use of torches (i.e. flashlights) as an alternative means of communicating, and when we added the flashlights into the mix, they generated some notable activity.

During these Estes Method sessions, we also run voice recorders. Since half of the Estes Method is practically identical to a voice recorder session (i.e. asking questions to the room), it's automatically another opportunity to potentially catch some EVPs — and that was certainly the case here. During Jecca's session, we managed to catch two EVPs! You'll have more context for the audio in the video posted below, but here are the two EVPs for your listening pleasure. Please note: It's best to listen to these EVPs with quality headphones and the volume turned up.

Next, we turned our attention to the front room (downstairs). Our host explained to us earlier during the tour that the table in this room has actually moved for other investigators, so this was definitely an area of interest for us. As mentioned above, this room was also our headquarters for the night, so we had all of our equipment cases laid out on the table and it wasn't exactly the best "setup" for asking a spirit to rearrange the furniture for us. Having just come off a few Estes Method sessions, we opted for a simple call-and-response style session, trying to see if we could get any spirits to knock in response to us. We didn't hear it at the time, but we did manage to get a response. We were running a voice recorder that was sitting on the table, and it managed to pick up a pair of soft but definite knocks.

Following that, we opted to take a 30-minute break to cool off. Since this was the end of July in a house without any air conditioning, we were starting to get overheated and exhausted. Before leaving the house, though, we set out a voice recorder to capture audio while we were out of the house. This kind of experiment is called abandonment, and investigators often employ video and audio to see what happens when a reportedly haunted location is empty (we did this at the Old Pickens County Jail too). To our surprise, we managed to capture quite a few things. While there were certainly individual knocks and taps throughout, toward the end of our 30 minutes, the voice recorder captured a solid minute and a half of what sounds like someone rummaging around the room, picking up and putting things down on the table, moving chairs around, and walking around. This audio clip really does need the volume turned up and your headphones pressed into your head to really appreciate it fully. It's shocking how much happens in this clip.

Once we had cooled off, three of us headed upstairs to investigate the last remaining area of interest while Olivia went and interviewed our host for more information. During the tour, the host noted that this upstairs room had some kind of negative energy to it, and objects had been thrown during past investigations due to some disrespectful provocation from previous paranormal teams. Being respectful is one of the cornerstones of our team, but we decided this would be a good opportunity to try some minor provocation to see if we could stir up some more activity. In this room, we set out our REM Pod, catballs, flashlights, and ran a voice recorder while we tried some call-and-response. The responses we got were confusing at best, and it's entirely possible our set of catballs is running low on juice and may need to be replaced. That being said, we did get several audible taps in the room during this session, along with some REM Pod (temperature sensor), flashlight, and catball activity. Some of the responses we got lined up with some of our provoking, but we couldn't quite discern what was working and what wasn't. Perhaps we weren't provoking enough. We did manage to get two more audio anomalies in this room, though: One in the form of a vocal tone (possibly a "hi") and the other in the form of an odd swoosh sound.

As the night started winding down, Grant and I (David) wanted to do one more Estes Method session in the room upstairs while the girls were done for the evening and stayed downstairs. We don't have any footage from that session in the video below, but I had a voice recorder running so we have audio. I was the listener during this session, and I noted the distinct sensation of feeling someone walk around me while Grant was asking questions. It felt so real, I was sure it was Grant pacing around for whatever reason. I noted it at the time, and even reached out with my arm at one point in an attempt to catch him moving around. But Grant assured me that he was seated and still the entire time, and we were the only two upstairs at the time. Surprisingly, the voice recorder managed to pick up several footsteps around the time I say I could feel the walking, and that audio is below. Even more surprising, though, is that when we were done, Jecca and Olivia recounted to us that they could hear someone walking around during our session. So not only was it a personal experience, but it was backed up with recorded audio AND a third-party. That's pretty significant.

Our investigation had naturally come to an end after this last Estes Method session. We packed up and rolled out around 12:30am. Below is our video production of the night. I was expecting this video to be one of our shorter videos, but it still managed to be around an hour long. We hope you enjoy it! If you watch it, I hope you'd consider liking the video and subscribing to our YouTube channel. The more I interact with the creator side of YouTube, the more I learn about how liking, commenting, and subscribing really does help a channel grow!

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Our Results

Despite having a full list of claims going in, we didn't know what to expect with this investigation. And with any investigation, the on-site work is only half of the investigative work. So when you're using voice recorders that you can't listen to in the moment, it kind of makes your work feel less full at the end of the on-site investigation, like you're walking away empty handed. But when you analyze your audio after the fact and come up with a slew of audio clips, it feels really rewarding. Not only did we come away with some EVPs, we actually confirmed several of the claims of paranormal activity, which is rewarding on a whole other level. Here are our results:

This place was so fun to investigate. It was a small enough building that we didn't feel overwhelmed at how to set up or what order of operations to follow, and each room was distinct enough that none of it felt repetitive. Logistically speaking, it was also close enough to home that we didn't need to get a hotel, but it still made for a fun little weekend roadtrip with friends. We also got more results than expected, which is just icing on the cake. We'd like to thank April Norrod and the Gaines House Association for allowing investigations like this to happen. We hope you enjoyed our work and video, and we'd love to come back again!

by David Reimer and Olivia LaRose, posted August 30, 2025

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Who We Are

Seeking Beyond Paranormal is a team of paranormal investigators based in Huntsville, Alabama. First started as a fun way to visit some of the country’s most haunted locations, Seeking Beyond now explores the realm of paranormal investigation.

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