Seeking Beyond Paranormal

1858 Garnett House Hotel

May 27, 2025 | 9pm — 4am

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

In the world of the paranormal, the 1858 Garnett House Hotel needs no introduction. Investigators from around the world flock to this location to experiece its rich hauntings and prolific poltergeist activity. Whether caught on camera or only captured in the memories of those who visit, the experiences ghost hunters have here are often far too numerous to count.

First constructed in 1858 as a residence by D.W. Houston, the house was damaged in a storm which caused its noticeable lean. It was abandoned by its original occupants out of safety considerations as a result, when it was then leased to Houston's son-in-law who converted it into a hotel. The hotel grew with additions and structural modifications, which then locked the house into its crooked and skewed appearance still seen today. Over the years, the Garnett House has been a hotel, doctors' offices, a jail, brothels, photo studios, and is even rumored to have been a stop on the underground railroad. It was sold to its current owner, Justin Spurrier, in 2017.

The Claims

The claims of paranormal activity at the Garnett House range from the mundane to the extraordinary. The claims include (but are not limited to) phantom footsteps heard upstairs, hearing disembodied voices (particularly that of a child), dolls falling to the floor, doors opening and closing, shadow figures in the house and on the property (including one known as "The Grinner"), and people getting scratched. Some people even claim the activity in the house to be demonic. Notably, the claims of paranormal activity here are intertwined with various rumors and stories, stemming both from interpretations of historical research, and more modern piggy-backed ghost stories, so it truly puts investigators to the test when sussing out fact from fiction at this house.

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Equipment and Setup

Since we had WRPS with us again, our equipment loadout effectively doubled. Not only did we have our typical kit (REM Pod, EMF meters, voice recorders, flashlights (which went unused), Spirit Box for the Estes Method, and our XLS camera, we had additional REM Pods, additional voice recorders, Mel Meters, laser grids, and a geophone. And specifically for experimentation, we had our two police bodycams.

My (David) main interest in the house was the potential to catch a door moving, and one of the doors upstairs was my target. So when we arrived and let ourselves in, Jecca and I immediately headed upstairs to place our police bodycams to be trained on that door (the cameras would actuall see four total doors, giving our night-long experiment several variables to watch. One camera was placed in each room on each side of that one door with the idea being if the door opened up, we'd have timestamped footage from both sides. Not only that, but the cameras were on and recording from the moment we left the vehicle so that they could catch any potential item movement on our way upstairs (we've heard that activity tends to happen during the initial tour of the house, so we wanted to be prepared for anything in that regard).

While we investigated room-to-room and changed our group dynamics throughout the night, the general setup was the same for most of the night. Four of us had voice recorders either on our persons or set out on furniture in each room we investigated, with REM Pods and Mel Meters deployed in the centers of the rooms or in key doorways. Jecca and I roamed with cameras, both for documentation purposes and to be on the lookout for any potential shadow play or poltergeist activity. We had a REM Pod placed halfway up the staircase most of the night as well, as the stairs have been shown to be active by other investigators. During our various split-ups, the laser grids were used to help see any movement, and the geophone was deployed to hopefully catch any footsteps.

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The Investigation

This wasn't expressed as an intention at all during the investigation, but with three members of our group being from a TAPS Family team, I saw it as an opportunity to really try to absorb some knowledge and methodology. So whenever possible, I tried to let Sherrie, Lu Ann, and Gage take the lead. As a result, our overall investigation style was a lot closer to that of TAPS than our previous efforts, which are based on more recent YouTuber-based methodology.

But what does that mean? Well, bluntly, it means a whole lot more time and effort put into debunking than we're used to. To be clear, we are certainly no strangers to debunking on investigations, of course, but the TAPS methodology is rather exhaustive when it comes to finding rational reasons for potentially paranormal activity. I knew this would be the case going in, so when Jecca and I first entered the house to set up our police body cams, we also checked for possible triggers that could account for the door opening occurences. And I don't mean loose floorboards and broken door latches — I mean actual hidden devices that could possibly push the doors open. It sounds silly, but it has happened to the core TAPS team on Ghost Hunters AND to our WPRS counterparts. With all the hype surrounding the poltergeist activity at this house, I really wanted to put in my due diligence here. This added effort wasn't done in an accusatory manner, to be sure. But from a scientific approach, such traps needed to be ruled out. I'm no detective or forensics expert, but we didn't find anything of the sort — just rusty hinges and flaking paint. More on debunking the door later.

The video below shares the bulk of our night at the Garnett House, and I do hope you watch it! But not everything we experienced that night made it into the video. Our night was full of personal experiences that have no explanation, and it might be best to simply list them out below.

Going back to the door upstairs, additional approaches were made in an attempt to debunk the claims of opening doors. Considering the overall condition of the house, movement and vibration had to be taken into account, so WPRS set out stomping their way around throughout several rooms upstairs in an attempt to unlatch our target door. The door would barely latch to begin with, so the idea here was that a little vibration ought to be enough to cause it to open. The door would swing open freely when unlatched, so we had gravity on our side during our attempts to debunk it. However, no matter how much stomping and vibration we made, the door sat securely enough in its latch. Gage even tried some sneaky prison tricks from his time as a guard where inmates would jam a rolled up paper towel in the latch, but to no avail.

Interestingly, there were lots of items set out in intentionally precarious ways in hopes they would fall to the ground through some paranormal nudging, not just dolls. There were lots of ping pong balls, building blocks, toys, and marbles set out on the edges of furniture, cabinets, curtain rods, you name it. The idea being that if some paranormal entity wanted to make itself known, it wouldn't have to use much energy to push these objects over because of how close to the edge they were placed. But why is that interesting here? Well, with all the stomping around we did, only one doll fell, and it was because we were stomping right in front of it. Mind you, I do mean STOMPING, not just "walking heavily." So as precarious as all the items are situated, they don't move much (if at all) when the house vibrates from walking, lending some legitimacy to the occasions when they do seemingly "fall on their own." Additionally, one of the dolls has a music box built into it, and we were attempting to debunk it playing on its own shortly after our attempts to debunk the door. We did get it to play while stomping around, but only after initially nudging it to get it to play. It wouldn't play before that nudge.

As loud as we were stomping around an empty haunted house at 2am, we did manage to capture a handful of incredible EVPs during some of the quieter parts of the night. In fact, one of our voice recorders managed to pick up some footsteps and thud sounds inside the house while we were blissfully unaware while outside on one of our breaks. These EVPs just go to show that the investigation doesn't stop when you leave the location - real investigative work is involved later on as you analyze your video and audio. The Garnett House certainly didn't disappoint in this department - in fact, we caught our best EVP to date here, and I'm still ecstatic about it as I write this weeks after the fact.

While we had the reservation from 9pm to 11am the following day, our investigation naturally came to an end around 4am. We didn't get any doors opening or have dramatic sightings of shadow figures or The Grinner (though I suspect that may be him laughing in the EVP!), but we certainly didn't leave empty handed, given the EVPs caught during review! Overall, it was an incredible investigation, and knowing more about the house now from having talked to other investigators, I'd love to return and really push the boundaries of provokation to see what we can stir up. Until then, here's the video of our investigation of the 1858 Garnett House Hotel. Enjoy!

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Our Results

As I just mentioned, we didn't see any astounding poltergeist activity, but our investigation was far from fruitless. The night was filled with personal experiences and equipment going off. There's more to the Garnett House than some doors opening and dolls falling, and below is a summary of our findings even without that stuff happening.

We'd like to thank Justin Spurrier and his team for making the 1858 Garnett House Hotel open and available to paranormal investigators like us to study and explore. It's an incredible, certifiably spooky location that was definitely worth the trip. It's our hope that our investigation helps in the restoration of the house in some small way!

by David Reimer, posted June 18, 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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