5 Oct 2007
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/stories/2007/10/04/ghost_tour_cover_1005gwe.html
Ghost tours popping up on the Northside
By H.M. CAULEY
For the Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/05/07
There's a nip of fall in the air, but it's not the cooler weather making many metro residents shiver.
On some October nights, they're getting goose bumps from the creepy stories that are part of the ghost tours in Roswell, Marietta and Lawrenceville.
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Renee Brock/Special
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Attendees of the Roswell Ghost Tour listen to tour guide Joe Avena (far left) in Roswell's Founders cemetery.
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Mikki K. Harris/AJC
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Jessica Thompson tells a tale of flying corpses during a ghost tour of downtown Lawrenceville last year.
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If the experts are to be believed, the old homes, stores, restaurants and shops around these town squares are hotbeds of supernatural goings-on. There are phantom bartenders, wayward spirits moving curtains and messing with light switches, and mysterious shapes appearing in windows.
In Marietta, some of those weird happenings have been captured in photographs and passed around for an extra frisson by tour guide Joni Goodin. Is there a patriarchal ghost posing for photos in the window of the Glover House on Whitlock Avenue? Does the spirit of a young girl wander through the Kennesaw House along the train tracks? Goodin passes around pictures that indicate it may be so.
Dressed in a flowing red velvet cape, black lace gloves and a hat with a black veil, Goodin relates stories that she has been told by owners of the properties on the tour.
"I found that a lot of people in Marietta are happy to sit and talk to you about their ghosts," she said. "Many of the stories I tell are about people living with those ghosts."
In Lawrenceville, the stories aren't as well-documented but are creepy all the same. These tours, run by guides from the Aurora Theatre, stop at several historic and sometimes eerie locations around the courthouse square. One of the most disturbing is the old jail off Calaboose Alley, where scary sounds are said to echo in the dark. Tour-goers get to step inside the low-ceilinged, dank space to take a look at the rusty iron bars and bunks no longer used by the living.
The Gwinnett tour also features a stop of weird trivia: The bullet holes in the side of a building from the 1978 shooting of Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt. The rest of the tour leaves most of the evidence up to the imagination. There's no saying for sure if Creek Indian war veterans interred on the courthouse square roam the lawns after dark, of if there's a mysterious force at work rearranging files and papers in a local law office.
In Roswell, the approach to ghosts is a bit more scientific. Tour owners Dianna and Joe Avena have taken a recent interest in the paranormal and share what they've learned with their guests.
"We find costumes and fake accents distracting," said Dianna Avena. "The stories speak for themselves. Some are generations old, but all the ones we tell have happened within the last seven years."
According to the Avenas, Roswell is a ghostly mecca, with dislocated spirits from the Civil War and restless children roaming the town. There are strange goings-on in the attic of Bulloch Hall, where lights seem to have a mind of their own. Down the street at Mimosa Hall, guests often ask the homeowners why they smell smoke, only to learn of a fire that destroyed the house in the last century. In the Founders Cemetery, a little girl is said to have grasped the hand of tour-goers and played hide-and-seek with them from behind the monuments.
While the tour operators can't promise any actual apparitions, you never know when a bit of moonlight, a fall breeze and a flashlight may produce something memorably eerie. And if not, that's fine with Goodin.
"I believe in spirits, but I don't want to see a full apparition," she said with a laugh.
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NORTHSIDE
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MARIETTA GHOST TOUR
• 770-881-8011
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• Prices: $15 adults; $10 children younger than 12
• Tours leave at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday from the courtyard next to the Marietta Welcome Center, 4 Depot St., Marietta. Check for additional hours in October.
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LAWRENCEVILLE GHOST TOUR
• 678-226-6222
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• Prices: $12 adults; $9 children younger than 12
• Tours leave at 8:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday from the Aurora Theatre, 128 Pike St., Lawrenceville, and last about 90 minutes. During October, tours are offered at 7:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and at 7 and 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Tickets on Friday and Saturday in October are $15 adults; $12 children younger than 12.
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ROSWELL GHOST TOUR
• 770-649-9922
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• Prices: $15; $10 children 12 and younger
• Tours leave at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday from the gazebo on the Roswell square and last about two hours. Check for additional tour days and hours in October.
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