VICKSBURG, Mississippi (CNN) – Near the end of the day on a recent Fourth of July, Grace Bailey noticed a man approaching along the brick path toward the front door of the McRaven House in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Through the fall foliage along the promenade, I could see Bailey dressed more formally than the typical visitor to the antebellum mansion (the first quarter was built in 1797). As one of two tour guides on duty, Bailey marched inside to his post at the entrance to greet late arrivals. But when she opened the door, no one walked in.
But as she stands waiting for the man to reappear, she notices that his clothing and unique hairstyle look eerily familiar. Both seemed out of place and outdated. Then she remembered another significance of this day. In Vicksburg, July 4 is also remembered as the day in 1863 when Confederate forces surrendered to Union forces, ending a brutal 43-day siege.
And it was exactly one year after the siege ended that then-owner John H. Bobb was murdered by Union occupiers.
“I almost panicked because the hair I saw was the same swish as in Mr. Bob’s portrait,” Bailey says. “That was the moment where I said, ‘Okay, I’ve officially seen a ghost for the first time.’
Starvation, mutilation, and death are all part of the harrowing Civil War history of the Mississippi River city that President Lincoln called the “key” to defeating the Confederacy, and McRaven claims his role in the story. During the operation, this was one of the homes used as a temporary hospital for wounded Confederate soldiers, and it is believed that hundreds of people were buried in a mass grave just 50 feet from the home.
But as guides and guests alike claim, paranormal activity occurs year-round in McRaven, and it’s not just about war. That’s why, in addition to historical tours, there are monthly late-night ghost hunts. One night in September, I joined 13 other guests, including repeat guests, to try to connect with its spirit.
Before I go any further, I must admit that I am a skeptic when it comes to the supernatural. I have never seen, felt or heard a ghost, nor have I ever witnessed an inanimate object move on its own. For me, ghost stories seem too fantastical and divorced from reality as I know it. But I have been risk averse to those beliefs. Once, when I had to stay overnight in another allegedly haunted place, I self-medicated enough to not wake up to anything except the sound of my alarm at 7am.
Bailey said she had similar opinions when she started working at McRaven. “I was a half-hearted believer. I thought, ‘Maybe there are ghosts.'” I wasn’t trying to say that people who believed in ghosts were crazy, but I wasn’t completely convinced yet. ”
She believed she had seen a fleeting glimpse of McRaven’s murdered owner.
If McRaven House was able to quickly convert Bailey, I wasted no time trying to persuade him either. Not long after she and colleague Brian Reilly detailed the electronic equipment that supposedly helps locate spirits, they heard a series of quiet but steady bangs coming from the empty second floor.
“Did you hear that?” I asked John Williams, a guest I had just met. “Yeah, it sounded like footsteps,” we shared a look of confusion. It was only 9pm, but the hunt had officially begun.
It was Williams’ second visit with his wife, Kathy, who traveled four hours from Booneville, Mississippi. Although he grew up in a home full of paranormal activity, he said he didn’t have high expectations when he and his wife first visited McRaven.
“I thought it was just some kind of tourist trap,” he says. “So walking over an old house in the woods is going to feel creepy, whether there’s anything there or not.”
He quickly changed his mind. In the second-floor bedroom of Mary Elizabeth Howard, a teenage bride who died during childbirth in 1836, she witnessed a cupboard repeatedly opening and closing on its own.
Across the hallway in the original part of the house, where Civil War artifacts such as a bone saw and a bloodstained cloth stretcher are on display, his wife, Kathy, said she encountered Andrew Glass, the notorious highwayman and thief who built the first phase of McRaven, in his bedroom.
As she stood in the small room, where an antique four-poster bed covered with sheer white curtains cast a corpse-like pallor, she said she felt something touching her hair. She thought it was her 3-year-old son she was holding until she noticed his hands weren’t near his head.
Staff say Glass’s ghost is attracted to women, and guide Bailey believes he is responsible for her own first paranormal experience at McRaven. She said she didn’t actually witness the incident, but that she felt someone gently grab her ankle and touch her cheek.
A few minutes past 11 p.m., Mr. and Mrs. Williams and I were standing in the glass bedroom with Bailey and a few other guests when something began to register on the K2 EMF meter and the REM pod (two devices that allegedly measure changes in temperature and electromagnetic fields that coincide with paranormal visitations). Bailey wore headphones and listened as a spirit box buzzed across the radio frequencies, seeking answers to guests’ questions.
The “answers” also contained a series of obscene contents. The scene became tense as more signs of life were observed. After that, activity suddenly stopped. “There was definitely something there,” Bailey says.
Mary Elizabeth’s room across the hall was silent, only a few recognizable words coming from the spirit box. It’s usually one of the most active rooms, and during one memorable hunt, Riley said she observed her husband’s baton, which served as a sheriff, move on its own.
Riley, a veteran paranormal investigator who was leading another group that night, says he saw a shadow running through the rhododendrons at the same time Bailey saw the man coming up the sidewalk. He said he had been pushed and scratched in the past, and once while on tour he made eye contact with a strange woman on the second-floor balcony outside Mary Elizabeth’s bedroom. It was a particularly chilling moment because she wasn’t on tour and would never see her again.
“I think she noticed me, and I definitely noticed her,” Riley says. “I remember her having brown eyes, brown hair tied up in a bun, and wearing a brown dress with blue flowers, which I later learned was an 1830s dress style.”
He said the activity increased after one of the owners accidentally unearthed a human femur while digging a shallow trench to bury power lines. Riley had just arrived home to prepare for a tour. That’s when he saw a shadowy figure exit the front door and walk towards the back of the house. Again, it was never seen again.
“I think it might have something to do with that,” he says. “Because I remember feeling kind of uncomfortable in the house for a few days.”
Around 12:45am we moved downstairs to the parlor. It was a gathering space decorated with ornate fixtures, a baby grand piano, and the original elaborate crown molding added in 1849. Bailey put on headphones and listened to the Spirit Box, repeating the words “party” and “mask” as she deciphered them through the static.
After Kathy Williams asked if the ghosts were having a party, the REM pod placed in the center of the room began blinking, and a small LED cat toy placed on the mantle blinked. Another guest asked if it was a masquerade ball. Again, by chance or for some other reason, the gadget responded.
Later, in the same area, the name “Ida” flashed on the Spirit Box app on her husband John’s phone. I don’t know if this is a coincidence or not, but it was the name of a woman who died in this house in 1946.
“I’ve never seen Mary’s room so quiet during a ghost hunt, especially late at night. But there was a lot of activity that night, so the reception room compensated for that in a way. Maybe they were having a party, so we interrupted it,” says Bailey.
“When we were in Mary Elizabeth’s room, the spirit box kept saying that she was saying ‘you’re late’ and ‘you have to leave,'” said Kathy Williams. So we thought maybe she was late for the party because we interrupted her, but she asked us to leave. ”
By nearly 1:30 a.m., it all seemed plausible. Were we having a good time at Intruder? When I was exhausted and the spell of curiosity broke, this story grabbed me. It’s time to leave the ghosts to their hoopla and retire from hunting. In groups of two or three, the other guests got off and started heading to their cars, and I quickly followed suit–honestly, being careful not to let anyone follow me on the way out.
As I walked down the brick path, reversing the strange gait that had made Bailey a believer, I tried to shake off the idea that I was being watched.
I emerged into the dim light pouring down from a pair of utility poles, crossed the sidewalk of Harrison Street, which dead-ended at McRaven, and quickly retreated to my car, where I now sat alone on the edge of the gravel parking lot. Then, in one fluid motion, I locked the doors, started the engine, and started the transmission.
