The Anchorage

If you like old houses that are haunted, well I have the perfect place for you!

Marietta is the oldest city in Ohio and while there are plenty of beautiful old houses in town, one caught my attention about ten or so years ago. The Anchorage, also known as the Putnam Villa, is a beautiful 22 room Italianate style home that was built in 1859 and sits proudly on a hill overlooking Harmar Village in Marietta. The house was built by Douglas Putnam for his wife Eliza and is built from native oak and sandstone. Eliza planned the homes design to suit her personal style and it took ten years for the home to be complete. Unfortunately, Eliza did not get to enjoy her grand new home for long, she died only three years after it was finished. 

Following the Putnam family, other prominent families owned the house over the years. After the last owners, Eddie MacTaggart and his sister Sophia Russell passed away, the house was turned into a nursing home which operated until the 1980s. After the closure of the nursing home, the house sat vacant for many years. Today the home is owned and being restored by the Washington County Historical Society.

I first knew of this home's reputation for being haunted, and that led to the initial visit years ago to see this it for myself. I have never investigated here, but stories of spirits that roam her halls abound. According to Hidden Marietta, the tour company that operates tours of the home, some 20 individuals have died inside the Anchorage over the years, including past owners, their family members and nursing home residents. Some of the reported paranormal activity includes hearing audible disembodied voices, shadows and apparitions and even the sensations of being touched. Up in the tower, the homes original owners, Eliza Putnam and her husband Douglas has been seen. 

I recently booked a tour of the old house to see it inside instead of just the exterior. Due to Covid-19, the only tours that were being offered were self-guided. We (my husband and myself) received a short summary of the history before we started. I was excited to see the inside of the house, although a fully guided tour would have been great, we ended up with the chance to roam the halls alone. I can't say that I was disappointed, this was a perfect opportunity to take lots of photos without having to wait for other tour guests to clear out of an area before I could snap photos. Trust me, I have done quite a few tours and typically hang toward to back in order to get plenty of pictures. 

During our tour of the home, I took notice of all the beautiful architectural details throughout the house, no doubt Eliza hand-picked them herself. The downstairs has been mostly restored, but the restoration process is ongoing. I walked throughout each room, simply admiring the work of art this house truly is, and with the restoration work, I can only imagine how much more beautiful it will become. The upper floors are still in need of restoration, but nonetheless, it is still beautiful, even with peeling paint, wallpaper and exposed boards. 

Having the old house almost completely to ourselves allowed for ample observation for any paranormal activity. There was an option to include a small investigation into the tour, but I just wanted to explore and if we happened to encounter any ghosts during our time, that was fine. Unfortunately, we did not have any experiences, it felt comfortable and calm inside the house, nothing out of the ordinary happened. We were told by one of the guides that a girl from the tour the previous day had her hair pulled by something unseen, which is another seemingly "normal" paranormal event that has been reported in the house.

On the second floor, it is still evident that the house was used as nursing home. The stairway was enclosed during the time the nursing home operated there, but if you look close you can still see some of the original character on the old steps. There are seemingly hidden rooms and rooms that connect to other rooms, which is pretty typical for houses built in the 1800s. This house has a section that was used as servants' quarters. The attic area is huge, and it is believed that the children liked to play up there.

The final spot we visited in the house was on up beyond the attic, and into the tower, also known as a campanile, or Italian bell tower. The tower has a breath-taking full view of Marietta. The winding staircase to the tower looks to be in original condition and it has a feel of being straight out of a fairy tale, or creepy haunted house movie, or perhaps just a combination of the two. I imagine this spot in the house was probably a favorite. I can envision children laughing and playing in the tower and running up and down the stairs. I can imagine Eliza and Douglas watching over their town below while having a quiet moment of reflection from their little castle on the hill. I can even picture the faint apparitions of the spirits that wander the halls of the Anchorage, peeking out from the tower windows and keeping watch over the house. 

Want to learn more about the house, take a tour or even book a ghost hunt? Visit Hidden Marietta for more information or to check out other haunts in the area.

Want to see more of my photos from inside the Anchorage? Visit Ghosts of Guyandotte on Facebook and check out my photo album. 

All photos on this site and in this article are property of the author, Melissa Stanley, unless otherwise noted. 

Advice For Starting Your Own Paranormal Group

This post has been my most popular read by many and I have had a lot of positive feedback on it. Originally written for the old Huntington Paranormal Investigations & Research website, I moved it over to the Huntington Paranormal blog after I closed the website and since I did, it has been viewed over five thousand times. Today I have updated it and now once again, have moved it with me to my newest blog site.

As of 2018 the paranormal group I started is no longer, but we did have a great 12 year run before life pretty much took us all in different directions, we got too busy and it was just time to move on to the next phase of life. I still have a passion for the paranormal, but my mission has changed, and I no longer am investigating. So, with twelve years of experience running a team of investigators, here is my advice for starting your own paranormal group, updated from the original post I did around 2010!

I received questions and e-mails about starting up a paranormal group all the time when my team was active, so I decided to make this post to share my thoughts and advice on starting up your own team. I will offer my advice based on how I operated my group, and the way I ran things may not be the same way you want to run things, but here is my personal opinions, practical tips and ideas for running a successful paranormal team.

• Start Slow - You may be eager to jump right in to investigating, but if you are inexperienced, you need to do some initial research. Read up! Find some books or articles online for beginner ghost hunting. Be prepared to always be learning and expand your mind, be open minded. Learn techniques, learn about different equipment and what it can and cannot do, and be sure to learn protocols of a safe, effective and respectful investigation.
• Friends & Family - Before you ever enter a stranger's home, you should begin your investigations at homes of friends and/or family. This is a smart way to gain some practice before you really take on other challenging investigations. Practice your equipment setup, client interviews and data collection and have fun doing it. 
• Rules to Live by - Set a strong foundation when you start your group. You will want a set of rules in place for your group members, use them and stick to them. You don't have to take the fun out of what you are doing, but like any business that has standards for their employees, so should you for your team members. Consider safety, the wellbeing and integrity of the group. Review and update them on a regular basis, especially if the dynamics of your team changes over time. Guidelines should be followed but not be so strict or unreasonable that there is no enjoyment in being part of the team.
• Building a Team - Honestly, this is probably the most difficult task to find the right people and build your team. Unless you already have a close-knit group of friends and/or family, building up a new team can be tough. It can be difficult to find individuals that will stick around for a while, some people are just in to seek a thrill and quickly get bored and quit, others may be wonderful team members but life gets in the way or their path may go in a different direction. You may have members come and go, it will likely happen until you eventually find the right people that settle in and stay, and you start to build up a strong foundation. I always offered an application for potential new members, this was to get an idea of who they are, what they are looking for and if they seem like they would be a good fit with everyone else. Always make sure any new applicants or members are aware of the team protocols and any other guidelines that are in place.  
• The Right Equipment - I think the best equipment is not the expensive or complicated stuff, but it is your most basic equipment that you should start with and, depending on your finances, you may stick with. Your base equipment should include the following: A camera, a voice recorder, notebook and pen and a flashlight. Really that is the most you will need in the very start, how simple is that? Of course, if you have more equipment or want more equipment, by all means get what you want. Just don't break your budget on super expensive equipment in the beginning. Consider how practical it is for you and your team and if it is affordable as a private purchase or a group purchase. Over time you can build up your equipment bag, no need to rush it. 
• Mission Possible - What is your mission in forming a team? Find a purpose in what you do. Are you starting a team to help others? If so, how will you help them? Will this be something you will be doing just as a hobby on the weekends with friends? Consider the direction you want to take your team and keep that in mind with each investigation you perform.
• Enjoy It! - While it is important to take your investigations seriously, remember to take some down time to enjoy what you are doing and get to know your team members. Take time to organize events outside of doing investigations. Maybe a group cookout, a movie night or even monthly meetings to plan out your investigations and activities.
• Avoid Burnout - I think it is great to have many opportunities to investigate on a regular basis but remember that too much too often may lead to burnout. Keep in mind that you and your members will likely have families, friends and other activities they may be involved in and weekly or frequent investigations may not be practical. The investigations themselves can become monotonous or even reviewing evidence after the investigations are done may prove to be tiring. I think in this instance, choosing investigation quality over quantity may be the best approach. We did not investigate every weekend, we tried to carefully choose which cases we did, or we intentionally sought out permission to investigate the places we wanted to visit. Also, be considerate of your teams' financial situations, not everyone can afford expensive pay to hunt investigation locations.
• Don't Be A Know It All - You will never know it all, remember that. Always strive to learn more and research more and gain more knowledge of the things we can know about the paranormal world. There are absolutely no experts in this field, paranormal investigation is not a recognized scientific study, because the paranormal cannot be put in a box and be carried into a lab to be studied. I personally think that sometimes the things we think we know; we may not know at all. But keep learning, keep trying, but don't mislead people. If you don't have an answer, that is ok. 
• Accept Changes & Challenges - Accept these things as they come, and they will come. If you have a group for years, expect there will be changes as time goes on. Changes can be good, bad or even neutral. Our group changed so much over the course of twelve years, we grew, we faced challenges and setbacks.  We had some big challenges to face, we made some enemies, we had internal issues, but we held on through most of that and came out stronger on the other end. Of course, for HPIR there came a time when it just faded away, despite all the battles we fought to keep going. But that is ok too, life changes for people, interests change, and there may be a day where you just say the time has come. Bend when you need to, but don't let the changes and challenges break you. Reinvent yourself if you hit a wall, persist in what you love to do, no matter how you do it. 
• Getting Your Name Out There - Social Media. Number one way to get your group out there, make sure you use social media and know how to use it. Use hashtags and use them correctly. Keep your content interesting, people love photos! Keep posts short and simple (I have a hard time with this myself!) people don't read more than a few sentences. If you like doing videos, do videos and post them on social media. Go live and answer questions once you have some experience investigating. Start a blog to keep an archive of your investigations and other content for others to read. Keep your content relevant to what you do, and don't do post overkill, one or two posts a day will keep you on people's minds and hopefully they will engage with your content. I'll be honest here and say I don't like seeing paranormal groups that use scary images or post a lot scary or bloody or memes. I think there is a place for that stuff, but I don't believe it fits when you are trying to help others feel less afraid of the paranormal. Once you have a few years of experience under your belt, you can even host talks or ghost hunts of your own, and that is an excellent way to get to meet people and get investigations.

And there you have it, some basic pointers and tips and ideas for getting started on your paranormal journey. I don't think this post covered everything, but I think these are some major points that should be considered. Thank you all for taking the time to read my article, and I wish you all much success in starting up your new group!

Melissa Stanley