Georgia Woman Recounts Series of Paranormal Events in Home near Okefenokee Swamp

Georgia-based investigator Aubrey Bowen recently spoke to a woman in Folkston, Georgia, less than 10 miles east of Okefenokee Swamp, who said that she and her family have experienced a series of paranormal events since moving into their home on Little Phoebe Church Road in April of 2016.

"We are on Little Phoebe Church Road, which is just up from the Okefenokee refuge—the wildlife refuge. I mainly say that because our property has a house on it that was actually moved out of the Okefenokee swamp. When the wildlife refuge, the national government, I guess, actually took over the swamp, [they] made it a refuge and would not allow the people who already lived in the swamp to hunt and trap anymore," she told Bowen.

One of the sons of W.T. Chesser, who settled a small island on the eastern edge of the Okefenokee Swamp in the late 1850s, now known as Chesser Island, moved his house out of the swamp and onto the property she and her husband currently own, she said, and the house she lives in was built by W.T. Chesser’s great-grandson, Clifford, in 1959.

"This used to be inhabited by the Chesser family, and prior to that, Roddenberry, which is another big name around here," she explained. "So, we have some really old structures on our property. Like, you can still see the hand cut beams that they used to [chop] themselves to make everything. Our house, that we live in, is right next door to that old Chesser homestead that I spoke of.”

According to the woman, they began experiencing paranormal events as soon as they moved in, beginning with an anomalous incident which may have involved her husband’s cellphone.

"We bought this property in 2016 and we were standing outside, me and my husband and my daughter’s boyfriend at the time, were just standing around talking and the first thing that we experienced here [was] from my husband’s body came his voice and the sound of him saying his dog’s name with a whistle—the way he whistles for his dog—and then the dog bark. All three of us were just kind of looking around like ‘What the heck was that?’ And he went through his phone, there’s nothing—no voice memos, no videos, no nothing—that does that," she said. "Well, it could have been his phone, which was in his pocket. We just know that it came from his body, like his legs. It probably was from his phone. We’ve had quite a few things that have happened from our phones in here."

"So, that was the first thing," she added. "You know, we didn’t think too much of it other than ‘Wow, that was weird.'"

But the family continued to have strange experiences on the property, including those members who were just visiting.

"My sister was here sleeping in the living room, and she has sleep apnea. She’s from Canton, you probably know where Canton [is]. She has sleep apnea, but we have dogs in the house, so because of the dog hair she didn’t bring her CPAP machine," the woman said. "So, she was sleeping on the recliner in our living room, and she woke up to what she thought at first was my husband picking on her, telling her ‘boo,’ right when he woke up in the middle of the night or, you know, he’d leave for work early in the morning or something. Well, when she woke up and thought she heard ‘boo,’ she felt a puff of air in her face and then she says ‘I don’t think they said boo, I think they said breathe.’ Because she was having one of those [episodes] people get with sleep apnea where they stop breathing. She felt a puff of air in her face and something said ‘breathe.’ That was kind of neat."

At least two other incidents involving sleeping persons interacting with unknown forces occurred in the house, she recalled.

The first, she said. involved her daughter’s boyfriend.

"My daughter’s boyfriend was here in the same living room, he was asleep, and she came and was trying to wake him up. It was later in the morning, so it was time for him to be up anyway," she said. "He described this as, he said like sleep paralysis but something would not let him wake up, and he could see my daughter at like the end of a hallway. He was trying to get to her, trying to come up, trying to wake up, [but he] couldn't wake up."

The second involved the woman’s mother.

Along those same lines, my mother was staying with us, staying in my daughter’s bedroom, and had a similar incident to that. I was up working, I work from home. I was up early one morning and I kept hearing these weird, weird, strange noises. Well, my mother kind of kicked my daughter out of her bedroom and she slept in the living room while my mom was in her bedroom, and these noises, I could kind of think, "Well, maybe that’s my daughter waking up,” because sometimes, my teenage girls, they wake up and [they’ll call for me].
You know, they’re just moaning because they woke up and they want me to get them something to drink or something like that. I kept hearing this noise, and this was five or six something in the morning, way too early for her to be awake.
And the dog, her dog, was actually sitting there with me, too, and she started getting real curious as to the noise. I finally, after this went on for 10 minutes, I’m like "Oh my gosh, what is this noise."
And I’m going to describe the noise, please don’t laugh at me, it was like [makes breathy screeching sound]. So then I started getting creeped out by it.
I walked out of my office and I went first towards my daughter to see if it was her, and she was still sound asleep. I didn’t have to get too far, because I heard the noise coming from my daughter’s bedroom, which is where my mother is sleeping. So, I get close to the door and it’s closed, and I kind of put my ear up to the door and I hear the noise continue.
I knocked on the door slightly, like "Mom?"
Well then, because we had other incidents of stuff happen in the house, I was scared, like "Am I going to open up this door and see my mom flying around the ceiling or something?"
I was just like, "Do I open the door? Of course, I have to, that’s my mom. I have to go check on my mom."
I opened the door, and she’s lying just flat, middle of the bed, no movement whatsoever, but I continued to hear the noise. So, I walked towards her, the noise is coming from her mouth. But she’s just as still as could be. I checked to make sure that she was okay. I put my hand on her leg and kind of gave her a little shake, and I said, "Mom, are you okay?" And she still didn’t move, didn’t respond, but the noise stopped.
I couldn’t wait for my daughter to wake up so I could tell her what happened. 10 minutes after I told her that, so let’s say three hours later, probably, my mother comes out of the bedroom. And normally, she’s 77 years old, she normally would go straight to the restroom. She came out of the bedroom, and she said, "Let me tell you what happened to me last night."
She said, "Something had its hands on my shoulders, holding me down, and I was screaming help. I was screaming Jackie, help, help. And you never came."
So, that kind of creeped me out. I was like, "Whoa."
She said something, she described it as a man, a black figure, a man, was holding her down.
If she has ever had [sleep paralysis], she has never mentioned it.

Another incident experienced by the woman involved her cellphone, similar to the previous story involving her husband.

"So, one evening I had my phone, which at the time wasn’t an old phone. I had it in my kitchen, plugged in. My husband was watching TV and I had left the living room to go use the restroom. Often times, he’ll watch YouTube videos while he’s waiting on me. I was hearing a lot of racket, a lot of noise, and I wondered what the heck he was watching. When I got up to go back into the living room, I had to stop and head towards my phone because my phone, which was in the kitchen, was just making this godawful, bloodcurdling scream noise, like a woman screaming," she said. "I grabbed my phone, took it to my husband, and said ‘Oh my gosh, listen to my phone.’ I started frantically closing every app that was open. I showed him that there was nothing open on my phone, and I'm still getting this scream, like a bloodcurdling scream coming from my phone."

"When I say bloodcurdling scream, I am not joking," she added. "It was like a woman screaming in agony. So, that was pretty creepy."

Her most recent experience, she said, involved hearing footsteps approaching her during remodeling of the house.

Most recently, it was later in the evening. We’d been going through some remodeling in the house and everything had been quiet for over a year, we had not heard anything since we started the remodel. I was standing in our bedroom looking down our new hallway, we didn’t even have a hallway before, but I was looking down the new hallway trying to decide which rug I was going to put in this area.
We had one portion of our house, which was the living room, closed off with a piece of plastic to keep the dust to a minimum when they were sanding the walls and such, and while the contractor was not here we pulled the plastic back a little bit, so, you know, we weren’t blocked off from our living room and kitchen, and could reach the back of our house. I was standing there, again, thinking about what rug I was going to put in this area, and I hear a disturbance in the living room.
My husband and our dogs were all asleep, but I figured, you know, the dogs were moving around. Well, then I heard the crumble of that plastic, like you’re walking through the plastic, and then I saw it move. Then I heard a few footsteps come down the hallway, across from the plastic, towards me.
Of course, then, I’m just frozen, freaked out. I got really, really cold, and then in my new bathroom, which used to be my office, the shower turned on. It wasn’t full on, and it wasn’t just a drip, [nor was it] like it was dripping after somebody took a shower. It was like a slow water flow, I guess you could say. That lasted 20 seconds and I took off and hid in my bed. Which was in the living room at the time, because our whole house was torn apart.
Me and my husband were by ourselves, both of our girls are grown and married. It was just he and I there. He had been asleep for several hours and our dogs were in there with him. I did peek in the shower, I looked in the shower in my bathroom to see if I saw anything, but I didn’t. I just took off running.

On previous occasions, she said, her daughter had been "sitting on the bathtub, shaving her legs on the side of the bathtub, and the cold water turned on. The faucet just straight up turned on," and they'd both heard footsteps "walking across the hard wood floors not even 20 feet away from us."

One of the contractors also reportedly experienced the phenomenon.

"My contractor was here and one day he heard—and this was in the middle of the day, which was unusual—footsteps in the house," she said. "He thought that I was home. I wasn’t home, and all the dogs were outside. He messaged me to ask me if my husband was coming home early, because he didn’t want to come back inside."

Shadowy beings have also been reported in the living room.

"My daughter saw an apparition [of a shadow person]," the woman said. "Both my daughter and her new husband have seen them, and on separate occasions. In my living room, both of them were in my living room."

The phenomena occur outside the house, too, she said.

"Outside, my husband, he has a [detached] garage, and of course a lot of power equipment out there," she said. "My husband has had power equipment turn on. His sander, a hand palm sander. He’s a very cautious, safety-oriented guy. He’s a lineman, so if he’s not safe, he dies, or somebody dies. So, he says that a sander that he had on the counter turned on and vibrated off the counter out in his shop. He says that he has also seen an image of an old man in overalls, leaned over and looking at his tractor."

Even her husband’s father has experienced strange events on their property.

"My father-in-law, who’s a retired detective and police officer, he brings his RV down here, and on two separate occasions he’s had a knock on his door," she said. "One time the door opened up. You literally have to pull the thing and latch it. The door just opened right up and nothing was there."

The woman said an empath, her "daughter's best friend's mother," visited the property and told her that "she feels when she goes outside, not far away from our house but still on our property, she says there are just men. There are just men working right there, non-stop working. They don’t know to stop. They’re all over. She says they’re just working, working, working."

Trader’s Hill, only a few miles away, did have a considerable lumber business, and an old railway does run along their property.

According to the empath, "a little boy got trampled by a horse" when the property "was just farmland," and his mother later hanged herself.

The Singular Fortean Society was unable to corroborate these deaths, although Charlton County did not keep official death records before 1919.

The empath also claimed that suspicious dirt found in the couple's bedroom was from "the little boy playing in the garden. She said that he’s showing us what he’s doing in the garden. She said that his presence and the mother’s presence is very, very strong in here."

"It was constant," the woman said of the dirt. "I would sweep it up and then I would get dirt again. You know, not every night, but frequently. We take our shoes off at the door. We never walk through the house with our shoes on, because we have chickens and pigs and you know, we got dirty feet."

Ultimately, these events are something the family has learned to live with.

“It gives me the heebie-jeebies and it scares me, but it’s nothing bad that’s happened to me or my husband,” said the woman.

To report your own encounter with the impossible, reach out to us directly at the Singular Fortean Society through our contact page.

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