On Saturday night, Jennifer, Becca, and I went on the world-famous Jekyll Island Ghost Tour. We brought out trusty digital cameras so we could capture some dead people on film. Unsurprisingly, we were surprised to find almost nothing of interest in our photos. After the tour was done, we decided to revisit one particular house, Hollybourne, on our own. This, incidentally, is the house that Jennifer works on during the day as part of her preservation architecture internship on the island. It was built in 1890. It was also claimed by the tour guide that there is definitely something "freaky" going on with Hollybourne. We decided to find out.


According to the tour guide, the ghosts of the Maurice family, including Charles Stewart Maurice, but usually one of his three daughters, had been seen several times at the cottage. The guide claimed to have personally experienced shutters being opened and shut and opened and shut again from the inside of the cabin while no one was inside. She also claimed that in the 1960's, kids would break into the house for less than pure purposes, only to come running out "at 90mph" because of the ghosts inside. There is even a graffiti in the house, which I have seen, that says "Jamie and Ashley were here with the ghost!" After spending some time outside the house, by ourselves, late at night, our reaction is, "meh."
We did, however, find one very freaky thing:


No, I'm not talking about my pubic hair goatee. Most people can immediately see what's in the window above my right (your left) shoulder. Here it is again in another photo:


Do you see the face? It showed up in one last photo:



If you're having trouble seeing it, this labeled version of the image should help you:


And just for posterity's sake, here's one of the entire images, resized to fit here:


As soon as we got home, we looked in Jennifer's material on the history of the house and found this photo of Charles Stewart Maurice, architect and original occupant of the house:


Note the very straight brow line. It's not v-shaped like most people's are. This can be seen in the face in the photo. Who knows? Maybe the face belongs to Charles.
We took lots of pictures that night, both on the tour and afterwards at Hollybourne. We got some orbs, but I don't really care about orbs because they could be just about anything, most likely dust. No face or orb showed up in this photo:


The next night, Nick and I went back to see if we could get the face again. We did not. We did, however, get this interesting orange orb:


That's nice, but again, I don't really care about orbs. It could be red or orange dust. After I saw this photo, I said out loud, "That's not good enough!" Before I finished saying it, I got a huge chill down my spine. It was like someone was lightly rubbing me with sawdust. A few seconds later, Nick got one too. Interesting, but probably all in our heads.
Later on that night, Nick said, "Take a picture of me." So I did.


He said the place he was standing felt colder than the surrounding area. There were lots of orbs around him. There were no orbs in most of the other photos, and certainly not that many. Still, it's just interesting, not conclusive.

I don't know if any of this means anything. It probably doesn't. The face looks very real, and very 3D. But what if it's just smudges on the glass? The door sure is smudgy. I wanted a smoking gun, but I don't think I got one. All of this stuff is interesting, but the jury is still out for me as to whether or not ghosts exist.