Starting Out on Our First Paranormal Investigation
In May of 2021, my mother, Amy, and I decided to take a much-needed vacation to the relaxing area of Tybee Island, GA and then drop by for a stay in the notoriously haunted Savannah, GA on our way back home. I had always grown up watching the infamous shows, specifically TAPS on Ghost Hunters, and have always had interest in the paranormal, even as a clueless teenager messing around with Ouija boards with a friend. Being drawn to the unexplainable phenomena that millions of people have personal experiences with, that had been discussed in history as ancient as the human race itself, was just heavily weighing on my curiosity for ages. Amy has also had her interest and own experiences and she was ready to dive into the investigative world herself. It only made sense to team up and check it out together, hence our paranormal team was created!
We quickly discovered that while watching and hearing stories were interesting, words cannot describe the difference in watching videos or hearing stories over truly experiencing the unexplainable for yourself. It’s something that seems to leave you with even more questions every time, and that’s what drives us to continue on these journeys.
While doing a bit of research on some of the most reportedly haunted locations in Savannah to stay in, we settled on room 204 in the 17Hundred90 Inn.
According to the Inn’s own site, linked below in the references, “Anna” is their most well-known spirit at the Inn and she resides in room 204. “Guests staying in room 204 frequently report strange happenings such as jewelry or clothing being mysteriously moved from one place to the other. Some have experienced being nudged or having bed covers moved.” The stories were intriguing to us, and her being described as a “friendly” spirit really piqued our curiosity and the decision was made an easy one.
Our Night at 17Hundred90 Inn
When we arrived at the inn, we were greeted by the very friendly, upbeat hotel staff who showed us to our room. The room itself was simple but lovely and definitely displayed that old fashioned Southern charm. There was a roomy King bed, chaise sofa, and full bathroom along the left wall. Both walls behind the bed and the chaise had windows to the outside and the room was spacious, airy and most importantly, it felt welcoming overall.
The fireplace was adorned with jewelry and small relics to honor and pay respects for Anna. There was also a picture to represent Anna and add to the ambiance of being the most haunted room in the 17Hundred90 Inn.
Also, on the fireplace was allegedly her doll, with whom I had to take a quick picture with. The picture together was enhanced with AI to color correct the darkness of the original photo I took.
We were highly enjoying our time and were looking forward to our first night officially investigating such a notoriously haunted location! What we didn’t yet know was that the night spent in this small, cozy room would be the kickstart of our total fascination and continuous search for undeniable proof of the paranormal.
The Paranormal Investigation of Room 204
A Few Snippets of our Evidence Collection
The EMF Detector:
We began our investigation as the sun began to wind down and the moon set itself up high for the night. This was our first time using paranormal equipement so we started with the basics: the EMF reader and spirit box. For anyone who is unfamiliar, an EMF reader is designed to detect any electromagnetic fields that occupy a space. Popular things that can set these to spike include electronics such as phones or wires within walls, floors, or ceilings. As I walked around the room, the EMF reader immediately began to detect a field right near the bed. I scanned the reader across the top of the bed where it continued at a level 3 about halfway across the mattress. The odd thing about this reading was that the field existed above the actual mattress rather than on the mattress, and it did not exceed much farther than about 2-3 feet high, disappearing back down to normal levels as I moved it up towards the ceiling. While I could lay the EMF on the bed and it would detect a 3 sometimes, other times, the field seemed to hover slightly above the mattress. Normally, if there were any kinds of wires to disrupt the EMF reader, these would be found nearer to the source, such as the wall or mattress. Looking back, I do wish I had recorded a bit more of this happening but being new at investigating and not really planning to document much, I sadly only have a few EMF videos.
So the question now was, where could this “hovering” electromagnetic field be coming from? My first thought was that there must be something electronic underneath the bed itself. As I went to check, I realized that we were actually unable to look underneath the bed, as underneath it (as you can see in the room picture) there was a solid wooden encasement surrounding the entire underside. This initiated a bit of a red flag moment for me as I asked myself the question, ”Why would they have something designed in such a specifically odd way, especially since they have claims of the paranormal taking residence here and they know researchers would want to observe all areas of this room?”
Nonetheless, even if there was some kind of electronic something underneath the bed in this encasement, the field it would generate would surely be detected at the edge of the boards or when I pushed it a bit closer against the top of the mattress itself, but this was not the case. The EMF did not detect anything above a normal level as I scaled it along the edges of the boards and across the top of the mattress again. It seemed to be the most consistent slightly above the right side of the bed. The ceilings and walls surrounding the phenomena area were normal levels as well. Being that we could not detect a source for any type of electrical current existing here, I had to consider this as a probable piece of paranormal evidence. Yay, we found something interesting already! But, the most compelling evidence was still yet to come.
The Spirit Box & Temperature Changes:
We next began our spirit box session. During a spirit box session, it is believed that spirits can speak and be heard through radio wave frequencies as channels are being quickly scanned through. The spirit box has never been a favorite of mine, personally, as I tend to lean on the “it is just words from radio stations coming through” or “people can interpret any word that think they hear into several differing things.” Such as, one person could hear the word “yes” quickly being said, while another person could have heard “billy” at the same time. For these reasons, I tend to deem them a slighter bit less reliable, but there have been times in other locations (future posts to come!) where the things captured using this method had an unwavering amount of consistency that had very slim chances of being coincidences.
Regardless, Amy really loves this method and so she believes to have contacted the spirit of a soldier or sailor attempting to speak his truths to us on this night. If this were the case, this would coincide with the story of Anna’s lover that is referenced in the 17Hundred90 Inn’s site: “Anna was a bride of an arranged marriage who fell in love with a sailor in the early 1800’s.”
Another feature on the spirit box is a temperature fluctuation detector. As you will see in the below spirit box clips, there is a blue or red light that comes on and beeps during the sessions. This is a built-in feature on the spirit box so any sudden, vast drop in the temperature around the device will cause it to emit a blue light while a temperature increase will trigger a red light. In the room, there was a wall air conditioning unit in place and this turning on very well may be the reason for this detection, however, there were times where the air had been running consistently without causing the detector to trigger a drop. There were also times when the A/C unit was not running and the device would still detect shifts. I had reset it plenty of times as well but it would continue to consistently detect temperature changes as we continued to attempt contact. We would also physically feel some of these drops in temperature as well, surrounding the device like a small pocket of energy, which seemed to be separate from the main areas of airflow that the A/C unit would generally cause when it was on. Being newer to using these devices, we halfway chalked it up to possible human error, but I will say that today, when we use the same device, we rarely do see the gauge detect cold spots like it had that night. We have even been in drastically different temperature fluctuating areas, such as older, run down buildings, and I still have never seen it spike in this way ever since it did in room 204.
Below are just a couple of very short excerpts of the many minutes of our spirit box sessions.
The Camera Malfunctions:
Below is one of many attempts to video record at certain times around me. At this time, I had a normal iPhone 7 and had owned this phone for several years. Never once had I experienced this type of malfunction on this device. As you can see in the clip, the recording would blur out on several occasions and sometimes, would not even allow me to record at all. My red record button just would not start recording when I would tap it. Equipment/recording malfunctions have happened now on several investigations since room 204, all the way from trying to repeatedly dial 911 on my phone while investigating Old Historic Harriman Hospital, or completely freezing and only recording for 1-2 seconds at a time in Historic Scott County Jail. The frequency of photo/video recording malfunctions are so highly common during investigations that it has become quite the “norm” for most investigators. In low light, cameras can have issues focusing from time to time, but honestly, I live in a house that is very commonly dark. I prefer low light in most settings and have never, ever experienced the types of camera malfunctions that I do in haunted locations. Even my trusty Canon has zonked out on me on several occasions, refusing the record in certain areas, only to work just fine again after interactions have stopped and/or we left the spot. Here in room 204, this was one of the only clips I was able to record of the surrounding area itself, blurring consistently and unable to focus on anything in particular. We know now just how telling these malfunctions can be when determining the possible hauntings of locations. Please feel free to me know if you are able to see anything that we might have missed!
The Ring on the Floor:
At one point, I clumsily managed to knock over the picture of Anna resulting in some of the items falling onto the ground. I picked everything up and searched around the best I could to ensure everything was picked up and properly placed back in its original spot. I made sure to apologize to the room around me, hoping I didn’t upset anyone who could have been face-palming at my faux pas in the corner. In the middle of the night, I woke up to use the restroom. As I came around the bed, I immediately noticed the glint of something shiny on the floor, perfectly in the middle center of the bed footboard. It turned out to be a small ring that I assume had fallen off when I knocked over the picture.. or, was it? It seemed odd to me, only later on, when I began to remember how diligently I quadruple checked to make sure I had returned everything to the mantle, yet, how obvious and noticeable it seemed to be when I spotted it that night. There are also the many, many claims of these types of items being moved around the room that can’t be ignored. Since I knocked the picture off, I can’t ever fully accept this as true evidence, but I wanted to mention it because, well, who really knows if it wasn’t someone else playing a few tricks here and there..?
The Covers:
I saved this for last, because well, this was single-handedly the most surprising and memorable thing to have happened during our stay, on both mine and Amy’s account. The bed in the room was a very large king bed and since it was just me and my mother, and the chaise really was not that comfortable, we decided to share. It was late and we were ready to head off to sleep. Amy took the left side of the bed, facing the left wall and restroom, while I took the right side, also facing the left wall. In between us was enough space for a whole other full grown person to be. As I felt myself closing my eyes and drifting off to sleep, I abruptly felt the entire cover tug and fly upwards directly between us and a slight cool gust of wind in my face. I, of course, immediately opened my eyes within milliseconds to see the cover coming back down into place and the back of my mother lying still across from me. Without moving an inch, she says, “Was that you?” and I answer no. Even if she had wanted to play a prank, there was no way she could have moved the blanket in that way and returned to her unmoving position in the .10 seconds it took me to open my eyes! She then says she felt as if someone ran the knuckles of their fist quickly down her back right before we felt the cover fly up. We searched around for anything that could have caused this to happen, the A/C coming on, some type of weird string attached to the covers, a weird hole in the bed that the hotel staff could be playing tricks on us or something, but there was nothing to be found. No strings attached to any part of the covers, no weird device to cause such an abrupt forceful motion to occur. Even if there had been some type of device to maybe blow the cover up, the yanking movement we had felt simply could not have been mimicked in the way it had in that moment by just airflow alone. It also did not explain the feeling of knuckles she felt quickly running down her spine. This truly left us scratching our heads and had to have been the most intriguing thing to have experienced during our stay. It is completely inconclusive for us and remains as one of our most solid pieces of paranormal evidence today.
Our Conclusion to the Question: Is Room 204 at the 17Hundred90 Inn Truly Haunted By Anna?
So, is this location truly haunted? Does the evidence collected suggest that this could actually be a young woman named Anna? In my personal opinion and experience, yes, I believe it to be haunted, and I believe it very well could be by a young woman spirit named Anna. Whether the spirit is truly named Anna, whether or not the stories are true, we will likely never fully know the entirety of the truth. Regardless, there are bouts of paranormal phenomena occurring in this location that seem to be deeply tied to the long rooted history of hauntings in Savannah, GA. There are so many accounts of experiences here that are so similar in nature, while still being completely personalized at the same time. Regardless of a few startling moments and questionable happenings during our stay, never once did we feel unwelcomed or uneasy in the space. Did Anna seem to want to gain our attention at times? It for sure feels like she did, amongst many others who have documented their similar claims as well. In this inn, during the time that we were there, there was a small journal that the inn kept in the drawer for anyone who stayed in room 204 to write down their own experiences in. Needless to say, there were pages and pages of reports by guests detailing their time at the 17Hundred90 Inn, many pointing to the similar feelings of Anna lingering in our realm, just making her presence known time and time again. If you are ever in Savannah, GA and on the hunt for some haunted spots to visit, I’d highly recommend staying in room 204. Anna seems to not mind the company and doesn’t shy away from saying hello, albeit in her own special and spontaneous ways.
If you have ever stayed here yourself and have experiences, I would love to hear of them! Please leave a comment, if so! Thanks for reading! 👻
References: The 17Hundred90 Inn’s Official Site: https://1790restaurant.com/ghosts/
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