Exploring haunted history
Don't get the ghost tours hosted in Athens and Watkinsville tonight confused with haunted houses or freak parades.
Melissa Piche and Jim Barrow don't need any special effects or bumps in the night to scare their audiences. The ghost stories speak for themselves.
"There aren't people who are going to jump out at you," said Piche, who leads the ghost tours around Watkinsville, starting at the historic Eagle Tavern. "The stories, the truth and local legends - they're pretty haunting."
Likewise, the 13 - terribly unlucky - stories Athenians will walk through around downtown and the North Campus at the University of Georgia offer plenty of horror without being hokey.
There are tales of disgruntled students, old Civil War soldiers and unfortunate deaths.
None of them are freshly made up, said Michele Griffin, a member of the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation, which hosts the haunted tours.
Griffin researched all the stories and found them in different books. They aren't hearsay; they're recorded history.
"There's another element of shock, because these stories aren't fiction," said Barrow, a UGA theater major who leads the Athens tour. "These things really happened."
The ghost of Robert Toombs haunts the Demosthenian Hall on campus, Griffin found.
College officials expelled the UGA student from the school in 1828, but Toombs came back that spring and gave his own speech under a tall tree outside the UGA Chapel during the commencement ceremony.
"Legend has it that he was givi
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Exploring haunted history
Don't get the ghost tours hosted in Athens and Watkinsville tonight confused with haunted houses or freak parades.
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