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PAGE 10A PICKENS COUNTY PROGRESS THURSDAY. OCTOBER 28. 2021
Continued From 1A
Continued From 1A
Halloween
crafts, face painting, scav
enger hunts, hot dogs, pop
corn, cotton candy, Kona Ice,
and lots of kid’s prizes.
All kids in attendance will
get to walk down Trunk or
Treat alley as they exit for
lots of great Halloween
candy. And it’s all free as the
church’s gift to the commu
nity.
Families in Pickens
County are invited to attend
at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 31.
Come early enough to get
parked and get to the big tent
at 2 for music, instructions
and a $100 give-away. The
fun is geared toward elemen
tary age kids, but it will be a
great event for the whole
family. Inflatables and games
will be open till 5 p.m.
Turkey
Shoot
Saturday
Nov. 6th
9 a.m. to ?
e
Baptist Church
Four Mile Church Road (off Hwy. 53 E.)
Marble Hill
Proceeds benefiting the church
(Rain Date November 13th)
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Haunted
coa River, the structure, cur
rently under ongoing renova
tion, appears stately and
pristine beneath crisp autumn
skies; but this facade belies
the oppressive reality of the
house’s narrative.
Erected at some point be
tween 1850 and 1855, the
house was the home of Jason
Coward Chastain and Mary
Ann Rogers Chastain, who
moved to Dial from Sylva,
North Carolina. It is the sec
ond dwelling built by the
Chastain family, the first
being a log cabin around
1840 when Chastain received
acreage from the Georgia
Land Lottery upon removal
of the Cherokee Indians.
Undoubtedly, the rich
earth of the bottomlands
along the river provided a
bountiful existence for the
Chastains and their eventual
10 children; and in addition
to their large house, the
homesite also boasted a
sawmill and a store, J.C.
Chastain and Sons Mercan
tile. Chastain, deemed semi-
wealthy by the large house,
expansive acreage, busi
nesses, and net worth at the
time, was regarded favorably
by those who knew him.
He was also seemingly a
God-fearing man who in
stilled within his family the
merits of holy reverence as
indicated by his tombstone
epitaph in the Chastain
Cemetery not far from the
house. Nonetheless, his re
spectability and attention to
the Divine failed to spare him
and his family from misfor
tune and a descension into
grief and spiritual despair.
The transition of the Chas-
tain-Brawley House from a
favorable familial setting to
one of inconsolable loss and
melancholy began in Decem
ber of 1862 when J.C. and
Mary’s daughter, 10-year-old
Alice Havana Chastain, trag
ically died from diphtheria.
The bereaved Chastain car
ried his daughter’s body to
the top of the hill behind the
home, Alice’s favorite place
to play, and buried it, begin
ning the Chastain family
cemetery.
The remaining family
members, especially Mary
Chastain, were devastated,
and their grief took them
from an existence of happi
ness and prosperity to one of
bleak days and stagnating de
pression. The entire aura of
the house shifted to impene
trable gloom with the gnaw
ing anguish that tore at the
couple.
From that time, the Chas-
tain-Brawley House became
the focus of a connection be
tween the world of the living
and the world of the dead.
Mary Chastain, though a vig
ilant mother for her remain
ing children, largely lived
within the misery of Alice’s
demise. Perhaps it is the rem
nants of that energy accom
panied by Alice’s spirit
trapped in this earthly realm
that renders the Chastain-
Brawley House what it be
came throughout the
succeeding decades and what
it remains today, a vessel for
tortured and static souls.
Over those decades, peo
ple have reported an abun
dance of strange phenomena
associated with the house.
Fleeting glimpses of a little
girl running about the prop
erty or peering out from a
second-story window, the
sound of random knockings
throughout the house, the
laughter of children playing,
the melodic sounds of “Ring
Around the Rosey,” and foot
steps across the floors and up
and down the stairs are all in
dicative that the dead are not
quiet within the Chastain-
Brawley House and across its
grounds.
From the remaining Chas
tain siblings, Sarah Ann Para-
lee Chastain married Daniel
Harrison Brawley (hence the
house’s name). This union
took place in spite of a long
Hatfield-McCoy type feud
between the Brawleys and
the Chastains. After her par
ents’ passing, Sarah and her
husband either inherited the
house or somehow managed
to gain possession of the
property, with Sarah retain
ing ownership until her death
in 1930, some 13 years after
her husband’s passing. It is
said by many that Sarah’s
spirit also remains in the
house.
Afterward, the last known
family member who lived in
the house was Robert Lee
Brawley, Sarah and Daniel’s
son, and the house then fell
into a trust of the Georgia
Baptist Children’s Corpora
tion for a defined period. The
corporation owned and oper
ated various properties
throughout the state that
served as orphanages and
homes for children suffering
due to various circumstances,
but the Dial Road house
never became a home for dis
placed youth.
Eventually, the decaying
structure and its land were
purchased by Judge Robert
A. Sneed in 2007; and he
began the process of renova
tion with the hope that the
house would become a bed
and breakfast. Fourteen years
later, with the roof, porches,
and outer walls restored, the
interior remains a series of
sub-flooring and new wall
studs largely because of the
continued haunting of the
building. Contractors report
the sounds of disembodied
voices, of knockings, and of
someone ascending and de
scending the stairs. The ac
tivity is frequent and
unnerving enough to send all
construction workers who
have been hired thus far
packing up and leaving for
good.
Current owner Judge
Robert A. Sneed comments
about his property that it is a
“different world.” He clari
fies the history of the house
by stating that some of the
stories passed around are
completely erroneous and
speculative, but he also con
firms that, indeed, the house
is haunted.
“Several entities exist in
the house,” he states, but to
his knowledge, no evidence
exists as to why these restless
spirits have not moved be
yond this world and into the
next nor who the spirits,
other than Alice Chastain,de
finitively are.
He reveals that throughout
the years of the Chastain
family’s ownership, the
house was often used as a
makeshift funeral parlor as
the winter-ravaged mud
roads in the area made trans
porting corpses to other areas
in a wagon almost impossi
ble.
“The house is associated
with a great deal of death
[and grief],” Sneed, who
lives with his wife just down
the road, says. It is notable
that his wife will not enter the
house at all.
Additionally, Sneed’s care
taker, Ricky Brown, states
that he will not enter the
house at night, though in the
past, he has actually slept in
the house. “The house plays
tricks on you,” he says.
Brown has been caretaker of
the property for almost two
decades. He has a wealth of
knowledge concerning many
aspects of the house’s and its
residents’ history, and he is
quick to relate stories of the
countless bizarre happenings
inside the house and on its
grounds. Brown also presents
photos of what appear to be
apparitions of children in
front of the house and in front
of an outside building in
which the Chastains lived
while the house was being
built.
Wanting to resolve the
mysterious happenings,
Sneed brought in a gentle
man (who desires to remain
anonymous) whose avoca
tion as a paranormal investi
gator began in 2014. The
investigator has conducted
several sessions at the house
and on its grounds. Initially,
the procedural methods and
expensive equipment, which
records visible and audible
evidence of spirit activity,
yielded little.
Frustrated, he and his
team were about to leave the
house, with him making a
derogatory comment by call
ing the lack of evidence
“lame.” At that moment, he
says a piercing scream rever
berated throughout the house
so shrilly and encompass-
ingly that it was as though the
house itself screamed.
“It was like the scream of
a woman being murdered,”
he states. As his team hurried
out the front door and he
scrambled to gather up all of
his equipment, a second
scream again shook his emo
tions.
The investigator’s initial
encounter with the spirits of
the Chastain-Brawley House
did not end there. For the
next six to nine months after
ward, his own home was
ground zero for paranormal
activity, generally between
the hours of 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.
Banging on walls, heavy
footsteps, and rattled door
knobs intemipted his sleep.
He said prayers aloud to re
buke the disturbances and
even had a cleansing per
formed on the house before
the occurrences began to sub
side.
The paranormal researcher
and his associates did, how
ever, return to the Chastain-
Brawley House to further
their research. Retaining a
scientific approach, he has
debunked many aspects of
the ongoing haunting as the
simple cracks and pops of an
old house; but other findings
defy all natural laws and
logic and support the theory
that the dwelling is inhabited
by some whose physical life
has ended.
The evidence thus far in
cludes a photograph of a little
girl crouched behind a ladder,
a photo of a woman whose
face appears skeletal, EVPs
in which intelligent responses
include “hello,” “yes,” and
“no,” and EVP’s in which en
tities have identified them
selves as Alice, Sarah, Mary,
and Ruth. In addition, the in
vestigator and his team have
experienced the standard
footsteps and knockings on
walls, countless orbs, and
movement of human-shaped
figures on SLS technology.
To his knowledge, the
paranormal events of the
Chastain-Brawley House did
begin with Alice Havana
Chastain’s passing in 1862,
but he thinks that other
events connected to the
house probably contribute to
the abundance of phenom
ena. He cites a “hanging
tree,” now cut down, that ex
isted on the property during
Civil War times as another
possible source. Still, much
surrounding the house and its
otherworldly manifestations
remains a mystery.
For the layman, the defin
itive truth concerning the
events surrounding the Chas
tain-Brawley House is a mat
ter of opinion and personal
conviction.
Some people contend that
some 150 years of talk and
speculation has led to a fabu
lous exaggeration of erro
neous human perception and
imagination. For those who
have witnessed the ghostly
manifestations, however, the
occurrences provide proof of
a sort of transitional limbo
between this world and the
next in which spirits remain
unsettled and unwilling to ac
cept the end of their earthly
existence.
Continued From 1A
Arrests
area where the juvenile pas
senger fled. Chandler told
deputies he did not know the
passenger’s name, but said he
was originally driving the ve
hicle and that they switched
before they noticed the patrol
car.
“The passenger noticed us
behind them and became
very worried,” Cox states in
the report. “He yelled at
Chandler to run and aimed a
compound bow in his direc
tion telling him he better
keep going. Chandler at
tempted to stop multiple
times, but was afraid to not
comply with the passenger.”
Deputies determined that
the van had been stolen from
Pickens County and that
Chandler had active warrants
for obstruction. A search
of the vehicle uncovered the
compound bow, a bag with
jewelry and drug parapherna
lia, and another bag that con
tained suspected
methamphetamine and a dark
powdered substance later
identified as possible Ec
stasy, as well as a PlaySta
tion. Chandler was taken into
custody and a perimeter was
set up to search for the pas
senger who fled.
“While on perimeter at
Hwy. 108 and the Tate 4-way,
a bystander drove on scene
and advised us that she had
collected a male in a black
hooded sweatshirt from her
residence off Windy Hill
Place,” the report states.
The male had asked to be
dropped at his mother’s
house on Destiny Drive off
Camp Road. The bystander
dropped him off at the subdi
vision entrance, then returned
home to find numerous patrol
cars in the area “and decided
to warn us of the incident,”
and took deputies to the sub
division.
Deputies set up a perime
ter at the Destiny Drive home
and entered with the home
owner’s consent, located the
suspect in the shower and de
tained him. The suspect, 16,
originally denied being part
of the chase incident, but the
deputy “advised him that I
knew he was the one that ran
because I was the officer he
ran from. He then froze in
place,” the report states, and
was transported to the Ball
Ground precinct for ques
tioning.
Chandler was charged
with Possession of Schedule
I Controlled Substance; Pos
session of a Schedule II Con
trolled Substance; Criminal
Damage to Property in the
2nd Degree; Theft by Receiv
ing Stolen Property; and mis
demeanor Obstruction. More
charges are expected to come
from the driving offenses
after further investigation.
The juvenile was charged
with Possession of Schedule
I Controlled Substance; Pos
session of a Schedule II Con
trolled Substance; Criminal
Damage to Property in the
2nd Degree; Theft by Receiv
ing Stolen Property; and mis
demeanor Obstruction. He
was released to his parents
pending a court date and
transported to the Cherokee
County Adult Detention Cen
ter for juvenile processing.
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