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The Willard
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The Willard Restaurant and Bar, Franklin, IN

Case File 10-0531: The Willard Bar and Restaurant
Classification: Commercial

Investigators
Tom
Chris (Training)
Charles (Training)

History of the Site and Claims of Activity
 

The building was built in 1860 as a house by William & Cynthia McCaslin.  After Cynthia died in 1978, William remarried a woman named Marguerite.  William died in 1883, and Marguerite and her niece lived in the house until 1922, when it was sold to Eliza Patterson Willard and her niece and nephew, Mr. & Mrs. Will Judah for $11,000.  The new owners then constructed the hotel around the home and remodeled the inside.  At that time, the building was christened The Willard Hotel.
From that point, the history of the location becomes murky.  It is speculated that the hotel became a flophouse, with many transients coming and going.  It was also recently discovered that the back portion of the hotel served as a center for tuberculosis patients in the 1930s, however there are no confirmed deaths on the property.  The building also sat vacant for a number of years before being purchased by John Limp and John Wright and turned into a bar and restaurant.  In 1990, The Willard was purchased by the current owner, Bob Schofield.
In 2007, the second floor was converted into a haunted house attraction, known as “Eliza Willard’s Haunted Hotel”.  The building has 36 rooms, and all recent renovations have been to the rooms on the second floor where the attraction is located. 

  • A heavy door on the fourth floor was reported to slam with no one else being present.
  • A psychic visited the location and claimed that there was a ghost named “George” in the building.
  • Wine glasses flew from their holder above the bar at an “unnatural” angle, landed halfway across the floor and shattered.
  • A bartender experience a quarter rolling about 40 feet across a tiled floor when no one else was present.
  • The haunted house director reported hearing heavy, male-like footsteps on the second floor when he was working there alone.
  • He also reported clearly hearing fingers snapping right behind his ear immediately after throwing a dresser drawer in anger on the second floor, even though he was alone, which unnerved him so badly he left the room.
  • Waitress reported going into women’s restroom after the bar was closed on one of the two stall doors was locked.  It had been unlocked when she had gone in a few minutes prior.
  • Four customers saw a white skirt float by them in the front room of the building.


Attempting to Debunk Claims of Activity

Though we were unable to debunk any of the reported claims of phenomena, we tested several of the claims. All three investigators, all good-sized men, tried pushing the door on the 4th floor that was reported to have slammed.  The door was very heavy and very difficult to move even a short distance, let alone slam.  It was concluded that wind or drafts most likely would not have slammed this door.For the wine glasses to land where reported, the trajectory would be one of going straight out about a foot before crashing.  The glasses do not slide easily on the holding rack, negating the possibility of “just sliding off”.  Even if it had, it would have dropped straight down, landing on the cooler.  They would not land naturally in the middle of the floor. One investigator tried several times to roll a quarter across the floor in question.  At no point did the quarter make it more than five feet without falling over on its side.

Baseline Readings

It was extremely difficult to get precise EMF base readings on the third and fourth floors because of continual fluctuations.  We were unable to determine a cause for the fluctuations.

  • First Floor, EMF 0.1; Temperature 73 degrees
  • Second Floor, EMF 0.1; Temperature 84 degrees
  • Third Floor, EMF range 0.2 – 1.1; Temperature 86 degrees
  • Fourth Floor, EMF range 0.2 – 1.0; Temperature 87 degrees

Personal Experiences

  • Two investigators reported having the sensation of being watched on the third floor.
  • One investigator reported having strong mental images of an elderly woman walking around and towards the door in the room on the third floor which the sensation of being watched came from.