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The Tate-Walker House

The Tate House was built in 1828 and purchased by Sam Walker in 1870. Walker, once a mayor of Milledgeville, lived in the house with his third wife, Molly, her niece Alice, and his son from his second wife, Joe. People say that he beat and verbally abused his wives. Maybe even caused their deaths. These stories came about because of the huge inheritances he so happened to gain after each one passed away. These stories gave him the title of the “meanest man in Georgia.”

 

Walker’s son, Joe, attended Mercer University in Macon in 1873. That year, an epidemic of meningitis passed through at Mercer, sending the students home while the college temporarily closed. A few days after his return to Milledgeville, Joe started to feel sick. Walker didn’t believe he was actually sick and chalked the illness up to a “character flaw.” He wouldn’t even allow a doctor to see him. Three days later, Joe struggled to get to the top of the stairs to beg for his father to help him. While there, he fainted and fell down the stairs to his death. Rumors suggest he may have been pushed by his father, but no concrete evidence has ever come to light. In that same week, his wife and her niece also passed away due to meningitis.

 

Previous occupants of the home claim to hear someone falling down the stairs, as if Joe may still be reliving his death years later. It is said to sound like bowling balls rolling down the stairs with a pronounced thud at the end. People have even heard the sound of father and son arguing at the top of the stairs. Some say that you can still hear Sam Walker walking the halls for eternity. Perhaps feeling guilty for treating his family so badly? It is also said that you can hear cries and feel an “aura of pain” in the bedroom where Molly and Alice passed away. In 1970, a man claimed to see an entire party taking place inside the house, with people dressed in 1840s attire. Other paranormal instances include closet lights turning on and off by themselves, tassels on a bed canopy swaying as though there is a breeze in the room, portraits falling off the walls, laughter and footsteps on the stairs, and a ghost woman in period clothing was also spotted in the garden.

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