Program aims to protect children

• Project ChildSafe, which started in 1999 as Project HomeSafe, helps keep guns out of the wrong hands.

Joshua Brown

LEESBURG — In Leesburg, where hunters are abundant, gun safety is an important issue, Leesburg Police Chief Charles Moore says.

So the Leesburg Police Department carries a stock of gun locks to help prevent gun-related accidents from injuring or killing people.

"We have a lot of hunters," Moore said last week. "When hunting season is around, more guns are around hunters and kids. (The program) keeps (guns) out of the way where little kids can't reach them."

Project ChildSafe, the program that
provides the gun locks, is a nationwide
program funded by a federal grant from the Department of Justice and run by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Director Bill Brassard said last week.

Brassard said the idea behind the program — funded also in part by gun makers —is to raise awareness about the dangers of firearms and to promote safe use of them. The gun locks that the program provides prevent a gun's action from closing.

"The NSSF has always promoted firearm safety," Brassard said. "(Project ChildSafe) is to remind people to properly store firearms in the home so a loaded firearm doesn't fall into the hands of a child.

"Well there's the three rules of gun safety: Keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction, keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to fire and treat every gun as if it's loaded."

Leesburg residents can find gun locks at Leesburg City Hall.

"We usually fill up the box once a month," Moore said. "We also have a box at the Ace's Hardware."

An employee at the Dougherty County Sheriff's Office said that department participates in the program, but that it hasn't been contacted by Project ChildSafe coordinators in about two years. An Albany Police Department spokesman said that department also hasn't been contacted in several months to receive a shipment of gun locks.

Brassard said that because of cutbacks in funding for the program, it has become more difficult to meet the demand for the gun locks. But he added, "We're going to do our best to get the locks out."

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Ghosts hunted at historic Windsor

• Is one of Southwest Georgia's most famous hotels haunted by an employee who was murdered about 100 years ago?

Aaron Bensonhaver

AMERICUS — It's about 5:30 a.m., and Dining Room Manager Ida Robinson is walking into the Windsor Hotel's basement cooler room to gather items for the morning continental breakfast. As she opens the door, she sees a face peering down at her from on top of one of the hotel's massive refrigerators.

"I won't go into the basement alone anymore," Robinson said Sunday, recalling her first run in with one of two reputed ghosts in the 114-year-old hotel.

Robinson said that encounter, about three years ago, was just the first of her many brushes with the dead.

About two years ago, while bringing up some room service food to a guest on the third floor, the ghostly presence of a little girl flew by her, sending a chill up her spine.

In the kitchen, pots will fall off hooks on the ceiling, and glasses and plates will suddenly smash on the floor.

In the main dining room, a stereo suddenly turned on when all employees were on the other side of the room. In the same room, a salad plate seemed to fill itself with greens.

"We all heard the tongs click, but there was no one there," Robinson said.

Robinson, who has been with the hotel for six years, said she fully believes the ghost of a maid and her daughter, killed in the early 1900's, still roam the halls of the hotel.

"I am very much convinced," said Robinson, who has not had any paranormal experiences outside of the castle-like hotel.

And now a team of experts is trying to find out if otherworldly spirits inhabit the hotel.

The Big Bend Ghost Trackers, of Tallahassee, Fla., who have been featured on The Learning Channel, the History Channel, CNN, Time Magazine and UPN, spent the night Sunday night to try to catch some evidence of spirits in the hotel.

Betty Davis, a member of a four-woman team at the hotel Sunday, said they use infrared cameras, motion detectors, thermal and electrical sensors and other equipment to document any non-human changes in the environment that can indicate the presence of a ghost or spirit.

"Ghosts are everywhere," Davis said.

She said the group is usually successful in finding evidence of a haunting.

"It's kind of like fishing: you can be there all day and get nothing or be there for two hours and catch your limit. It's the same with ghosts."

Davis said photo or video recorded evidence is usually the strongest to prove a building or area is haunted.

Davis and team members said there are no conclusive reasons why a building or site would be haunted, but causes can be that something bad happened, such as in the Windsor, where the maid was reportedly thrown down an elevator shaft, or Andersonville, where Union prisoners of war were housed under brutal conditions during the Civil War.

Other causes can be because the spirit has refused to cross over into the next world.

"I believe we have a choice in death as we do in life to not move on," Davis said.

Davis said if conclusive evidence of a haunting is found, the Windsor will be certified as a haunted building by the Big Bend Ghost Trackers, which is a member of the International Ghost Hunters Society.

But despite Robinson's experiences with the girl and her mother, not all employees are convinced there is something paranormal going on in the Americus hotel.

Jeremy Griner, who often works the 11 p.m. - 7 a.m. shift, said he has heard several bumps in the night — literally — and other sounds some would find spooky, but he chalks them up to guests in the hotel and the fact that the building is more than 100 years old.

Griner said it is "statistically improbable" that the hotel has ghosts or spirits dwelling within.

"I'm not too concerned with bumps in the night," he said, saying there is generally a rational explanation to what some would chalk up to ghosts.

"Pretty much everywhere you walk someone died, so why isn't the whole world haunted?" Griner asked.

Robinson said she still believes the spirits of a murdered maid and her daughter, and possibly a former elevator operator, still roam the hotel, running the halls and breaking glasses.

"We always joke that when a glass breaks the little girl or her mom are mad," Robinson said.

Davis said she felt good about finding proof of paranormal entities within the hotel Sunday.

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