Local investigators look to answer “Is the Capitol Haunted?” through new documentary

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – When you think of haunted spots in South Central Kentucky, you might think of Octagon Hall in Franklin or the top of the hill at Western Kentucky University, but one spot you might not think of is the Capitol in downtown Bowling Green.

Two local investigators are looking into that haunted history and answering the question “Is the Capitol Haunted?” with a brand new documentary premiering on October 11th.

“We’ve got a lot of reports from a range of different people… and Magnolia and Dr. Tamela Smith have talked to us about different people telling anecdotal stories. There’s not a lot of history that has been uncovered that backs up a lot of these things. So we wanted to tackle through a paranormal lens, maybe we can find some information… and that way that kind of validates some of these stories and goes with the anecdotal evidence and stuff,” Austin Yewell, a lead researcher on the documentary, says.

During their overnight stay, the team found out a unique fact as to how the hauntings might be happening.

“The Capitol likes to speak to the people that have stories there already. In this video, you’ll probably see some interactions with some staff that might be personal to them… and they kind of… it’s interesting. It’s as if the spirits of the Capitol are aware of the people that work there and want to give them maybe the stories that are more personal,” Yewell says.

But why the Capitol specifically? It was a conversation with Dr. Tamela Smith, who runs her own spooky tour on the hill, that sparked the interest.

“She was talking to us and mentioned how difficult it was to get into the Capitol to investigate… and the difficulty of it is the reason we were intrigued by… nobody could get in… but Magnolia Gramling, she was really open to it once we got the ball rolling. So we were like ‘Hey, this is super interesting. We’ve got all these stories from Dr. Smith, who’s really a paranormal historian, and we’ve got all these stories and we’ve got this difficult location to get into.’ It’s just a perfect storm of there’s a lot of history here that’s untapped and a lot of stories that haven’t been told in a public kind of lens. So we wanted to get that out there,” Yewell says.

The documentary will air at 7 PM on the 11th, with a light Q&A to follow. There will also be a unique opportunity to see the paranormal activities for yourself as well.

If you have any stories or sites you’d like Austin & his team to take a look into, their YouTube channel is Spooky Time (@realspookytime).