Inside the Bull's Head Inn: Investigating One of New York's Most Haunted Historic Properties
“Multiple unconnected people, across different visits, reporting the same experiences in the same locations — that's not something I dismiss. That's something I investigate.”
— Jason Hawes
Some locations stop you the moment you walk through the door — not because of anything you can measure, but because of the weight of everything that happened there. The Bull's Head Inn in Cobleskill, New York is exactly that kind of place. Before JV and I ever set up a single piece of equipment, we sat down with owner Christopher Guldner to understand what we were really walking into — and what he told us made it clear this investigation was going to demand our full attention.
I've been doing this long enough to know that the history of a location is just as important as anything you capture on a recorder or a camera. You can't properly investigate a place you don't understand. That's why, before every investigation, I want to hear directly from the people who live it every day. Christopher Guldner has been running the Bull's Head Inn for years, and when he starts talking about this property, you can tell immediately that this isn't someone chasing ghost tourism dollars. This is a man who has experienced things he genuinely cannot explain — and who has done his homework on the history behind them.
The Bull's Head Inn is one of New York's oldest operating historic inns, and that age comes with layers. We're talking about a property that has seen centuries of American history pass through its doors — and according to Christopher, some of that history never quite left. He walked JV and me through the documented history of the location, including events that would leave a mark on any building and any ground. When a place carries that kind of past, my job isn't to walk in assuming it's haunted. My job is to walk in and start eliminating every possible rational explanation for what people are reporting. Drafts, settling structures, electrical interference, infrasound, the power of suggestion — all of it goes on the table first. The paranormal is always the last resort, never the first conclusion.
What makes the Bull's Head Inn particularly compelling from an investigative standpoint is the consistency of the reports. Christopher described experiences from staff, guests, and visitors that follow recognizable patterns — specific areas of the building where activity concentrates, particular times when things seem more active, and phenomena that multiple unconnected people have reported independently of one another. I pay close attention to that kind of corroboration. One person hearing something unusual is anecdotal. Multiple people, across different visits, reporting the same thing in the same location? That earns a closer look. Going into our investigation, those overlapping accounts gave JV and me a clear map of where to focus our time and our equipment.
Christopher was also refreshingly straightforward about what he knows and what he doesn't. He's not trying to sell us on a haunting — he's trying to understand what's happening in his own building. That's exactly the kind of witness I want before an investigation. He didn't embellish, he didn't dramatize, and when I pushed back with questions designed to find holes in the accounts, he didn't flinch. He just told us what he'd seen, what his staff had reported, and where in the inn the activity seems to be most concentrated. Armed with that information, JV and I were ready to go in and start doing what we do — ruling things out, one by one, until only the truth is left standing.
The pre-investigation conversation with Christopher Guldner set the stage for what I already suspected was going to be a genuinely challenging and fascinating investigation. The Bull's Head Inn has the history, the witness accounts, and the atmosphere that serious investigators pay attention to. Whether the evidence holds up under scrutiny is exactly what JV and I are there to find out.