Haunted History or Local Legend? Jason Hawes Investigates the Bull's Head Inn in Cobleskill, NY

Some locations stop you in your tracks the moment you walk through the door — not because of anything supernatural, but because the weight of history is practically embedded in the walls. The Bull's Head Inn in Cobleskill, New York is one of those places. Before JV and I even 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 be anything but ordinary.

I've been doing this long enough to know that the most important part of any investigation happens before the lights go out. It happens in the conversation — the one where you sit across from the person who lives or works in the location every single day and you listen, really listen, to what they're experiencing. That's exactly what JV and I did at the Bull's Head Inn, and owner Christopher Guldner did not disappoint. He walked us through the full history of one of New York's oldest inns, and the deeper we got into that conversation, the more I understood why this place has drawn so many paranormal claims over the years. History and tragedy have a way of leaving marks, and Cobleskill has seen its share of both.

The Bull's Head Inn carries the kind of layered past that investigators like me take seriously. We're talking about a location that has witnessed generations of human drama — joy, loss, conflict, and everything in between. Christopher shared accounts of unexplained activity that staff and guests have reported over the years: apparitions, disembodied sounds, objects moving on their own, and an overall sense that something else shares the space with the living. Now, I want to be straightforward with you — I don't walk into any location ready to hand out a 'haunted' verdict. My job, and the job of TAPS, is to first exhaust every rational, scientific explanation before we even begin to entertain the idea that something paranormal is at play. That mindset doesn't change regardless of how compelling the stories are, and Christopher's stories were compelling.

What I appreciated most about this pre-investigation conversation was Christopher's honesty. He wasn't embellishing for the cameras. He spoke like a man who has genuine questions about his own property — someone who wants answers as much as we do. He acknowledged the inn's dark historical chapters, including the violence and conflict that touched this region of New York, and he connected those events to the experiences people continue to report today. That's the kind of context that matters to me as an investigator. Understanding the who, the what, and the when of a location's history gives us a framework. It tells us where to focus, what questions to ask, and what kind of evidence would actually be meaningful versus what might have a perfectly ordinary explanation.

Heading into the investigation itself, JV and I were aligned on our approach: methodical, evidence-based, and skeptical first. The Bull's Head Inn gives investigators a lot of ground to cover — historic rooms, common areas, and spaces that carry very different energy depending on the time of day and the century you're thinking about. We came prepared to document everything, challenge everything, and let the evidence — or lack thereof — do the talking. Christopher has built something special here, both as a historic destination and as a gathering place for people who want a great meal and a great story. Whether or not the inn earns a paranormal designation from us, one thing is already certain: the Bull's Head Inn is a piece of living New York history, and it deserves to be treated with the respect that history commands.

This pre-investigation interview with Christopher Guldner set the stage for one of the more historically rich cases JV and I have taken on in recent memory. The Bull's Head Inn has no shortage of stories, and our job now is to find out how many of them hold up under scrutiny. Stay tuned — the investigation is coming, and I promise you, we're not going in there looking to be scared. We're going in there looking for the truth.