Hell's Chruch

New Hightower Baptist Church, Canton GA. The actual name of Hell's Church is New Hightower Baptist Church in Canton, GA.  This church has a history that truthfully told is fair more strange than any fictional work.  Because of the events that unfolded at this church's remote location, it has become an unwilling hot spot for ghost hunters and investigators alike. The sad ending to their story centers around all of this attention, in which the church, and its congregation, are still paying for an event which was set in motion by a grieving teen age mind. No one knows the exact year that the church was constituted but some members believe the year to be around 1886. Through stories past down through the years they know that when the land was given to the Church there was a old log cabin which served as a school and church for the farming community. This structure was torn down once the actual church building was completed and there is a large pile of rocks at the site of the original log cabin. New Hightower Baptist Church stood for over a hundred years until in the winter of 1990 when it was burned to the ground by vandals. The church that stands today was re-built and dedicated in 1992 and still has Services, Revivals, Prayer-Meetings and Decoration. According to New Hightower Church Records the first burial in the cemetery was Sara Jane McCollum in the year 1890.1 On November 20, 1990, the original church building was burned by an 18 year old and two juvenile accomplices who threw homemade firebombs at the church from the parking lot. The high school senior said that he and his friends "belived they were striking at at a reputed site of Satan worship". The ring leader said he felt it was the only way to punish the man that killed his father in 1975 . "I felt he was a Devil worshipper.", the young man stated in a police interrogation. The young man felt by burning a "supposed site of Satan worship", he could get even with the man who killed his father. A Cherokee county officer said, "We've heard rumors over the months that supposedly some people had been around the area at night- outsiders, not church members. There were tales of occult rituals but nothing more than rumor. You always hate that anything like that could bring a person to commit a crime, if that's the reason they did it. It's strange how things get turned around." The Pastor of New Hightower Baptist said "He's wrong, just plain wrong."2 1-Cherokee County Heritage 2- The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, December 19, 1990; Author- Bill Montgomery

Preliminary Investigation Report - November 13, 2004

Investigation Team: Kevin & Amy Fike Investigation: 9:30pm - Investigation Begins. Amy and I conducted the initial walk through of the site by taking pictures and getting test readings for use as control data in upcoming investigations. During our time on the site we met local teenager and learned some of the urban legends of the location. These legends included everything from coffins in the basement, an old "hanging tree", and not being able to start your car after 10:30pm. Surprisingly these stories didn’t say anything about the small child that was apparently found murdered in the cemetery years ago. My high powered spotlight quickly proved the rumor of a coffin filled basement to be just that... a rumor. Through a vent we all saw a very clean and well kept, coffin free, crawl space complete with a plastic covered dirt floor. The walk through ended in the cemetery across the street. I had heard about the high number of tombstones for children that died very young. I did see an unsettling amount but you have to remember that this church was built in the mid 1800's and although very sad, children dying that young was not an uncommon event. 10:30pm - Investigation Ends.   Conditions at Time of Investigation: Temperature: 44.6 Relative humidity: 71% Pressure: 30.45 Inches and Steady Wind Speed: 7 mph Moon Phase: waxing Crescent 17.7% of full Solar X ray: Normal Geomagnetic Field: Unsettled   Phenomena Witnessed: None   Notes: Camcorder never worked. Spotlight failed to hold charge.

Investigator Pictures