Brooklyn Nets forward Ziaire Williams (1) shoots the ball as Memphis Grizzlies forward Jaren Jackson Jr. (13), John Konchar (46) and Ja Morant (12) attempt to block the shot during the first half at FedExForum on October 30, 2024 (Wes Hale Photo)
The Memphis Grizzlies dropped to 2-3 on the season, falling 119-106 at home to the Brooklyn Nets. Injury woes continued, as starters Marcus Smart and Desmond Bane exited the game with ankle issues.
Despite favorable expectations, Memphis underperformed, hindered by careless ball handling which led to 22 turnovers that Brooklyn capitalized on for 31 points.
The Grizzlies’ quest for a faster tempo remains elusive, marred by sloppy execution and costly mistakes.
Grizzlies head coach Taylor Jenkins expressed disappointment in the Grizzlies’ defensive performance, and praised the Nets offense. He admitted his team failed to execute their planned strategy and took responsibility for not adequately preparing them.
“We just have to fill our cup,” Jenkins said, on dealing with injuries. “Tomorrow, [we play] a great [Milwaukee] Bucks team, and they’re going to be hungry for a win. We’re hungry for a win. It’s going to be two teams battling.”
He continued, “We have to bring a better effort tomorrow, and whoever’s available to play has to go out there and compete even better than we’ve done the last two games. The guys are feeling it. They know it’s unacceptable.”
“We [the coaches] have to find a way to be included,” Jenkins concluded. “I have to lead better —I have to prepare them better. Our guys have to go out and play better, so it all comes down to responsibility. We’ll just take it day by day. I don’t know where we’re going to stand tomorrow, but once we get through, we know we’ve still got depth that can go out there and can be better [than] before.”
Jaren Jackson Jr. poured in a season-high 30 points, shooting 83% from the field (10-12) and perfect from three (3-3), with 7-10 from the free throw line, his 23rd career 30-point game.
Ja Morant posted 14 points, eight rebounds, and 11 assists, securing his 64th career double-double and second of the season, despite shooting 5-16 from the field and 1-6 from three.
Zach Edey tied his career high and Brandon Clarke set a season high, each scoring 13 points. Edey went 6-9 from the field and 1-2 from the line, while Clarke shot a perfect 5-5 from the field and 3-3 from the free throw line.
No Time to Panic
Although disappointing, it’s only 5 games out of 82. As Jackson Jr. said last night, “Can’t panic. Soldiers don’t panic. Should never panic. Panic just makes it worse, makes anything worse. You just stay calm and work on what you have to do — work on your craft.”
Up Next
The Grizzlies’ four-game home stand comes to a close on Thursday, October 31, with a showdown against the Milwaukee Bucks at 7 PM CST.
Louise Page’s music video “Green Ribbon” will be screening at the Porretta Film Festival in Bologna, Italy. (Photo: Courtesy Oddly Buoyant Productions)
Six Memphis filmmakers will have their work screened at the 23rd annual Porretta Film Festival just outside of Bologna, Italy, in December. Thanks to a grant from the Dr. O’Farrell Shoemaker Foundation, the Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission partnered with festival director Luca Elmi to select six short films by Memphis directors to screen at the Festival del Cinema di Porretta Terme.
The short films were selected from more than 25 entries by the film faculty of LeMoyne-Owen College and the University of Memphis. They are “What Were You Meant For?” by Kevin Brooks, “The Devil Will Run” by Noah Glenn, “What Life Is” by Brandon Russell, “Loveshake” by Caleb Suggs, “Soul Man” by Kyle Taubken, and Louise Page’s “Green Ribbon” music video by Laura Jean Hocking. “Soul Man” and “The Devil Will Run” both won Best Hometowner Short Film awards at the Indie Memphis Film Festival.
Film Commission board chair Gail Jones Carson and vice-chair Alicia George will travel to Italy to represent Memphis. Porretta Terme is situated in Italy’s picturesque Tuscan region and has been famous since antiquity for its hot springs. The town also hosts a long-running, soul music festival, which has hosted many Memphis music luminaries over the years. The film festival will take place December 7 through 15, 2024.
(left to right) Bob Roy, Barbara Roy, Emily Guenther, and Stephen Guenther (Photos: Toby Sells)
This week’s cover story by Toby Sells is about Historic Haunts Memphis. We followed the Bluff City paranormal investigators as they explored Memphis’ haunted juke joint Earnestine & Hazel’s, and tried to contact the many spirits who supposedly reside there. On the Memphis Flyer YouTube channel, we’ve got video of the spooky expedition. Happy Halloween!
A photo Cynthia Grawemeyer took of her "ghost piano" on the set of a Hallmark Channel movie filmed in her home (Credit: Cynthia Grawemeyer)
People still remember the old Grawemeyer’s restaurant, where they enjoyed wiener schnitzel, apple strudel, and other German cuisine.
But how many of them remember the haunted piano that resided at the restaurant at 520 South Main Street?
I frequented Grawemeyer’s, but I never heard the piano, which isn’t a player piano, play by itself. But others have.
It’s also included in the “Haunted Rooms America” website and can be seen in the movie, Christmas at Graceland: Home for the Holidays on the Hallmark Channel.
Since pianos seem to be coming back to Memphis eating/drinking establishments, including Elwood’s Shack on Park Avenue and Zinnie’s on Madison Avenue, I asked Cynthia Grawemeyer to tell me the history of her haunted piano.
“I play the piano,” Grawemeyer says. “So, our daughter at the time, Leah, was probably 8 or 9 years old. She wanted a grand piano. That’s all she kept saying. I wanted one, too.”
Cynthia’s late husband, Mark Grawemeyer, kept looking for a good deal on a grand piano. “One day he found this piano for sale on Craigslist at such a great price.”
So, Cynthia and Mark drove to an apartment in Millington, where the piano was located. They were greeted by a man in his 30s. “This piano takes up the entire tiny little dining room. And the guy is chain smoking one cigarette after another. The whole place smelled like smoke. He was sweating and nervous and kept loosening his tie.”
Mark asked him, “Why are you selling it? You must be moving. You need to get rid of it?”
The owner told him he still had six months on his lease, but he was staying at a friend’s apartment. And he said, “I can’t stay in this apartment with this piano.”
Mark offered to give him a lot less than the man was asking for the piano. “The guy said, ‘I’ll sell it to you at that price if one, you pay me cash, and two, you keep the piano. You don’t sell it. Keep it for your daughter like you said because it’s a family heirloom.”
And, Cynthia says, “The guy said his mom lived in a house in Frayser and she was getting older. His family wanted her to be in a safer place.”
The man told them they were in the process of moving his mother to Knoxville, but she never made it. “She was killed on the piano.”
According to the story, three intruders broke into her home. “The mother’s boyfriend was there. He shot one of the intruders, but they shot her and then him. I think he may have been surprised. But she got blood on the piano. So, then he felt like the piano was haunted.
“He said this piano was her prized possession and she had gotten it from her parents as her 16th birthday present. It’s an old Hamilton Baldwin piano. An old stage piano that they said could have come out of Chicago.”
The Grawemeyers took the piano anyway. “Mark thought he had found a deal.”
Then things began happening. And, Cynthia says, “I’m not ordinarily a ghosty person.”
She was playing the piano one winter afternoon while Mark was at work. “The dog was laying up under the piano and I’m in this big room and there’s nothing but me playing classical music and that dog.”
Then she suddenly felt something. “You know when you’re in a house and it’s wintertime and you’ll open the window and you get the suction feeling when you let the air in?”
That’s what she felt. “The dog stood up under the piano and his hair stood on top of his head and he was growling.”
Cynthia thought Mark had let himself in the house, which made air rush in. She called to him, but he didn’t answer. She got up and checked the door, but she discovered the deadbolt was still fastened on the inside. “I remember I had locked the door from the inside.”
About a week later, Cynthia was asleep in bed and Mark was in another room. When he returned to the bedroom, he said, “Wow, what was that beautiful piece you were playing?”
Cynthia asked him what he was talking about? She told him she didn’t get up and play the piano. He said, “You didn’t get up and play the piano and go back to sleep? I swear I heard the piano playing.”
The Grawmeyers later moved the piano to their restaurant, Grawemeyer’s. But, apparently, that didn’t stop the piano from doing its thing. A man they knew told him he was entertaining friends by taking them to different downtown restaurants. They walked past Grawemeyer’s after it closed. “He swears he heard the piano playing by itself from the inside.”
He wasn’t the only one with a similar story. “Tenants who lived in my building or next door called me and said, ‘That radio got left on at the restaurant.’ They could hear the piano playing. But nobody would be there.”
Darryl Taylor, who worked at the restaurant and now works at the Grawemeyer home, heard the piano play by itself when he was at the restaurant. He asked Mark who was playing it. “He said it was the ghost piano,” Taylor says.
But Taylor also heard the piano play by itself play at Cynthia’s house. He thought it was the Grawemeyer’s daughter, Emily Alagic. But Emily told him she thought she was hearing him play it.
And, Taylor says, “They didn’t just play a note. They played a nice long tune.”
So, why doesn’t Grawemeyer sell her haunted piano? “I wouldn’t mind getting rid of it,” she says. “I actually have a nicer one that I play. It has so much history and story I’d feel bad getting rid of it. I’m assuming one day Leah will put it in her house in Texas. She’s in Fort Worth.”
Post script: “A new player piano sits where my piano sat at South Main Sushi,” Cynthia says.
That’s the restaurant that occupies the space at the old Grawemeyer’s. Cynthia still owns the building. But the “player” on that piano is mechanical. Not metaphysical.
The Memphis crime rate showed a “very significant drop” from January to September of 2024, according to new data from the Crime Commission and the University of Memphis Public Safety Institute.
Credit: Crime Commission and the University of Memphis Public Safety Institute
The major property crime rate fell more than 20 percent in the first nine months of 2024, compared to the same period last year. These crimes are burglaries, vehicle thefts, and other felony thefts (like thefts from vehicles). The biggest drop came in the vehicle theft rate, down more than 35 percent. Burglaries were down nearly 20 percent. Other felony thefts were down nearly 13 percent.
The major violent crime rate fell, too, in the first nine months of the year. Though, they did not fall as dramatically as property crimes.
Crime Commission and the University of Memphis Public Safety Institute
The murder rate fell by more than 11 percent. Rapes were down nearly 9 percent. Robberies were down by more than 22 percent. However, aggravated assaults rose more than 2 percent.
Crime Commission president Bill Gibbons said there were nearly 10,000 victims of aggravated assault in the first nine months of the year, making up over 80 percent of all reported violent crimes.
“Until we reduce significantly the number of aggravated assaults, we will not be able to have a significant reduction in the overall violent crime rate,” Gibbs said in a statement. “And, of course, an aggravated assault can become a murder in a split second. All it takes is the offender being a good aim.”
Crime Commission and the University of Memphis Public Safety Institute
The overall crime rate in Memphis dropped more than 10 percent in Memphis from January to September.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, flanked by Republican legislative leaders, speaks with reporters after the 2024 General Assembly adjourned on April 25 in Nashville. The defeat of Lee's universal voucher proposal was a major setback for his administration. (Courtesy of State of Tennessee)
A new universal school-voucher proposal will be the first bill filed for Tennessee’s upcoming legislative session, signaling that Gov. Bill Lee intends to make the plan his number-one education priority for a second straight year.
Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) said last week that he’ll file his chamber’s legislation on the morning of Nov. 6, the day after Election Day. He expects House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland) will do the same.
The big question is whether House and Senate Republican leaders will be able to agree on the details in 2025. The 114th Tennessee General Assembly convenes on Jan. 14 as Lee begins his last two years in office.
During the 2024 session, the governor’s Education Freedom Scholarship proposal stalled in finance committees over disagreements about testing and funding, despite a GOP supermajority, and even as universal voucher programs sprang up in several other states.
Sponsors in the Tennessee House, where voucher programs have had a harder time getting support from rural Republicans and urban Democrats, attempted to woo votes with an omnibus-style bill that included benefits for public schools, too. But Senate Republican leaders balked at the scope and cost of the House version.
On Monday, Johnson gave a voucher update to school board members in Williamson County, which he represents, on the development of new legislation.
Similar to last year’s proposal, the new bill would provide about $7,000 in taxpayer funds to each of up to 20,000 students to attend a private school beginning next fall, with half of the slots going to students who are considered economically disadvantaged. By 2026, all of Tennessee’s K-12 students, regardless of family income, would be eligible for vouchers, though the number of recipients would depend on how much money is budgeted for the program.
“The bill is not finalized, but we’re all working together with the governor’s office to come up with a bill we all can support,” Johnson told Chalkbeat after the presentation.
Testing accountability is among chief issues to settle.
Johnson said the Senate’s 2025 bill will again include some type of testing requirement for voucher recipients — either state assessments or state-approved national tests — to gauge whether the program is improving academic outcomes.
However, the Senate bill would eliminate a previous provision that might have allowed public school students to enroll in any district, even if they’re not zoned for it. That policy proposal had been included at the insistence of Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg (R-Bristol), who lost his reelection bid in the August primary.
Lamberth, the House leader, did not respond this week to multiple requests for comment about his chamber’s plan, which in 2024 had no testing requirement for voucher recipients. Instead, the House version sought to dramatically reduce testing and accountability for public school students, including replacing high school end-of-course assessments with ACT college entrance exams.
The House bill also included numerous financial incentives to try to garner support from public school advocates. One idea was to increase the state’s contribution to pay for public school teachers’ medical insurance by redirecting $125 million the governor had earmarked for teacher salary increases.
Johnson told school board members the governor is planning a “substantial” increase for public education funding in 2025 but didn’t specify how much or for what.
“I think we’re going to have some things in there that will be great for all public education,” he said when asked later about including costly incentives such as teacher medical insurance funding. “Whether it’s in that (voucher) bill or if it’s in a separate bill is a great question. We will see. I don’t know the answer.”
Williamson County school board rescinds earlier anti-voucher resolution
Johnson told board members in his home district that he expects “nominal” impact to Williamson County’s two suburban school systems south of Nashville, if the bill passes the legislature in 2025. Most enrollees, he said, would be in urban areas that have more low-performing schools and private school options.
The governor is from Williamson County and graduated from a public high school there in 1977. So it was significant when his local board voted in March to join more than 50 other school boards across Tennessee on record against his signature education proposal.
But Dennis Diggers, a new board member, argued that it was appropriate to revisit the issue given the recent election, and proposed rescinding the resolution.
“Four of the six candidates who won their election ran publicly for more than six months on this issue, so it was out there,” Diggers said. “I am not going to deny the parents in Williamson County the chance to help their kids.”
Meanwhile, a Tennessee policy organization that supports vouchers released a new poll showing 58 percent of the state’s voters are more inclined to support a candidate who supports letting parents collect public funding to choose where their child is educated, including public, private, charter, or home schools. The Beacon Center poll did not use the word “vouchers” in its question to voters, which tends to poll worse than language about “school choice.”
Universal vouchers would mark a major expansion of vouchers in Tennessee, where lawmakers voted in 2019 to create education savings account options for students in Memphis and Nashville. That targeted program, which has since expanded to the Chattanooga area, has 3,550 enrollees in its third year, still below the 5,000-student cap, according to data provided by the state education department.
A spokeswoman for the governor said his administration continues to work with both legislative chambers on a “unified” universal voucher bill to kick off discussions for the 2025 session. She also noted that $144 million remains in this year’s state budget for the program, even though lawmakers didn’t approve the bill.
“We remain grateful for the General Assembly’s continued commitment to deliver Education Freedom Scholarships to Tennessee families by keeping funding for last year’s proposal in the budget,” said Elizabeth Johnson, the governor’s press secretary.
Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Atomic Rose Club and Grill, a popular nightclub that hosted drag shows and brunch, is now closed.
A post from the establishment’s Facebook page said that new owners are scheduled to occupy the space in December and hoped that the building would stay a “safe place” and be “better than ever.”
“The last five years have been a blast and we would like to thank you for your friendship and support,” the post said.
This announcement comes almost a year after a letter was posted on the account’s social media page from the previous owners where they said they were looking to “let the business go” to someone younger who “[has] the connections and energy to take Atomic Rose to the next level.”
Atomic Rose via Facebook
“We have done our best and hope we have gained the trust and respect of the LGBTQ+ community,” the letter said. “We hope that the new owners will keep the same format and just add to the business and continue to make it the premier LGBTQ+ venue in the south.”
The club opened its doors 2019 on 140 Lt. George W Lee Ave. and has hosted weekly drag shows and brunches, as well as its War of the Roses competition – a local drag competition that follows a similar format of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Atomic Rose also received national recognition when it became the setting of a viral video of drag performer Bella DuBalle condemning Tennessee’s infamous “anti-drag” bill. Outlets like Politico and The Guardian also shed light on the club as the bill went through the legislature.
Love Doesn’t Hurt, a Memphis-based nonprofit dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ victims of domestic and sexual violence, believes that education and empowerment are powerful tools in aiding those experiencing abuse.
Phillis Lewis, CEO and founder of the organization, said knowledge is power, and it creates a ripple effect. She said skills are something that no-one can take away from you, which can be comforting for those experiencing domestic violence and who are looking for ways to navigate their situation, even if they aren’t immediately ready to leave.
In hopes of equipping those in need with inalienable skills, Love Doesn’t Hurt has teamed up with The Haven, The Works, and the South Memphis Farmers Market to offer a cooking and financial planning class for people who may never have budgeted or cooked nutritious meals.
“Clients that are coming to us for housing or food — a lot of them either have not been the primary person preparing the food or meals in their household, or had never done any grocery shopping by themselves,” Lewis said. “That then puts them in a vulnerable position that if you don’t know how much this food costs, you don’t know how to budget. If you don’t know how to prepare nutritious foods for yourselves, not only are you [in a position] where you’re going to be impacted financially, but also holistically, body-wise, too.
Cooking 101 is a class scheduled for November 16 for attendees to gain financial empowerment while also learning to cook budget-friendly meals. The event will be held at the South Memphis Farmers Market located at 1400 Mississippi Boulevard from 10 am to noon.
The hands-on workshop seeks to reduce the risk of financial abuse through a multi-pronged approach. Not only will participants be able to eat a nutritious and cost-effective meal, but they will also receive a $20 voucher with which they will be able to purchase items at the event to take home.
“Those are things you will always have to use, and the knowledge to know how to keep yourself safe,” Lewis said. “For us, that’s the most important thing: how to keep yourself safe.”
Lewis said financial abuse can show up in many different ways, such as a partner requiring the other to turn over all of their income and rationing it as an allowance. She also said victims could be monitored by having to turn in receipts, and can even be harassed at their place of employment if they are trying to seek financial independence.
“[This] happens a lot — more than people know,” Lewis said. “If you have a partner that’s controlling, aggressive, and toxic, they can call your job until they fire you.”
These behaviors can contribute to a negative narrative shift, which Lewis explains has changed the way that victims of domestic violence can be viewed. She said that it was typical that the abuser would experience shame, but situations like these have pivoted from placing shame on the aggressor to the victim or survivor. As a result, the victim can be seen as a “liability” to their place of employment and can face termination. Lewis said abusers are aware of this, and use this as a way to maintain control so they can be the sole financial provider — thus discouraging independence.
Lewis hopes those attending the event will leave with skills and knowledge they will always have to “keep themselves safe,” which she said is the most important thing. They will also understand they’re not alone in their situation.
“Being a victim of domestic violence is very isolating,” Lewis said. “Statistically it takes survivors seven times to leave before they actually leave.”
This often leads to severed relationships and connections, which can leave the victim discouraged and feeling as if they don’t have a support system when they decide to leave.
The class and the partnerships offered are an extension of Love Doesn’t Hurt’s mission: not to tell victims and survivors what they need, but to listen to their stories and examine their barriers to help them.
Those interested in the class may register at this link.
(left to right) Bob Roy, Barbara Roy, Emily Guenther, and Stephen Guenther (Photos: Toby Sells)
Ghosts haunt Earnestine & Hazel’s.
You get that info in your Welcome to Memphis starter pack, tucked next to other fact cards that read, “Central has great wings” and “The trolleys ain’t for transportation.”
I’d heard about the bar’s many ghosts, and its haunted jukebox. Chris McCoy, our film and TV editor, had, too.
“The first time I ever heard about Earnestine & Hazel’s, the first thing they said was, ‘Oh yeah, it’s haunted,’” McCoy said. “There’s a lot more crazy stuff about this place besides that but … if any place is going be haunted around here, it’s this place.”
I’d heard. McCoy had heard. So had Abigail Morici, our culture editor. None of us were sure, however. None of us had ever had a paranormal encounter in the place. But I knew some people who had, some people with the tools, the know-how, the experience, and a dogged curiosity about what lay beyond the veil to help us turn our second-hand knowledge into, maybe, a firsthand experience.
Last week, the investigation team from Historical Haunts Memphis showed us around Earnestine & Hazel’s in a spooky nighttime adventure that offered the ultimate Memphis Halloween experience, and, perhaps, a glimpse into the spirit world.
Prologue
I don’t work many nights. I get my journalism-ing done in daytime hours so that evenings are clear for family, dinner, and show-binging with my wife. But this was an offer impossible to pass up.
I’m a ghost guy. Well, I celebrate all of paranormalia, really. And I mean really. For proof, look to my first book, published this year — Haint Blues: Strange tales from the American South. It’s full of ghosts, monsters, aliens, and even a psychic horse. Wrote a whole-ass book on this stuff, y’all.
But I’ve never had a paranormal encounter. Never seen Bigfoot. Never spotted a UFO. And never have I ever had an encounter with anything even remotely ghostly — no apparition, nor shadow figure, shade, specter, phantom, presence, revenant … you get it.
I’ve watched a million hours of ghost evidence videos on YouTube, enough to believe that likely 90 percent (or more) were hoaxed for cheap internet attention. But my mind was wide open heading into our guided spirit investigation last week. And as I left Cooper-Young, I also had my antennae up, a sort of low, gnawing anxiety that I could not quite put my finger on nor dispel as regular reporter jitters.
Even as I turned onto South Main from Crump, the “ghost” in Ghost River Brewing took on a strange dread. I love Ghost River and I was truly excited to maybe encounter a real ghost. So what was this anxiety? I wasn’t sure.
Then, I saw the caboose of a Canadian National train pass over me as I drove under the trestle, and thought I remembered that to be an omen of either good or bad. I couldn’t remember which. It didn’t matter. Because just thinking about it underscored that I was, in fact, having some sort of weird anxiety about the evening. Then, I saw the sexy-posing, winking screw on the Active Bolt and Screw Co. building and thought, “Well, there’s that, at least.”
Meet the Team
The Earnestine & Hazel’s building earns the bar’s “ragged but right” ethos. Usually, I revel at a chance to celebrate in those vaunted rooms of peeling paint, uneven floors, low light, and murky history. But that Tuesday evening, the bar slumped on the sidewalk, unlit and sad — like the face of friend lost in an unpleasant revery when they think no one can see them. And, yes, this description fits under the “meet the team headline,” for it was as big a character in our evening as any there with a pulse.
Thomas, a super nice guy in a Pantera T-shirt, unlocked the doors, pulled away the massive door bar, and allowed us entry, leaving us to our own endeavors. The lights seemed lower than usual, casting deeper shadows into an already dim room. Wheel of Fortune played silently on flat screens above, the audience applauding someone who’d just solved the puzzle — “Purple Rain, Purple Rain.” The air was close but not stifling, scented with roasted onions, a hint of stale beer, and the dusty passage of time.
Meanwhile, Bob Roy sat his blue tool tote on a table and began checking his many devices. Though the bag he rifled through was “the small one,” ribbed his wife Barbara Roy.
“We started with just one cheap little meter,” Bob said. “A year later, we probably had $1,000 worth of equipment.”
That’s Bob all over, the data hound. He works in tech and trusts his tools to measure physical aberrations that may hint at a presence our eyes cannot see.
Then, there’s Barbara, the sensitive one. Spiritual abilities run in her family, enough for her to once correctly foretell her sister’s pregnancy. She respects the spirits she connects with like the living.
“I’ve always felt like there was more out there for us to understand,” Barbara said.
During the load-in, settle-in, meet-and-greet beginning of our investigation, Emily Guenther seemed at home in the darkened barroom, at ease, checking her phone and the windows. She’s a well-tuned empath, among other things, who has spent hours in that very place doing the very thing we were about to do, so her ease was no surprise. That experience was a calming influence for the uninitiated, like us, as she tried to contact spirits, even inviting one to sit in her lap.
Emily’s husband, Stephen, served as a sort of a lead guide for us that evening. He, too, has spent countless hours investigating countless haunted sites, attempting to glimpse other realms in real life. In a Flyer story ages ago, I called Stephen the “Mayor of Spooky Memphis” for his familiarity with the city’s spirit side, a title I’ll renew here, but not just for his knowledge. Stephen can break down complex spiritual concepts and draw them broadly enough that even I can understand.
Chris McCoy, who we met earlier, has worked on Memphis’ independent film scene for more than two decades. He loves a good story in the theater, but on the street, he’s a man of science. Ask him about rocketry or the chemical reasons hemp can get you high, and you’ll see what I mean. Still, it was plain Chris came to the evening with an open mind and an open heart.
When I asked Abigail Morici, who we also met earlier, if she’d ever had a paranormal encounter, she immediately (and shockingly) replied, “Well, my mom says I had a ghost friend when I was 3.” Dorea, Abigail named the ghost girl. Though, when I asked her to spell it, she didn’t know. She was 3, she explained.
“I told my mom things like she wore pantaloons, and she came on a boat with her brother and her mom,” Abigail said. “We lived in New Orleans, in this house right by all the cemeteries. [Dorea died of] yellow fever, we think, maybe. It gave my mom the creeps and she won’t talk about it to this day.”
The Set Up
Our team assembled under the bar’s bare naked light bulbs by the downstairs bar. All the hands were shook, introductions made. Bob explained how he uses all his tools. Stephen explained the evening’s basic run-of-show. Then, he explained some of what we might expect.
“Sometimes, especially here at Earnestine & Hazel’s upstairs and in the backrooms, at times it’s very heavy,” Stephen said. “It almost feels like barometric pressure, like you can almost feel a bit of pressure.
“Some people get touched, never violently. You may feel, particularly women, someone touch your hair.”
Then, he explained what we should not expect.
“Ghost hunting is a bit of a misnomer; it’s really like ghost fishing,” he said. “You just go sit somewhere, set up your stuff, and wait.
“A lot of the [ghost hunting] TV shows are about … 22 minutes long, without commercials. That might be days of filming — three or four days — edited down to the best parts.”
Much of the evening, Stephen warned, might be boring. We’d snug in somewhere, sit in the dark, and ask a lot of questions. Actually communing with the dead, it turns out, can be every bit as tough and tedious as any other worthwhile endeavor made to look easy by a charismatic TV host. (I’m looking at you, Bill Dance.)
Questions would form the core of our evening’s commune. That’s how we let the spirits know we were there and there to listen to them, not drink Hi-Life and draw cuss words on the wall. And there were a few best practices for those questions.
Ask binary questions, not open-ended affairs. So, Stephen explained, instead of “What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?” ask “Do you like chocolate?” That way, a spirit can more easily communicate with the team — lighting up a motion sensor or tripping a meter rather than soliloquizing about frozen desserts. While the veil may be thin in places like Earnestine & Hazel’s, it can be hard to be heard through the curtains, it seems.
Some other guidelines for clarity: Keep conversation to a minimum. Use your voice to “tag” human noises like passing cars, passing pedestrians, or even passing gas. (Stephen joked his team has a strict no-Taco-Bell rule before their investigations.) Phones go in airplane mode to not give trip electro-magnetic equipment for false positives.
With the team and ground rules established, it was time to wobble up the familiar wobbly back stairs and into the must-odored heart of the unfamiliar, the unknown.
We let the spirits know we were there to listen to them, not drink Hi-Life and draw cuss words on the wall.
The Black Room
You’ve sat in this room. Make a 180 right turn at the top of the stairs to the end of the hall and choose the room to the right. The walls are painted black, illuminated with a single blue light bulb. Being in this room with a beer and your friends is one crazy stitch in the fabric of this great city. But in that room with ghost hunters, the room vibrates with some silent expectation that had me focused to the very edge of senses.
“Emily, if you sense anything, you let us know,” Stephen said as we settled into the Black Room’s squishy seats.
“I sense the batteries in my audio recorder are dead,” Emily said.
“So,” Stephen began, “we usually just start talking. This is Stephen. I’m here with Emily, Bob, and Barbara. We have some guests with us. They wanted to come over and hear and just kind of experience for themselves how it feels here. So many have expressed the presence of spirits here. So we hope that you’ll interact with us tonight.
“We come peacefully, just to talk. We like to tell your stories. That’s how people live on. We tell their stories.”
Silence. Focused silence. Extended silence. I busied myself taking photos of the scene. Chris angled his phone video rig around the room. Abigail clutched her bag on her lap with two arms as if in fear of some ghostly ne’er-do-well. Bob moved a small, black, digital device back and forth.
“It got up over one just a second ago,” Bob said, almost to himself as he watched the readings. This drew a mild hmm from Barbara.
Stephen asked if any of the spirits were women and promised that the men in the room would leave if that made them feel more at ease. Silence. “Any waitresses or servers among us?” Emily asked. “The building was once a church,” Barbara said.
“When it was a church, did a little girl fall down the stairs?” Barbara asked.
More silence. Who else? The team asked if any among them had been cooks, clergy, or musicians — horn or piano players. Silence. Stephen said aloud he’d heard there were no spirits in Earnestine & Hazel’s, a gentle taunt to coax communication. Nothing.
Barbara said she’d spoken once with the spirit “Mr. George,” Russell George, the bar’s former manager who had committed suicide in the building, about his famous Soul Burgers, and their famously secret sauce.
“Does anybody here know the secret?” Emily asked.
There was a soft pause and Chris then softly said, “Worcestershire sauce and pickle juice.”
After some gentle snickering, Stephen said to the spirits, “Chris just shared the secret. Is that okay?”
The men eventually did leave the Black Room but it was not enough to bring any spirits to the fore.
The spirits of Ike and Tina Turner, Ray Charles, and B.B. King are said to frequent Nate’s Bar.
Nate’s Bar
You’ve been in Nate’s Bar, too, at the far other end (the front) of the building. There, Stephen said he’d heard reports of encounters with the spirits of Ike and Tina Turner, Ray Charles, and B.B. King. He himself connected with the ghost of Wilson Pickett there one night. (The details are creepy and amazing. Ask him.)
The team continued with familiar questions: Any one with us tonight? Anyone had a drink here? Silence.
Stephen then turned on a spirt box. It’s a digital device that (to my unscientific ear) produces a skipping stutter of static. With them, ghost hunters can ask direct questions and, sometimes, get direct answers. When Emily asked, “Any musicians here?” amid a pause in the stutter, a voice could be heard to say, “yeah” or “yup.” Later, this prompted Stephen to begin talking about Ray Charles and his alleged carousing at the bar.
“I don’t know why people have to bring out the negative all the time,” he began. “Clearly, we each have things we struggle with. So …”
With that, one of the motion-sensor balls lit up in a sparkle of multi-colored lights. Barbara and I had been four feet from the dark thing for at least 15 minutes. Neither had moved to touch it — even to look at it — as it lit up. This drew shallow, excited gasps. This was the moment we’d planned for, organized for, and waited patiently for.
“Oh, hello!” Stephen said. “Thank you! I hope you agree with that. You should talk about the good times and the contributions of folks …”
With this, another motion light dazzled in a spray of color, a different one, drawing another wave of muted, respectful exultation, and a “thank you” from Barbara.
Heading Home
There it was. Something I could not explain, in an environment I thought I knew. In short, it was a paranormal experience, my first in the more than 30 years since I fell into the rabbit hole of myth, legend, and the unexplained.
In the moment, my heart raced and eyebrows went wide. Though, the situation called for respect and calm, I wanted to yell, “Holy fucking shit!” I didn’t.
Instead, I felt kind of warm. And in the place of that weird anxiety on my way there, my way home was a state of sort of quiet contemplation. Did I witness a sign or message from the dead? Did the veil open just feet from where I stood? If it did, what then? Is there an afterlife? If not, what did I see?
I decided to not think too hard about the answers to those questions. Instead, I put on some Wilson Pickett and decided that Bob was right. It’d be easy as hell to spend big money just to have that experience one more time.
Javaughn J. Owens, 23, was charged with first-degree attempted murder after he got into a dispute over a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on Sept. 15, the DeKalb County Daily Chronicle reported. A witness told DeKalb police that Owens and another man argued about the victim “not cleaning up after themselves,” whereupon Owens swung a butter knife and struck the other man. The victim was seen at a local hospital but had to be transported to Chicago for further treatment of a punctured intestine. He said he believed “100%” that Owens would kill him. Owens faces up to 60 years in prison. [Daily Chronicle, 9/17/2024]
Inexplicable
Beaches along the Atlantic Ocean in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia were closed to swimmers by authorities on Sept. 15 after mysterious medical waste started washing up, The New York Times reported. The trash included syringes and needles, used feminine hygiene products, and plastic cigar tips. “We currently have no idea where it came from and will not be speculating about a source,” said the National Park Service office at Assateague Island National Seashore. They were unsure how long beaches would remain closed. “We recommend wearing shoes on the beach and avoiding the ocean entirely,” warned Joe Theobald, director of Emergency Services in Ocean City, Maryland. [NY Times, 9/17/2024]
Saw That Coming
Norton Havoc, 32, can now “smell colors,” they said, after blowing their nose in the shower and dislodging a Lego block that had been stuck inside for “at least 26 years,” the New York Post reported. Havoc posted that they suffered from “multiple breathing issues” after the childhood incident; at the time, their mom tried to extricate the piece with tweezers, to no avail. “I can breathe out of this side of my nose now, and it’s fantastic,” Havoc said. [NY Post, 9/14/2024]
The Way the World Works
Vacaville, California, resident Ken Wilson is VERY careful about his consumption of electricity. “I was being very vigilant on this,” he told KMAX-TV. “Every day that I go to work, I turn the breakers off.” He also purchased a device that tells him how many watts of energy his appliances use. But recently he noticed that his bill was higher than normal. Wilson has lived in an apartment, unit 91 of his building, for 18 years. After Wilson called PG&E to come out and check his meter on Sept. 10, he discovered he’s been paying for unit 90’s electricity usage for years. PG&E admitted the mix-up and said it is “fully committed to rectifying the situation.” Wilson said he hopes the story can help others with similar problems. [KMAX, 9/16/2024]
Politics, Am I Right?
As candidates for mayor in Sao Paulo, Brazil, took to the stage for a televised debate on Sept. 15, Pablo Marcal referred to allegations of sexual misconduct against his rival, Jose Luiz Datena, the Associated Press reported. In response, Datena picked up a metal chair and approached Marcal’s podium, then slammed the chair into Marcal’s side. The moderator cut to commercials, and later the debate resumed without Marcal, who was rushed to a hospital with a fractured rib cage. Marcal portrayed the event as “attempted homicide,” while Datena admitted his mistake but said he didn’t regret it “at all.” [AP, 9/16/2024]
Explosive!
Magnet fisher and YouTuber Dani Dip pulled a provocative find out of the Saint Joseph River in South Bend, Indiana, on Sept. 1, ABC57-TV reported. “We believe this is a 175mm Howitzer round from like a stationary cannon back in the day,” Dip said. “It took four people to pull this big 2-foot round over the wall to safety so it wouldn’t fall back in and potentially go off.” The South Bend Police Department said further testing would be necessary to make sure the charge is not live. “We’re just here to help and clean out the river and see what we can find,” Dip said. [ABC57, 9/3/2024]
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