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Ghost Fishing

(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.

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Elmwood Cemetery Breaks Silence on the Paranormal … Sorta

(Photo: Abigail Morici)

Memphis is host to many a haunting — the Orpheum Theatre, the Woodruff-Fontaine House, Earnestine & Hazels, maybe even the very house you live in. But one place which makes no claim of a haunting is Elmwood Cemetery.

Sure, it’s been around since 1852 and is home to over 75,000 of the, er, formerly living, but Elmwood’s executive director Kim Beaden hasn’t seen a ghost in her 25 years working at the cemetery, nor has she heard of such a sighting. That’s not to say ghosts don’t exist — or that they do. Bearden, when asked whether they exist, circumvents the questions. Good on her. 

But she will be presenting a lecture on the historical side of ghost stories. (Also good on her.) “The history of spiritualism in the United States kind of fascinated me,” she says. “I want to examine how our current concept of ghosts arrived in the United States. It came over from multiple points, from the South and the East, from Europe and from Africa. And so it’s a pretty interesting subject matter to me. I think it tells us a lot. The study of spiritualism can tell us a lot about ourselves, and the things that we are longing for or afraid of. All those stories are just part of the American story. It’s part of the Memphis story, too.”

This Sunday, Bearden will talk about the religious belief that the dead communicate with and advise the living, ghost photography, séances, and more. You’ll learn about the young United States and young Memphis, too, including, yes, some Memphis spiritualism. “We do have at least one spiritualist buried in the cemetery,” she says. “His name was Samuel Watson, and he was a Methodist minister for a time. So his life story is included in the presentation.”

“I don’t pretend to have any answers,” Bearden continues. “At the end of the end of my presentation, I’ll leave you with, hopefully, some history, but also some mystery. I don’t have any definitive answers, but I leave them with food for thought. And I hope that they enjoy what they have to hear regardless.”

With this being Halloween weekend, Elmwood has a few other events going on. Unfortunately for you, most of them are sold out. You can still get tickets to “Woe Is Me: A Tour of Tragic Tales” right now — and we mean right now as we write this, so if they’re sold out by the time you read this, that’s on you. 

“The ‘Woe Is Me’ is a relatively new tour,” Bearden says. “If you’re a fan of Edward Gorey and The Gashlycrumb Tinies, this is the tour that you would probably be interested in. It’s a tour of unfortunate events.”

You’ll hear about a man killed in a laboratory explosion due to the carelessness of others, another lost at sea, and a child who drowned in the Court Square fountain in 1884 in broad daylight. Fun fact: Some (read: those who believe in ghosts) say the fountain is still haunted to this day by that child. 

“October is our most popular month for people to visit the cemetery, but we’ve got stuff going on throughout the year,” Bearden says, pointing out the upcoming Veterans Tour of Elmwood Cemetery, Tree Tours of Elmwood Cemetery, and Victorian Christmas Carols event.

Bearden’s “From the Beyond: Ghosts, Spiritualism, and Cemeteries” lecture is Sunday, October 29, 2-3 p.m. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased here.   

“Woe Is Me: A Tour of Tragic Tales” is Saturday, October 28, 10:30 a.m.-noon. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased here. 

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A Haunting in Memphis

Photo: Joelee Creative | Adobe Stock

Editor’s note: This story contains discussions of suicide and death, which may be sensitive for some readers.

Tis the season to be spooky. Halloween is just around the corner, which means our Flyer writers are busting out the Ouija boards and lighting the seance candles. Memphis is the home of blues and barbecue, but also the “boos,” with plenty of supernatural citizenry contributing to the city’s frightening side. Our writers risked life and limb to brave the paranormal horrors of Bluff City to bring our readers some of Memphis’ scariest legends.

Pink Lizzie & Clara

In February of 1971, 13-year-old Clara Robertson was practicing her piano lessons in one of the upper rooms in the Greek-revival school building of the Brinkley Female College. She was a bit shy, sometimes nervous, but intelligent. That day, as she lifted her gaze above the keys she played, an emaciated girl appeared before her. She wore a tattered strawberry-stained pink dress, rusty pink slippers, and mildewed stockings. She seemed to be covered in a layer of slimy mold, and Clara could see right through her. 

Later in life, Clara Robertson was haunted by the ghost of her husband’s first wife. (Photo: Abigail Morici)

Immediately, Clara screamed and ran to her fellow classmates, only to be met with disbelief and teasing. Days later, when the transparent girl reappeared, dripping with water splashing at her feet, she did so in front of Clara and a few other students. Needless to say, they were terrified and ran away, but Clara stayed behind long enough for the apparition to reveal herself to be Lizzie Davie, the girl who used to live on the school property that once belonged to her family before the current owners had obtained it (supposedly) illegally. Lizzie told Clara of a jar, buried under a tree stump in the schoolyard, which held treasures like gold coins, jewelry, and, most importantly, the papers that would show all the wrongs committed against Lizzie’s family. Unless this jar was found, Lizzie promised she would “never do good to or for anyone.”

Soon, news of the specter (and the buried treasure) spread throughout Memphis and the country. Some thought the whole thing was a hoax; others dove into spiritualism, with mediums holding nightly seances around town, some of which Clara even attended to communicate with Lizzie. Bartenders began selling “ghost cocktails” (recipe unknown); stores closed early; parents withdrew their frightened daughters from the Brinkley Female College, which closed later that year due to the sensational story; men and women were afraid to go out alone at night. 

Meanwhile, Clara’s father J.R. Robertson, a lawyer, hired men to start digging for that jar, which they soon found. Upon Lizzie’s instructions, the moldy jar could not be opened for 60 days after its discovery, so, until its opening, Robertson hid the jar, at least 12 inches tall and wide, in the safest place possible: the outhouse (seriously). He planned a public opening, with an admission fee of $1 — only that never happened. He was robbed at gunpoint by four men and forced to surrender the jar, which has since never been recovered.

After her encounters with Pink Lizzie, those close to Clara say she became a changed girl. She continued to practice spiritualism afterward, both privately and onstage, and she even allegedly received letters about her story with Pink Lizzie from President Grant and Queen Victoria. At 18, Clara married a much older widower, whose first wife’s ghost “would return at night and kick her out of bed.” She died of consumption at 25.

— Abigail Morici

The McCoy Theatre at Rhodes College just might be haunted by a former student, whose hopes to join a sorority were dashed. (Photo: Courtesy Rhodes College)

Of Gothic and Ghosts

There are plenty of ways for students to spend their time on campus at Rhodes College. Pursuing a fulfilling liberal arts degree, participating in collegiate athletics, rushing Greek life, or … ghost hunting? Campus lore contains a trove of diverse tales ranging from the comedic (escaped zoo monkeys running riot) to the macabre. But since we’re in spooky season, we’ll keep the focus on some of the college’s scarier legends.

For parents sending their kids off to university for the first time, perhaps the only thing more frightening than their child revealing they’re going to pursue a theater major might just be an actual ghost haunting the walls of Rhodes’ McCoy Theatre. Legend has it that back in the ’70s, undergraduate student “Annie” was so devastated that she wasn’t accepted into the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority, that she marched into the sorority house and hanged herself. Years later, after Zeta Tau Alpha disbanded and the structure was converted into the McCoy Theatre, tales grew of the spectral Annie, who in death haunted the halls of the building she was desperate to be a part of while alive. It became tradition for students to summon Annie to every performance, a seat set aside in the audience for her, lest her vengeful spirit break chairs or other props. 

Was Annie real? Probably not. But with Rhodes having shuttered its theater degree in 2021, the specter should have plenty of companionship from the ghosts of theater majors past. Over on the other side of campus is a spectral tale that may be informed by a true tragic story. An actual student in the ’70s, William Thomas Bayley, sadly took his own life in his dorm room at Bellingrath Hall. That tale is perhaps the foundation for the legend of the Bellingrath Ghost, a haunting tale that reached my ears within just a couple of days of setting foot on campus at the start of my freshman year (which was all the way back in 2011, a truly scary thought). 

Every year, students report signs of paranormal activity in Bellingrath Hall: spectral hazes showing up in photographs, ghostly moans echoing throughout the night, and all manner of strange noises and occurrences. According to a 2018 article by Rylan Lorance in the campus newspaper The Sou’wester, reports of the Bellingrath ghost and related phenomena trace back to the ’80s, including the Bellingrath fire of 1987. Fire aside (no proof it was the ghost), the campus ghosts seem to be harmless companions. And for aspiring ghost hunters, dig a little deeper on campus, and there may be even more ghosts and ghouls lurking among the Gothic walls. Still no sign of that B.S. in parapsychology, however.

— Samuel X. Cicci

Sightings of the enormous, yet elusive, Arkansas Wild Man stretch all the way back to the 1830s. (Photo: Michael | Adobe Stock)

The Arkansas Wild Man

Nobody thinks Memphis is Bigfoot country. The last time anyone suspected a Bigfoot of anything around here, an investigation by wildlife officials only yielded a new Memphis cryptid, the once-famed Midtown Coyote.   

Bigfoot sightings are more scarce in Memphis than those of alive-and-well Elvis Presley. There have been reports, though, and some of them are lame. One woman told the Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization that in the 1980s she got cozy with a family of Bigfoots that lived in a nearby cave, noting they loved apples and “sweets.” C’mon.

Some are more credible, though. An eye witness told the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization that in 1985 they and some friends were driving toward Shelby Forest one night when they saw “it” cross the road in front of their headlights. 

“It was very big black and looked like it was covered with fur,” the eyewitness said. “It ran with a slight forward tilt and with very little arm bend.”

But dig around the pre-internet wayback machine and you’ll find that a “wild man” once roamed right across the river. It brought terror and, maybe (that’s a big maybe), secured Memphis a special spot in Bigfoot history. 

Wild Man stories emerged around St. Francis, Greene, and Poinsett Counties in the 1830s. But a Baltimore Sun story in 1846 gave some details.

“His track measures 22 inches, his toes are as long as a common man’s fingers,” reads the story, “and in height and make, he is double the usual size.” 

By 1851, The Patriot and State Gazette newspaper of New Hampshire said an expedition was forming to find this “wild man.” It said a posse led by well-respected men of the community reportedly left Memphis on horseback that year in what might have been the first organized Bigfoot hunt in American history. Didn’t see that coming, right?

The Arkansas Wild Man was “of gigantic size and covered with hair,” the story said, and it had been seen by hunters and farmers. Once the Wild Man had been seen chasing a herd of cattle, and it ran away from two men who saw it, leaping some 12 feet to 14 feet at a time. 

Four years later, The Pittsfield Sun reported “a wild man, seven feet high, is stated to be roaming through the great Mississippi bottom in Arkansas. Numerous travelers and hunters have asserted that they have seen him, but none have been able to get near enough to give particulars concerning the strange being.” That same year, the Wisconsin Patriot said the Wild Man was seen breaking the ice of a frozen lake. He was “covered with hair of a brownish cast” and “well muscled.” Later, another group of hunters tracked the creature, lost it in the snow-covered Ouachita Mountains but not before the creature ripped one man from his saddle, scratched his eyeball nearly from its socket, and viciously bit parts of his shoulder away.  

Is all of this true? Well, these stories were printed in newspapers. So, they must be true, right? 

Real or not, add the Arkansas Wild Man stories to your campfire quiver and fuel Memphis nightmares in a whole new way.

— Toby Sells 

Justine’s Haunted Wine Cellar

Janet Stuart Smith remembers the time she saw the ghost in the wine cellar at the legendary Justine’s restaurant.

It was back in the ’80s, says Smith, whose parents, the late Justine and Dayton Smith, owned the now-closed restaurant, which was housed in the circa 1860 Italianate house at 919 Coward Place.

“I had to go down to the wine cellar, which was not being used at the time, to reset the air conditioner,” Smith says. “It was creepy down there. But I thought someone was behind me. I thought it was one of the waiters trying to scare me. Kid me.”

A painting of the old Justine’s facade by Janet Stuart Smith (Photo: Janet Stuart Smith)

It wasn’t one of the servers. “It was a tall, dark figure. I could kind of see through her. And her feet were not touching the ground.”

The figure looked like “mist,” Smith says. She’d heard the story of the ghost, whom they called “Miss Mary,” all her life from servers and others who worked at the restaurant, but that was the first and only time she saw it.

Servers played poker in the wine cellar until someone saw the ghost. They still had to go downstairs on occasion, but they took someone with them.

The ghost wasn’t scary, she says. She thought it was cool. It was “just another dimension.” 

About a year later, Smith saw a guest, who was attending a party upstairs, sitting in a chair with a puzzled expression on her face. Smith asked, “Are you okay? Is something wrong?”

The woman answered, “Is there a ghost story to this house?”

When Smith said yes, the woman pointed to the ladies’ room, where she said she saw a ghost going back and forth. Smith, who thought Miss Mary stayed downstairs, had heard the ghost was a woman “from the Civil War days who lost her child in childbirth and was looking for her.”

But Smith later heard some chilling news after the incident with the woman at the party. “I found out years later from my dad or someone that the upstairs ladies room was the original nursery in the house.”

Smith, who devoted two pages to the ghost in her book, Justine’s: Memories & Recipes, said goodbye to Miss Mary when she left the house for the last time after the restaurant closed in 1995. “I hate leaving the ghost. I wish I could have brought her to my house with me and all the Justine’s memorabilia.”

The old house, which has been renovated, still stands. “I’ll bet she’s still there.”

— Michael Donahue

The Mynders Hall Ghost

Mynders Hall, originally a women’s dormitory on the University of Memphis campus, eventually becoming co-ed in 2014, is closed for renovations, but one resident has never left. Indeed, the fact that she died 111 years ago never stopped her from moving in — after all, it’s her building. 

When the West Tennessee State Normal School opened on September 10, 1912, Seymour A. Mynders, the college’s first president, was still grieving the death of his 21-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. She’d only been married four months before perishing, and papers of record neither recorded her spouse’s name nor her cause of death, only that this building, among the first three on campus, was christened in her honor. And its very shape, resembling a giant E, seems to embody her. 

So too did the large portrait of her that hung in the lobby for decades, and students who felt her ghost’s presence would greet the framed picture every day to stay in Elizabeth’s good graces. Meanwhile, her spirit seemed mostly concerned that occupants of her building remained studious. As reported in The Daily Helmsman, former associate dean of residence life Daniel Armitage recalled one resident who “had a test the next day and couldn’t sleep. She noticed an outline of a person in her chair, so she turned on the light and no one was there. She looked at her desk, and there was the book she was supposed to study, opened to the chapter she was being tested on. She claimed she put the book up before bed.” 

Intrigued by such terrifying tales, I ventured to Mynders Hall myself, hoping to lure Elizabeth out. All I had to go on was a ritual recommended by a spirit-savvy friend: carrying a satchel full of textbooks (weighing at least 23 pounds), one must approach the hall at dusk and, walking in circles, recite the following chant: “My notes are in my three-ring binder/My cup’s fresh from the coffee grinder/May my teacher be much kinder/Find her, find her, Lizzie Mynders!”

What happened next still has me trembling. As the sun sank, a hand beckoned me from a window above, and just inside the back entrance I spied a little table and chair. “Join me in my study party,” said a laughing, girlish voice. “Tee-hee!” Just then the door blew open, and Elizabeth’s echoing words commanded, “And now we cram for the exam. This is one all-nighter that will last … an eternity!” 

— Alex Greene 

Louise Page at the 2021 Black Lodge Halloween Masquerade Ball (Photo: Chris McCoy)

Black Lodge Halloween Masquerade Ball

Memphis’ biggest and weirdest Halloween party began humbly enough. Black Lodge Video opened the last week of October 2000, says owner Matt Martin. “But nobody came in for the first couple of days because nobody knew we existed.” 

The first customer for the video store on Cooper was musician Eldorado Del Rey, who wandered in on Halloween. “He was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’” says Martin. 

That Halloween, a couple more people found Black Lodge and rented movies, so Martin and co-founder Bryan Hogue decided to celebrate. “We had a party that night to celebrate that somebody finally figured out who we were,” he recalls. “One year later, when Halloween came around, and we had actually survived the year — quite the opposite of what we had thought, which was that no one would ever come — we’d gotten really popular. We threw another party to celebrate our one year, but this time a whole bunch of people showed up. That started the ball rolling, no pun intended.” 

During the ’00s, the Black Lodge Halloween Masquerade Ball was invitation-only. The festivities got bigger and crazier. Many of the Black Lodge regulars were horror, sci-fi, and psychotronic movie fans who also happened to be really into costuming. “Everybody brings out their A game on the cosplay,” says Martin.  

Hogue, who died in November 2020, had the idea to bring bands and DJs in to perform in the video store. “I think it was in 2011 when Hogue and Craig Brewer said we should open it up,” says Martin, who was apprehensive at first. “It’s one thing when we’re having our own party; it’s another thing when we invite the public.” 

The party didn’t stop when Black Lodge vacated their original location and went looking for a new, bigger space. In 2014, Craig and Jodi Brewer merged their long-running Halloween house party with the Masquerade Ball, which was held at Earnestine & Hazel’s. The theme was Heaven and Hell. “That’s what took it to the stratosphere,” says Martin. “People heard about it and it just blew up. I remember we stepped out the front door and the line to get in stretched a good block or two down Main Street.” 

When Black Lodge moved into a new location in Crosstown, the Ball was the first thing on the calendar. In 2020, what would have been a gala anniversary celebration was moved online. “I remember at the time we said, ‘I don’t want to not do the Ball, but we can’t have people here,’” recalls Martin. “So we streamed it online, and you could party in your own house. It was one of the moments that really hammered it in for me, how this was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I was proud that we kept the tradition alive, and you better believe in 2021 we brought it back!” 

This year’s Black Lodge Halloween Masquerade Ball will be on Saturday, October 28th. There will be fire dancers, hoopers, sideshow performers, and “surprises.” Music entertainment includes Little Baby Tendencies, Joybomb, Optic Sink, Turnstyles, The Sheiks, and Jack Oblivian. After midnight, DJs Selector Jack and Graveyard Gloria take over the dance floor. As Martin says, “Let the ceremony begin!”

— Chris McCoy

Categories
News News Blog

An Interview with a Ghost Hunter

Photo: Tanya Vandesteeg | Instagram

With Halloween rapidly approaching and the veil between this world and the next getting thinner, the Memphis Flyer couldn’t help but reach out to local paranormal investigator Tanya Vandesteeg to learn more about her ghostly occupation. By trade, Vandesteeg is an entertainer, having written productions and having performed in various musicals and at Disney World, Universal Studios, and SeaWorld. Now she, along with business partner Stephen Guenther, runs Historical Haunts Ghost Tours and conducts investigations with the Historical Haunts Team, which she co-founded. 

Memphis Flyer: How did you get into the paranormal?

Tanya Vandesteeg: I was the creepy girl in school — I guess, I still am. I grew up in Texas and we moved a lot. To make friends with everybody in my new school, I would always just ask them things like, “Oh, what’s the local legend in your town?” I was always really curious about it, and I was always really wanting to debunk it, too.

But I was really into it. I would see portals in my room when I was a small child, like these really spinning weird things. My mind’s always in the supernatural. Things have always come to me and been attracted to me. I always knew there was something else there, so it never was even a question in my life.

So, in college, I found a group of us that wanted to go hunt these things a little more. And then in Orlando, I formed another group, and then I lived in Los Angeles where I did some stuff there. It wasn’t until here where I got into really an official paranormal group. And that’s how I met Stephen [Guenther], and then we decided to break off that group and make our own group, and the rest is history.

What makes someone more sensitive to the paranormal?

I don’t know what makes a person more special than others. Some can see the full body apparitions. Some don’t. Some don’t wanna see it and they see it anyway. I think it’s a gift. I think it can be genetic. I think it also depends on what blood type you are, what astrological sign you are. More closed-off signs don’t tend to attract spirits as much as other signs. 

We always say love and gratefulness are the highest levels of vibrations. And so if you’re loving and caring and grateful and thankful, you’re going to vibrate on that level [of the spirits].

What does a paranormal investigation look like?

If someone says they have a haunting in their house, we offer our services for free. We send a questionnaire; we do interviews. We wanna make sure that we’re a good fit. Like, we don’t do exorcisms; we’re not demonologists. But once we say, “Okay, this is a good fit,” we get the team together and we’ll set up some of our equipment, like K-II meters, which read electromagnetic fields. And a lot of times people will sense things or feel things that are actually natural because if you have too many electromagnetic fields running through your house it can create feelings of paranoia, feeling like somebody’s staring at you from behind.

One of the last cases that we were on, they had all these mesh boxes for their Wi-Fi in this really small living room, and all of our devices were going off like crazy. I even felt heavy sitting in that room. We call it a fear cage because it’s natural electromagnetic fields that are surrounding you, but they’re creating a kind of a supernatural environment. We unplug everything and then we show them our meters. Everything’s clear.

So we try to debunk as much as we can before really investigating. We set up cameras, motion detectors, and our team will go through all of the footage. A lot of it is putting headphones on and listening to see if there are any voices we didn’t pick up while we were there — those are called EVPs, electronic voice phenomena. We compile all the footage and we come back with the client. We’re like, “Okay, this is what we found. This is what we didn’t find.”

What kind of hauntings have y’all come across?

There is the whole thing of attachments. Typically, if something’s tied to the land or tied to the house, it won’t go with you. That’s one of the initial questions that we have when people have an investigation. Like, how old’s your house? How long have you experienced this? Have you experienced this before you lived here or experienced it after you moved here? Then we can figure out if something’s tied to you or something’s tied to the house. Typically, it’s the house, land, or an object in the house. Very rarely are you gonna have something that’s just following you around in life. If you believe in your spirit guides, like ancestors, loved ones, that’s a little different.

What kind of tools do you use?

Believe it or not, we use these little cat toys with motion detectors in them, so sometimes we’ll line them down a hall to see if something will set them off. We’ll also set up these laser grids, and if a spirit comes through it, it’ll manipulate it. 

There’s the Spirit Box, which is a device that scans through AM and FM channels really fast to create white noise. We ask a question like, what’s your name? And something answers back that we might hear with our ears or if we don’t, we’ll see if something was caught on the audio recorder.

We have dowsing rods, which are really fun. They’re some of my favorite investigative tools; they’re just rods and you can ask questions and the spirits can manipulate them. “If so-and-so is here, can you cross the rods?” We also use K-II meters and ask questions to see if the spirit will light a certain color for an answer.

Paranormal investigative tools (Photo: Abigail Morici)

Have you ever seen a ghost? 

We always joke that we’re always looking for the tap-dancing ghost — somebody who looks full body, standing in front of us, going, “Here we are.” It just doesn’t happen that way. I always say the moment I see the tap dancing ghost, I’ll retire. That being said, we have seen full body apparitions. We’ve seen what would look like shadow figures.

There are also spirits that try to look like us, like imitation spirits, but they can never get the smile right. You can research that; it’s through all of history. One day, I left my best friend’s house, and then I drove down the street and saw my best friend standing next to a tree. And then she would smile and it would be really creepy, but it wasn’t her. But things don’t scare me. I get startled, but I don’t get scared.

Are there malevolent forces?

You will find what you’re looking for, and that’s what we always tell people if they wanna be an independent ghost hunter. Any joker with a flashlight and a cell phone could be a ghost hunter now. And that’s the problem — people are breaking in places, going in places they shouldn’t, doing things they shouldn’t. And I’m all about being a paranormal investigator, but do it right and do it safely. Not only physically, but spiritually. Whatever your religious beliefs are, you have to keep yourself protected because there are what we call the cockroaches of the spirit world. They’re lower vibrating, lower frequency, I wouldn’t say demonic or evil, but they’re just not good. And they will attach to you if you are not protected enough.

Like, on Ghost Adventures with Zak Bagans, where he goes into these houses and he is like, “Come at me and slap me and hit me” — that’s why he gets slapped and hit all the time ’cause you will find what you’re looking for. That’s his schtick, but we don’t recommend going and doing that. We don’t allow that on any of our tours or investigations. No provoking. We don’t call out spirits to fight us or scratch us or any weird things like that. Why would you go to somebody’s house in their location and make fun of them? We believe that they’re just differently living. 

But if you’re going to look for evil, you will find it.

Historical Haunts tour guides Damon and Amber (Photo: Abigail Morici)

Have you ever had an experience with something malevolent? 

One investigation was really heavy. A little 2-year-old was getting scratched. I was on a couch and I put my knees on my chest because all of a sudden I just started feeling not okay. We all started coiling up. We had to call our friend from New York, who can go into the spirit world and see what’s going on. She said there was something there that was not … not nice. And she had to get rid of it. 

Turns out one of the young kids in the house was trying to sell this soul to the devil. We were like, “Stop it.” Then we had a lecture.

Once our friend got rid of it, we could feel the whole environment change. We had a beautiful investigation after that. We contacted the father who had passed, and he came through on our Spirit Box and said things that we didn’t know about and told them he loved them. That’s the most rewarding thing about investigations — when families can find comfort.

Do you have any spirits that you — for lack of a better word — stay in touch with?

Two doors down from the Broom Closet [where Historical Haunts arranges tours], there was a patrolman that was brutally murdered — Edward Broadfoot — in 1918. His spirit haunts the building. There’s still a blood stain on the floor. It’s all down in the basement. But he comes through all the time. We were just on our tour the other night, and we talked with him with dowsing rods. He’s a good friend of ours. We helped get him his memorial at Forest Hill as well. 

But, yeah, we always call out the spirits around here. At Court Square, there’s a little boy that died in the fountain. Claude Pugh is his name. It was in all the papers at the time. [Read more about Claude here.] Claude knows us really well.

The Haunted Memphis Bus Tour stops at Court Square’s fountain where Claude Pugh’s spirit resides. Attendees have the chance to communicate with him, using the group’s investigative tools. (Photo [captured poorly by] Abigail Morici)

We’ve made more friends with spirits out there. There’s a sailor or a soldier — we can’t figure out, but we know that when there are more younger girls on the tour, he comes out more often. There’s sometimes a male spirit there that is kind of intimidating and he’ll chase off all the other spirits and make our equipment go crazy.

Sometimes I walk down the street and I’m like, “Is everybody I’m looking at, are they real?” It’s like, what if we are seeing ghosts and we just don’t know?

Historical Haunts’ tours include the Haunted Memphis Bus Tour, Haunted Pub Crawl, Memphis True Crime Tour, Walking Ghost Hunt, Memphis Brew Bus, and Ghost Hunt at Earnestine and Hazel’s. You can schedule a tour here. 

If you are experiencing paranormal or unexplained activity, you can reach Historical Haunts’ investigative team here. 

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Secrets That’ll Haunt

Doc and me in Dorea's house. (Photo: Maureen Morici)

My grandmother can’t keep a secret, specifically my mother’s secrets. When I was 12, she spoiled the surprise trip to Disney World that my parents had planned to take my sister and me on. When I was 21, she broke the news that our two family dogs (may they rest in peace) ate our pet bird (may he rest in peace) when I was in kindergarten. Admittedly, even as a 5-year-old, I suspected that Doc had died under hushed circumstances, and now, at least, I know that my suspicions were right. Guess you could say that I have a sixth sense (more on that in the next paragraph).

But perhaps the biggest secret that has slipped through my grandma’s well-lipsticked lips was one that drastically shaped my identity: I had a ghost friend when I was 3, back when my family was renting a house that happened to be directly across the street from a cemetery in New Orleans. Reader, this meant that six years, two-thirds of my life at the time — I knew my fractions — had gone by without mention of the fact that I had my very own Casper. I had no memory of this, of course, but the betrayal I had felt in that moment at 9 years old, from the very woman who touts “no secrets in this family,” was like none I’ve felt since.

Once those beans were spilled at that fateful lunch, my mom looked like — well, she looked like she had just seen a ghost. Unlike the killer-dog secret which garnered nervous laughter upon revelation, this secret made my mom give Gammy the look I had thought was only reserved for when my sister and I were in deep, deep trouble, the kind of trouble where we went to our room without having to be told. This secret was unspeakable, and she said as much: “I’m not talking about it.”

To this day, I cannot get this woman to tell me all the dirty, ghostly details, and I try. Trust me, I try. In between begging for answers and “Jesus Christ, Abigail, ask me again and see what happens,” I’ve gathered a few tidbits. My mom would see me talking to nothing, though I claimed to be talking with my friend. I called her Dorea. She was around my age. She had a brother. She came to New Orleans on a ship. I told my mom Dorea wore “pantaloons” under her dress — a word far outside my 3-year-old vocabulary. I said she looked “strange” — the only word in my vocabulary that I could muster to describe whoever, or whatever, I was seeing.

Regardless, it was enough to freak my mom out. She won’t drive past that house anymore. The family that lived there after us died in a plane crash. I’m sure there’s no relation; she’s not so sure.

Despite my mother’s clear aversion to the topic, after I found out about Dorea, I felt like a badass. I was (am) a shy kid, but apparently my shyness didn’t stop me from speaking with the dead. Dare I say, I felt like the Virgin Mary, the ultimate lady in my Catholic schoolgirl frame of reference — hand-selected for something greater than what the skeptics in this world could handle. I longed to find a way to wedge Dorea into my story, to make her more than just a one-line anecdote that my grandmother casually mentions in a conversation at a random Tuesday lunch.

I’d try to force a memory of that time, to picture what Dorea looked like, what our conversations could’ve been, but all I can remember from that house was the green carpeted staircase that I took a tumble down in front of the young handyman (the embarrassment!) and the PBS Kids logo that floated on the TV screen when my mom told me that our dog Hobbes (who we had before the bird-killing ones) had gone off to heaven, and that no, the vet didn’t kill him, no matter how convinced I was. (I guess my sixth sense wasn’t fully formed then … or maybe it was. Now, that’s a haunting thought.) Oh, if only I could remember Dorea instead.

But I don’t.

So now Dorea really is simply an anecdote with just enough embellishment to fill this short space in the Flyer, but not enough to write the next Nancy Drew-esque book that 9-year-old me had planned to get out of the whole “Dorea thing.” (Dorea would’ve been the perfect Bess to my Nancy, I was convinced.) Every now and then, I’ll hop onto Google and go down hours-long rabbit holes of census records, looking for some kind of answer, but I’m as clueless as ever.

There’s a part of me that thinks I should just let the idea of her go and be grateful that I had a friend when Hobbes died or when my mom was dealing with my grouchy, recently born little sister. I was never alone or lonely in that house. I wonder, though, if Dorea is.

I’m going back to New Orleans for the weekend, which just so happens to be Halloween, when the veil between this world and the next is thinnest. Maybe I’ll drive by that house. In theory, I’m old enough to go by myself, but my mom has volunteered Gammy to go with me. Maybe I’ll see Dorea, or maybe I’ll just get another secret out of my grandma. Either way, I’ll be in good company.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Lurking at the Green Beetle.

The popular spelling of “Bushwacker” leaves out the second H, possibly because its creator had too many of his own concoctions and didn’t care about proper spelling. That guy, likely a man named Thomas Brokamp, has “Bro” in his name, so it’s really no surprise that he created what amounts to a chocolate milkshake made with Bacardi 151. This alcoholic milkshake is not as popular here in Memphis as it would be at the beach, but it’s a popular item at the Green Beetle, where I enjoyed one this past weekend. They’re one of the few places in town that have Bushwackers, much to the delight of Wendy’s Frosty fans everywhere. It’s hot out, so now is the time to drink something you wouldn’t normally drink like, you know, a drink made with a rum that is essentially pure gasoline.

The Green Beetle has been around since 1939, but in its most recent form for about seven years. During that revamp, the bar on the north side of the wall was torn down and the current bar, a horseshoe-shaped one, was built out of old shuffleboard tables. Behind that bar was the lovely Krista, expertly battling an onslaught of people stopping in before a show at the Orpheum. No, really, it was completely packed, and she was keeping it together, despite 100 women in rompers ordering shots, which is my personal hell.

As the crowd moved on to the show, Krista and her friend Jeff, a regular at the bar, spent some time talking to us about the Beetle and its patrons. I’ve spent a fair amount of time there; it’s affordable, always full of South Main regulars, and has great food, but I had never heard about its being haunted. Krista and Jeff said that the ghosts are mostly mischievous, leaving sink faucets on in the restrooms and overturning salt and pepper shakers on tables. Krista said they won’t act up around just anyone, which is fine by me, as I already have enough issues without having to deal with a meddlesome ghost.

The Beetle is a small bar, with green walls and dark paneling on the ceilings, making it feel more like a lair. A bar that is a lair is a place where you lurk more than you sit, so it is fittingly appropriate that it caters to those who enjoy lurking (ghosts and people alike). It’s an awesome place to drink and eat before a Grizzlies game and it’s full of TVs for all your sports-watching needs. During the sports dead-zone that is August, however, we were treated to the Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore classic, Fever Pitch, which I guess is only a few steps below ESPN “The Ocho” showing a ping pong game. But as Jeff pointed out, the reason that the Beetle is so popular with South Mainers isn’t owing to its status as a place to catch a game (or a rom-com); it’s because of its role as a gathering place, a bar where everyone there is a friend and neighbor.

The intimacy of the inside of the Beetle spills out onto the sidewalk, where several tables and umbrellas are out for those who prefer to drink beer al fresco. At any given point in the weekend, these tables are packed with Downtowners making the most of their days off. While Downtown is not lacking in bars, it is certainly not full of neighborhood joints that act as both the last stop on a Saturday night and the first stop on a Sunday morning. The Beetle is like that, though; it even takes on a third role as a great business lunch spot. The menu is typical pub fare, but kicked up a notch. You’ve had cheese fries, sure, but have you had Philly cheese fries? The menu used to be exhaustingly large, even leading to one South Main resident attempting — and succeeding — at eating every single item (Mark’s plaque for accomplishing this feat is still on the wall behind the bar). They’ve since pared it down a bit, but it still has something for everyone.

The Green Beetle may be one of South Main’s neighborhood bars, but it’s got the neighborhood bar feel that caters to everyone who walks in. Mosey in and grab a Bushwacker, limit your intake to two, and get some nachos to-go. And oh, if the faucet’s on when you walk in the restroom, run like hell.

Green Beetle, 325 S. Main, 527-7337, thegreenbeetlememphis.com

Categories
Book Features Books

An Undertaking

David Kurzweil isn’t the “suggestible” sort — the sort to believe in the supernatural, the paranormal, and the otherwise inexplicable. A hypnotist who couldn’t hypnotize him once said as much. Kurzweil says so himself: “Logic is what holds it all together.” And by “all,” Kurzweil means the world as we know it, the world “as it is,” the observable, testable, verifiable world of cause and effect.

Which doesn’t mean Kurzweil isn’t searching — searching for “something unseen behind common experience, some totality” to be glimpsed between the “cracks,” as in that crack between the worlds of the living and the dead.

But what is Kurzweil to do when, alone inside the funeral home where he works, he sees, one day at dusk, a vapor exiting (or is it entering?) the body of a dead woman? More than a vapor, Kurzweil claims, but how to describe it? It seemed to him alive. It had “intelligence.” It looked at him. Seconds later, it was gone.

Not for long. The memory of it haunts him, and when news of a “ghost” reaches outside the funeral home, a newspaper reporter hounds him about it, a psychic researcher tests him on it, and scientists at the local university ask him to deny it. But no denying the life-changing effects of Kurzweil’s vision on the man himself and those closest to him: his co-workers, his girlfriend, his ex-wife, and his widowed mother. Where are the words to describe the effects? In Alan Lightman’s new novel, Ghost (Pantheon).

Lightman, a native Memphian, is a theoretical physicist by training, but he’s also a science writer, essayist, and best-selling author of the novel Einstein’s Dreams and National Book Award finalist in fiction for The Diagnosis. He is also the first person to receive a dual faculty appointment at MIT in science and the humanities, which puts him in the perfect position to pose David Kurzweil’s questions and our own — questions about the limits of science and religion, about the powers of reason and faith, and about the present, which is fleeting, and the past, which is faulty with memories. Questions too about the passing of time itself: Is it the ticking of a clock, or sunlight crossing a room, or the ripples from a stone tossed in a stream?

What are we to make, though, of David Kurzweil, a 42-year-old man who served nine unambitious years working at a bank (he’s a wiz at numbers), only to be downsized right out the door? Mortuaries “repulse” him, and yet he applies for a job in one. He lives alone and comfortably enough in an unremarkable apartment. His reading, however, is anything but commonplace: Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations), Antoine Lavoisier (Elements of Chemistry), Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan), and Charles Darwin (The Descent of Man).

He’s also divorced, but his ex-wife of 12 years still has hold of him emotionally, to the distress of his girlfriend, who is otherwise the essence of understanding. His widowed mother is something of a cold fish, and yet he admires her, while it’s his father who lays claim to one of Kurzweil’s fondest childhood memories, and yet he’s a father dead now for decades. Add to these plot points Kurzweil’s metaphysical speculations and his run-in with an apparition, little wonder that when Ghost opens, the man is one step from a nervous breakdown. But it puts him in good company with his funeral-home boss, who suffers from a panic attack after venturing into the unpredictable, sometimes violent outside world.

That’s a lot of plot points to fold into this narrative, which is, on the one hand, a family drama and, on the other hand, an extended meditation on what Kurzweil calls “the world underneath” — the extrasensory spirit world. You can take that to include a world of ghosts, a world for some of us true enough. Or is it the equally mysterious world of the imagination, unmeasurable by the standards of science but true just the same?

Categories
Cover Feature News

Bumps in the Night

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

“Now, ya’ll are going to think I’m crazy, but I swear I saw an old woman this afternoon walking down the hallway when I was checking in. These two didn’t see any old woman,” says Teresa, pointing to her two girlfriends, crowded next to her on an antique loveseat.

“What did she look like?” asks S.P., a member of the Memphis – Mid South Ghost Hunters (MMSGH) from his chair in the parlor of Magnolia Manor, an antebellum home turned bed-and-breakfast in Bolivar, Tennessee.

On a table between the women, the ghost hunters, and my friend Greg and I are several pieces of electronic equipment — tape recorders, video recorders, digital cameras, and electromagnetic-field detectors. We’re about to begin a workshop in which S.P., Rich, and Mervin (three ghost hunters who prefer that the Flyer not use their full names) will teach us a little “Ghost-Hunting 101” in this reportedly haunted house.

But first, Teresa needs answers. She describes the woman she saw as elderly, short, heavy-set, and wearing an apron over a dress. She can’t remember the color of the woman’s hair, but it was short. As she explains her sighting, her middle-aged friends shake their heads and giggle lightly, as if to show their disbelief.

None of the ghost hunters saw the woman either. Rich says the mysterious woman may be a friend of Elaine Cox, the hostess and sole resident of Magnolia Manor.

Mervin (who, despite the name, is female) takes Teresa back to the manor’s private quarters, where Cox and two friends are visiting. When they return several minutes later, Mervin is smiling and Teresa’s wearing a stunned look.

Justin Fox Burks

Neither of Cox’s friends resembled the woman she saw, and no one else had been inside the house besides the five workshop attendees, the ghost hunters, and Cox’s guests.

The ghost hunters’ conclusion: Teresa may have seen an apparition. Judging by her description, Rich suggests it could be the ghost of Annie Miller, the last family resident of Magnolia Manor, who died in 1979 at age 84.

It’s exactly what Teresa wanted to hear. Having been on numerous amateur ghost hunts in her home state of Arkansas, she’s had plenty of experiences recording electronic voice phenomena (EVP), a form of ghost hunting that picks up voices of the dead through audio recordings. But she came here to see an apparition.

So did I. At the least, I was hoping for some type of paranormal experience. The MMSGH host monthly overnight workshops at Magnolia Manor, where small groups of eager ghost seekers learn how to track a phantom.

My friend Greg and I were hoping that one night in an allegedly haunted antebellum home would convince us that ghosts are more than fodder for campfire stories.

The Haunted Mansion

Tucked in a row of stately historic homes on Bolivar’s Main Street, Magnolia Manor is barely visible from the road. That’s due to a lawn filled with large magnolia trees that no doubt served as the mansion’s namesake.

The colonial Georgian home was built in 1849 with bricks said to have been handmade by slaves. Judge Austin Miller, the home’s original owner, was a well-to-do lawyer, banker, and politician. He played a large role in the state legislature’s determination of the Southern boundary of the state, a decision that placed Memphis in Tennessee rather than Mississippi.

Colorful stories abound about the mansion’s history. Union generals Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, John Logan, and James B. McPherson allegedly planned the Battle of Shiloh in the gentleman’s parlor at Magnolia Manor.

Legend has it that one day during a meal Sherman stated that all Southern women and children should be exterminated. Mrs. Miller ran outside in tears. Grant ordered Sherman to apologize, which he did. But the proud general wasn’t fond of saying sorry, so he also slashed the walnut staircase with his saber. Today, the evidence remains in the form of a deep cut in the wooden railing.

Justin Fox Burks

Seeing is believing: Elaine Cox resides in Magnolia Manor, where some guests believe spirits move coins during the night.

Members of the Miller family continued to occupy the home through the 1970s, when Magnolia Manor was willed to the city of Bolivar. A local attorney purchased the home for his daughter in the late 1970s.

The house was only occupied a few years before Cox took ownership in 1981. Soon after, she began renting three upstairs rooms and a backyard cottage as a bed-and-breakfast.

Guests have reported strange noises and a few sightings of apparitions. A ghostly woman in a Victorian dress reportedly pulls the covers off guests in the 1849 Room. An old woman in a rocking chair has been sighted in the wee hours of the morning in the C.A. Miller Suite. The same apparition has been spotted holding a candle in Annie’s Room late at night.

Cox says lights go on and off, doors open and close, and occasionally she hears heavy footsteps walking up the staircase. Since the MMSGH began hosting workshops here over a year ago, numerous audio recordings have been made of what they believe to be the dead trying to communicate.

Stalking Spirits

Greg and I arrive in Bolivar on Saturday evening. As we pull up to the home, I can’t help but get the feeling that I’m a character in the opening scene of a horror film. You know the one: A couple kids decide to spend an innocent evening in a haunted house and everything’s going nicely until a back-from-the-dead serial killer comes up from the basement.

But S.P. has assured me that the ghost hunters use Magnolia Manor because they believe it’s a place where spirits have no ill intent.

So I shake my fear, and we ring the bell. Cox points us in the direction of the 1849 Room, and we head up the staircase. Once in our room, my eyes are immediately drawn to a woman’s portrait hanging over the mantel.

A pair of soft, sparkling eyes stare back at me. Transfixed, I move in closer. The portrait seems to come alive the longer I stare. I later learn the portrait is believed to be that of Priscilla McNeal, a wealthy cousin of the Millers who died at age 18.

Rich tells me it may have been painted post-mortem and warns me that Priscilla’s ghost is known to wake people in the night.

At 8 p.m. we head downstairs to the parlor, where silver and gray damask wallpaper, stately mahogany and walnut chairs and tables, and grandiose chandeliers whisk us back to the days of hoop skirts and chivalry.

The women visiting from Arkansas (Teresa, Stephanie, and Laneca) gather on the sofa, while Greg and I opt for straight-backed cushioned chairs. S.P. and Rich go over how to use the electronic equipment.

“Pay close attention, because your ghost hunt has already begun,” says S.P. “It’s all about being aware. Unless you’re really paying attention, you won’t notice anything.”

He tells of how, in March of last year, an apparition resembling the original Mrs. Miller floated past the parlor door during a workshop just like this one.

“We saw a full-bodied apparition of a lady in a Civil War-era hoop skirt,” says S.P. “I thought it was Mrs. Cox at first, because she owns a hoop skirt that she sometimes wears. I thought she’d come down to give us a treat, but I could see right through this figure, which was glowing and shimmering. I jumped up and ran into the hallway, but no one was there. Mrs. Cox was in the kitchen in blue jeans.”

As we’re discussing the difference between using analog tapes and digital recorders to capture EVPs, Greg shivers and then whispers to me, “Hey, breathe on my face.”

“What?” I say, louder than a whisper. It attracts the attention of the others, and Greg informs us that he felt cold air on his face, almost as if a hand had touched his cheek. He was hoping that it was just my breath, but my breath is not cold.

The ghost hunters give us a tour of the manor around 9:30 p.m., accompanied by tales of sightings and experiences of previous guests.

In our room, Rich tells of a skeptical man who was staying here during a Christmas party several years ago. He went to bed early while his wife socialized downstairs.

Justin Fox Burks

Resident Elaine Cox has furnished Magnolia Manor with antebellum antiques.

“When his wife went looking for him, he’d disappeared from the bed,” says Rich. “He was hiding in the bathroom. He said he’d been awakened by the ghost of Priscilla pulling the covers off of him.”

Greg squeals with delight at the idea that a ghost was sighted in our room. Goosebumps rise on my arms, and I glance at the portrait again, silently asking the young woman pictured to kindly not wake me in the night.

Next, we enter the sitting room attached to the C.A. Miller Suite, the largest and most luxurious of the guest rooms. I hear a faint meow.

“Did anyone else hear a cat?” I ask. I’d already been informed that there was no cat in the house, but past guests have reported phantom mewing. No one else heard it.

“I bet you just heard Whitey, the ghost of Annie Miller’s cat,” says S.P. Whitey is buried in the Miller family plot at Polk Cemetery in Bolivar, the only four-legged resident of the centuries-old graveyard.

At 11:15 p.m., we gather in the C.A. Miller Sitting Room for an EVP session. We’d been asked to bring tape recorders, so I place my trusty Olympus on the table. All the lights are turned off in the room, except for one small lamp. A door leading out to the hallway is left

When everyone’s quiet, S.P. begins the session:

“We come here tonight to visit. We don’t mean any harm or disrespect to anybody. We’d just love … ”

Before he can finish his sentence, the lights in the hallway flash on and stay on. Everyone gasps.

Justin Fox Burks

Priscilla’s ghost is said to pull the sheets off guests as they sleep in this room, built in 1849.

“Wow, I just got chills,” says S.P. He thanks the spirit for giving us a demonstration and proceeds with a roll call of each Miller family member. If their ghosts are present, S.P. tells us, they may choose to speak on our tape recorders.

During the session, Stephanie announces that she felt a hand rub her lower back. Rich and Laneca spot a dark ball of energy that darts from underneath one chair to another. All of us report feeling cold breezes moving throughout the room, and I get chills when someone points out a distant radio-like chatter in the background. I’d been hearing it too but thought it was my imagination. There is no radio upstairs.

After the event-filled EVP session, I was certain the place was rife with paranormal activity. It’s 2:30 a.m., but, scared to sleep, Greg and I play an hour-long game of Monopoly. I only admit defeat when I begin falling asleep in between turns.

Greg turns the lights off but props the hallway door open so some light shines in. There’s no way I’m sleeping in complete darkness in a haunted house. I pull the covers way over my head and hold on tight. If Priscilla decides to visit, she’ll have to fight to remove the covers.

Greg, still eager to see some ghost action, lies in bed awake, waiting for something to happen. Just as I’m dozing off, I hear, “Hey, do you feel that?”

“What?” I ask, afraid to hear the answer.

“I think there’s something sitting on the end of my side of the bed. Do you feel that? It feels like the bed is pressing down near my feet,” Greg says.

I can feel some pressure near the foot of the bed. The mattress is depressed, as if someone is weighing down one end. Then, it lets up and the feeling is gone. Lying awake, scared shitless, I stare into the open hallway door.

Justin Fox Burks

Priscilla McNeal’s portrait: Stare long enough and she’ll come to life.

Suddenly, a shadow passes across the opening, as if someone (or something) is walking down the hallway. I shudder and glance at the clock. It’s 3:26 a.m. And then I fall asleep.

Ghost Hunter History

You’d never guess by talking to him, but S.P. hasn’t always believed in ghosts. His skepticism waned after he noticed streaking balls of light in some photos he’d snapped during a ghost tour several years ago. Just for fun, he sent them to the Ghost Stalkers of West Tennessee (MMSGH’s earlier incarnation) for evaluation.

The group’s members determined that the spirit-like images were simply spider webs illuminated by a camera flash. But S.P. was intrigued.

“Next thing I know, they’re asking me to go on investigations with them. Then they asked me to join,” says S.P., who’s been a member since 2002.

S.P. and his fellow hunters focus much of their time on house calls. People who believe their homes or businesses may be haunted can contact the group through their Web site (www.memphisghosthunters.com). All MMSGH investigations are free and confidential.

“We have a questionnaire we send back to the person, and it’s fairly involved,” S.P. says. “If people are really having a problem and they need help, they’ll answer the questions and agree to our conditions — no electronic equipment may be turned on, no smoking is permitted, children must be out of the home, and pets must be secured.

“We’ve had some pretty crazy things happen during an investigation, so we’re concerned about the safety of children,” S.P. says.

The team spends several hours in each home or business, recording in active areas and checking for moving electromagnetic fields.

“We’ve found that the best way to hunt for ghosts is not to hunt, but just to go in and visit,” S.P. says. “The spirit energies in these places aren’t going to interact with you unless they’re comfortable. You have to be respectful.”

Pictured: Annie Miller (on the right), the last family resident of Magnolia Manor

Team members rely mostly on audio recordings and EMF detectors to collect evidence, but they also use video recorders and digital cameras to document their investigations.

“About 99.9 percent of the ghost pictures you see on the Internet are the result of photographing dust, moisture, pollen, or insects,” S.P. says. “It’s extremely rare to catch anything in a photograph. If you go outside when it’s dark and shine a flashlight in front of you, you’ll see all the dust in the air.”

Sometimes, they’re able to “talk” with the spirit. If a client wants the ghost gone, MMSGH members will politely ask the spirit person to leave. Other clients simply want a name or history of their ghostly visitor. S.P. says most spirits aren’t out to cause harm.

“They’re just people without bodies,” says S.P. “We don’t believe that hauntings are demonic in nature. Sometimes the energies in these houses are mad or confused, but I’m sure if you walked through downtown Memphis, you’d see a few crazy people out there.”

Over the years, numerous requests have come in from people wanting to join the team on a hunt. But S.P. says spirits are less likely to communicate when there are lots of people around.

They began offering the monthly ghost-hunting workshops at Magnolia Manor as a way for amateur hunters to learn the techniques of the trade. (The next Magnolia Manor workshop will be held August 11th and 12th.) The group will also begin offering monthly two-hour workshops in August at an allegedly haunted site in Memphis. More information and a workshop schedule will be posted on their Web site soon.

The Morning After

I’m awakened by the alarm on my cell phone. Priscilla didn’t come calling in my slumber. I glance at her portrait and silently thank her. I wake Greg. Breakfast will be served downstairs in 30 minutes.

As I’m brushing my teeth, I overhear S.P. and Laneca talking in another room. She’s explaining why she’d left the Miller Suite, where she’d been sleeping alone, and crawled into bed with her friends in Annie’s Room.

“Something woke me up last night,” Laneca says, “and I got scared and ran into bed with them. It felt like someone was sitting at the end of my bed, and I felt it touch my hand. I felt it lie down next to me — twice!”

“It happened to us too!” I exclaim, as I run into the room, butting into their conversation. Laneca’s incident occurred around 3:30 a.m., just minutes after ours.

Before we went to sleep, the ghost hunters advised us to place coins on a piece of paper with a photocopied picture of the same coin. The coin was to be aligned directly over the copy. They say that, occasionally, the spirits at Magnolia Manor have been known to move coins.

Neither the coin in our room nor the one in Annie’s Room had moved, but in Laneca’s room, it was positioned just slightly to the right of its copy.

We share our ghost stories over breakfast in the sunroom, and Cox gives us a brief history of the home. Though she’d never met the Millers, the older residents of Bolivar have imparted plenty of Miller family tales to Cox through the years.

We gather our things and say goodbye to the ghosts of the Miller family. S.P. proclaims our stay as one of the most spiritually active weekends in the workshops’ short history.

If there was ever a doubt in my mind that ghosts are real, it’s gone now. And occasionally, when I wake in the night, I tug my covers tightly around my shoulders … just in case.