Excited Work

So, I finished up work early and came home to work on book stuff. I emailed the folks at WordPress.com to make sure I could hype my own book on my own blog without violating the TOS and they said, “Go ahead!” so I spent all afternoon (after work) putting up my press release and [...]

A Bit of Happy, Weird News

I’ve been getting the map ready for the second collection of ghost stories, so I had to click over to the map of the first one to refresh my memory on what I’d done.  And, people, according to Google, that map has had 37,414 views. Dang! It’s a private map, so you have to have [...]

All The Same Old Haunts, recap

Well, I am completely bummed that that’s over. I don’t say this mildly, but that was the most fun I’ve had blogging in a long, long time. And I have some good times blogging. I thought they were fun, when I wrote them, but y’all really enjoyed them, which is such a rush, I can’t [...]

31. The Wait

In a little house on Venus Drive, she waited for him to come home from the war.  She passed the time making airplanes and when he got home, he told all his friends that she was a better mechanic than anyone in town. His car ran because of her expertise. Telling you that much, if [...]

30. The Demoss Hollow House

There is a house in Demoss Hollow, just off River Road, west of town that is tucked so far back away that you can’t see it from the road. It has the twin chimneys and the low slung porch that say that it was built a while ago.  It has, at least, been there as [...]

29. Let Me Call You Sweetheart

“Lookaway” is the name of the old house on Manila Street. It was a wedding gift from Mr. Whitson to his new bride, Beth Slater Whitson. You have probably never heard of her.  When the house was for sale a couple of years ago, the listing made no mention of her ever having lived there.  [...]

28. Hickory Hollow Mall

Everyone says that the reason why no one goes to Hickory Hollow Mall is because it’s not safe, that it’s over-run with teenagers and gang members or teenagers who are gang members. There’s another reason, though, in addition to that. How many times can a woman be walking through the mall only to feel a [...]

27. 18th Avenue North

No one is sure if the thing on 18th Avenue North actually constitutes a ghost. But no one is sure what else to call it. Some say that you can almost see it on rainy or foggy days, a shape, like a person, but not quite, around which the moisture bends as the shape moves [...]

26. The Cat that Said “Ma Ma”

The women who worked Dickerson heard the cat days before they saw it.  The noise sounded enough like a human voice, words in the distance, not quite made out. But the working girls had, if they had been on the street any length of time, learned to ignore voices not directed at them. It was [...]

25. Adelicia Acklen

It works best if you have two young, suggestible pre-teen girls in your back seat.  You take them to Bobby’s Dairy Dip and then start filling their heads with ghost stories about Adelicia Acklen.  It doesn’t matter which stories you choose to tell. Start with the ones about how greedy she was and so she [...]

24. The Strange Case of Scenic Drive

There’s nothing unusual about the house on Scenic Drive.  Scenic Drive, itself, is quiet. On one side of the street is a wooded lot where people often walk their dogs.  On the other side are long, over-sized brick ranches.  And this one is no different.  It sits at the top of a hill and has, [...]

23. The Home Depot Parking Lot

Weirdly enough, the ghosts in the Home Depot parking lot on Gallatin may be the most upsetting ghosts in town. They don’t do anything particularly scary. They tend to walk across the open grassy area between the parking lot and the road, looking around like something is missing, and then they stand in the parking [...]

22. The Broken Mirror

Depending on when you visit the Hooters in Hermitage, sometimes there’s a mirror behind the bar. This is not the strange part. If you ask about it when it’s not there, they’ll tell you that the mirror broke and they’re debating about whether to get a new one. What’s strange is what exactly they mean [...]

21. Gulf Coast Phantoms

Hurricanes come to town by throwing one arm up over the southern horizon and then another and then the whole old ghost drags itself through town, wet with other people’s despair.

20. The Devil Lives on Lewis Street, I Swear

We tell people that there are so many churches, so many denominational headquarters in town–from the Methodists to the Baptists–because we are literally the buckle of the Bible belt.  This may be true, but doesn’t is seem strange? Why do we need a church every block and a half? Or have you ever considered why [...]

19. Opryland

There are two great mysteries when it comes to the Opryland complex just off Briley.  One is large and I cannot answer it–why did it seem like a good idea to close down Opryland and put up a mall?  Could a mall and an amusement park not have worked hand in hand?  I take comfort [...]

18. Laura

There used to be a house on Old Glenrose, just across the train tracks from the big field behind Woodbine Baptist Church. If you have seen this field in the summer, it’s hard to forget it, since there seems to be often fifty sweaty men playing soccer in it at any given time.  Men who [...]

17. El Protector

My friend John asked me about ‘El Protector’ over lunch one day, asked if I’d heard anything about it. At the time, there was a big police initiative to reach out to the Hispanic community called ‘El Protector,’ which we considered to be something of a sad joke.  ‘Yes, we’re trying to deport your friends [...]

16. Granddad

Dear readers, I admit, when the woman from the Downtown Presbyterian church said, “We never have crying babies on Sunday morning,” it was out of my mouth before I could stop it, “Do y’all have any babies in church on Sunday morning?” Luckily, she thought that was funny. To look at it, you would assume [...]

15. Bacon Frying in the Pan

Years ago a couple, the Andersons, moved to a little house on Ordway. Their neighbor was a little old man named Tim Macon, who lived alone now that his wife had died and his children had moved north.  He was a perfectly delightful neighbor. He’d come over to help Mrs. Anderson dig bulbs.  He could [...]

14. The Sylvan Heights Soldier

Sylvan Park has properly gentrified and West End has had a fancy streak for as long as anyone can remember, but Sylvan Heights, wedged between the two of them, laying along the railroad tracks is still waiting for its neighbors’ good fortune to spread through it. So, a person cannot be blamed for not noticing [...]

13. Pebbles

Here is a sad story I heard. There is a son, who is old now, whose mother died when he was young. They lived out in the country, down Bull Run Road, and she was buried in their family plot. Every Sunday he can, he still goes out to her grave and sits with her. [...]

12. Some Ghosts Make You Blush

If you’ve ever been into any of the four story buildings on Lower Broad or 2nd Avenue, you may find yourself wondering why, no matter what time of day it is, the music is always so loud. You’re not trying to be a party-pooper, you think, but how is a man supposed to talk to [...]

11. Pressed into Service

Jesse Price was an ordinary guy, who died when he was 26 in a train accident in 1880 on Valentine’s Day. If there was speculation about his death being more suicide than accident, based on the day, let me put that to rest now. Price just died, in a way people just die. He laid [...]

10. The Widow Ledbetter

Most everyone can tell you that Jesse James was killed by Robert Ford.  What most people cannot tell you is how Frank James managed to live until he was 72.  Was he not also an outlaw?  Did people not die at his hand?  How is it that Jesse died and Frank lived? It seems luck.  [...]