Paranormal Fakelore, Nevermore: Real Histories of Haunted Locations

By Shannon Bradley Byers

There is a fine line between folklore and fakelore. The real history of haunted locations and the people involved is interesting and I find it extremely disrespectful to change the history of the dead. They deserve better than that. Do you want to know the truth?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781387111589

Book preview

Paranormal Fakelore, Nevermore: Real Histories of Haunted Locations

Paranormal Fakelore, Nevermore

Real Histories of Haunted Locations

Shannon Bradley Byers

Paranormal Genealogist Publishing

2017

pglogo

Copyright © 2017 by Shannon Bradley Byers

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. Any trademarks referenced within this work are the property of their respective owners. Any copyrighted materials are used under the Fair Use doctrine and their owners retain all rights.

First Printing: 2017

ISBN: 978-1-387-11158-9

Cover art and PG logo by Ken Weigand

French Ghost art by Maíre H. Denman © 2017

Paranormal Genealogist Publishing

Lilburn, Georgia

www.paranormalgenealogist.com

Dedication

For my Mama, Stephanie Tolbert Bradley

Thank you for teaching me to always find the real facts, encouraging me when I am frustrated, being my sounding board, my second set of eyes and never thinking I was too young to be exposed to the morbid side of life.

Foreword

Finding the historic perspective.

At first glance, the relationship between history and paranormal research may seem counter intuitive. One field has a dedicated researcher spending hours exploring crumbling documents in search of clues to reassemble the jigsaw puzzle of the past. The second field has researchers playing with cutting edge, experimental tools often in crumbling buildings.

For paranormal researchers, a constant challenge comes in understanding the limited pieces of data that current technology captures. For a particular paranormal event at a specific location, dozens of seemingly unrelated (and often random) pieces of data may be assembled but like an archeologist first exploring an unknown ruin, unless the context of the artifacts is known, the fragments are meaningless.

In the crossroads where evidence and context meet, the historian finds their services invaluable to a professional paranormal investigator.

One of the guiding principles of any scientific endeavor is the discovery of the truth. For paranormal investigation to retain any level of credibility, a cornerstone of truth must be established to prove the validity of the research.

Sadly, the lack of truth and understanding is where the vast majority of paranormal investigations utterly fail.

Contrary to popular belief, just because the history of a location dances across the screen on a television show, no implied agreement exists to suggest that the history is correct. Television shows are scripted to entertain. Television show writers alter or completely fabricate the history of many paranormal locations to tell a better story.

The truth of the location’s history becomes the first murder victim.

Without understanding the real context of the evidence, it is impossible to decipher it properly. Imagine being an amateur archeologist for a day. The investigator’s job requires digging through a child’s toy box in order to reassemble all the puzzle pieces found there.

After several hours of work, three thousand forty two pieces emerge. Now the task changes from collecting the evidence to understanding it. Without a picture or even an understanding of how many puzzles compose the artifact collection, the task of reassembling the pieces becomes much more difficult.

While some of the individual pieces may quickly fall in place, others will remain a complete mystery. Entire sections of some of the puzzles may be missing. Other fragments lay damaged to the point where they no longer fit.

This is the problem faced by modern paranormal investigators.

A proper understanding of the historical context of a location must be established for any evidence to be properly evaluated.

Instead of looking at our puzzle example, consider the case of the Thomas House in Tennessee. Over the years of exploring the paranormal events in that hotel, investigators have repeatedly obtained audio samples of what is believed to be a little boy with a strong southern accent. On at least one occasion, the little boy’s voice recording says that he drowned. In another recording, the same voice calls out a name. A third recording has the boy saying another name.

As a paranormal investigator, these specific pieces of evidence are something that should be verifiable. The first part of the quest begins with verification of facts.

Are there potential drowning locations? Since there is an abandoned concrete swimming pool on the property, the pool can be assumed the first potential point of death. There is also a large stream on the hotel property. While the stream is low now, historic research reveals that once the shallow stream was a small river. A search of regional newspapers reveals that in 1969 the stream flooded destroying the town and killing two little girls. Therefore, the creek is definitely a contender for the source of the drowning.

The next step is to attempt to narrow the period. If the little boy drowned in the swimming pool, it becomes important to know when the pool was built. After extensively researching the property, it was revealed that a doctor built a bowling alley and swimming pool on the hotel property in the early 1950s. Since the current hotel owners purchased the property in 1993, the range of possible dates for a drowning is reduced to forty years.

At this point, a historian has a choice. The creek has been there since well before recorded history at the property. The pool has a finite history. Therefore, it is easier to begin researching the shorter period.

Unfortunately, because this is small town many of the records have been lost or not recorded in the first place. The county courthouse has lost many of its records from fires over the last century. Most newspapers for the region were not preserved.

Luckily, a 1961 newspaper obituary contains the story of a seven-year-old boy that drowned in the hotel swimming pool. His first name matches the second name on the recordings. The obituary lists the boy’s surviving family members and one of the names there matches the first recorded name.

While these pieces of evidence do not provide absolute proof that the audio recordings are the young boy in the obituary, the historic research does help bring context to the data collected.

For a moment, consider what would have happened if the researcher did not really explore the history. Instead, if the researcher simply googled the location and cobbled a story together. The narrative suddenly could take a vastly different direction. A quick search on the town brings up dozens of the same article about the flood of 1969. The headlines in most of the papers are about the drowning deaths of the two little girls. If the research ended here, then the investigator may conclude the voice is that of girl instead of boy.

Arbitrarily, the investigator starts using one of the two little girl’s names to identify the spirit. Suddenly, the new name becomes the spirit’s name. Generations of future investigations are biased by incorrect information.

Future researchers studying the events at the location may not have access to the original recordings. When they do the proper research and discover the drowning of the little boy, they ignore the new information because the drowning victim that haunts the hotel is a little girl.

This is the problem with the vast majority of the research done by paranormal investigators. For many less-than-professional paranormal investigators, the full extent of their research is an hour spent reading history summaries copied from Wikipedia and enhanced on paranormal websites. Many researchers may never do research on a location beyond watching a television show where the host spouts pop-history in between getting possessed.

This is where Shannon Bradley Byers is a different type of paranormal investigator.

Over the years, Byers has developed a solid reputation for doing historical and genealogical research. Her attention to detail stands as a benchmark for investigators conducting their own research.

As an adept genealogist, Byers unravels the minutia of the people’s lives that she is studying. Through her tireless work, many families have been fortunate enough to discover their own personal histories that have been lost to time.

Much to the chagrin of modern pop-culture paranormal television shows and unprofessional paranormal teams, Byers has brought her passion for research to the paranormal field.

Over the years, Byers has made a name for herself as a historian specializing in some of America’s most famous pop-culture haunted locations.

With groundbreaking work into the history of the Waverly Hills Tuberculosis Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, Byers resurrected the real history of the facility. Thanks to Byers, the television misrepresentation of the hospital as being a horrible place for patients to endure wretched lives has been replaced with the understanding that it was an amazing state-of-the-art hospital desperately trying to give patients a chance at a normal, long life outside of the facility. Byers has swept away decades of exaggeration and misdirection aimed to present the facility abuse.

Beyond just redeeming locations, Byers has launched a personal crusade to repair the histories of many maligned women. In cases like Lavinia Fisher and Pearl Bryan, Byers has tirelessly worked to reconstruct the real events