April 21, 2015 • 62 mins
America's Most Haunted Radio with host Eric Olsen was live last night at 8pE with guest Shannon Bradley Byers on the IPBN radio network. Listen to the podcast right here!
Shannon Bradley Byers, the "Paranormal Genealogist," is a paranormal investigator and educator who infuses paranormal investigation with genealogical and historical research, and lectures in the Southeast on how to blend them into a seamless whole.
She teaches para-enthusiasts and professionals that the "TV show history" of a location is not always correct and that it is critical for them to do their own research and not take legends at face value.
Using examples such as Lavinia Fisher at the Old Charleston Jail, and Pearl Bryan at Bobby Mackey's Music World, Shannon shows how para-entertainment has skewed history and how incorrect the "facts" they supply to their audience and paying paranormal investigators sometimes are, and how incorrect facts can hinder a paranormal investigation.
Byers also uses historic metro Atlanta locations to demonstrate how even the most basic facts such as the location of a given event aren't always correct. As former assistant director and department chair for the National Paranormal Society, she has authored many educational articles that are used as training material for members.
In 2013 the team she co-founded with her husband in 2003, Timeless Paranormal, was featured in the A DAY TRIP documentary shown on EATV.
Shannon Bradley Byers, the "Paranormal Genealogist," is a paranormal investigator and educator who infuses paranormal investigation with genealogical and historical research, and lectures in the Southeast on how to blend them into a seamless whole.
She teaches para-enthusiasts and professionals that the "TV show history" of a location is not always correct and that it is critical for them to do their own research and not take legends at face value.
Using examples such as Lavinia Fisher at the Old Charleston Jail, and Pearl Bryan at Bobby Mackey's Music World, Shannon shows how para-entertainment has skewed history and how incorrect the "facts" they supply to their audience and paying paranormal investigators sometimes are, and how incorrect facts can hinder a paranormal investigation.
Byers also uses historic metro Atlanta locations to demonstrate how even the most basic facts such as the location of a given event aren't always correct. As former assistant director and department chair for the National Paranormal Society, she has authored many educational articles that are used as training material for members.
In 2013 the team she co-founded with her husband in 2003, Timeless Paranormal, was featured in the A DAY TRIP documentary shown on EATV.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
Good evening, my friends. I'mMiracles and it's time once again for America's
Most Haunted Radio, bringing together thefinest minds of personalities from across the paranormal
spectrum. I'm telling you fine mindsacross that paranormal spectrum. I'm Erica Olson.
(00:31):
Welcome once again to America's Most HauntedRadio. I believe we will have
the Haunted housewife, Teresa Argie joiningus at some point in the evening.
She with the extraordinarily complex schedule.But in the meantime, we have a
tremendous guest. I am very excitedto welcome Shannon Bradley Buyers, the paranormal
(00:57):
Genealogist, to the show. AsI just stated, she is a paranormal
investigator, educator, genealogist who blendsand infuses paranormal research with genealogical and historical
research and somehow waves her magic wandand incorporates it all into one seamless tapestry.
(01:19):
She teaches para enthusiasts and professional iswhy it is important to understand that
the TV show history of a locationis not always correct. Very recent examples
from her super cool paranormal Genealogist websiteinclude Lavinia Fisher at the Old Charleston Jail
(01:40):
and Pearl Brian near and dear toour heart headless Pearl Brian, who is
not hanging out at Bobby Mackee's MusicWorld, but who we will speak of
in conjunction with same. Shannon showshow para entertainment has skewed history and how
incorrect the facts they supply to theiraudience and paying paranormal investigators sometimes are,
(02:02):
and how incorrect facts can hinder aparanormal investigation. Welcome Shannon, good evening.
How are you. I am well. You could probably hear my voice
is a litttle bit scratchy. Iwas alarmed. I thought I was all
well, went through the whole antibioticregime a few weeks ago. Back three
(02:23):
weeks ago, all was good.But man, we keep atting radio shows.
I keep having to play with theband. Had to talk and play
and sing at the Kent Paranormal Weekend, and we just had band rehearsal last
night. So all of a sudden, I'm all scratchy and weird and flemmy
again. But nonetheless I am hereand jolly to be so well. I'm
(02:49):
glad I can at least hear you. Your voice sounds better than it did
the other night. Well, thankyou, I am pleased to hear that.
So why don't we give people alittle bit of a background round of
how you arrived at being the paranormalgenealogist, kind of bringing in these various
threads and as we just said,weaving them seamlessly. Yeah, if you
(03:15):
could watch me do research, youwouldn't say seamlessly. Basically, I have
two loves in life, ghosts andgenealogy. The ghost love came in first
when I was about eight. Thegenealogy bug hit when I was thirteen,
and as I got older, Ijust I learned that the history of a
(03:38):
property, the history of the peopleon that property, was extremely important to
be able to conduct a thorough investigation. As you are well aware, there's
two camps on this There's the campthat doesn't want to know anything before they
go in, and then there's mycamp that believes the more information you go
(04:01):
in armed with, the better yourinvestigation can be because the questions you can
ask or in an EVP session youknow are going to be more likely to
be answered because you're talking to aperson like you know them and they're specific
and relevant to that individual. Yes, and you know that if you get
(04:25):
an answer, you know it cando one of two things. It can
provide you with information you weren't ableto dig up and gives you, you
know, a bread trail to tryto go find something that will match that
answer, or it will validate whatyou found, So you know it works
on both sides. Just for argument'ssake, why don't you give us the
(04:50):
thoughts of those who who don't wantto know anything when they come in?
Well, basically, and you know, since I don't think this way,
it's it's kind of hard for meto understand. If you go in not
knowing anything, then you're not whenyou ask a question and you get a
response, you're not geared towards hearinga specific answer. So your mind is
(05:15):
not, you know, doing thematrix thing where it's making whatever they said
be what it's supposed to be.Got it? Got it? Well,
that makes sense too. I supposein other words, you're going to be
less inclined to fool yourself exactly,but I think you're more inclined not to
(05:36):
understand the answer that you get andbe able to take that conversation Further,
I think you're limiting yourself on whatyou can talk to them about. In
a sense, you're trusting yourself more. I'm true, who's trusting themselves more?
The people that don't do research orthe people that do. No,
(05:59):
you are, because you're figuring thatyou can account for the human tendency to
try to, you know, talkyourself into things or too to find what
you're looking for. That's basically whatwe're talking about. So you're assuming that
you can keep that in mind andtake that into account, and you would
(06:19):
rather be armed with more information andmore specific information. Yeah, so you
can actually sit and carry on aconversation because you know, we are of
the belief that when you go intoa location and you talk to somebody,
you know, we we try totreat them like we would treat a family
(06:41):
member, you know. If it'solder people, we treat them by grandparents,
you know, that kind of thing. And if we can ask a
question that actually elicits a response,then we can keep going, you know,
down that same path. It's like, you know, we we have
a place local here that we caninvestigate anytime we want, and we happen
(07:02):
to know that the older lady.You know, she was ninety seven when
she died in that house, andwe happen to know that she loves food.
So she and I carry on longconversations about the things that she used
to cook to take to church socials. Got it. And because I know
(07:23):
this stuff about her, you know, I can keep the conversation going.
It's not just sitting there, Ohwell, who am I talking to?
Maybe you do your or you don'tget a response. If I can walk
in the house and go, youknow, miss Mary, I'm here,
I'm back. I'm glad to seeyou. What have you been up to
since I've been gone? You know, because I know her and I know
(07:45):
the time that she grew up in. I knew the people that came and
visited her house. I knew eventsthat happened at her house. You know,
aren't she going to be more inclinedto talk to somebody that can talk
to you like that than just comein in and going, oh, is
there anybody here? Tell us yourname? Knock on a wall? I
would certainly think so. If weare talking about in entity a spirit that
(08:11):
thinks like people do. Sure well, if yeah, if you're dealing with
an intelligent. Yeah, I mean, you know, residual you're not going
to get anywhere with. But youknow, we always go in armed with
a knowledge that if we do runinto an intelligent, hopefully it's the person
that we've done research on. Sowhy don't you give us a little example
(08:35):
of that something somewhere where you haveused that information and what it has yield
it for you. Well, ourfavorite example didn't get us any results because
he didn't answer us, but itwould be you know a house here that's
local to Atlanta. That's a famoushouse that had an ex Civil War soldier
(08:58):
who took his rooster with him whenhe went off to war so they could
engage incock fighting. And I happenedto find that little tidbit in a book
a former governor had written about hisfamily in the early nineteen hundreds. So
when we went into the house,you know, I could ask him about
(09:20):
his rooster, and nobody else hadever uncovered this very very interesting Yes,
I remember now you talking about that. Which which of your didn't that relate
to one of the stories that you'vewritten up one of your No, not
yet, it's not one that I'vedone yet. That's the it's a house
(09:43):
here in Atlanta. It's called theHoliday Dorsey Fife House. And I have
not written his story up yet,so there's just a lot of damn cock
fighting going on. I wasn't surehow I could say that, So yes,
you said it, So yeah,you know, he he went off
to war with his his fighting cockunder one arm and the flag for the
(10:05):
regiment under the other, and hisslave following him out the back door.
And yeah, I always get this, you know, it's really weird.
I get this Norman Rockwell image inmy head every time I say that,
and I know that's wrong, butthat's just how it appears to me,
you know. And when we didthe investigation, unfortunately, this was one
(10:28):
of those group investigations where they crammedtwelve people in, you know, a
house that only had how many roomsdid it have, um one or two
to eight rooms? And the evidencewe got in the house was nothing.
But unfortunately I ticked off the docentat the house and I will probably never
(10:50):
be allowed back in there again becauseI pointed out information that they, you
know, had printed up on plaqueson their walls that was not correct because
of the research I had done.I actually proved the house to be twelve
years older than what they told everybody. Plus the fact that they keep trying
to say that dot Holiday was tiedto that house as an adult, when
(11:16):
he had only visited there as achild. They try to say Dot Holiday
haunts that house. And when Icame up with the proof that, you
know, when he came back toAtlanta after dental school, it wasn't that
house he practiced out of, theygot mad at me. So I won't
get to try that one again.But that's an example of, you know,
(11:37):
how you can do research and youknow the actual property owner does not
want to hear the real story.Well, you know what I'm thinking.
I'm thinking presentation under such circumstances isvery very important. It's all how you
(11:58):
present the information. Well, andI was very nice and polite about it,
and I was excited, you know, because I had found these few
things that you know, especially withyou know, if you could find out
your house was actually twelve years older, you know, they thought it had
been built in the eighteen fifties andit was built in eighteen thirty two.
I mean, wouldn't you want toknow that that your house was actually older?
(12:20):
Well, of course, I wouldthink you'd want to know anything that's
true. I mean, but youknow, I'm trying to project myself into
the ownership of a of a paranormallyactive or at least theoretically paranormally active location.
That is this a place that chargesto be? Is this something that
(12:46):
they market to do invations? They'rethey're actually they're a museum, and so
they make their money off the factthat they're a museum. And you know,
people come in and tour and theyhave a gone with the wind room
and dot Holiday room and a WarVeterans room and a Civil War room,
and you pay your money to goin and do the tour. We did
(13:09):
not have to pay to do aninvestigation because I don't pay to go places.
If you charge, I don't go. So you know they do.
Sorry, I said me too,you know, especially like bathrooms. Remember
they used to charge for toilets.I would go, I'm not going here.
I can crawl under the door.There's always that. But I don't
(13:33):
know is that truly dignified? Doesit matter when it's an emergency under those
circumstances. No, you're right,but um, you know, I you
know you had to keep in mindwe're dealing with the South, and the
South is very particular about their historyand what's presented and what's not presented,
(13:56):
and they don't like being told theywere wrong. You know. They actually
sat there and tried to accuse mein front of my husband of not knowing
what I was doing, and thatI hadn't verified any of my research when
I had copies of the alleged originalland platts and the house and you know
(14:16):
the other things that we had found. And you know, you don't.
I am not one of these people. If I can't find something on paper
to document what it is, Idon't tell you that it's a fact.
I just you know, when Istarted doing genealogy in eighteen eighty two,
(14:37):
this was before computers, you know, this is when you were actually going
to courthouses, going to archives,going to cemeteries. You couldn't just sit
at a computer and look this stuffup, you know, And a good
genealogist if you can't source your work, it's crap. If it's not Scottish,
(14:58):
it's crap too. Of course,Yes, this is also true,
as we all know. Yeah thatI'm very interested actually in hearing your thoughts
on that evolution from doing I imaginethere was some digital aspect way back in
(15:20):
the early eighties, at least interms of in a library. I guess
we're gonna call uh no, thatwas digital at all now. I guess
it really, really, really wasn'ta whole lot that we would call digital
in the early eighties. But I'dlove to hear about that evolution from a
researchers standpoint, from the good olddays to today. Well, you know,
(15:43):
haven't been taught how to do itquote unquote manually. You know where
you had to go and sit andgo, you know, pull the microfish
cards or the microfilm reels and sitthere and you know, number one,
trying to figure out how to loadthem on those machines where they weren't upside
down and backwards. You know,that's still my favorite way to do it.
(16:07):
You know, I would rather sitand read a book, look at
a microfilm, you know, holda book in my hands that was you
know, people wrote in in thelate seventeen hundreds, then to sit and
look at it on a computer.But the computers cheaper. You know,
if I'm just doing research here inmy local county or say part of the
(16:29):
state because I'm lucky where I amin Atlanta. We have a branch of
the National Archives and we have theState Archives, and they sit in the
same parking lot. So if Ineed to go do archival research, I'm
going to the same place. IfI needed to come up to Ohio to
do research, it would cost mea lot of money. And if I
(16:51):
can sit and find the exact samething on the Internet, now, yeah,
that's what I'm gonna do. Butwhen I teach people how to do
this, I want them to know, you know how to go use the
card catalog at the State Archives tolook up what you need to find,
(17:11):
because that's honestly going to help youin your search tools for what you're looking
for online. Right what I findabout and I believe me, I've done
an awful lot of research myself,including pretty early on on the internet.
We were trying to use the internetfor all the reasons you just said.
(17:32):
It's just it's quicker. It's certainlyvastly cheaper if the information is there,
cheaper than traveling or in the olddays. Anyway, calling I was just
thinking as you were talking, Iwas thinking about all the research I had
to do for a book I wrotebetween ninety six and ninety nine, so
it was kind of a transitional time, but you still had to call.
(17:56):
There was no Skype or anything,so it was the Encyclopedia record producers and
we had a number of them outsideof the country, in the UK,
Europe, Australia. You can imaginehow expensive it was calling those people,
especially back then. Well that's whatI'm saying, and I was thinking,
if you know, if I haddone that research now, I would have
(18:18):
saved a vast amount of money,plus end time, plus the fact that
you can you can see people,you know. I mean, if you're
doing purely audio, such as weare radio tonight, there's no need for
the for the video. But youknow, if you're having a conversation like
when we talked to my son andhis wife in Denmark, of course we
(18:40):
want to see them. That's partof the experience and part of what makes
it tolerable that they're so far awayand that we don't see them in person
very often. But you know,it's an amazing thing. But there's always
a downside to all the technology,and well, why don't you let us
know? Scypically in your field.What do you see the downside of this
(19:04):
really easy access that we have cometo take for granted in a very short
period of time, you know,via digital methods. What do you see
are the main downsides of that?In genealogy specifically, the main downfall is
people copying other people's work and notlearning to do their own research. They
(19:27):
will find something somebody's posted online andsay, oh, well, this person
posted this, I'm gonna throw thisinto my files as fat they don't follow
up. You know, if ifI run into something like that, you
know, when I'm researching, youknow, I'm all over the place on
the internet, and I'll say,well, this person posted this fact,
(19:48):
and this person posted the same fact, but this third person over here posted
a similar fact, but it's gotdifferent stuff in it. Okay, where
did these people come up with this? So you're still gonna have to try
to go find the actual documentation toprove which one of these people was right?
(20:14):
Boy, did you say a mouthful? In moving ahead? Excuse me
forgive my throat my friends out therein radio land. I am struggling,
but we will make it through.And I have fortitude, and I'm armed
with water and pineapple juice. Anyway, moving ahead about ten years, you
(20:36):
know, when we were working thenon America's most Haunted and certainly using the
Internet as a primary source. Youare, you couldn't be more right.
I mean, you still have toultimately figure out which version you believe,
you know, because there's a differentThere are multiple versions of basically every story
(21:02):
exactly, and even the basic basicfacts seem to vary pretty wildly well,
and that's when it goes back toyour old school training and you actually go
to actual documents and not something somebody'sposted, you know, and we'll you
know, when we start talking aboutPearl, you know that that's going to
(21:23):
be a perfect example or even Laviniaof what's gone on, because if you
sit down in the state archives andyou read trial transcripts, you cannot argue
with those trial transcripts. You know, even newspaper accounts can be skewed.
(21:44):
You know, you can take thesame article that was printed in a paper
in Kentucky, in Indiana, inOhio, and here in Atlanta on the
same day and it's reporting the sameevent that happened. All four of them
will have different facts in it.So how do you decide which one you're
(22:07):
going with. I find legal documentationthat backs up what I've read, and
that includes, you know, vitalrecords, you know, birth, marriage,
death certificates, pictures of tombstones,court transcripts, anything like that.
(22:30):
You compare it to what was quoteunquote back then social media and see where
the difference is. The legal documentsare the ones I'm going to believe now.
There are instances where if you lookat a legal document when you've been
(22:52):
doing genealogy research as long as Ihave, for example, a death certificate.
If you look at a death certificatedown in the bottom corner, there's
always a name for the person thatgave the medical Examiner's office the information.
They're called the informant. Sometimes itwas your spouse, Sometimes it was a
(23:12):
cousin. Sometimes it was a brotheror a sister. That information is only
as good as what that person knew. If you had a sister who was
you know, and we're talking oldin times here, you had a sister
that was sixteen years older than youwere, and you're having to give the
(23:36):
information for their death certificate, youmay not realize what the mother's maiden name
of that child had been, becausemaybe that mother died and you never heard
it. So that's when you've gotto find other legal documents to try to
verify what's in that document. Itgets really confusing, But I'm always going
(23:56):
to take a legal document over amedia document, sure, because there's something
at stake, and in theory there'sa authority figure who who's passing judgment over
those facts. Well, why don'twe move on then? And I'd love
to hear not only the Tale ofPearl, because of course I am absolutely
(24:21):
invested in that one, having donea lot of research on her myself,
or for America's Most Haunted of course, for the Bobby Mackie's chapter. And
I have to admit I felt abit of what some of these people,
I think feel when you correct them, because you found a lot more than
(24:47):
I did, and you went indifferent directions, and you found some really
fascinating things that honestly I knew nothingabout. I knew relatively little about the
family. You have all kinds ofgreat information on her family, and you
covered a period, You found informationon a period on Bobby Macke's itself,
(25:07):
or I should say the land therethat was absolutely missing. I could not
find anything on that time period betweenthe late eighteen hundreds, you know,
into the between that and the nightclubera, and you found information on that.
So I'd love to hear not onlythe story, but how you found
(25:30):
where you found this information. Ithink that's an amazing test case for how
you work. And incidentally, Ido want to remind everyone before you get
started on that, you really shouldgo check out shannon site, The Paranormal
Genealogist. It's relatively new. There'sonly a handful of stories in there.
(25:52):
There's Pearl Brian, there's the realstory of Cold Mountain, which factors in
actually to Shannon's family is involved inthat story, so that is fascinating from
multiple standpoints. And then, aswe mentioned earlier, the Lavinia Fisher story,
which is a very well known ghoststory that in her research is not
(26:15):
true. So she's written these upvery well done, very thorough articles.
Go check out the Paranormal Geneologist dotcom. Okay, now to poor Pearl
and her missing noggin, tell usthe tale. Let me back up just
one thing, it's actually Paranormal Geneologistdot com. Don't put the on it.
(26:40):
Sorry, I didn't want to haveto type more words than possible.
Would geneologist already be in so longso it's just paranormal geneologist dot com.
Um, yeah, I have togo back. You know, I am
a true crime nut. I loveanything to do with true crime, especially
(27:02):
anything that happened in the Victorian era, and I have been since I was
a child. You know. Thefirst time I heard of Lizzie Borden,
it I just took off with beingentranced with with anything that happened murder wise
in the eighteen hundreds anywhere in theworld, not just the US, but
(27:22):
you know, living in the US, of course, that's what I focused
on. So the Pearl Brian casehas you know, been a thing with
me since I was very young,you know, because this was what they
dubbed the crime of the Century.It was six years after Lizzie Borden,
It was what two years after HHHolmes, So you know, murder was
(27:45):
a big thing. You know,Victorians loved all the gruesome details of murder
and you could find a lot ofstuff and a lot of people have written
books on Pearl Brian prior to theyear two thousand and one. And I'll
get to why that's important on intothe story. You know, the detectives
(28:08):
on the case wrote books. Youknow, the newspaper people that came down
from New York. They sent peopleto live down there the whole year this
was going on to report back tothe New York Times. They wrote books
about it. I mean, there'sa lot of information that was there prior
(28:29):
to Bobby Mackie ever setting foot onthat property in Wilder. Well, what
a lot of people don't realize iswe'll take the property first. That was
actually an area in the early eighteenhundreds called Finchtown. You know, it's
gone by many names, and thedividing lines kind of blur. You've got
(28:49):
Finchtown, Newport, Finchtown kind ofblended into Newport, and then Wilder kind
of came out of Newport. Sothat whole area depending on the time period
you're talking about. That's how you'vegot to know how to look up the
records. You follow me a following, okay, like a bloodhound and sniffing
(29:11):
up your tail trailing. So youknow, poor Pearl, you know,
she's she was this very well todo girl in Indiana, which you know,
Greencastle, Indiana was one hundred andthirty two miles If I'm remembering right
(29:32):
from Cincinnati, and you know,so she was a long way from where
her death march started. You know, she was one of twelve kids.
Like I say in the article,six of those kids were dead before nineteen
hundred's. That's amazing. And hangon one sec because it's time for the
(29:52):
break. I refuse to believe it'salready been a half hour, but it
has. So we're gonna take outthe break and it'll be right right back.
(30:22):
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(34:01):
dogging it? That's what I wantto know. Is it little heads popping
up? I want to know.I don't want to know little heads bobbing
up and down. You know,I should tell a very quick story about
that. I grew up in southernCalifornia, which is returning to its semi
arid state with all the water runningout. I don't want to interrupt you.
(34:24):
Eric By, dude, know whatprairie dogging it is? Would you
like to hear? God? Yes, okay, Cordner Urban Dictionary. When
you take a number two and it'sso bad that it feels basically when you're
in the restroom and it's a painfulnumber two, is prairie dogging it?
(34:44):
Ah? Well, that would certainlyfit in with my story that I'm going
to tell very very quickly. Getit out of the way, or else
it's gonna bother me forever. Andthen we'll be back to the amazing tale
and sad and our tale of PearlBryan, which has very little to do
(35:04):
with Bobby Mackie's other than as currentlyconstituted. All right, So prairie dogs.
So I grew up in southern California, right, So it's semi arid,
So the ground is hard, basicallykind of a desert e. It's
not sand, it's just kind ofa hard pack. It's dry. Let's
it's been raining, and there arelots of rodents, including the equivalent of
(35:30):
prairie dogs. Their gophers is reallywhat they are. So on my base
this shows you how things have changedin I won't tell you how long it's
been a while from my childhood.So my baseball field was only a few
blocks my little league field from ourhouse. And one of the things that
they had the kids, the boys, young boys playing baseball, playing littlely.
(35:52):
One of the things they had usdo was helped them reduce the gopher
population. So on the field,because you know, there's holes all over
the place, it's very dangerous.You're running twisted ankle, catch a cleat
not what you want to do.So once a year they would bring out
a big ass hose and they wouldput it down the biggest hole gopher hole
(36:15):
they could find. They're all connected, of course, so eventually the water
starts coming up, as do thegophers. And you got ten teams worth
a little league kids standing there withbaseball bats poised, ready to go when
the gophers pop up their little heads. And that was a extraordinarily efficient method
(36:40):
of extermination. Can you imagine theoutcry if that happened today? Anyone?
Hello, are we there? Yes, we are here, and we're just
all absorbing story. Brennan A.We are speaking with Shannon Bradley Buyers,
(37:04):
the paranormal genealogists. We are talkingof the sad, sad tale of Pearl
Brian and equally importantly, her researchinto it. Go ahead, Shannon,
Let's see where did I leave off? Oh, six of them were dead
by nineteen hundred. We were backto her hometown in Indiana. One of
(37:28):
twelve children, relatively well off,half of them were already dead. Very
sad. Yes, it was especiallythe poor woman who died in a folding
bed accident. That did you makethat stuff up? I'm still not over
that one. So yeah. Shewas from a very well to do family.
Her father was a stockbreeder who wasa farmer. He ran a dairy
(37:51):
business. They had a very nicehouse. You know, some of the
Indiana in history is about the family. You know, say that even when
other people were in financial ruin,nothing touched this family. You know,
they always prospered. So she wasthe rich girl in town. Unfortunately for
(38:15):
her, her second cousin introduced herto Scott Jackson, her second cousin being
William Wood. Scott was on therun. He had been in bazzling from
the railroad that he worked. Hehad been in buzzling from a department store
(38:37):
that he had worked at. Hehad had a lot of run ins with
drunken disorderlies with prostitutes, which gothim kicked out of the dental college in
Indianapolis. So he decided to bidehis time in Greencastle, Indiana, working
kind of as an apprentice for thetown dentist until he could start a fall
(39:00):
term in the Cincinnati dental school.There. So, in the spring of
eighteen ninety five, he and Pearlmet. They courted. They evidently had
a whole lot of fun because sheended up pregnant. She she and William
(39:24):
and Scott had discussions after she foundout she was pregnant. After Scott left
to go to Ohio. There area lot of letters that went back and
forth that it was testified to bythe Western Union agent in the town that
he had read with all these concoctionsof drugs that Pearl could try to take
(39:51):
to cause a miscarriage or spontaneous abortion, however you want to look at it.
So they tried all the these concoctions. None of them worked. Scott
came home over the Christmas holidays,you know, December of eighteen ninety five,
left early January to go back toschool in eighteen ninety six. Since
(40:15):
none of these things they were tryingwere working, they decided they were going
to have to have a quote unquotecriminal operation, which is was the term
they used for abortion back then.So it was arranged that William would put
Pearl on a train to go toOhio, that Scott Jackson and his friend,
(40:37):
his roommate, Alonzo Walling, We'regoing to procure a person that could
do this criminal operation get everything takencare of. So Pearle told her parents,
I'm going to visit, you knowmy friend who's moved away, you
know that I grew up with asshe lives in Indianapolis. Now I'm going
to go spend a week with her. Flies to her parents, gets on
(41:01):
a train goes to Indianapolis, butdoesn't get off of it and continues on
to Cincinnati. She left home onJanuary twenty eighth. She spent three and
a halfish days with Scott and Alonso, where at some point Scott procured a
(41:21):
large amount of cocaine from the localpharmacy, which was legal back then.
You could just walk in and buyit over the counter. You didn't even
have to have a prescription for it, or you could just drink it in
Coca cola. It wouldn't have hadquite the same effect that they wanted for
her, I imagine not blank.Oh, he got the drugs at some
(41:51):
point right before she came. Hehad also been talking to other doctors in
town about other poisons that he couldtry, because he evidently decided he'd had
enough of her. The three ofthem were in Wallingford saloon on the night
of January thirty first. The bartendersaw Scott mixing the cocaine into her drink.
(42:17):
She drank it and proceeded to getvery loopy, pretty much incoherent.
Alonso went and hired it, renteda cab, and at that time,
what a cab was, you know, was it was an enclosed carriage type
(42:37):
thing, and then went and paida man named George Jackson five dollars to
drive it for him and the officialyou know, testimony later when you know,
let's back up. George was ablack man, so for him to
come forward to testify against the twoof them in eighteen ninety six was a
(43:01):
very big deal. His testimony includedthe exact route that they had driven to
take Pearl to murder her, andthey had him recreate it for them,
and you know, he did itwith no problem and ended up exactly where
(43:23):
they had found you know, almostexactly where they found Pearl's body because he
had stopped on the road and theyhad dragged her at the lane. Did
go, did go past the propertythat is now Bobby Mackie's, as I
understand it, even though that wasnot the most direct route, but that
was the way to go to avoidhaving to go through toll booths. Exactly
(43:46):
basically what it is. And we'llbacktrack here. The property where Bobby Mackie's
is now. Everybody keeps, youknow, the story is it was a
slaughterhouse. It was never a slaughterhouse. The slaughterhouse was actually set several hundred
feet to the southwest of where BobbyMackie stands. Now, what used to
(44:07):
be where Bobby Macke's is was thedistillery that Robertson built in eighteen seventy six.
And if when you go to mywebsite, there are actual pictures maps
right now. It's it's really angreat article because or I should say,
(44:30):
not only because of the story andall the information, but all of the
images you found. It's very impressive. Yeah. Yeah, if you look,
there's an actual town map of Finchtownwhich shows where the slaughterhouse was compared
to where the distillery was. Andwhat was unique about the distillery was that
(44:52):
when Robertson built it, he gotpermission from the government to dig three tunnels
the distillery under the railroad tracks tothe Licking River. And it was kind
of twofold. The government let himdo it because it was going to keep
water away from the train tracks,you know, to keep any flooding from
(45:15):
going on there, because they wereright beside the river, and they pumped
the water in from the Licking Riverthrough those tunnels into the distillery for their
bottling process. So it worked twofold. So the all three tunnels still exist
under Bobby Mackie's. But you've gotthe one that everybody refers to as the
(45:36):
well to hell. That's the oneeverybody says, oh, well, that's
where all the blood ran down fromthe slaughterhouse. Well it's not true,
because the slaughterhouse, like I said, was several feet south of Bobby Mackie's,
or several hundred feet south, andit wasn't even a commercial slaughterhouse.
It was a local man who butcheredlocal people's animals for them. It wasn't
(46:01):
commercial, so it wasn't even abig one. So if you look at
those two maps I've got on there, you'll see the difference of where the
slaughterhouse actually was and where Bobby Mackie'sis. Now, when Robertson was driving
them, he got scared, andwhen he did, he pulled over in
(46:23):
front of the distillery and Alonzo Wallingpulled a gun on him and told him
he had to continue. So thatis the closest that Pearl ever got to
that location, and she was stillalive at the time. Was yeah.
So when they got her to thelocation, and the location they picked was
(46:45):
an apple orchard of a man namedJohn Locke, he had a farm and
his farm backed up the barracks atFort Thomas, and this particular area was
well known. It's where the soldierswould take their quote unquote dates for a
long time, which was normally meantthat's where they were, you know.
It was the lover's lane for thetown prostitutes and the soldiers at Fort Thomas.
(47:09):
So this is where they killed Pearl. A big bone of contention at
the time once they identified who Pearlwas and arrested Scott was was she actually
killed on that property or was shekilled in Ohio and driven over there?
(47:30):
And it was a body dump.And one of the reasons it was a
big deal was because because she waspregnant, the laws were strict in Kentucky
on fetal side than they were inOhio. So everybody wanted her to have
been killed in Kentucky so that theycould go after him for first degree murder
(47:52):
instead of manslaughter in killing the baby. Got it and that to be true,
Yes, yes, because when theyactually found Pearl, and you'll notice
on the website there is one crimescene photo and grim it is it is.
(48:13):
I mean, it's not blood oranything, because it's an eighteen hundred
photo, and it's actually posed becausethat's not the position that Pearl's body was
found in. Pearl was actually foundlying face up. Well, yeah,
sorry, that's bad. She waslying on her back. Her corset had
(48:35):
been cut off and ripped off ofher. The skirts were thrown up over
the top of her. That's whywhen the body was found, they didn't
realize it was headless until the coronerguys there and went to move her,
and that's when they realized she didn'thave a head. The arterial spray from
(48:58):
them cutting off her head reached mostof the reports say at least three feet
into the trees. I've read acouple that say six, but most of
them say three feet. And theblood also soaked three inches down into the
ground because they dug out that areato collect the soil and they had to
(49:20):
go down at least three inches toget that. That could not have happened
if she if her head had beencut off after she died, because there,
you know, her heart wouldn't havebeen pumping for there to be any
kind of arterial spray. So heractual murder was yes, that blow or
cut and they surmised that Scott usedhis dental tools to do it, you
(49:47):
know, because they they never admittedthat they did it, and they blamed
each other. Nobody knows who cutyou know, which one of them cut
her head off. The only thingthey have is George Jackson's testimony that the
two of them were with her atthat location. He had left, right,
didn't he take off? He tookoff and left. He heard her
(50:08):
scream. And if you read theautopsy report on her her defensive wounds that
this will tell you how wide awakeshe was when they were trying to do
this. The defensive wounds that shehad on her hand were cut. You
know, she was cut to thebone in her hand. That's how hard
(50:29):
she was fighting them when they weretrying to do this. So she was
not at that point, you know, just some limp rag and they cut
her head off. She fought untilshe couldn't fight anymore. Yeah, it's
a It's an amazing and terrible tipe. The real tale as you're you are
(50:51):
telling it, and your reconstruction certainlyfits mine that I was able to be
together from basically newspaper accounts of thetrial, and then speculation too. There's
always speculation. You just have moreinformation and I'm jealous because but yeah,
(51:13):
I mean it's such a sad tale, and I really am kind of visualizing
it. You are making it realfor me. I mean it was real
as I was doing the research too, but you know, you kind of
come away from it becomes almost acartoon or something. It just becomes less
real. But telling the tale,I mean, this was a real person,
really awful circumstances, someone she trusted, someone she thought she loved,
(51:38):
to turn on her in such ajust despicable, cold heartless manner, and
to just dump her there as ifshe were, you know, literally an
animal to the slaughter, And Imean, it's it's just appalling now in
your mind. How did all ofthis besides the simple fact that it was
(52:04):
such a notorious and terrible case,how did this story and these facts,
how did they come to be associatedwith what is now Bobby Mackie's what was
that link? Well, let methrow on one more thing before we get
there, to go ahead, havethis even more home on what a horribly
(52:27):
sad situation it was. When theymurdered her, she did not lose the
baby. They did not know untilthey went to do the autopsy that she
was five months pregnant. Okay,when they realized they had a fetus that
they were dealing with, they becauseof where they were doing the autopsy,
(52:49):
they didn't have anything to put itin. So they sent somebody to go
find something, and the person wentto the drug store and empty a peppermint
stick jar off the counter at thedrug store and brought it back and that's
what the baby was put in.The baby was then put on display for
people to pay to come and lookat, and then it was lost.
(53:15):
She wasn't even buried with her baby. Wow, that seems, even for
one hundred and twenty years ago,pretty twisted. It When I think about
the fact they put that baby ina candy jar and then put it on
display. I mean, I knowthat, you know they did that with
medical things. I know that wassomething they had a fascination with, you
(53:37):
know, But this was a murdervictim who threw no fault of her own
other than she'd fallen in love withthe wrong man ended up this way.
That that's just one of the partsof it. That's you know, It's
like I told you, I criedthe whole time I was writing this because
it is just so incredibly sad.And know, the people that go to
(54:00):
Bobby Mackie's don't realize, you know, they this is not a real person
to them, right, forgets thefact that that she's not even there.
Okay, it's if she was,it's still not a real person to them.
Now what happened if you? Andyou did the research so you know
(54:22):
this. There is not one mentionedin any newspaper article about anything to do
with a Satanic cult. The Sataniccult story appeared in a book that was
written in two thousand and one,and I don't you know, I don't
want to give the person credit becausetheir research was so bad that everything I've
(54:47):
read in this book is horrible.But two thousand and one, and then
again in another book by a differentauthor in two thousand and five, they
picked up the Satanic cult story andran with it. That is the first
time it was ever mentioned in anything. And it's made up, you know,
you'll read in my article. Idid extensive research. There were no
(55:08):
Satanic cults in that part of Kentuckyin the eighteen nineties. None, No,
I agree, I found nothing whatsoever. It's a completely made up fact
by someone who couldn't even get theright date that she had left her own
hometown right in his book, sothat that's where it showed up, and
(55:30):
it's just snowballed from there. Youknow. It's just one of those things
that makes a good urban legend.And you know, because it was published
in a book, people think it'strue. Yeah, what a case study.
This is on so many levels.And we should add, I mean,
we have nothing whatsoever against Bobby mackews. I mean, obviously we picked
(55:51):
it. We picked it to be, you know, one of America's most
haunted, and it certainly appears tobe absolutely only balls out haunted galore well,
and I even say in the article, I am not at all saying
Bobby's is not haunted. If youlook at the fact that that was known
that his property, the deed tohis property includes what was known as Gallos
(56:15):
Gap back on that was Finchtown,and the fact that there were at least
twenty illegal hangings or lynchings of blackpeople in that area. Plus you take
the bridge disaster of eighteen seventy two, were over forty people died a quarter
mile from Bobby Mackie's that area.Not to mention all the stuff that happened
(56:37):
in the nineteen hundreds. Yes,I wholeheartedly believe that place is haunted,
but it's not haunted by Pearl.Her head was not thrown down any well
because of a Satanic ritual. Herhead, by all accounts from the recreations
that Detective Krem did, was incineratedin the cadaver furnace at the Dental College
(57:01):
in Ohio. Interesting. I hadheard the most likely scenario as it had
been tossed but into the Ohio River. You're going to toss it somewhere,
that would be the place to tossit. They were afraid it would wash
up if they cremated it. Therewas no chance of it ever being found.
Because they found all the other thingsthat they ditched in the river,
(57:23):
in the sewer systems, all theother bloody items that belonged to her they
found. Her head was the onlyone that never turned up. And if
you go by the testimony of thebartender at Wallingford's where Scott had him keep
Pearl's volie that had her head init, which was proven because they found
(57:45):
her hair and her blood in it, he stated that it felt like there
was a bowling ball in it,because whatever was in there was round and
rolling around. So yeah, thedetective crim till the day he died,
states that his belief was because ofwhat they created in the in trying to
recreate some of the crime. Thetimeline fit for him to go a couple
(58:08):
blocks down the road through her headin the cadaver furnace at the dental college
and come back. Well, itmakes sense, certainly. My goodness,
I cannot believe how quickly this timehas gone. You did a great job
of compacting that story down because there'sso much to it, and I absolutely
(58:31):
recommend to one and all go toParanormal Genealogist dot com and read the full
story and see the pictures and thediagrams and the drawings for yourself. It's
the amazing, sad, tragic taleof Pearl Bryant and how it does and
(58:52):
does not intersect with what is nowBobby Mackie's music world. All Right,
So, as I said, yougotta check out Paranormal Genealogist dot com.
You have another site, and whatis that, Shannon, That would be
Timeless Paranormal dot com. That's ourinvestigation site. I was doing so much
(59:15):
of this stuff that that's how thethe Paranormal Genealogist site was born so I
could kind of separate the two things, keep our investigation stuff in one place
and then the educational stuff and another. So that's why we have the two,
all right, and tell them howto find you on social media.
I am on Facebook and Twitter.You can look for Timeless Paranormal or the
(59:39):
Paranormal Genealogists in both places. Ithink Twitter is actually para genealogist and Timeless
para because Twitter is stupid and makesyou won't give you enough characters to do
your whole name or you can,you know, find me on Facebook Understanding
Bradley Buyers, and I will directyou where you need to go. Outstanding.
(01:00:04):
Well, we barely scratched the surface, though I'm really glad we got
to more or less cover the PearlBrian tale. What remind you, guys
if you go to the Paranormal notthe Paranormal Genealogist, but Paranormal Genealogists dot
Com. There are other very wellwritten, very well researched stories as well,
(01:00:25):
on the real story of Cold Mountainand the real story of Lavinia Fisher.
Well, there's plenty left to talkabout. We really have to have
you back on down the road.We'd love to do so. Really enjoyed
it. Love to hear a littlebit more about how you do your actual
genealogy research. We didn't get toomuch into that, but really fascinating stuff.
(01:00:51):
Really appreciate it very much. Shanenjoyed speaking with you once again.
Well, thank you so much forhaving me on. You really need to
go to two hours? Well,I'm I'm hearing that. You know.
It shows you how your perspective changes. When we were first starting this show,
I thought an hour, How inGod's name can you fill an out?
(01:01:15):
Well, now I know that twohours can go very very quickly,
and actually I've been on shows thatare what three and four hours, So
it's as long as you have interestingpeople and interesting things to talk about,
it's it is no problem filling thattime. All right, Well, thank
you once again, One end all, including Shannon, most especially for this
(01:01:39):
show all our listeners. It's America'smost haunted radio. We are here on
the ib end network every single Mondaylive at eight pm Eastern, seventh Central,
and we are featured at a numberof other super cool outlets, including
(01:02:00):
blog talk radio in podcast form.Super thanks to Joel for running the board
of a great evening. Everyone,and we'll talk to you next week.
Good evening, my friends. I'mMiracles and it's time once again for America's
Most Haunted Radio, bringing together thefinest minds of personalities from across the paranormal
spectrum. I'm telling you fine mindsacross that paranormal spectrum. I'm Erica Olson.
(00:31):
Welcome once again to America's Most HauntedRadio. I believe we will have
the Haunted housewife, Teresa Argie joiningus at some point in the evening.
She with the extraordinarily complex schedule.But in the meantime, we have a
tremendous guest. I am very excitedto welcome Shannon Bradley Buyers, the paranormal
(00:57):
Genealogist, to the show. AsI just stated, she is a paranormal
investigator, educator, genealogist who blendsand infuses paranormal research with genealogical and historical
research and somehow waves her magic wandand incorporates it all into one seamless tapestry.
(01:19):
She teaches para enthusiasts and professional iswhy it is important to understand that
the TV show history of a locationis not always correct. Very recent examples
from her super cool paranormal Genealogist websiteinclude Lavinia Fisher at the Old Charleston Jail
(01:40):
and Pearl Brian near and dear toour heart headless Pearl Brian, who is
not hanging out at Bobby Mackee's MusicWorld, but who we will speak of
in conjunction with same. Shannon showshow para entertainment has skewed history and how
incorrect the facts they supply to theiraudience and paying paranormal investigators sometimes are,
(02:02):
and how incorrect facts can hinder aparanormal investigation. Welcome Shannon, good evening.
How are you. I am well. You could probably hear my voice
is a litttle bit scratchy. Iwas alarmed. I thought I was all
well, went through the whole antibioticregime a few weeks ago. Back three
(02:23):
weeks ago, all was good.But man, we keep atting radio shows.
I keep having to play with theband. Had to talk and play
and sing at the Kent Paranormal Weekend, and we just had band rehearsal last
night. So all of a sudden, I'm all scratchy and weird and flemmy
again. But nonetheless I am hereand jolly to be so well. I'm
(02:49):
glad I can at least hear you. Your voice sounds better than it did
the other night. Well, thankyou, I am pleased to hear that.
So why don't we give people alittle bit of a background round of
how you arrived at being the paranormalgenealogist, kind of bringing in these various
threads and as we just said,weaving them seamlessly. Yeah, if you
(03:15):
could watch me do research, youwouldn't say seamlessly. Basically, I have
two loves in life, ghosts andgenealogy. The ghost love came in first
when I was about eight. Thegenealogy bug hit when I was thirteen,
and as I got older, Ijust I learned that the history of a
(03:38):
property, the history of the peopleon that property, was extremely important to
be able to conduct a thorough investigation. As you are well aware, there's
two camps on this There's the campthat doesn't want to know anything before they
go in, and then there's mycamp that believes the more information you go
(04:01):
in armed with, the better yourinvestigation can be because the questions you can
ask or in an EVP session youknow are going to be more likely to
be answered because you're talking to aperson like you know them and they're specific
and relevant to that individual. Yes, and you know that if you get
(04:25):
an answer, you know it cando one of two things. It can
provide you with information you weren't ableto dig up and gives you, you
know, a bread trail to tryto go find something that will match that
answer, or it will validate whatyou found, So you know it works
on both sides. Just for argument'ssake, why don't you give us the
(04:50):
thoughts of those who who don't wantto know anything when they come in?
Well, basically, and you know, since I don't think this way,
it's it's kind of hard for meto understand. If you go in not
knowing anything, then you're not whenyou ask a question and you get a
response, you're not geared towards hearinga specific answer. So your mind is
(05:15):
not, you know, doing thematrix thing where it's making whatever they said
be what it's supposed to be.Got it? Got it? Well,
that makes sense too. I supposein other words, you're going to be
less inclined to fool yourself exactly,but I think you're more inclined not to
(05:36):
understand the answer that you get andbe able to take that conversation Further,
I think you're limiting yourself on whatyou can talk to them about. In
a sense, you're trusting yourself more. I'm true, who's trusting themselves more?
The people that don't do research orthe people that do. No,
(05:59):
you are, because you're figuring thatyou can account for the human tendency to
try to, you know, talkyourself into things or too to find what
you're looking for. That's basically whatwe're talking about. So you're assuming that
you can keep that in mind andtake that into account, and you would
(06:19):
rather be armed with more information andmore specific information. Yeah, so you
can actually sit and carry on aconversation because you know, we are of
the belief that when you go intoa location and you talk to somebody,
you know, we we try totreat them like we would treat a family
(06:41):
member, you know. If it'solder people, we treat them by grandparents,
you know, that kind of thing. And if we can ask a
question that actually elicits a response,then we can keep going, you know,
down that same path. It's like, you know, we we have
a place local here that we caninvestigate anytime we want, and we happen
(07:02):
to know that the older lady.You know, she was ninety seven when
she died in that house, andwe happen to know that she loves food.
So she and I carry on longconversations about the things that she used
to cook to take to church socials. Got it. And because I know
(07:23):
this stuff about her, you know, I can keep the conversation going.
It's not just sitting there, Ohwell, who am I talking to?
Maybe you do your or you don'tget a response. If I can walk
in the house and go, youknow, miss Mary, I'm here,
I'm back. I'm glad to seeyou. What have you been up to
since I've been gone? You know, because I know her and I know
(07:45):
the time that she grew up in. I knew the people that came and
visited her house. I knew eventsthat happened at her house. You know,
aren't she going to be more inclinedto talk to somebody that can talk
to you like that than just comein in and going, oh, is
there anybody here? Tell us yourname? Knock on a wall? I
would certainly think so. If weare talking about in entity a spirit that
(08:11):
thinks like people do. Sure well, if yeah, if you're dealing with
an intelligent. Yeah, I mean, you know, residual you're not going
to get anywhere with. But youknow, we always go in armed with
a knowledge that if we do runinto an intelligent, hopefully it's the person
that we've done research on. Sowhy don't you give us a little example
(08:35):
of that something somewhere where you haveused that information and what it has yield
it for you. Well, ourfavorite example didn't get us any results because
he didn't answer us, but itwould be you know a house here that's
local to Atlanta. That's a famoushouse that had an ex Civil War soldier
(08:58):
who took his rooster with him whenhe went off to war so they could
engage incock fighting. And I happenedto find that little tidbit in a book
a former governor had written about hisfamily in the early nineteen hundreds. So
when we went into the house,you know, I could ask him about
(09:20):
his rooster, and nobody else hadever uncovered this very very interesting Yes,
I remember now you talking about that. Which which of your didn't that relate
to one of the stories that you'vewritten up one of your No, not
yet, it's not one that I'vedone yet. That's the it's a house
(09:43):
here in Atlanta. It's called theHoliday Dorsey Fife House. And I have
not written his story up yet,so there's just a lot of damn cock
fighting going on. I wasn't surehow I could say that, So yes,
you said it, So yeah,you know, he he went off
to war with his his fighting cockunder one arm and the flag for the
(10:05):
regiment under the other, and hisslave following him out the back door.
And yeah, I always get this, you know, it's really weird.
I get this Norman Rockwell image inmy head every time I say that,
and I know that's wrong, butthat's just how it appears to me,
you know. And when we didthe investigation, unfortunately, this was one
(10:28):
of those group investigations where they crammedtwelve people in, you know, a
house that only had how many roomsdid it have, um one or two
to eight rooms? And the evidencewe got in the house was nothing.
But unfortunately I ticked off the docentat the house and I will probably never
(10:50):
be allowed back in there again becauseI pointed out information that they, you
know, had printed up on plaqueson their walls that was not correct because
of the research I had done.I actually proved the house to be twelve
years older than what they told everybody. Plus the fact that they keep trying
to say that dot Holiday was tiedto that house as an adult, when
(11:16):
he had only visited there as achild. They try to say Dot Holiday
haunts that house. And when Icame up with the proof that, you
know, when he came back toAtlanta after dental school, it wasn't that
house he practiced out of, theygot mad at me. So I won't
get to try that one again.But that's an example of, you know,
(11:37):
how you can do research and youknow the actual property owner does not
want to hear the real story.Well, you know what I'm thinking.
I'm thinking presentation under such circumstances isvery very important. It's all how you
(11:58):
present the information. Well, andI was very nice and polite about it,
and I was excited, you know, because I had found these few
things that you know, especially withyou know, if you could find out
your house was actually twelve years older, you know, they thought it had
been built in the eighteen fifties andit was built in eighteen thirty two.
I mean, wouldn't you want toknow that that your house was actually older?
(12:20):
Well, of course, I wouldthink you'd want to know anything that's
true. I mean, but youknow, I'm trying to project myself into
the ownership of a of a paranormallyactive or at least theoretically paranormally active location.
That is this a place that chargesto be? Is this something that
(12:46):
they market to do invations? They'rethey're actually they're a museum, and so
they make their money off the factthat they're a museum. And you know,
people come in and tour and theyhave a gone with the wind room
and dot Holiday room and a WarVeterans room and a Civil War room,
and you pay your money to goin and do the tour. We did
(13:09):
not have to pay to do aninvestigation because I don't pay to go places.
If you charge, I don't go. So you know they do.
Sorry, I said me too,you know, especially like bathrooms. Remember
they used to charge for toilets.I would go, I'm not going here.
I can crawl under the door.There's always that. But I don't
(13:33):
know is that truly dignified? Doesit matter when it's an emergency under those
circumstances. No, you're right,but um, you know, I you
know you had to keep in mindwe're dealing with the South, and the
South is very particular about their historyand what's presented and what's not presented,
(13:56):
and they don't like being told theywere wrong. You know. They actually
sat there and tried to accuse mein front of my husband of not knowing
what I was doing, and thatI hadn't verified any of my research when
I had copies of the alleged originalland platts and the house and you know
(14:16):
the other things that we had found. And you know, you don't.
I am not one of these people. If I can't find something on paper
to document what it is, Idon't tell you that it's a fact.
I just you know, when Istarted doing genealogy in eighteen eighty two,
(14:37):
this was before computers, you know, this is when you were actually going
to courthouses, going to archives,going to cemeteries. You couldn't just sit
at a computer and look this stuffup, you know, And a good
genealogist if you can't source your work, it's crap. If it's not Scottish,
(14:58):
it's crap too. Of course,Yes, this is also true,
as we all know. Yeah thatI'm very interested actually in hearing your thoughts
on that evolution from doing I imaginethere was some digital aspect way back in
(15:20):
the early eighties, at least interms of in a library. I guess
we're gonna call uh no, thatwas digital at all now. I guess
it really, really, really wasn'ta whole lot that we would call digital
in the early eighties. But I'dlove to hear about that evolution from a
researchers standpoint, from the good olddays to today. Well, you know,
(15:43):
haven't been taught how to do itquote unquote manually. You know where
you had to go and sit andgo, you know, pull the microfish
cards or the microfilm reels and sitthere and you know, number one,
trying to figure out how to loadthem on those machines where they weren't upside
down and backwards. You know,that's still my favorite way to do it.
(16:07):
You know, I would rather sitand read a book, look at
a microfilm, you know, holda book in my hands that was you
know, people wrote in in thelate seventeen hundreds, then to sit and
look at it on a computer.But the computers cheaper. You know,
if I'm just doing research here inmy local county or say part of the
(16:29):
state because I'm lucky where I amin Atlanta. We have a branch of
the National Archives and we have theState Archives, and they sit in the
same parking lot. So if Ineed to go do archival research, I'm
going to the same place. IfI needed to come up to Ohio to
do research, it would cost mea lot of money. And if I
(16:51):
can sit and find the exact samething on the Internet, now, yeah,
that's what I'm gonna do. Butwhen I teach people how to do
this, I want them to know, you know how to go use the
card catalog at the State Archives tolook up what you need to find,
(17:11):
because that's honestly going to help youin your search tools for what you're looking
for online. Right what I findabout and I believe me, I've done
an awful lot of research myself,including pretty early on on the internet.
We were trying to use the internetfor all the reasons you just said.
(17:32):
It's just it's quicker. It's certainlyvastly cheaper if the information is there,
cheaper than traveling or in the olddays. Anyway, calling I was just
thinking as you were talking, Iwas thinking about all the research I had
to do for a book I wrotebetween ninety six and ninety nine, so
it was kind of a transitional time, but you still had to call.
(17:56):
There was no Skype or anything,so it was the Encyclopedia record producers and
we had a number of them outsideof the country, in the UK,
Europe, Australia. You can imaginehow expensive it was calling those people,
especially back then. Well that's whatI'm saying, and I was thinking,
if you know, if I haddone that research now, I would have
(18:18):
saved a vast amount of money,plus end time, plus the fact that
you can you can see people,you know. I mean, if you're
doing purely audio, such as weare radio tonight, there's no need for
the for the video. But youknow, if you're having a conversation like
when we talked to my son andhis wife in Denmark, of course we
(18:40):
want to see them. That's partof the experience and part of what makes
it tolerable that they're so far awayand that we don't see them in person
very often. But you know,it's an amazing thing. But there's always
a downside to all the technology,and well, why don't you let us
know? Scypically in your field.What do you see the downside of this
(19:04):
really easy access that we have cometo take for granted in a very short
period of time, you know,via digital methods. What do you see
are the main downsides of that?In genealogy specifically, the main downfall is
people copying other people's work and notlearning to do their own research. They
(19:27):
will find something somebody's posted online andsay, oh, well, this person
posted this, I'm gonna throw thisinto my files as fat they don't follow
up. You know, if ifI run into something like that, you
know, when I'm researching, youknow, I'm all over the place on
the internet, and I'll say,well, this person posted this fact,
(19:48):
and this person posted the same fact, but this third person over here posted
a similar fact, but it's gotdifferent stuff in it. Okay, where
did these people come up with this? So you're still gonna have to try
to go find the actual documentation toprove which one of these people was right?
(20:14):
Boy, did you say a mouthful? In moving ahead? Excuse me
forgive my throat my friends out therein radio land. I am struggling,
but we will make it through.And I have fortitude, and I'm armed
with water and pineapple juice. Anyway, moving ahead about ten years, you
(20:36):
know, when we were working thenon America's most Haunted and certainly using the
Internet as a primary source. Youare, you couldn't be more right.
I mean, you still have toultimately figure out which version you believe,
you know, because there's a differentThere are multiple versions of basically every story
(21:02):
exactly, and even the basic basicfacts seem to vary pretty wildly well,
and that's when it goes back toyour old school training and you actually go
to actual documents and not something somebody'sposted, you know, and we'll you
know, when we start talking aboutPearl, you know that that's going to
(21:23):
be a perfect example or even Laviniaof what's gone on, because if you
sit down in the state archives andyou read trial transcripts, you cannot argue
with those trial transcripts. You know, even newspaper accounts can be skewed.
(21:44):
You know, you can take thesame article that was printed in a paper
in Kentucky, in Indiana, inOhio, and here in Atlanta on the
same day and it's reporting the sameevent that happened. All four of them
will have different facts in it.So how do you decide which one you're
(22:07):
going with. I find legal documentationthat backs up what I've read, and
that includes, you know, vitalrecords, you know, birth, marriage,
death certificates, pictures of tombstones,court transcripts, anything like that.
(22:30):
You compare it to what was quoteunquote back then social media and see where
the difference is. The legal documentsare the ones I'm going to believe now.
There are instances where if you lookat a legal document when you've been
(22:52):
doing genealogy research as long as Ihave, for example, a death certificate.
If you look at a death certificatedown in the bottom corner, there's
always a name for the person thatgave the medical Examiner's office the information.
They're called the informant. Sometimes itwas your spouse, Sometimes it was a
(23:12):
cousin. Sometimes it was a brotheror a sister. That information is only
as good as what that person knew. If you had a sister who was
you know, and we're talking oldin times here, you had a sister
that was sixteen years older than youwere, and you're having to give the
(23:36):
information for their death certificate, youmay not realize what the mother's maiden name
of that child had been, becausemaybe that mother died and you never heard
it. So that's when you've gotto find other legal documents to try to
verify what's in that document. Itgets really confusing, But I'm always going
(23:56):
to take a legal document over amedia document, sure, because there's something
at stake, and in theory there'sa authority figure who who's passing judgment over
those facts. Well, why don'twe move on then? And I'd love
to hear not only the Tale ofPearl, because of course I am absolutely
(24:21):
invested in that one, having donea lot of research on her myself,
or for America's Most Haunted of course, for the Bobby Mackie's chapter. And
I have to admit I felt abit of what some of these people,
I think feel when you correct them, because you found a lot more than
(24:47):
I did, and you went indifferent directions, and you found some really
fascinating things that honestly I knew nothingabout. I knew relatively little about the
family. You have all kinds ofgreat information on her family, and you
covered a period, You found informationon a period on Bobby Macke's itself,
(25:07):
or I should say the land therethat was absolutely missing. I could not
find anything on that time period betweenthe late eighteen hundreds, you know,
into the between that and the nightclubera, and you found information on that.
So I'd love to hear not onlythe story, but how you found
(25:30):
where you found this information. Ithink that's an amazing test case for how
you work. And incidentally, Ido want to remind everyone before you get
started on that, you really shouldgo check out shannon site, The Paranormal
Genealogist. It's relatively new. There'sonly a handful of stories in there.
(25:52):
There's Pearl Brian, there's the realstory of Cold Mountain, which factors in
actually to Shannon's family is involved inthat story, so that is fascinating from
multiple standpoints. And then, aswe mentioned earlier, the Lavinia Fisher story,
which is a very well known ghoststory that in her research is not
(26:15):
true. So she's written these upvery well done, very thorough articles.
Go check out the Paranormal Geneologist dotcom. Okay, now to poor Pearl
and her missing noggin, tell usthe tale. Let me back up just
one thing, it's actually Paranormal Geneologistdot com. Don't put the on it.
(26:40):
Sorry, I didn't want to haveto type more words than possible.
Would geneologist already be in so longso it's just paranormal geneologist dot com.
Um, yeah, I have togo back. You know, I am
a true crime nut. I loveanything to do with true crime, especially
(27:02):
anything that happened in the Victorian era, and I have been since I was
a child. You know. Thefirst time I heard of Lizzie Borden,
it I just took off with beingentranced with with anything that happened murder wise
in the eighteen hundreds anywhere in theworld, not just the US, but
(27:22):
you know, living in the US, of course, that's what I focused
on. So the Pearl Brian casehas you know, been a thing with
me since I was very young,you know, because this was what they
dubbed the crime of the Century.It was six years after Lizzie Borden,
It was what two years after HHHolmes, So you know, murder was
(27:45):
a big thing. You know,Victorians loved all the gruesome details of murder
and you could find a lot ofstuff and a lot of people have written
books on Pearl Brian prior to theyear two thousand and one. And I'll
get to why that's important on intothe story. You know, the detectives
(28:08):
on the case wrote books. Youknow, the newspaper people that came down
from New York. They sent peopleto live down there the whole year this
was going on to report back tothe New York Times. They wrote books
about it. I mean, there'sa lot of information that was there prior
(28:29):
to Bobby Mackie ever setting foot onthat property in Wilder. Well, what
a lot of people don't realize iswe'll take the property first. That was
actually an area in the early eighteenhundreds called Finchtown. You know, it's
gone by many names, and thedividing lines kind of blur. You've got
(28:49):
Finchtown, Newport, Finchtown kind ofblended into Newport, and then Wilder kind
of came out of Newport. Sothat whole area depending on the time period
you're talking about. That's how you'vegot to know how to look up the
records. You follow me a following, okay, like a bloodhound and sniffing
(29:11):
up your tail trailing. So youknow, poor Pearl, you know,
she's she was this very well todo girl in Indiana, which you know,
Greencastle, Indiana was one hundred andthirty two miles If I'm remembering right
(29:32):
from Cincinnati, and you know,so she was a long way from where
her death march started. You know, she was one of twelve kids.
Like I say in the article,six of those kids were dead before nineteen
hundred's. That's amazing. And hangon one sec because it's time for the
(29:52):
break. I refuse to believe it'salready been a half hour, but it
has. So we're gonna take outthe break and it'll be right right back.
(30:22):
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(34:01):
dogging it? That's what I wantto know. Is it little heads popping
up? I want to know.I don't want to know little heads bobbing
up and down. You know,I should tell a very quick story about
that. I grew up in southernCalifornia, which is returning to its semi
arid state with all the water runningout. I don't want to interrupt you.
(34:24):
Eric By, dude, know whatprairie dogging it is? Would you
like to hear? God? Yes, okay, Cordner Urban Dictionary. When
you take a number two and it'sso bad that it feels basically when you're
in the restroom and it's a painfulnumber two, is prairie dogging it?
(34:44):
Ah? Well, that would certainlyfit in with my story that I'm going
to tell very very quickly. Getit out of the way, or else
it's gonna bother me forever. Andthen we'll be back to the amazing tale
and sad and our tale of PearlBryan, which has very little to do
(35:04):
with Bobby Mackie's other than as currentlyconstituted. All right, So prairie dogs.
So I grew up in southern California, right, So it's semi arid,
So the ground is hard, basicallykind of a desert e. It's
not sand, it's just kind ofa hard pack. It's dry. Let's
it's been raining, and there arelots of rodents, including the equivalent of
(35:30):
prairie dogs. Their gophers is reallywhat they are. So on my base
this shows you how things have changedin I won't tell you how long it's
been a while from my childhood.So my baseball field was only a few
blocks my little league field from ourhouse. And one of the things that
they had the kids, the boys, young boys playing baseball, playing littlely.
(35:52):
One of the things they had usdo was helped them reduce the gopher
population. So on the field,because you know, there's holes all over
the place, it's very dangerous.You're running twisted ankle, catch a cleat
not what you want to do.So once a year they would bring out
a big ass hose and they wouldput it down the biggest hole gopher hole
(36:15):
they could find. They're all connected, of course, so eventually the water
starts coming up, as do thegophers. And you got ten teams worth
a little league kids standing there withbaseball bats poised, ready to go when
the gophers pop up their little heads. And that was a extraordinarily efficient method
(36:40):
of extermination. Can you imagine theoutcry if that happened today? Anyone?
Hello, are we there? Yes, we are here, and we're just
all absorbing story. Brennan A.We are speaking with Shannon Bradley Buyers,
(37:04):
the paranormal genealogists. We are talkingof the sad, sad tale of Pearl
Brian and equally importantly, her researchinto it. Go ahead, Shannon,
Let's see where did I leave off? Oh, six of them were dead
by nineteen hundred. We were backto her hometown in Indiana. One of
(37:28):
twelve children, relatively well off,half of them were already dead. Very
sad. Yes, it was especiallythe poor woman who died in a folding
bed accident. That did you makethat stuff up? I'm still not over
that one. So yeah. Shewas from a very well to do family.
Her father was a stockbreeder who wasa farmer. He ran a dairy
(37:51):
business. They had a very nicehouse. You know, some of the
Indiana in history is about the family. You know, say that even when
other people were in financial ruin,nothing touched this family. You know,
they always prospered. So she wasthe rich girl in town. Unfortunately for
(38:15):
her, her second cousin introduced herto Scott Jackson, her second cousin being
William Wood. Scott was on therun. He had been in bazzling from
the railroad that he worked. Hehad been in buzzling from a department store
(38:37):
that he had worked at. Hehad had a lot of run ins with
drunken disorderlies with prostitutes, which gothim kicked out of the dental college in
Indianapolis. So he decided to bidehis time in Greencastle, Indiana, working
kind of as an apprentice for thetown dentist until he could start a fall
(39:00):
term in the Cincinnati dental school.There. So, in the spring of
eighteen ninety five, he and Pearlmet. They courted. They evidently had
a whole lot of fun because sheended up pregnant. She she and William
(39:24):
and Scott had discussions after she foundout she was pregnant. After Scott left
to go to Ohio. There area lot of letters that went back and
forth that it was testified to bythe Western Union agent in the town that
he had read with all these concoctionsof drugs that Pearl could try to take
(39:51):
to cause a miscarriage or spontaneous abortion, however you want to look at it.
So they tried all the these concoctions. None of them worked. Scott
came home over the Christmas holidays,you know, December of eighteen ninety five,
left early January to go back toschool in eighteen ninety six. Since
(40:15):
none of these things they were tryingwere working, they decided they were going
to have to have a quote unquotecriminal operation, which is was the term
they used for abortion back then.So it was arranged that William would put
Pearl on a train to go toOhio, that Scott Jackson and his friend,
(40:37):
his roommate, Alonzo Walling, We'regoing to procure a person that could
do this criminal operation get everything takencare of. So Pearle told her parents,
I'm going to visit, you knowmy friend who's moved away, you
know that I grew up with asshe lives in Indianapolis. Now I'm going
to go spend a week with her. Flies to her parents, gets on
(41:01):
a train goes to Indianapolis, butdoesn't get off of it and continues on
to Cincinnati. She left home onJanuary twenty eighth. She spent three and
a halfish days with Scott and Alonso, where at some point Scott procured a
(41:21):
large amount of cocaine from the localpharmacy, which was legal back then.
You could just walk in and buyit over the counter. You didn't even
have to have a prescription for it, or you could just drink it in
Coca cola. It wouldn't have hadquite the same effect that they wanted for
her, I imagine not blank.Oh, he got the drugs at some
(41:51):
point right before she came. Hehad also been talking to other doctors in
town about other poisons that he couldtry, because he evidently decided he'd had
enough of her. The three ofthem were in Wallingford saloon on the night
of January thirty first. The bartendersaw Scott mixing the cocaine into her drink.
(42:17):
She drank it and proceeded to getvery loopy, pretty much incoherent.
Alonso went and hired it, renteda cab, and at that time,
what a cab was, you know, was it was an enclosed carriage type
(42:37):
thing, and then went and paida man named George Jackson five dollars to
drive it for him and the officialyou know, testimony later when you know,
let's back up. George was ablack man, so for him to
come forward to testify against the twoof them in eighteen ninety six was a
(43:01):
very big deal. His testimony includedthe exact route that they had driven to
take Pearl to murder her, andthey had him recreate it for them,
and you know, he did itwith no problem and ended up exactly where
(43:23):
they had found you know, almostexactly where they found Pearl's body because he
had stopped on the road and theyhad dragged her at the lane. Did
go, did go past the propertythat is now Bobby Mackie's, as I
understand it, even though that wasnot the most direct route, but that
was the way to go to avoidhaving to go through toll booths. Exactly
(43:46):
basically what it is. And we'llbacktrack here. The property where Bobby Mackie's
is now. Everybody keeps, youknow, the story is it was a
slaughterhouse. It was never a slaughterhouse. The slaughterhouse was actually set several hundred
feet to the southwest of where BobbyMackie stands. Now, what used to
(44:07):
be where Bobby Macke's is was thedistillery that Robertson built in eighteen seventy six.
And if when you go to mywebsite, there are actual pictures maps
right now. It's it's really angreat article because or I should say,
(44:30):
not only because of the story andall the information, but all of the
images you found. It's very impressive. Yeah. Yeah, if you look,
there's an actual town map of Finchtownwhich shows where the slaughterhouse was compared
to where the distillery was. Andwhat was unique about the distillery was that
(44:52):
when Robertson built it, he gotpermission from the government to dig three tunnels
the distillery under the railroad tracks tothe Licking River. And it was kind
of twofold. The government let himdo it because it was going to keep
water away from the train tracks,you know, to keep any flooding from
(45:15):
going on there, because they wereright beside the river, and they pumped
the water in from the Licking Riverthrough those tunnels into the distillery for their
bottling process. So it worked twofold. So the all three tunnels still exist
under Bobby Mackie's. But you've gotthe one that everybody refers to as the
(45:36):
well to hell. That's the oneeverybody says, oh, well, that's
where all the blood ran down fromthe slaughterhouse. Well it's not true,
because the slaughterhouse, like I said, was several feet south of Bobby Mackie's,
or several hundred feet south, andit wasn't even a commercial slaughterhouse.
It was a local man who butcheredlocal people's animals for them. It wasn't
(46:01):
commercial, so it wasn't even abig one. So if you look at
those two maps I've got on there, you'll see the difference of where the
slaughterhouse actually was and where Bobby Mackie'sis. Now, when Robertson was driving
them, he got scared, andwhen he did, he pulled over in
(46:23):
front of the distillery and Alonzo Wallingpulled a gun on him and told him
he had to continue. So thatis the closest that Pearl ever got to
that location, and she was stillalive at the time. Was yeah.
So when they got her to thelocation, and the location they picked was
(46:45):
an apple orchard of a man namedJohn Locke, he had a farm and
his farm backed up the barracks atFort Thomas, and this particular area was
well known. It's where the soldierswould take their quote unquote dates for a
long time, which was normally meantthat's where they were, you know.
It was the lover's lane for thetown prostitutes and the soldiers at Fort Thomas.
(47:09):
So this is where they killed Pearl. A big bone of contention at
the time once they identified who Pearlwas and arrested Scott was was she actually
killed on that property or was shekilled in Ohio and driven over there?
(47:30):
And it was a body dump.And one of the reasons it was a
big deal was because because she waspregnant, the laws were strict in Kentucky
on fetal side than they were inOhio. So everybody wanted her to have
been killed in Kentucky so that theycould go after him for first degree murder
(47:52):
instead of manslaughter in killing the baby. Got it and that to be true,
Yes, yes, because when theyactually found Pearl, and you'll notice
on the website there is one crimescene photo and grim it is it is.
(48:13):
I mean, it's not blood oranything, because it's an eighteen hundred
photo, and it's actually posed becausethat's not the position that Pearl's body was
found in. Pearl was actually foundlying face up. Well, yeah,
sorry, that's bad. She waslying on her back. Her corset had
(48:35):
been cut off and ripped off ofher. The skirts were thrown up over
the top of her. That's whywhen the body was found, they didn't
realize it was headless until the coronerguys there and went to move her,
and that's when they realized she didn'thave a head. The arterial spray from
(48:58):
them cutting off her head reached mostof the reports say at least three feet
into the trees. I've read acouple that say six, but most of
them say three feet. And theblood also soaked three inches down into the
ground because they dug out that areato collect the soil and they had to
(49:20):
go down at least three inches toget that. That could not have happened
if she if her head had beencut off after she died, because there,
you know, her heart wouldn't havebeen pumping for there to be any
kind of arterial spray. So heractual murder was yes, that blow or
cut and they surmised that Scott usedhis dental tools to do it, you
(49:47):
know, because they they never admittedthat they did it, and they blamed
each other. Nobody knows who cutyou know, which one of them cut
her head off. The only thingthey have is George Jackson's testimony that the
two of them were with her atthat location. He had left, right,
didn't he take off? He tookoff and left. He heard her
(50:08):
scream. And if you read theautopsy report on her her defensive wounds that
this will tell you how wide awakeshe was when they were trying to do
this. The defensive wounds that shehad on her hand were cut. You
know, she was cut to thebone in her hand. That's how hard
(50:29):
she was fighting them when they weretrying to do this. So she was
not at that point, you know, just some limp rag and they cut
her head off. She fought untilshe couldn't fight anymore. Yeah, it's
a It's an amazing and terrible tipe. The real tale as you're you are
(50:51):
telling it, and your reconstruction certainlyfits mine that I was able to be
together from basically newspaper accounts of thetrial, and then speculation too. There's
always speculation. You just have moreinformation and I'm jealous because but yeah,
(51:13):
I mean it's such a sad tale, and I really am kind of visualizing
it. You are making it realfor me. I mean it was real
as I was doing the research too, but you know, you kind of
come away from it becomes almost acartoon or something. It just becomes less
real. But telling the tale,I mean, this was a real person,
really awful circumstances, someone she trusted, someone she thought she loved,
(51:38):
to turn on her in such ajust despicable, cold heartless manner, and
to just dump her there as ifshe were, you know, literally an
animal to the slaughter, And Imean, it's it's just appalling now in
your mind. How did all ofthis besides the simple fact that it was
(52:04):
such a notorious and terrible case,how did this story and these facts,
how did they come to be associatedwith what is now Bobby Mackie's what was
that link? Well, let methrow on one more thing before we get
there, to go ahead, havethis even more home on what a horribly
(52:27):
sad situation it was. When theymurdered her, she did not lose the
baby. They did not know untilthey went to do the autopsy that she
was five months pregnant. Okay,when they realized they had a fetus that
they were dealing with, they becauseof where they were doing the autopsy,
(52:49):
they didn't have anything to put itin. So they sent somebody to go
find something, and the person wentto the drug store and empty a peppermint
stick jar off the counter at thedrug store and brought it back and that's
what the baby was put in.The baby was then put on display for
people to pay to come and lookat, and then it was lost.
(53:15):
She wasn't even buried with her baby. Wow, that seems, even for
one hundred and twenty years ago,pretty twisted. It When I think about
the fact they put that baby ina candy jar and then put it on
display. I mean, I knowthat, you know they did that with
medical things. I know that wassomething they had a fascination with, you
(53:37):
know, But this was a murdervictim who threw no fault of her own
other than she'd fallen in love withthe wrong man ended up this way.
That that's just one of the partsof it. That's you know, It's
like I told you, I criedthe whole time I was writing this because
it is just so incredibly sad.And know, the people that go to
(54:00):
Bobby Mackie's don't realize, you know, they this is not a real person
to them, right, forgets thefact that that she's not even there.
Okay, it's if she was,it's still not a real person to them.
Now what happened if you? Andyou did the research so you know
(54:22):
this. There is not one mentionedin any newspaper article about anything to do
with a Satanic cult. The Sataniccult story appeared in a book that was
written in two thousand and one,and I don't you know, I don't
want to give the person credit becausetheir research was so bad that everything I've
(54:47):
read in this book is horrible.But two thousand and one, and then
again in another book by a differentauthor in two thousand and five, they
picked up the Satanic cult story andran with it. That is the first
time it was ever mentioned in anything. And it's made up, you know,
you'll read in my article. Idid extensive research. There were no
(55:08):
Satanic cults in that part of Kentuckyin the eighteen nineties. None, No,
I agree, I found nothing whatsoever. It's a completely made up fact
by someone who couldn't even get theright date that she had left her own
hometown right in his book, sothat that's where it showed up, and
(55:30):
it's just snowballed from there. Youknow. It's just one of those things
that makes a good urban legend.And you know, because it was published
in a book, people think it'strue. Yeah, what a case study.
This is on so many levels.And we should add, I mean,
we have nothing whatsoever against Bobby mackews. I mean, obviously we picked
(55:51):
it. We picked it to be, you know, one of America's most
haunted, and it certainly appears tobe absolutely only balls out haunted galore well,
and I even say in the article, I am not at all saying
Bobby's is not haunted. If youlook at the fact that that was known
that his property, the deed tohis property includes what was known as Gallos
(56:15):
Gap back on that was Finchtown,and the fact that there were at least
twenty illegal hangings or lynchings of blackpeople in that area. Plus you take
the bridge disaster of eighteen seventy two, were over forty people died a quarter
mile from Bobby Mackie's that area.Not to mention all the stuff that happened
(56:37):
in the nineteen hundreds. Yes,I wholeheartedly believe that place is haunted,
but it's not haunted by Pearl.Her head was not thrown down any well
because of a Satanic ritual. Herhead, by all accounts from the recreations
that Detective Krem did, was incineratedin the cadaver furnace at the Dental College
(57:01):
in Ohio. Interesting. I hadheard the most likely scenario as it had
been tossed but into the Ohio River. You're going to toss it somewhere,
that would be the place to tossit. They were afraid it would wash
up if they cremated it. Therewas no chance of it ever being found.
Because they found all the other thingsthat they ditched in the river,
(57:23):
in the sewer systems, all theother bloody items that belonged to her they
found. Her head was the onlyone that never turned up. And if
you go by the testimony of thebartender at Wallingford's where Scott had him keep
Pearl's volie that had her head init, which was proven because they found
(57:45):
her hair and her blood in it, he stated that it felt like there
was a bowling ball in it,because whatever was in there was round and
rolling around. So yeah, thedetective crim till the day he died,
states that his belief was because ofwhat they created in the in trying to
recreate some of the crime. Thetimeline fit for him to go a couple
(58:08):
blocks down the road through her headin the cadaver furnace at the dental college
and come back. Well, itmakes sense, certainly. My goodness,
I cannot believe how quickly this timehas gone. You did a great job
of compacting that story down because there'sso much to it, and I absolutely
(58:31):
recommend to one and all go toParanormal Genealogist dot com and read the full
story and see the pictures and thediagrams and the drawings for yourself. It's
the amazing, sad, tragic taleof Pearl Bryant and how it does and
(58:52):
does not intersect with what is nowBobby Mackie's music world. All Right,
So, as I said, yougotta check out Paranormal Genealogist dot com.
You have another site, and whatis that, Shannon, That would be
Timeless Paranormal dot com. That's ourinvestigation site. I was doing so much
(59:15):
of this stuff that that's how thethe Paranormal Genealogist site was born so I
could kind of separate the two things, keep our investigation stuff in one place
and then the educational stuff and another. So that's why we have the two,
all right, and tell them howto find you on social media.
I am on Facebook and Twitter.You can look for Timeless Paranormal or the
(59:39):
Paranormal Genealogists in both places. Ithink Twitter is actually para genealogist and Timeless
para because Twitter is stupid and makesyou won't give you enough characters to do
your whole name or you can,you know, find me on Facebook Understanding
Bradley Buyers, and I will directyou where you need to go. Outstanding.
(01:00:04):
Well, we barely scratched the surface, though I'm really glad we got
to more or less cover the PearlBrian tale. What remind you, guys
if you go to the Paranormal notthe Paranormal Genealogist, but Paranormal Genealogists dot
Com. There are other very wellwritten, very well researched stories as well,
(01:00:25):
on the real story of Cold Mountainand the real story of Lavinia Fisher.
Well, there's plenty left to talkabout. We really have to have
you back on down the road.We'd love to do so. Really enjoyed
it. Love to hear a littlebit more about how you do your actual
genealogy research. We didn't get toomuch into that, but really fascinating stuff.
(01:00:51):
Really appreciate it very much. Shanenjoyed speaking with you once again.
Well, thank you so much forhaving me on. You really need to
go to two hours? Well,I'm I'm hearing that. You know.
It shows you how your perspective changes. When we were first starting this show,
I thought an hour, How inGod's name can you fill an out?
(01:01:15):
Well, now I know that twohours can go very very quickly,
and actually I've been on shows thatare what three and four hours, So
it's as long as you have interestingpeople and interesting things to talk about,
it's it is no problem filling thattime. All right, Well, thank
you once again, One end all, including Shannon, most especially for this
(01:01:39):
show all our listeners. It's America'smost haunted radio. We are here on
the ib end network every single Mondaylive at eight pm Eastern, seventh Central,
and we are featured at a numberof other super cool outlets, including
(01:02:00):
blog talk radio in podcast form.Super thanks to Joel for running the board
of a great evening. Everyone,and we'll talk to you next week.
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