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Retired US professor hunts ghosts
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-31 10:53 Halloween isn't the only time ghosts and spirits
haunt parts of Tennessee. Nancy Acuff should know. The retired East Tennessee
State University professor has investigated many sightings in the region and
helped people understand why places might be haunted.
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| A costumed figure stands in a doorway
at Hampton Court Palace in southwest London in this image caught on
closed circuit television and released by the Palace Friday, Dec.
19, 2003. On several occasions in October 2003, guards at the palace
were alerted to an open fire door in the 16th century palace.
[AP/file] | |
In time
for the spooky holiday, Acuff recalled some of her most interesting hunts for
haunts.
A Jonesborough man called Acuff once and told her his house was haunted.
"He woke up one morning to find the image of a dead, bloody child on the
floor beside his bed; very traumatic," Acuff said.
"Sometime later, while watching television one night, he said he saw the
image of two turn-of-the-century-dressed families walk through his house."
Acuff told the man to set up a video camera in the hallway to try to capture
the image. Acuff and the man reviewed the video and saw what appeared to be a
globe of light at first, followed by the shadows of a man, a woman and two
children.
Then out of nowhere a voice shouted, "What are all these ghosts doing here?"
"The gentleman almost fainted when we heard that voice," she said. "The
voice, he said, was the voice of his late wife, who had died of cancer a while
back."
Acuff found evidence that a small child had been killed on a road near the
house to explain the image the man saw.
Acuff said a church was once located near the man's house, and she believes
the ghosts were walking to the church.
After Acuff found some explanations, the man told her the ghostly images
stopped appearing.
There have been other ghostly sightings reported in Jonesborough.
The image of "Parson" Brownlow, a Methodist minister, founder of a newspaper
in Jonesborough, governor of Tennessee immediately after the Civil War and later
a U.S. Senator, has been seen walking the Jonesborough cemetery on some nights.
"He was a real fire-and-brimstone type of minister," Acuff said. "The thing
that is puzzling is why his ghostly image has been seen here. He is buried in
Knoxville."
Some believe one of his wives is buried there. Others think Brownlow buried
five to six people at a time in graves at the cemetery after they died of
typhoid or cholera.
Ghosts and spirits of dead people are not to blame for all hauntings. Acuff
investigated another freaky episode she attributed to a doppelganger, a German
word that means "double walker" and refers to an image or action of a person
still alive.
A Johnson City woman, who Acuff described as intelligent and well-informed,
told her that on certain holidays, birthdays or family gatherings she would come
home and find her normally neat closet in disarray.
Acuff delved into the relationships in the woman's family to find an answer
to the disturbance.
The woman's mother-in-law had Alzheimer's disease and was living in a nursing
home. The woman's husband never went to see his mother or call her because he
regarded her as dead.
As Acuff tells it, after the family visited the nursing home and told the
mother how concerned they were about her, the closet disturbances
stopped.
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