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| Murfreesboro's ghostbuster |
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By: By Erin Edgemon, Post business editor
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Terry Mayo, ghost hunter.
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Whether we want to admit it or not, most of us have seen or heard something that can't be logically explained.
A light suddenly goes out, a picture frame falls off a table or a room suddenly turns cool.
Some people out there like Murfreesboro resident Terry Mayo are attempting to explain the unexplained.
Mayo is a ghost hunter. He investigates paranormal activity.
The retired schoolteacher wears a black cap that says just as much every day, and it is an attention getter.
"People look at the hat and ask questions," Mayo, 52, said from a table in the Murfreesboro International House of Pancakes recently. It being one of his haunts, Mayo knows the names of most of the servers there and they know him.
As he discussed his plans for starting a haunted tour company, opening a coffee house and bringing a ghost hunters conference to Murfreesboro, a waitress whose nametag read Ashley, interrupted animatedly, asking Mayo, who was wearing his hat, if he was really a ghost hunter.
Mayo's confirmation prompted Ashley, who I came to learn was actually named Laura Pesterfield, to tell us she has never seen a ghost but she has received signs.
"I have never not believed," she said.
Pesterfield had no choice but to believe in the paranormal when after asking for a sign that her deceased grandfather was OK a chandelier fell from the ceiling of the room in which she was standing, crashing between her and her mother.
Mayo said those types of conversations happen all of the time.
"Anyone who refuses to believe in (the paranormal) is going to tell you there is no such thing." Mayo said. "Anyone with religious beliefs is going to say they are satanic or demonic, but anyone who has seen one will be the first to tell you their story."
Since moving back to Murfreesboro about more than a year ago, the MTSU alum has found many liked-minded people, many he met at the now closed The Grind coffee house. They formed a ghost-hunting group, the Society of Paranormal Investigations & Research in Tennessee (S.P.I.R.I.T.). Mayo trained them on what to look for. They visit sites they expect or know to be haunted all around the Middle Tennessee area.
They use thousands of dollars worth of equipment from electromagnetic field detectors and laser thermometers to digital cameras and video cameras to do their work.
Mayo said you have to just be in the right place at the right time to see a ghost or other paranormal activity. Believers can be on the look out for years and never see one.
"Ghosts are kind of like the wind," he said. "You can't see the wind, you can only see the effects. If ghosts want you to see them then they will manifest themselves."
Everyone, Mayo said, has a sixth sense that allows him or her to feel or see the paranormal but few nurture this gift. They are too afraid, he said.
"A lot of people are afraid to be who they are," Mayo said.
Some like Mayo are more sensitive than others. It took Mayo 40 years, he said, to accept his gift.
Mayo said he sees visions. Pictures of things that may be going on next to him or thousands of miles away just pop into his head. Mayo doesn't know when they are going to happen.
He has had visions and has had strange things happen to him since he was a child, but the turning point for him didn't come until October 1988.
Mayo was with a security guard at a Middle Tennessee university, which he promised the university's president he wouldn't name, locking up an antebellum mansion for the night when he came face-to-face with a ghost.
"I can tell you to this day what she looked like," Mayo said.
The ghost of Adelicia Acklen, owner of the mansion from around 1853 to her death in 1887, manifested before them, he said.
She was standing on the third step of the mansion's grand staircase. The beams from flashlights were going through her.
Mayo now meets many of his new friends and fellow ghost hunters through his page on MySpace, a popular site for networking and making friends, at www.myspace.com/theinspectre.
His current business venture, the Old Salem Insane Asylum, a haunted house, gained momentum through the Internet.
The attraction he calls Middle Tennessee's scariest "real" haunted house spans 18,000 square feet. Mayo said he is overwhelmed by the turnout but declined to release attendance numbers until after the attraction closes on Halloween.
S.P.I.R.I.T. did an investigation of the site of the attraction, a former manufacturing facility turned reception hall called Central Park at 521 Old Salem Road, over the summer and determined it was haunted by four ghosts.
The ghosts that inhabit the site are a 60-year-old man, a woman in her 20s, a boy about 8 or 9 and another who has warned whoever in the building to leave him alone.
Mayo has a digital recording of the last ghost saying, "Get away from here. You don't need to be here. Get away from me."
Besides the words of warning, Mayo said the ghosts have made it difficult for him and his actors to put on their show. The spirits have messed with the electricity and one night blew every red light bulb in the four-room asylum.
Mayo has big plans over the next several months for business ventures that he hopes will bring his friends together and promote heritage tourism in Rutherford County.
Because of its role in the Civil War, Rutherford County is one of the most haunted counties in Tennessee, he said, and "city fathers" and the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce Convention and Visitors Bureau don't do enough to promote the history.
The Battle of Stones River, one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, was fought on 4,000 acres that now make up much of the city of Murfreesboro. Mayo says the spirits of hundreds of Civil War soldiers roam the city.
Mayo formed Murfreesboro Haunted Tours Co. last summer. Mayo expects it will be late next summer before he and fellow S.P.I.R.I.T. members begin taking tourists in vans or hearses on tours of Murfreesboro, telling ghost stories and pointing out the haunted sites in the area year round.
Mona Herring, director of the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce Convention and Visitors Bureau, supports Mayo's vision.
"It is definitely a niche industry that is successful in other areas," she said of the ghost tours. "With all of the history we have, I think it would go over well."
Haunted tours held in the fall around Halloween each year at the Stones River National Battlefield, downtown and other historic sites always sell out, Herring said. Tours could appeal to everyone from the Civil War enthusiast and families to college students.
Will Boles, president of S.P.I.R.I.T., said Murfreesboro is one of the few cities with a rich history that doesn't already have a haunted tour.
Mayo is looking for a place somewhere between downtown and the MTSU campus for Crossing Over Café, the coffee house, he hopes to have open by this spring. It would serve as a gathering place for S.P.I.R.I.T. members and for the general public.
What has Mayo energized now is his newest venture. He is planning to put Murfreesboro on the map when it comes to paranormal investigations by hosting The First Annual Southern Ghost Hunters and Paranormal Expo April 20-22, 2007 at Central Park.
As the name suggests, the event will be the first of its kind in the South. Vendors, ghost book authors and ghost hunting teams who appear on the Sci-Fi, Travel, and Discovery channels will be invited.
Mayo expects some negative feedback from the paranormal-centered ventures he is attempting to get off the ground. But he thinks Murfreesboro is ready for it. And everyone who knows Mayo knows he is.
Business Editor Erin Edgemon can be reached at 869-0812 and at eedgemon@murfreesboropost.com.
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Member Opinions:
By: TSCheredar on 10/15/06
Heh, fun story.
By: heather on 10/15/06
thanks for this story! i'm pretty convinced our house is haunted. something weird happened a couple of weeks ago that i can't get over and back in may, another thing. i'm not frightened at all, just a little creeped out. i think the spirit(s) is/are friendly.
By: acdsrool on 10/16/06
"The ghost of Adelicia Acklen, owner of the mansion from around 1858 to her death in 1988, manifested before them, he said." Wow, she was 130 years old? ;0)
By: mattthepm on 10/17/06
Cool stuff! A Middle Tennessee university referring the name of Acklen...hmmm... I believe they're referring to Belmont University in Nashville.
By: kimapate on 10/17/06
I'm glad someone is doing this in Murfreesboro! I'm looking forward to hearing about more of your encounters!
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