New Death in the Cemetery

Cemeteries are filled with ghosts.  Almost every large and historic cemetery has a ghost story or two tucked beneath the tomb stones.   Even small cemeteries tell stories.   I have been to large and small cemeteries and chased ghosts in large cities and in the country.   I  love cemeteries and I love the stories they tell.  I have spent a lot of time with the old cemeteries and old tombstones, but today I went to a small cemetery that merged new with old.   Although the old graves whispered of secret histories which usually call to me, today I found myself deeply touched by the new graves in this little cemetery.  While the old stones were forgotten, over grown, and so worn down the names were hard to discern, the new graves were beautiful and as lovingly tended as the most elaborate garden.  They told stories of human emotion.   Today I found graves covered with gardens and decorated with toys.  I found them topped with fairies and situated amidst gardens of wind chimes that sang in the wind whispering of fresh sorrow.  I always believe that, at least in part, the search for ghosts is a quest to explain death.   It is a quest to make death somehow more bearable and more understandable.  These graves reminded me that behind every ghost story there is the sorrow of loss.

Email from Zaira

Dear You Law Firm Name Here,

Thank you so much for your email. Its always very hard to be able to ascertain when best to call from here, we are 1300hrs EST ahead of you and this is a big barrier toward achieving a successful conference call. If it may pleased you to know, in my humbly suggest we communicate via email while I figure out when best to reach on phone due the course of this representation.

My Husband and I had an out of court agreement (Settlement Agreement) for him to pay $950,500.00 plus legal fees. He has only paid me $251,500.00 since; I am hereby seeking your firm’s assistance in collecting the balance from him. He has agreed to pay me the balance but it is my belief that a Law firm like yours is needed to help me collect/enforce payment from my ex-husband Allen Hoshiko or litigate this matter if he fails to pay as promised,My ex lives in your jurisdiction.

I still reinstates my appear to have your firm collect these owned funds on my behalf instead of having him pay directly to me which I am very sure he will not, as I have made several efforts to collect these funds and all yielded no result.

I will be pleased to provide further information on this matter on request. I expect this to be a non-litigation matter as I have already notified him in enforcing your firm service. Please send me your retainer service agreement fee so I can have a preview and execute.


Please find attached

Best Regards
Ms Zaira Hoshiko

Lawyer for James

Vin Yag Enterprises-Hong Kong.
Nam Wo Hing Building,
148 street, Sheung Wan,
Hong Kong.


Att: Counselor,

I greet you most respectfully.

I am James Saito. I am a businessman and owner of the above
named company from Asia and who apparently conducts his
business in quietier ways.

I come to you with a business matter that is unsettling my mind
alot and with a view of seeking your assistance.

I have some uncollected funds in the North America (USA)
arising from some business transactions carried out last year.

I want you/your law office to collect these funds from these
debtors/customers for a commission, and as well follow up with
these accounts.


Upon acknowledgement of your interest, I will furnish you with
more details.

Thank you.

Yours faithfully,
James Saito.
For:Vin Yag Enterprises-Hong Kong.

The Ghost of Founders Hall

Founders Hall is the tallest building in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Its lean form towers over the city in classic elegance.  It is home to the Bank of America Corporate Center.  It is also home to a small mall and various shops.  It is the city center.   The floors are marble and frescoes decorated the walls.  The atrium is vaulted and the last thing you would normally associate with a building like this is ghosts.

Founders Hall wasn't always what it is today.   Once, a medical school stood where the tall, modern building now stands.   Sometime in the late 1800's the body of a young girl was stolen from a grave near Salisbury, North Carolina.   The grave robbers took her body when it was still fresh.  This was a common practice in the late 1800s as medical schools paid top dollar for cadavers for dissection and study.  The famous serial killer, H.H. Holmes , used to sell the bodies of his victims to medical schools.  

After the girl's body was stolen and sold to the medical school, people began seeing the ghost of a young girl wandering around the medical school.   She wasn't a happy ghost and would often be seen screaming. 
According to legend, the girl told her woeful story to some people.   The people were so disturbed by the girl's ghost and her story that they went to the police.  The police actually acted on this information and recovered what was left of her body and returned it to her grave.  However,  her ghost still roams the halls of Founder's Hall bemoaning what was done to her body.  Witnesses to this haunting say that doors open and close on their own and loud noises can be heard throughout the building.

The Ghosts of Gimghoul Castle

The ghost of Gimghoul Castle doesn't actually belong to the castle itself.  In fact, the ghost was there long before the castle. The ghost belongs to a bloodstained rock.  According to legend,  Peter Dromsgoole died and was buried beneath this bloody rock and his ghost still haunts it to this day.

Peter Dromsgoole went to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1831.  Like many young college students, he met and fell in love with a beautiful young woman at school.  The woman's name was Fanny and the two young lovers were inseparable.  Sadly, Fanny had another admirer.  Her beauty was well known and another man decided that Fanny should be his.  Peter's rival challenged him to a duel for Fanny's hand in marriage and Peter accepted this challenge.

They chose the spot for the duel on top of  Piney Prospect.  This was a hill not far from the University.  The two met at dusk and shots were fired.  Peter Dromgoole was shot and fell on the rock on top of Piney Prospect.  His blood seeped into the stone and has never left.    Murder was a crime, even then, so Peter's rival decided to quickly cover up his treacherous act.  He buried Peter beneath the blood soaked rock and made up a story about Peter running away to join the Army.

Fanny never believed the lies.  According to legend, Fanny saw Peter's ghost atop Piney Prospect and would go there ever day to wait for her phantom lover.  She sat there so long that she finally went mad and died on the rock beside her love leaving her ghost behind.   Peter's killer confessed to his murder on his death bed sixty years later.

Gimghoul Castle was built beside the bloody rock on Piney Prospect in 1926.   The castle is a place of mystery and shadow. It is the house of a secret society that originally named themselves after the infamous Peter Dromgoole.  The founders of this organization believed Peter to be the embodiment of Arthurian ideals of chivalry.  They later changed their name to the Order of Gimghoul in "accordance to midnight graves and weirdness.".  The castle is a dark and mysterious looking place and the ghost stories have bled over to include the castle as haunted.  However, by most accounts,  the ghosts of Peter and Fanny have always been seen on the bloody rock waiting for each other in the dark.

The River of Blood

Chickamauga Battlefield just South of Chattanooga is one of the most haunted battlefields in the world.   In the United States, it is second only to Gettysburg.   I have begun researching Chickamauga for my new History Press book, Haunted Chattanooga, and what is most interesting about Chickamauga is that it seems to have been haunted long before the first shots of  The Battle of Chickamauga were fired.   The Battle of Chickamauga was a bloody affair killing 35,000 men and leaving the ground littered with corpses and the air filled with the scent of decay for months to come.  Yet even before this, Chickamauga was linked to darkness, death, and demons.

Chickamauga was named for the Chickamauga River that runs through the battlefield.  This river was named by the Cherokee people who were in the area long before the white man set foot there.   Although the exact translation of the word Chickamauga is often disputed, it is widely believed that Chickamauga is upper Cherokee for "The River of Blood."    It is believed that the Cherokee people named Chickamauga the River of blood because after the white man came they brought disease with them.   Small Pox decimated the native population.  It killed more natives than any guns and it is said that the Cherokee people who were infected with small pox went to the river to die.   They named the river the river of blood because so many people died there.   So death clings to Chickamauga like a wet cloth and the ghosts of the battlefield are so many they can't even be listed.

One of the most famous things that haunts the battlefield is thought to be older than even the natives.   Old Green Eyes has been seen by innumerable visitors to the battlefield and his legend is well known throughout the Southeast.  Old Green Eyes is a demon like creature with green eyes and sharp teeth.  He has long claws and an almost human aspect about him.  There is much debate over what Old Green Eyes is.  Many believe he is a demon.  Others say he is an elemental being of some kind. After the battle of Chickamauga, he was seen in the tall grass on Snoddgrass Hill feeding off the dead.   The living still see him watching from the shadows with his glowing green eyes.

How Valentine's Day Began with Dead Goats and Naked Ladies

A friend of mine sent me a wonderful article on the origins of Valentine's Day on NPR.   This article filled me with so much wicked happiness I had to blog about it.  I know it is slightly off topic, but naked people being flogged with animal hides is worth discussing in any forum.  Apparently the ancient roots of Valentine's Day begins with the Romans.   The Romans celebrated Lupercalia from Feb. 13 to 15. In Roman mythology Lupercus was the equivalent of the Greek god Pan who was known to be a sexy sort of fellow who promoted fertility.  His holiday was a somewhat romantic kind of celebration.  During Lupercalia the men would sacrifice a goat and a dog and then whip women with the hides of the dead animals.  The women would line up naked in order to be whipped.  They did this because they believed this ritual would make them more fertile.   Afterwards, there would be lottery in which men and women would be paired up for a night of naked fun. 


I know, you are now wishing we still celebrated Valentine's day this way.  Enough with the cheesy cards.  Where are the dead animals, whippings, and naked people?  It was the Catholic Church that ruined the fun.   Emperor Claudius II killed two Valentine's in different years of February 14th.  Both men were martyred and the day derives its name from these two martyred saints.   In the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I got confused and merged the two martyrs into one person and named February 14th after them.  He also absorbed the romantic traditions of Lupercalia into the day in order to soften the pagan debauchery and retake the day for Christianity.  Christianity has a long history of doing this type of thing.  Christmas was taken from Roman Saturnalia traditions and Norse Yule traditions.  By absorbing pagan holidays rather than forbidding them, ancient Christians were able to gain new followers rather than lose them. 

Chaucer and Shakespeare can be credited with further romanticizing St. Valentine's day and turning it into the romantic, kissy holiday it is today, but  I will always think back to better days when women ran naked through the streets being beaten with dead animals.