Return to Shackelford Corner

Shackelford Corner is a quaint Queen Anne style home in Mt. Pleasant, Tennessee. It is also a house with a long history of disturbing events that have happened within its walls. The house itself was built in 1905 by the Shackelford family, who controlled most of the concrete industry in the area. As a result, the family was responsible for a great deal of the construction projects in the region, and they employed a large number of African-American workers during that time period (early 1900's). One of the stories told of the family and the house is that one of the daughters of the Shackelford family had an affair with a black worker, the result being a mulatto child. For a prominent family such as the Shackelfords, this would have been a great social scandal, so the child was hidden in an upstairs room in the house for the first three years of his life. The story is told that the embarrassment of this child was so great that the family did not even give him a name. During a party one evening, the child apparently came out of his room from upstairs. Because the boy was supposed to be kept out of sight, he was caught on the stairs and allegedly beaten to death in the process, although it was later claimed the boy died of dysentery.

This was just one of the sad stories of this house.

We went back to this house for a second time on evening of October 8th (having gone previously in the spring) to further investigate some of the strange things that we encountered on our first visit. After a quick sweep of the house, we decided where to put our equipment.

One of the stranger things that happened on our first visit happened in the basement of the house. The basement was once used as an illegal speakeasy in the 20's and 30's, so we were told it was a hotspot for strange occurrences. On our first visit, several of our team members experienced marbles either being dropped or thrown at them. A search of the basement revealed no apparent way these marbles could have been dropped down the stairs without being heard, or rolled down somehow from the ceiling. So, for our second visit, the first thing we did was scour the basement for any possible holes in the ceiling or pipes, or anything that might dropped or roll marbles down into the basement. The floor was also examined to make sure there were no marbles already there. Satisfied that the basement was clear, we placed one of our DVR's down there.

Another area of interest was the front sitting room (the room that was once used as a funeral parlor). A strange toy monkey was sitting near the entrance to the front hallway. This monkey (pictured below). . .. . .was one of those old "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" monkeys whose hands would move up to cover his eyes. In some of our pictures, the monkey's arms were in the "up" position, and in later pictures they would be in the "down" position. Therefore, we placed one of our video cameras focused on the monkey to see if it moved. Below is a picture of the monkey with his arms in the "down position"

We had several instances of televisions turning themselves on and off in the house, the first time happening when we immediately walked in. One of the televisions that switched on was in the master bedroom, the other one was upstairs in the the boys' bedrooms. In order to avoid the risk of the upstairs television being turned on remotely, we made sure the infrared remote sensor was unplugged from the wall (this is important). We placed DVR's in the crawlspace of the house, upstairs in the boys' bedrooms, and of course, down in the basement. We also had a DVR we carried around with us to catch E.V.P.'s as we traveled around the house.

We decided to go inside the house in pairs of two (there were six of us) while the others waited outside on the front porch. This was done to avoid contaminating the recordings inside with a lot of ambient noises as people moved around the house.

Each team went in for about 30 to 45 minutes apiece. We had two women in our group and they were paired up. Remarkably, the most interesting things happened to them as they went through the house.

About 9:45 in the evening, the team of two women was inside the house. They had gone down into the basement. We had gone in after to check on one of the video cameras when we heard them calling for us from downstairs. We came down there stairs and were immediately told to watch our steps and stay close to the stairs. It was immediately apparent that something strange had happened and the two women were agitated. The lights had stayed on in the basement while the women were down there. They told us what happened.

They were away from the stairs near the side door of the basement that led outside. A loud noise was heard of something falling, and when they turned around, there were three objects on the floor, two buckeyes and a large marble. The objects were arranged almost in an exact straight line almost equal distance from each other. The objects did not bounce (as would have been evidenced by the DVR recording we had in the basement) nor did they roll. It was literally as if someone had placed them in a straight line on the floor. We called the other team members down to see the objects. The owner of the house said that it looked as if they were pointing to something (maybe the well beneath the house). If you look at the picture below, you can see the objects circled with arrows pointed at them and see how they are lined up.
We tested out the sound the objects would have made if they were dropped. They all made a distinct sound and would have bounced or rolled if dropped. So how did they get there? The lights were on, but the women did not see the buckeyes and the marble until after they were on the floor. While we were all in the basement pondering the mystery of the marbles, the owner of the house said the thought he felt something near some of us. He reached over to the table and grabbed one of our cameras and snapped a picture. In this photograph shows a weird, white, hand-like "thing" coming down from the ceiling. And, yes, it looks like it's about to drop a marble on the floor because you will be able to see a marble in the photograph.

Another instance happened with the two women upstairs in the boys' bedroom. These bedrooms were not where the mulatto boy died, but two other boys who had died later on in the house. As soon as they women walked into the second boy's room, the television turned itself on and the volume shot way up then turned itself back off. Needless to say, the two women were startled by this. They ran outside to get us and when we went back upstairs with we checked the room. The remote sensor that we had been so careful to unplug had mysteriously been plugged back into the wall. It was unplugged again to see if the television would turn on without it (a side note: the owner of the house was outside with us or around one of us almost the entire night. He never went upstairs the entire night, and all of our team insisted that no one had plugged in that remote sensor). So one of the biggest unsolved questions of the night was how or who plugged it into the wall? We moved the camera away from the monkey (who had decided not to move while the camera was on it, of course) and placed it upstairs to monitor the television.

By now it was drawing towards midnight, and with two very strange occurrences happening, we were curious to what would happen next. Several of us decided to investigate the back of the house near the garage area where a strange squeaking sound was heard by three of us but the source was never located.

When we came back into the house, we were treated to a strange sight. The ceiling light above the kitchen table was swinging wildly (we caught this on video, which will be posted later). Quickly, one of our team ran upstairs to walk around to see if the vibrations of someone walking above could cause the swinging (it didn't). Another strange sight in the kitchen: a lot of the kitchen cabinet doors were wide open. Again, everyone was accounted for, and no one opened any of the cabinets because everyone (even the owner of the house) was with someone else. Some of the cabinets were opened fully, others were just cracked.

Very odd, indeed.

We cannot account for the reasons these things happened. We still have hours of audio recordings to shift through. The owner of the house has had several paranormal groups investigate his house, and each one leaves with new evidence and new stories to tell.