Next Wednesday is Halloween, arguably the most frightening of the holidays observed around the world.
By coincidence, one of Mississippi’s greatest storytellers and ghost hunters, Walt Grayson was the guest speaker at Tuesday night’s Inverness Chamber Banquet.
Grayson told a number of stories during his keynote, but he did not talk about ghosts to the sold-out crowd.
However, Grayson was gracious enough with his time afterward to sit down with me and relate a few ghost stories and some of the more spooky things that have happened to him in his travels.
A native of Greenville, Grayson told me that he did not have any particular paranormal encounter as a child.
“Growing up in a Baptist family, ghosts are very confusing, because on the one hand, your mother would tell you there’s no such thing as a ghost, and on the other hand, she would say, ‘The Holy Ghost is going to get you,’” he quipped.
For 34 years, Grayson has been a fixture on WLBT Channel 3 in Jackson and Mississippi Public Broadcasting, hosting shows like Look Around Mississippi.
His over three-decade run at WLBT ended this week, but he was delighted to take the same concept to rival station WJTV 12, where he will be doing features and lifestyles stories.
I grew up watching Look Around Mississippi, and my favorite episodes were always the ghost stories, particularly the Civil War ghost stories from places like Grand Gulf and Vicksburg.
“I think I’m like everybody else,” Grayson said. “I’d like to see a ghost. Until I’m in a haunted house at midnight, then I don’t want to see it right then.”
Grayson has told the ghost stories of dozens around the state, and he has toured the spooky rumored dwellings of these spirits.
But this week, he opened up about a few of his own experiences with the other worldly, and quite a few of those tales originated right here in the Delta, and many occurred with his wife, Jo.
The Susie B. Law House, Lake Village, Ark.
Grayson said he and Jo were staying on the Susie B. Law House property with a group of ghostbusters one night, and he had an experience that might be explained by the wind, but it could also have been an encounter with the unknown.
“The leader of the group was shouting at the ghost, ‘Make yourself known, show yourself, throw something at me, I dare you, make a noise,’” Grayson said. “I was over by my camera going it’s okay, you don’t have to do that.
“About that time, a door slammed in the bedroom, and there was nobody in there. It wasn’t just an accidental. It was a wham!
“I found out the difference between me and professional ghost hunters. They went in there.
“I would have been down the stairs and gone, but I figured, if they went in there, I’ve got to go in there too. I took my camera in, and the bathroom door was still swinging just a little bit, and I asked them, is that the door that slammed, and they said ‘yep.’
“I said, they hollered at the ghost, I can holler at the ghost. I said, if you want to be on television, you better do something spectacular. That door swung open, sat there for about five seconds and went wham! I told them, I’m going to leave, I’ll see y’all later.”
A Pennsylvania
Boarding House
Grayson and Jo were visiting the parents of a close friend in Pennsylvania, when they encountered some unsettling noises.
“Jo and I were about to go to bed one night, and we walked across the living room floor, but we stopped for some reason at the (bottom of the stairs), but the footsteps kept going up the stairs. And that night, in our room, it sounded like a lady wearing a bunch of petticoats or something swishing around. Jo woke up screaming…It scared me so bad, I couldn’t’ scream.”
Strange Sounds
Grayson told another tale about filming a haunted house in Mississippi. He was with his producer, who was being shown around the property by a local citizen.
Grayson said he was inside, and he kept hearing the sound of the floor squeak above him, along with muffled talking.
He figured it was the producer and the guide, but he came to a window and saw they were outside talking.
“I said, if you guys are outside, then who is that inside?” Grayson said.
On Strange
Encounters
“The thing about a ghost experience is that you’ll experience something at the time and you’ll swear that it must have been a ghost, and then later, you get to thinking about it, and you say, maybe it wasn’t what I thought it was,” he said. “I can’t say I’ve ever seen a ghost or any kind of manifestation of a ghost when I go out on these ghost hunts, but although I haven’t seen one, when I go with these groups, all of the ghost hunters have seen them.”
Fortunately, Grayson’s attempts to connect with the other world will continue. It’s a new station, but it’s the same old Mississippi.
