Books by Alan Brown

Ghosts of Mississippi’s Golden Triangle (Haunted America)

by Alan Brown

The Golden Triangle is an institutional hub, but restless spirits of Native Americans, Civil War soldiers and slaves also wander this region. Tales of a mysterious watchman who patrols the railroad tracks between Artesia and Mayhew haunt curious locals. Ed Kuykendall Sr. is rumored to manage Columbus's Princess Theater from beyond the grave. A young girl who died while attempting to free her head from a stair banister is said to still wander the halls of Waverly. Author Alan Brown uncovers the eerie thrills and chills within Mississippi's Golden Triangle.

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Mississippi Legends and Lore (American Legends)

by Alan Brown

The battle for Vicksburg roils still, the outcome of the Union siege undecided as specters reload and carry on. The Pascagoula River sings out in grief, and a three-legged lady stalks a country lane outside Columbus. The Magnolia State is more than antebellum homes, fish camps and the blues. This is a land worthy of its matchless storytellers. Even after being passed back and forth between the Spanish, French and British, the ancient energy of the original inhabitants still reverberates through the region. From forgotten tales of African slaves, once the majority population, to yarns of bloodthirsty backwoodsmen on the Natchez Trace, author Alan Brown goes beyond the bullet points of Mississippi history. The legends often tell a clearer story than anything else.

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Ghost Hunters of the South

by Alan Brown

Southerners are accustomed to hearing stories of a residence, an old hotel, a mansion, or a battlefield being haunted. In Ghost Hunters of the South, Alan Brown shows that ghostlore is no longer enough for some. The forty-four ghost hunting groups he profiles in this book pack cameras, Geiger counters, thermal scanners, oscilloscopes, tape recorders, computers, and dowsing rods to find and record elusive proof of supernatural activity. With candor, the directors and team members reveal the passions and even obsessions that lead them to this expensive, time-consuming, and sometimes dangerous and chilling pursuit of evidence of the spirit realm.

Brown interviews enthusiasts from twelve states―Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Ghost Hunters of the South takes the reader along on exciting and fearful investigations of places such as the Myrtles, St. Francis Inn, Chickamauga Battlefield, Bob Mackey's Music World, Old Talbott Tavern, North Carolina State Capitol, Granberry Opera House, and 17Hundred90 Inn and Restaurant.

Brown participates in some of the investigations to gain a full and objective understanding of teachers, doctors, accountants, housewives, and law enforcement personnel, who devote much of their free time to a quest that many outsiders view with skepticism if not scorn. In fascinating, frightening, and sometimes humorous accounts, Brown highlights the determination of these individuals to answer the question: “What happens to the soul after death?”

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Stories from the Haunted South

by Alan Brown

When Alan Brown published his well-received Haunted Places in the American South, a kind of seance swirled around him. Locals who knew ghost stories began haunting him with ghoulish reports from houses, schools, libraries, sanitariums, inns, battlefields, train depots, radio stations, and bridges. Following these leads, he uncovered even more ghost-ridden southern locales.

In Kentucky's White Hall, the ghost of Cassius Clay's first wife Mary Jane roams the upstairs in a black dress, and the night air smells of candle wax, perfume, and bourbon. The spirit of a boy who died in a tragic accident half a century before plagues Mississippi's Cahill Mansion.

Written in the vein of its successful predecessor, Stories from the Haunted South contains fifty-three accounts from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

Balancing the history with the legends of each supernatural locale, Brown focuses on personal stories of ghostly encounters. From folk archives across the South, Brown also includes nearly forgotten legends, such as the Headless Horseman of Hobkirk. With directions to each place, Stories from the Haunted South will be an important addition to the ghostlore of Dixie.

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Haunted Places in the American South

by Alan Brown

Before Alan Brown wrote Haunted Places in the American South, only the locals knew what was lurking in these locations. Slamming doors, eerie lights, and Confederate soldiers' ghosts kept some folks too scared to talk with outsiders.

Above Peavey Melody Music in Meridian, Mississippi, children may be heard giggling and running down an abandoned hallway that turns icy cold.

At the Jameson Inn in Crestview, Florida, an apparition appears on surveillance tapes after filling the lobby with sweet-smelling cigar smoke.

Seldom told and rarely―if ever―printed stories such as these join tales from haunted inns, mansions, forests, ravines, and prisons to create Haunted Places in the American South.

The book collects ghost stories from fifty-five historically haunted sites in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

Alan Brown gathered these stories from newspapers, magazines, museum directors, archaeologists, hotel managers, and many others who shared their disturbing experiences. Most of these stories have never appeared in book form, and some, such as the haunting of Peavey Melody Music, have never been published at all.

Haunted Places in the American South differs from most other collections of southern ghost stories, for the featured sites include more than just haunted houses. Bridges, forts, governors' mansions, prisons, hotels, woods, theaters, cemeteries, and even a large rock are included as focal points for these tales. The book provides directions to the sites, notes, and a bibliography that will be useful to folklore scholars and to travelers seeking that cold and creepy brush with the supernatural.

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Haunted Natchez (Haunted America)

by Alan Brown

Though a charming, small Mississippi town full of all the southern appeal that Dixie has to offer, there is more to Natchez than its pristine exterior suggests. Much more. Just beneath the unassuming placid gentility of classic southern mansions and estates, ghosts and spirits pervade Natchez. From the old Adams County Jail to the Natchez City Cemetery, spirits from generations past remain in Natchez. Join Alan Brown, experienced Mississippi author and expert on all things haunted, as he surveys the historic haunts of Natcheza town as rich in history as it is in ghostly activity.

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Haunted Vicksburg (Haunted America)

by Alan Brown

Discover the history of Vicksburg, Mississippi through the voices of a society long past and the land long left scarred by war.
Nestled along the mighty Mississippi River, Vicksburg is among Mississippi's most historic towns. The site of one of the most important and brutal battles of the Civil War, it is perhaps ?tting that voices from the past still echo in the humid climes. As the home of beautiful antebellum homesteads, storied wartime quarters and ports essential for the steamers and barges of the river trade, Vicksburg today serves as home to an abundance of spirits from years past. Lurking just beneath Vickburg's scenic beauty, ghostly apparitions from bygone eras continue to haunt this historic community. Join Alan Brown, seasoned Mississippi author and authority on the spirits that haunt the Magnolia State, on a chilling journey through Vicksburg's most historic haunts, uncovering history that refuses to die.

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Haunted Meridian, Mississippi (Haunted America)

by Alan Brown

Meridian once echoed with the high and lonesome sound of early country music pioneer Jimmie Rodgers. With the right ears, that lonely wail may still be heard from the spirits that haunt this historic east Mississippi community. Now, for the first time, Meridian ghost expert and local author, Alan Brown, surveys the city's many sites of ghostly activity and recounts chilling tales of spirits past. From the Gypsy Queen's grave at the Rose Hill Cemetery to the phantom that haunts Stuckey's Bridge, this frightening collection offers adventurous readers a view into a side of Meridian's history that is rarely seen.

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Ghosts along the Mississippi River

by Alan Brown

Some of the nation's most compelling ghost stories owe their origin to “The Father of Waters.” Ghosts along the Mississippi River is the first book-length collection of ghost tales from the small towns and bustling cities that have grown up along its banks. The states represented in this book include Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. Unlike most collections of “true” ghost stories, Ghosts along the Mississippi River draws from the folk traditions of the northern and the southern United States. These tales are populated with Federal and Confederate soldiers, Native Americans, wealthy entrepreneurs, actors, college students, hotel owners, preachers, slaves, and planters. According to some paranormal investigators, the large number of ghost stories from the Mississippi's river towns, and from watery sites all over the world, are proof that large bodies of water are conductors of psychic energy. Granted, no concrete proof exists that there is a definite connection between the river and any actual ghosts or spiritual phenomena. What is indisputable, though, is the fact that the ghost stories included in Ghosts along the Mississippi River are an invaluable record of the values, dreams, fears, and lives of the people who have called the river home.

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Moravagine (New York Review Books Classics)

by Blaise Cendrars, Alan Brown, Paul LaFarge

At once truly appalling and appallingly funny, Blaise Cendrars's Moravagine bears comparison with Naked Lunch—except that it's a lot more entertaining to read. Heir to an immense aristocratic fortune, mental and physical mutant Moravagine is a monster, a man in pursuit of a theorem that will justify his every desire. Released from a hospital for the criminally insane by his starstruck psychiatrist (the narrator of the book), who foresees a companionship in crime that will also be an unprecedented scientific collaboration, Moravagine travels from Moscow to San Antonio to deepest Amazonia, engaged in schemes and scams as, among other things, terrorist, speculator, gold prospector, and pilot. He also enjoys a busy sideline in rape and murder. At last, the two friends return to Europe—just in time for World War I, when "the whole world was doing a Moravagine."

This new edition of Cendrars's underground classic is the first in English to include the author's afterword, "How I Wrote Moravagine."

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Mississippi Scoundrels Murderers, Marauders & Downright Vile Characters

by Alan Brown

Author Alan Brown shines the light on some of worst characters in Mississippi history. Mississippi's nickname--"The Magnolia State"--highlights the region's natural and architectural beauty. However, Mississippi is also home to a rogue's gallery of thieves and murderers, beginning with the nation's first serial killers--the Harpe Brothers--and continuing to the present with Glen Rogers, "The Cross Country Killer." Lurking through Mississippi Scoundrels is a wide variety of scalawags, ranging from the 19th century "hell raisers " in Natchez-under-the-Hill to racist murderers, like Byron De La Beckworth and Samuel Bowers. Readers will also find "bad men" who have morphed into folk heroes, like Rube Burrow--"The King of the Train Robbers"--and Texas Red, Franklin County's African-American outlaw. But this book isn't all about atrocious men. Here you'll encounter vile women such as Ouida Keaton and Ruth Thompson, both of whom committed matricide, and Carolee Biddy, who killed her stepdaughter.

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