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Haunted guitar ?


62burst

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In The Great Strummers thread, Murph mentioned in post #11 that his 1933 A-00 mandolin occasionally put out a ghostly tone that he'd attributed to it's former owner, Scotty Stoneman. As we approach Halloween, it got me thinking about The Guitar, by Guy Clark and Verlon Thompson. For those who haven't seen it yet, and for those who think about their guitar's past lives:

 

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I heard a very weird tale about a haunted Kalamazoo archtop (KG21) that an acquaintance bought in the US. It has belonged to a blues player from New Orleans, who had died and his effects were being auctioned off at an estate auction.

 

The guy bought the guitar and found a mojo hand in the case, and a rattlesnake tail in the guitar itself, both of which he disposed of, and found the guitar a rather ornery thing that would only really sing in open D when played with a slide. The night after he bought it, his wife woke him up in the early hours and said “someone is in the house playing guitar”, after originally waking up cross that her husband was up at some unearthly hour playing, but finding him asleep next to her.

 

He went downstairs and found the guitar still on its stand, with the strings ringing. He put it in its case and went back to bed, figuring maybe a draught from an open window disturbed it and set the strings ringing. An hour later, his wife woke him up again, and said she could still hear guitar playing...he went downstairs and found the guitar in its shut crocodile case droning away in open D, ringing loudly and not stopping or fading out.

 

By this point he was rather disturbed by the experience and took to the strings with a side cutter, snipping them all in two, and the next day went to his nearest Guitar Center and traded it for something else. A really weird tale but one I’ve heard from the horse’s mouth. Definitely something odd at play.

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Well, we had a troubadour here in the neighborhood, who played the local bars and did that for ages. Lived a bit hard and sadly he passed away too early. I spoke with him once in a while and one day he revealed why he always used capo. He claimed the old model he had was made of gold and that it not only made him play better, but the guitar sound like gold too. Having heard stranger things from fellow musicians, I kind of accepted that, but never gave it much thought.

 

Now when he perished his brother was kind enough to give me this capo. I honestly don't think he knew or believed it was made of precious metal. Neither did I and first said no thanx. But after second thoughts I decided to receive and keep it in a wooden box with shining black plush inside.

 

All fine, , , until one night when my girlfriend woke me up saying : E-minor, I'm sure I heard a cliiing. "It must have been the clock", I replied, but she insisted. Finally I got out of bed and there in the other room I saw the golden capo placed on the third fret on my 1965 Country Western. Still a vague high G rang in the air. What ! , , , I gently removed the device and carefully put it back in the box.

A few days later the same thing happened, only this time the capo had found way to the 8th fret of my Dove. This went on through the long dark winter; first fret of my Hummingbird (kind of weird choice), 5th fret of the Martin HD-28V etc. etc. And every time I patiently stood up, took the thing off and brought back where it belonged – the little fine oak-shrine.

 

Then after 5 months my girlfriend, who by the way got so used to the ritual that she began to react in sleep, suddenly woke again and claimed,

"I'm sure I heard a dry clack-sound this time." A dry clack-sound ?!? Okaayyyy, , , up I went and now to my utter surprise saw the capodastro clamped to the broom. Alrite, that freaked me out.

Within 20 seconds I threw the broomstick including the capo over the balcony-rail, , , but for some flabbergasting reason never heard it land. Oooh, what would be the next, , , I began to worry, , , until I luckily forgot.

Then one beautiful day in May when all the leaves had just bloomed, we got the tragic news. Mister Janson's canary down on the first floor had been strangled late last night by a strange golden tool no one could say what was. O lords. .

 

Admit I kept my mouth shut, , , simply couldn't bear to share what I knew. Devastating. And yes, yes, of course it filled me with shame and guilt - but then again in the big picture I felt so innocent.

 

A total mess, , , which didn't get under control until I finally wrote a song about it, which actually charged big time and allowed me to move to another part of town. Pheeew, , , just thinking of all this makes me sweat again. Shouldn't be hard to see why.

If I still have the wooden box. No, gave it to mister Janson so he could use it as a coffin for his sweet yellow flier. Quite certain he did. .

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i was recently commissioned by a ghost to write a song entitled " i aint got no body"

Oh, a wise guy, eh?

 

 

I thought this was going to be a thread about all the prevalent pumpkin hue aging toner...

Sigh.

That would probably be found over at the UMGF. Plenty of instant pumpkin'ed M guitars that could be decorated as jack o' lanterns.

 

. . . And to the yarn-spinning tale tellers Jinder and Emin7- for some reason, as a guitar person, I find it quite easy for suspension of disbelief to occur to enjoy the tale.

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I brought Scotty's mandolin into a 110+ year old haunted house. When we bought the house there were many stories, and it was vacant for well over 20 years. We never had any canary murders that I know of. Just slamming doors, lights flickering, strange sounds, my wife's antique books would re-locate.

 

Stuff like that.

 

Oh, and my 5 year old daughter met an invisible friend who lived here when we moved in.

 

As I re-modeled and repaired things and after we bought the mandolin, the strange things happened less and less. Now they are quite rare, but we're pretty much used to it and they've never tried to harm us.

 

Yet....

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I wish I had a dollar for every guitar I have run across supposedly played by a now long dead musician in the south.

 

Back when I used to hang around my favorite little music shop though you could on occasion hear what sounded like a very faint strumming coming from a guitar or two hanging on the wall. Turned out it was just the air handlers kicking on which moved enough air to get the lighter built guitars to vibrate just enough to hear something coming out of them

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