St. Elmo author Mark Fults shows off the second edition of “Chattanooga Chills,” a book of local ghost stories for sale at Barnes & Noble and amazon.com.Green Eyes. The guest who never left the Read House’s Room 311. Soddy-Daisy’s Black Track ghost.
These local legends and many more are the subject of “Chattanooga Chills,” a book recently re-released by St. Elmo resident Mark Fults just in time for Halloween.
“I’ve always loved a good ghost story,” he said. “People started telling ghost stories at Christmastime because of Dickens and I just got hooked as a kid. You find a lot of history, a lot of mystery and a lot you didn’t know about your city in these stories.”
In his book, which is available for sale at Barnes & Noble and amazon.com, Fults details local and regional legends alongside his own paranormal experiences, excerpts from local newspapers and even a few recipes for cleansing a building of unhealthy energy.
“I just think it’s fun and a lot of people will be surprised at how many stories come out of Chattanooga,” he said. “There’s a lot of old stories I found about witchcraft and voodooism in the 1800s. There was a whole lot of it here in the Bible Belt after the Civil War, especially in black communities.”
When he’s not writing ghost stories into books, Fults can often be found chasing them down. A self-taught psychic and trance medium, he works with paranormal investigation group Hunting the Unknown Truth. Fults is also working on a second book of ghost stories that includes more of his own personal experiences.
“Spirits are energy,” he said, referencing his experiences, particularly with exorcisms. “I go in and deal with them as energy and change the energy locks and reinstate the perimeters. They’re energy so they relate to energy.”