Blue Ridge Country January/February 2022 - 28

SPIRITS, SURVIVORS AND SONGS
Where a Haunted Mansion
and Rock 'n' Roll Collide
The links, echoes and mysteries tying an old Virginia mountain
mansion to a seminal Southern rock band are too rich to ignore.
Text and photo by JOE TENNIS
H
ow does an 1840s, brick-fortress
mansion in Southwest
Virginia get linked to a classic
and tragic Southern rock band?
The Major Graham Mansion,
in Wythe County, Virginia,
is an imposing brick fortress
built in stages, as early as 1840, and
took its name from Major David Graham,
a Confederate Army officer.
Lynyrd Skynyrd is a major American
rock band with hits including " Sweet
Home Alabama, " " Simple Man " and
" What's Your Name, " and which endured
a 1977 plane crash that killed six, including
29-year-old singer Ronnie Van Zant
and interrupted Lynyrd Skynyrd's career
for a decade.
The coming together of the two begins
with one J.C. Weaver, a Florida businessman
who in 1988 bought the first of lands
that would eventually include more than
4,000 acres. Part of the property was the
Graham Mansion, the centerpiece of a
family fortune fueled by iron furnaces
roaring all over Wythe County.
For decades after the Grahams no longer
owned the land, people reported seeing
shadows around the property and
mysterious faces in the windows of the
remote mansion. People also talked about
Clara, a little-girl ghost who was believed
to have been an orphan cared for by the
Graham family inside the mansion.
Weaver loved the spooky house. While
he did not live in it, he did entertain
friends in the mansion by singing and
playing guitar and piano, much like one
of his musical heroes, Lynyrd Skynyrd.
In 2007, Weaver launched Grahamfest,
28 BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
a music festival that featured a performance
by himself as well as the Roanoke
Symphony Orchestra.
For the 2009 festival, Weaver hired a
Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band called Long
Island Street Survivors, which took its
" Street Survivors " name from the final record
released by the original Lynyrd Skynyrd-just
three days before the band's
plane crashed in a Mississippi swamp in
1977.
On this September night in 2009,
Weaver featured more than just a tribute
band on stage. The musicians also included
two members of the original Lynyrd
Skynyrd that recorded the eerie " Street
Survivors " album.
On a microphone was backup singer
JoJo Billingsley, who, incidentally, had
a foreshadowing dream in October 1977
that the Lynyrd Skynyrd band was going
to face a fatal airplane crash. She was not
on the plane.
On drums was Artimus Pyle-the only
Lynyrd Skynyrd band member physically
able to climb out of the wreckage and seek
help after the plane crashed on October
20, 1977.
Both Billingsley and Pyle walked the
grounds outside the Major Graham Mansion
on that late summer Saturday-she,
the gospel singer who tried to warn her
band of imminent danger; and he, the
drummer who slashed through the swamp
to save his bandmates.
Still, after the final notes of " Sweet
Home Alabama " and " Free Bird " had faded,
this pair would never perform at this
place again. This was to be the final Grahamfest.
And Billingsley died of cancer on
The Major Graham Mansion, in
Wythe County, Virginia, had its
first glory days in the 1840s, soon
after its construction; it took a
strange brand of fandom for a rock
band to bring about its brief and
musical renaissance in the 2000s.
June 24, 2010.
At the Major Graham Mansion, the
era of Grahamfest was over. But the mansion
took a turn toward tantalizing visitors
with a spooky world all its own.
In the fall of 2010, the first installment
of an annual haunted house premiered.
For the next several years, these October
events combined the history of the Graham
clan with props like skulls, spiders
and snakes.
Inside the mansion, kids loved to visit
" Clara's Room, " where they tried to test
the alleged spirit of the orphan girl, seeing
if Clara would roll a ball back to them
across a mansion room floor.
Ghost hunters brought in clairvoyants.
They also recorded strange messages
like " get out " and " I don't play that tune, "
spoken by a ghostly voice.
Another time, an unexplained voice
said, " What's your name. " Was that a
question or a song request?
Just think: " What's Your Name " was
the biggest hit single from " Street Survivors, "
the last album by the original
Lynyrd Skynyrd and the name of the tribute
band featuring original members of
that group at the final Grahamfest.
But, wait-there is still more music at
the spooky Major Graham Mansion.
" The spirits that live in this house are
unbelievable, " Weaver said in 2019. " I
used to play the piano, and there would
be spirits that would hum with me ... "
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