We’ve done many stories here at The Occult Section on the dangers of trespassing in the name of ghost hunting, and many of these stories deal with the ghost hunters getting hurt accidentally, and sometimes even killed. But after reading this story, it’s apparent there is a new danger to ghost hunters everywhere: gun nuts.
"Trespassin' is illegal, disrespectful and a minor annoyance! Now stop or I'll blow your brains out!"
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Police have accused a high school teacher of holding teenagers at gunpoint after he found them ghost-hunting in a Tennessee graveyard.
The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office says deputies went to Shipley Cemetery, outside of Chattanooga, on Saturday night after a complaint of shots fired.
Police say they confiscated an assault rifle from 45-year-old Stacey Swallows.
Several teens, ages 16-19, told deputies they had gone to the cemetery after reading an online ghost story about it. They say as they were leaving, Swallows blocked the road with his vehicle, pointed the rifle at them and told them to stay until police arrived.
Swallows teaches diesel mechanics at Sequoyah High School in nearby Soddy-Daisy. He was being held on $180,000 bond Monday, charged with nine counts each of aggravated assault and false imprisonment.
I’m not even really sure where to start with this one. Kids have been going to cemeteries since the invention of cemeteries, especially in the months leading up to Halloween. The media likes to label anyone looking for ghosts these days as “ghost hunters” and “trespassers,” even though 10 years ago it was just “kids being kids.” I’m also not sure why this guy, who is a teacher and deals with kids all the time, felt it was necessary to detain these kids with an assault rifle. And if police were responding to shots fired, then this guy probably, at the very least, fired a shot into the air to scare the kids. If they were on his property, then maybe he’d have a case. But the cemetery was not his property. So what gives him the right to be judge, jury and (almost) executioner? If he suspected something was amiss with these kids, all he had to do was call the police. Confronting them with a deadly weapon is the height or irresponsibility.
