Norcross may have been the setting for the 1984 redneck zombie movie “Mutant,” but the city today is allegedly full of more gentle supernatural creatures.
Before it was a hot spot for paranormal activity, Norcross was a summer escape for Atlantans traveling on the Airline Belle railroad to the Brunswick Hotel, built in 1870 and torn down after World War II.
“Psychics tell us it’s a spiritually cheerful town because it was a resort destination,” said Sally Toole, producer of the Norcross Ghost Tour. Toole has resurrected the fall tour for summer crowds. “A lot of rich folks came to Norcross from the 1880s to the 1920s and that’s the period-dress psychics see here most.”
Kim Brame started the ghost tours in 2007 but turned them over to Toole recently after Brame moved out of state.
Toole’s personal interest in Norcross history (which has produced two books, “Remembering Norcross: Nuggets of Nostalgia” and “Souls of Norcross”) has helped her build the momentum and scope of the tours to incorporate not just more history, but also paranormal investigations.
“We started with no actual guides and regional stories because at that time there were no stories known to anyone outside of the old-timers in Norcross,” Brame said. “After that first year, people started to sit us down and tell us about things they knew. We took those stories and added them to [Toole’s] research for season two. By year three, the ghost hunters had shown up.”
Toole says local psychics join the Norcross Ghost Tours about four times per year, and can be called in if a tour group makes a special request. The teenage set, Toole said, especially enjoy the gadgets and meters some of the specialists, like local paranormal investigator Will Aymerich, a co-author of “Souls,” can pull out to detect the presence of other-worldly presences while visitors stroll through town at twilight.
It doesn’t matter if Toole has to skirt her tours around movies in Thrasher Park, or downtown food and music festivals because she can stand in front of nearly any building downtown and “talk for days” about its history and possible supernatural activity.
Summer ghost tours can be arranged by appointment for groups. But Toole decided to open the tours up to passers-by on Peachtree Street in downtown Norcross following a successful Friday the 13th event in May.
“I’d just get into costume and say, ‘meet me at the 45,' to guests who book tours with me, but I was starting to pick up more people just hanging around downtown looking for something to do.”
Toole is offering new material for the summer tour, as well as a new character she’s impersonating called “Miss Winnie Sue Simpson,” a popular Norcross surname. The characterization will segue into a true story about two Simpson moonshiners who were shot and killed by the Duluth sheriff around 1919. She even shares the moonshine recipe.
“Eighty percent is factual, true history,” Toole said. “It’s not just the same ghost stories you hear wherever you go. We actually tell you the story of our town.”
Sally Toole takes walk-up visitors and reservations for the Norcross Ghost Tours that depart 45 South Cafe, 45 South Peachtree Street, Norcross, at 8 p.m. Saturdays through September. www.scareyalater.com.
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