History

E. L. Cravin’s Haunted Parlor: A History/A Speculation Local  historians tell us that Dr. E.L. Cravin gave up private practice  in 1909 and moved to Blackshear, Georgia.  However, no records exist concerning his previous residence.  Shortly after arriving in this quiet, southeast Georgia town,  he founded E.L. Cravin's Funeral Parlor in a prominent  location on Main Street. From all accounts, he was a respected member of the  community and did very well in his new profession  until the summer of 1914 when tragedy struck.  According to the Blackshear Gazette, Cravin lost his wife,  Eleanor age 40, and son, Eddie age 18, in a fire that burned  the funeral parlor to the ground. The historic weekly newspaper  makes no mention of a funeral or memorial service for either  member of the Cravin family, and burial records are nonexistent.   By late October that same year, he had the parlor rebuilt and moved  back in. No one was quite sure why he went to the trouble to  reconstruct the building because he never reopened the funeral  parlor to the public and went as far as bricking in or boarding  up most of the doors and windows. Some speculate he did it to  preserve the remaining memory of his family, and some say he  rebuilt it to keep their ghosts alive.  Over the years,  complaints of loud screams and noises in the middle of the night  were documented, but a thorough investigation was never conducted.  This man who was once a family-oriented, pillar of the community was  now acting very peculiar and withdrawn. Throughout the next couple  of years, most sightings of him occurred at night where he could be  spotted at the back of the parlor meeting a delivery truck or in the  local cemeteries just wandering around. As the years passed,  he seemed to become more and more bitter and distant until he  seemed to have simply vanished.This is where the tale of Mr. Cravin  grows cold and even more bizarre. Decades later, around  the summer of 2008, strange activities started re-occurring at the  mysterious parlor. Citizens and local business owners report seeing  unmarked vans and delivery trucks arriving at odd times.  Passersby tell of screams heard in the middle of the night.  Perhaps, the most puzzling of all is that a full staff of workers  appear to be involved in some sort of ongoing enterprise.But  where did they come from?What are they doing?And where do they  go at night?Experts search for some logical explanation; however,  Blackshear’s oldest residents tend to shy away from the topic of  the parlor and hold on to the tales they heard as children  concerning a mortician who went mad and searched for a way to  keep himself alive and bring back his wife and son who were  tragically taken from him.Surely these old-timers and their  cemetery ramblings are products of over-productive imaginations  and a story which has gotten exaggerated over the years.  This is the stuff of which legends are made.  There must be a simple, reasonable explanation since  relatively recent medical discoveries show that living  humans must be used for harvesting organs.Then again,  that may have something to do with why the new sign reads,  “Visitors Welcome - E.L. Cravin Corp.- Where People are DYING to get in”