You can now own a “haunted guitar” for the devilish price $666. What exactly makes an instrument haunted? I would have assumed it could only play Nickelback songs. But this guitar’s “history” is far more sinister and fiendish. It involves a mysterious death, whispers of Satan worship, and unexplained twangs heard in the middle of the night. But what really makes it evil is the absurd story being told about it.
Reverb currently has a listing (which we first heard about at Boing Boing) for a “Haunted Paranormal Ghost Guitar.” It’s for sale from the American Vintage & Boutique Music Emporium out of New Lebanon, Ohio. The unnamed seller claims it once belonged to a kid who lived on his street. Rumors tie this young to “devil worship, seances, Aleister Crowley, Black Magic, and other dark endeavors of the Spirit World.”
From the listing:
“I later learned that this neophyte necromancer was born in June of ’66, and died tragically on Halloween, October 31, 1979, when he was just thirteen years old. (His death has never been solved, but the calamitous kid was found lying on his bed with THIS GUITAR draped across him, apparently electrocuted, even though this is an acoustic guitar! Additionally, when the damnable corpse of this soulless stooge of Satan was eventually discovered, a 45 record of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” was playing repeatedly on the Mephistophelean moppet’s GE Wildcat record changer!!”
Reverb/American Vintage & Boutique Music Emporium
The owner says that, years later, the boy’s mother, who he describes as also being “a propagating practitioner of the Pagan arts,” gave him the very same guitar, which has no listed brand or model name. That’s when the actual “haunted paranormal ghost” part started. They claim to sometimes hear “the strings discordantly ring out” by itself. On three occasions they say the guitar found its way from the closet to his bed, despite living alone. And “the final straw occurred” when they saw “the guitar levitate out of the trash can I had somberly placed it in.”
Look, maybe this person really believes all this. There are certainly strange events that seem to defy logic or explanation. So I won’t call them an opportunistic liar. Nor will I say they concocted an elaborate ruse to sell a worthless old guitar to a gullible patron. All I’m saying is it’s more likely the actual Devil went down to Georgia looking for a soul to steal.
Forget a haunted guitar. They should have listed a haunted fiddle instead.