The notorious true crime story of a sex party that ended in double murder in the woods of Chattanooga County, Georgia. On December 12th, 1982, Tony West and Avery Brock made a visit to Corpsewood Manor under the pretense of a celebration. Then they brutally murdered their hosts. Dr. Charles Scudder had been a professor of pharmacology at Chicago’s Loyola University before he and his boyfriend Joey Odom moved to Georgia and built their own home in the Chattahoochee National Forest. Scudder had absconded with twelve thousand doses of LSD and had a very particular vision for their “castle in the woods.” It included a “pleasure chamber,” and rumors of Satanism swirled around the two men. Scudder even claimed to have summoned a demon to protect the estate. But when Scudder and Odom welcomed West and Brock into their strange abode, they had no idea the men were armed and dangerous. When the evening of kinky fun turned to a scene of gruesome slaughter, the murders set the stage for a sensational trial that engulfed the sleepy Southern town of Trion in shocking revelations and lurid speculations.

On December 12th, 1982, a strange house in the remote mountains of North West Georgia became a bloody slaughterhouse for two men and their dogs. One of the victims-an accomplished scientist and university professor-experimented with the occult. A self-portrait found at the crime scene appeared to depict the professor gagged with gunshot wounds to his head, exactly as his body was discovered by investigators. Had he gazed into the future and witnessed his own death-or had the painting inspired the murder?The case became a media sensation with allegations of satanic cults, supernatural curses, and mind control experiments. The only thing stranger than the murders themselves was the legal odyssey that followed, resulting in four Supreme Court decisions and revelations that would stun the judicial system.After years of research involving court transcripts, audio recordings, and interviews with the participants in the case-including the murderers themselves-author Daniel Ellis peels back the layers of legend to reveal the truth behind one of the most bizarre true crime cases ever to emerge from the dark Southern woods-Corpsewood: A True Crime Like No Other.

Nestled deep in the north Georgia woodlands are the ruins of an estate appropriately and ironically named Corpsewood. The conservative residents of the small towns nearby all know of the two men who came from Chicago to live among them. When the blood drenched bodies of the men were discovered there not long before Christmas, the whole area is shocked by the heartless, vicious nature of the crime. They can't imagine who among them would commit such cold-blooded murders and they are even more shocked when a pretty teenaged girl comes forward to say that she was an eyewitness and willing to tell what she knows. The victims were two openly gay men, and rumors soon circulated that they were devil-worshippers who experimented with LSD and conducted Satanic rituals on the estate. It was said they participated in wild, sex-filled orgies and even had their own "pleasure palace" built onto their home. The buildings that once stood on the isolated grounds are now only brick remnants, covered in ivy and slowly being absorbed back into the woods, but strange tales persist and those who are brave enough to wander down the rutted dirt road and venture deep into the woods to explore the grounds tell stories of strange curses and hauntings. Even now, some thirty-three years after what happened there, nearly everyone in the area calls the place "the devil worshippers' house." What was the truth of that night? Only four people left alive really know what happened in that prophetically named house in the North Georgia hills, no matter what others might claim. The two murderers, still sitting in prison, have their self-serving stories. The other eyewitness isn't talking. Only one of the eyewitnesses, the former Teresa Lynn Hudgins, is stepping forward again to tell the truth.

In the town of Santa Claus, Georgia, the holiday spirit lived all year round...until Jerry Scott Heidler came to town... In Santa Claus, Georgia, the streets were named Candy Cane Road and December Drive. Christmas was the lifeblood of the people. One terrible night in December 1997, Heidler broke into the home of his former foster family and brutally murdered them. Doug Crandell describes the harrowing incident that changed this one town forever.

In 1929, in a remote county of the Arkansas Ozarks, the gruesome murder of harmonica-playing drifter Connie Franklin and the brutal rape of his teenaged fiancée captured the attention of a nation on the cusp of the Great Depression. National press from coast to coast ran stories of the sensational exploits of night-riding moonshiners, powerful "Barons of the Hills," and a world of feudal oppression in the isolation of the rugged Ozarks. The ensuing arrest of five local men for both crimes and the confusion and superstition surrounding the trial and conviction gave Stone County a dubious and short-lived notoriety. Closely examining how the story and its regional setting were interpreted by the media, Brooks Blevins recounts the gripping events of the murder investigation and trial, where a man claiming to be the murder victim--the "Ghost" of the Ozarks--appeared to testify. Local conditions in Stone County, which had no electricity and only one long-distance telephone line, frustrated the dozen or more reporters who found their way to the rural Ozarks, and the developments following the arrests often prompted reporters' caricatures of the region: accusations of imposture and insanity, revelations of hidden pasts and assumed names, and threats of widespread violence. Locating the past squarely within the major currents of American history, Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South paints a convincing backdrop to a story that, more than 80 years later, remains riddled with mystery.

The author shares a lifelong collection of well-known and obscure ghost stories set in the rich historical landscape of Chattanooga, Tennessee. From Native American burial grounds to the Civil War battlefields, from elegant hotels like the Read House to a lynching on the Walnut Street Bridge, Chattanooga has ghosts, some of whom the author has met personally.

In 1982, Tony West and Avery Brock made a visit to notorious Corpsewood Manor under the pretense of a celebration. They brutally murdered their hosts. Dr. Charles Scudder and companion Joey Odom built the "castle in the woods" in the Trion forest after Scudder left his position as professor at Loyola. He brought with him twelve thousand doses of LSD. Rumors of drug use and Satanism swirled around the two men. Scudder even claimed to have summoned a demon to protect the estate. The murders set the stage for a trial vibrant with local lore. Author Amy Petulla uncovers the curious case that left two men dead and the incredible story still surrounded by controversy, speculation and myth.