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The Harp Twins Halloween Savannah Show!

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“O passing angel, speed me with a song, a melody of heaven to reach my heart and rouse me to the race and make me strong. ” — Christina Rossetti

Camille & Kennerly, aka, The Harp Twins

The Harp Twins Halloween Concert hosted by Shannon Scott Tours & Events – October 31st, 7:30 to 9:30PM
@ The Bonaventure Funeral Home in Savannah, Georgia!
https://www.brownpapertickets.com
Search “Harp Twins Halloween.”

I grew up playing a Baldwin piano in our living room under the watch of my mother and in my child’s mind, I always saw the heart of every piano as a harp on its own side. Like only angels could really play harps but the piano was still touching or being permitted to touch divinity. Every now and then I would cheat and pluck the beautiful tightly wound metal strings under the piano lid. Not for very long as it irritated mom and she’d scold that it wasn’t good for the tuning but I’d continue to sneak the occasional strum as I loved hearing it vibrate through the belly of the piano. Once in a moon, a traveling harp player would perform at our church or I’d catch one featured in a symphony night, but other than listening to some harp music on CD it remained a rarity. A life highlight was getting to hear and speak to Yolanda Kondonassis https://www.yolandaharp.com/ in Savannah but that was some 20 years back.

When one thinks of being close to divinity, a Victorian cemetery acting as a reflection of Eden with harp & lyre symbols and many angel statues is a visual symphony unto itself. One might even be more inclined to say that one can actually hear harps playing. Not a bad thing and if the reader must know, I often privately imagine such sounds along with great horns and chorus. 

Its a relatively fair assessment to say we imagine angels as perhaps golden-haired winged beings. And often they are depicted with lyres classically as they’re a bit more mobile while in flight really. Just ask any angel. Revelations Chapter 5 speaks of  “Four angels, along with 24 elders, each hold a harp and a golden bowl full of incense to represent people’s prayers as they praise Jesus Christ.”

Angels Entertaining The Holy Child by Marianne Stokes

Artists & they’re religious influencers it would seem have always tried to use art to make religion more palatable. Cherubs or Cherubim were originally hideous creatures guarding the gates of Paradise or Heaven. Artists made them into fat babies with wings. Angels were “messengers” but depending on which text one is reading, they were up to good or no good and at times, sending mixed messages. They all seemed to get friendlier during The Renaissance and more overall “golden” in their works as time went by. Victorian sculptors did their look a huge favor by humanizing & feminizing them in the 19th-century cemetery landscapes to make them seem more relatable and to make the statement that “women were the angels of our lives.” For centuries angels had been depicted as sexless and emotionless as those are earthly qualities and such celestial beings had no purpose inside of such mortal characteristics or behaviors. Now, or at least in The Victorian Age, it was all about bridging the distance between earthly and heavenly dimensions. 

Hey, I’ll bite. I’m all for love, beauty, knowledge & harp music.

Which is why a couple of years or so back when I was perusing YouTube and caught sight of these 2 angelic creatures strumming what appeared to be gothic space-age Celtic harps with Savannah cemeteries as the backdrop to their version of “Paint It Black, I was more than reeled in by who I would come to learn were The Harp Twins, Camille & Kennerly. It was if some of those weeping angel statues had been commanded to unfreeze and serenade the dead with song– Ah, players after me’ own art. 

Let’s face it, we’re all fascinated by identical twins. It’s even more hypnotic if they’re playing killer music on harps. It’s then thrice as good if they’re also angelic looking but now my obviousness is showing. You get it though. They’re mystical. In fact, when you watch these sisters play, in between admiring their talent, you’re trying to decide the plausibility to them actually being from another world. Yes, they’re just a couple of talented good-natured Mid-Western girls really but I’m not entirely convinced this isn’t just a cover so they don’t get taken to Area 51 for research. Could happen. 

“Intrepid musicians  If you live long enough, you get to hear this (The Harp Twins) version of White Wedding”      —   Billy Idol

Anyway, I knew that I had to kidnap them for at least a show at some point as we were clearly all kindred musical spirits along with being friends in cemeteries and historical ruins. I reached out to them in 2018 and the response very positive but things kept coming up but we all felt it was meant to be at some point. I was beyond thrilled when they mentioned an opportunity for Halloween Night just a few weeks ago! And if you live in Savannah, you know if Halloween falls on a weeknight it can be a struggle to find something really cool to do that’s “different.” Yes, this concert fits the bill and while we can’t have it in Bonaventure Cemetery itself, we think it’s pretty awesome to have it in The Chapel @ The Bonaventure Funeral Home just up the street from the hallowed grounds. The Harp Twins promise to share some previously unheard, Halloween inspired music and of course, the rock classics they’re known for by Metallica, The Rolling Stones, Megadeth, B.O.C., Iron Maiden, Billy Idol and others! Its my honor to bring them to you so don’t miss out as tickets are extremely limited! 

 

 

 

The House That Scared Me Most – Part One

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“Is there a house where something scared you?”

As simple and perhaps as obvious as it is? It’s a good question. Especially when getting asked on a daytime cemetery or evening cemetery tour. Anymore I get asked this question or some variety of it by tourists who both have a keen interest in such subjects but who have undoubtedly read up a little on my background. For the record, I’ve conducted more ghost tours than any other figure in Savannah and I don’t mind saying that aloud as in my heyday of doing them, I took the craft to an entirely new level by creating different ghost tours and inside of neighborhoods previously not toured that way. We’re talking many thousands of tours between 1995 and 2012. I’ve also lived in one 1850s haunted Savannah home and have had unexpected psychical experiences in a few others without actively seeking them out. Which is what I try to remind people when I discuss the subject of hauntings. As I used to tell crowds, “I walk into a building the same way you do, through the front door.” 

There was a day in my early life in Savannah, late 1980s & early 1990s, when there were no ghost tours. The many vacant buildings and eerily empty streets haunted Savannah on the precipice of the coming Tourist Boom. There was talk of ghosts yes, but no dedicated tours. Such spectral conversations had a sort of salon-quality around the dinner tables of the old Savannah-guard set. The 1980’s classic by Margaret Wayt DeBolt, “Savannah Spectres,” was mentioned on occasion like an odd cousin but often with a note of respect as a real source. Which it is and to Ms. Debolt’s eternal credit is still a Top 10 seller in most area bookstores. I miss those purist hours really, but after I landed the America’s Most Haunted City award for Savannah in 2002, the ghost tour culture took on a life all of its own that not even I anticipated. So yes, before my brain or the city was rife and saturated with such things, I just wandered around in old buildings as I’d always done since I was a young kid. A past-time that survives in my life to this very day.

Beyond Savannah, having worked for “Scariest Places On Earth,” “Ghost Hunters,” MTV’s “FEAR” and ABC Family’s “Real Scary Stories,” I’ve researched and been inside of my share of haunted hospitals, asylums, castles, monasteries, forts and homes. The whole nine. But that was work and typically I never felt scared in them or by them. TV shoots seem to dilute such things for at least myself. Nothing makes a building less scary than a bunch of monitors, generators, lights, cameras, crew and people talking all of the time.
In my life, I’ve been party to dozens of ghosts hunts, including a weekend at Savannah’s Marshall House the weekend before it officially opened and around the same time, organized the first investigation of The Moon River Brewpub ever conducted by a bona fide scientific organization, The American Institute of Parapsychology. Even so? Other than being fun social events with some interesting people and findings, bringing great attention to Savannah and in some cases, re-energizing businesses, the investigations themselves never much held my attention. I enjoyed it for others but at heart, I’m a solo artist. I like to go into old buildings alone or with one other person, feel them out for themselves without all of the gadgety stuff. I like to let buildings be themselves and reveal what they want to show me. You can’t really do that in mixed company in my opinion. Or in the same way.

PART TWO of “The House That Scared Me Most” Tomorrow!