Historic SC house and funeral home turned headquarters for professional ghost seekers. Take a look
Could there be a better home for a woman who runs a paranormal investigation business than a 6,800 square-foot Victorian house that was used as a funeral home for 100 years?
Jennifer VanBoskerck of Raven Paranormal bought the former Smith Brothers Funeral home in December and has begun renovating the dilapidated house and overgrown 2.5 acres in the downtown Marion historic district.
“Daunting and costly” is how she describes it.
Abandoned since 2015, the house has ceilings falling in, rotted staircases, missing or damaged floors and broken windows. The first thing she and her business partner Ken Holden did was spend $60,000 replacing the hurricane-battered roof.
Neglect caused some damage, but most was caused by squatters and just-plain nosy people wanting to walk around a historic and abandoned building. They trashed rooms and left clothing. Some of the embalming tools were taken.
But what VanBoskerck sees are the hidden gems — intricate woodwork, a turret, the original fireplace mantels, Eastlake Victorian locks, eight working fireplaces. It’s listed as historic by the South Carolina Department of Archives.
And then there is the stuff left behind by a business that took care of the after-death needs of generations of Pee Dee families.
The embalming room is in place. An array of available burial suits in picture frames. Women’s clothing in boxes. Victorian era furniture.
And the spirits.
VanBoskerck counts many. There are children — a boy, a girl, an infant — a woman believed to be the “standoffish” first wife of Jesse Holliday, who built the house in 1895. He is of the family known for the Galivants Ferry Stump meeting that began with a Wade Hampton speech in 1876 and remains a must do for Democratic candidates.
VanBoskerck and her associates have experienced drawers opening with no one seemingly around. Holden said unseen spirits have clawed him in the back to get his attention. Four times. Sometimes it was so off putting he just had to leave.
He also has seen a woman in a Victorian-era dress, another wearing more modern clothing and a boy floating outside a window.
VanBoskerck said when she first went into the house, she told the spirits she was the new owner and assured them she knew this was their home. She addresses them like friends. She’s been in this sort of work for decades. Rarely is she frightened.
Several people have died in the house, including one of the funeral directors who had a heart attack outside the embalming room. A man pulled up to the magnolia tree at the back and shot himself. Three people are buried on the property. VanBoskerck has also felt the spirit of a nanny.
The provenance of ownership is not exactly clear. What VanBoskerck does know is Holliday built the house, then a man named Pace opened a funeral home in 1903 but it doesn’t seem he ever owned the house. The Smith family continued the mortuary business in the 1940s and a family named Collins bought it in the 1980s and used it for a funeral home until the mid 1990s.
The next project will be pulling up the old pine floors damaged by rain from a hole in the roof.
VanBoskerck has renamed the property the Holliday House and intends to open it up to other paranormal groups for meetings and investigations. One has already been booked.
There will be historic tours in September, Halloween events such as costume contests, games and a haunted house (with respect to the on-site spirits, she said), Christmas events, and movie nights in the spring.
And a gift shop with T-shirts, flashlights for investigations, sage kits, holy water. Ultimately, she hopes to expand into a metaphysical store with herbs, candles and teas.
She has a gofundme page as well.
All proceeds go to a fund set aside for renovating the house, she said.
“This is my dream,” she said.
