I first heard of the “Satanic Six-String” from an episode of Squaring the Strange, a podcast that approaches strange claims from a skeptical point of view. During a segment called “What are you skeptical of this week,” cohost and musician Pascual Romero related a story involving an allegedly haunted guitar that came with a dramatically detailed backstory. This haunted guitar was covered by mainstream media after it was recently purchased by my old buddy, Zak Bagans, for his not-so-haunted museum. I found the story interesting so I decided to take a closer look.

I found the original listing on Reverb.com under the heading “Haunted Paranormal Ghost Guitar.” The description reads in part, “A kid that lived on my street when I was growing up was rumored to be into devil worship, seances, Aleister Crowley, Black Magic, and other dark endeavors of the Spirit World. 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!!” (Merribaker 2018).

The style of the story reminded me of something narrated by the late Vincent Price. The over-the-top, dramatic language and flourishes attest more to the creativity of the seller than the validity of the story and suggest this spooky backstory is likely more fiction than fact. For example, the seller refers to the body of the deceased teenager as the “damnable corpse of this soulless stooge of Satan” (Merribaker 2018). Such a description would be considered by most to be grossly inappropriate, especially given what the seller tells us next: “Years later, I ran into the defunct boy’s mother (herself a propagating practitioner of the Pagan arts), and when I informed her that I was a professional guitarist, she offered me her devilish, daisy-pushin’ son’s git-fiddle” (Merribaker 2018).

The seller goes on to describe some of the paranormal activity surrounding the guitar: “Since I’ve owned this guitar, I’ve heard the strings discordantly ring out, despite no one being near the guitar. Further, on three occasions I put the guitar in my bedroom closet, only to find the guitar on my bed when I returned home (and I live alone!). The final straw occurred when I saw the guitar levitate out of the trash can I had somberly placed it in” (Merribaker 2018). Unfortunately—and predictably—there isn’t any video of the levitating instrument, or any evidence provided besides the description. However, you can listen to the not-so-spooky sounds of the guitar on the track, Leave All Your Cares Behind, on the seller’s YouTube channel (Merribaker 2019).

I did a quick search and found a Newsweek article announcing that “Zak Bagans Buys $666 ‘Satanic Six String’ Haunted Guitar That Supposedly Killed a Teen” (Wynne 2021). The article repeated sections from the listing’s description, as well as some comments from the new owner, plagiarist Zak Bagans. Bagans is quoted saying, “I was really blown away by the story behind the guitar and how the seller got the guitar directly from the boy’s mother. Because of that provenance is why I jumped as fast as I could to buy the guitar” (Wynne 2021).

Bagans’s use of the word provenance is what really caught my attention. He’s telling us that because the guitar came from an unknown mother of her unknown son and was now being sold by a musician, this somehow established good provenance. It’s not, I assure you. Provenance is the chronology of ownership of an item (work of art, original manuscript, etc.) and is a practice that helps to authenticate that item. Records, receipts, and photos/video of the item at a location or within a person’s possession can establish provenance. Historians and researchers are required to do due diligence when authenticating items to be reasonably sure that an item is what it’s claimed to be. One person telling a story about two completely unknown people is not authenticating anything whatsoever.

I thought perhaps Bagans—surely wanting to carefully screen out any inauthentic items from his “haunted museum” displays—had gained additional information from the seller, particularly the identity of the mother and son. I tracked down the seller of the guitar, a professional musician by the name of Eddie Merribaker. After introducing myself and explaining I was looking deeper into the story, I asked for the name of the boy. Merribaker responded, mentioning he was a “very big fan of Skeptical Inquirer” and had been reading it for years. Although he didn’t answer my question about the boy, he directed me to an article about the guitar listing, posted on the AV Club website.

I read through the article and noticed that toward the end, the author asks whether Merribaker thinks the guitar is actually haunted. His response is quite revealing: “It isn’t so much what I believe (or not), but rather what the reader believes that’s important” (McCarter 2021). This quote is very telling, and I think it was meant to be a subtle hint that the story may not be entirely true. By putting emphasis on what the reader believes, he was able to avoid answering the question directly. It is a common practice when one doesn’t want to divulge information they would otherwise prefer to keep quiet.

I followed up with Merribaker, asking again for the name of the mystery (and unknown) boy and/or mother. I also asked if he could provide any links to newspaper articles that covered such a mysterious, unsolved death of a teenager. Because it was said to have occurred on Halloween night, I have no doubt this would have a popular story that could be traced (in fact, I was already searching for the event myself).

As we traded emails, Merribaker initially stated he had no way to contact the mother who gifted him the guitar. Also, he did not wish to reveal the identity of the mother, thus unleashing unwanted notoriety and destroying her privacy. I can understand that, as unsolicited media attention can often be overwhelming to a normally private person. However, Merribaker mentioned something that caught my attention concerning the buyer, which he had not named yet. He stated, “Out of respect for the buyer’s interest, I prefer not to address the ‘facts’ presented in the guitar’s listing. I will say, however, I am a pretty creative guy!” (Merribaker 2021).

Merribaker had placed quotes around the word facts, which I believe was another hint that the guitar’s backstory probably did not contain any actual facts. Coupled with the description of himself being a “pretty creative guy,” I became more confident the backstory was likely an entertaining work of fiction. However, because he had not come straight out and admitted to creating the guitar’s backstory, there was still a chance it was based in some truth.

I continued my correspondence with Merribaker, gaining the sense that he was a nice guy and had likely written the description for the guitar as a joke. The listing had been up for three years, and Merribaker states that he had turned down over fifty other offers to purchase the guitar. It wasn’t until March 2021, when it was suddenly thrust into the spotlight by several articles in mainstream music circles, that he sold it. This seems to be the turning point for the extraordinary backstory getting away from him. Once Bagans got involved and legitimized—if that’s the right word—the “Satanic Six-String” story, it became cemented in paranormal lore.

Or was it? As a last-ditch effort to determine the validity of the story, I appealed to Merribaker’s love of Skeptical Inquirer. I mentioned how Bagans believed he has sufficient provenance and how he would be most likely passing on what I believed to be severe misinformation to the public as they toured his Las Vegas museum. This would undoubtedly influence thousands of people who would hear the backstory from the guide under the impression it had all been well-researched and confirmed by the well-known TV personality. Skeptical Inquirer struggles continually to combat such misinformation, and I needed his help.

Merribaker understood what I was trying to do and so responded once more with some important information: “As for the ‘substantial provenance’ Zak claims to have, let me be clear by enumerating several points: 1 – I never offered any proof about the validity of the story. 2 – He never requested any proof. 3 – Had he asked for proof, I would not have been able to offer a single shred of evidence pertaining to the alleged haunted nature of the guitar (for reasons I’m sure are obvious)” (Merribaker 2021).

And there you have it. This old, beat-up guitar is not haunted (or at least there is no reason to think that it is or would be). The only provenance we can trace is that it belonged to Merribaker. There is absolutely no evidence to support that a boy mysteriously died by electrocution at the age of thirteen with this guitar laying across him (or any of the other dramatic details). The story was an entertaining fabrication. Merribaker goes on to explain the reason he decided to sell it to Bagans (after declining so many other offers were because he was “certain he [Bagans] wasn’t expecting any paranormal occurrences to emanate from the infamous guitar” (Merribaker 2021).

There is an important lesson here for paranormal enthusiasts and/or fans of Zak Bagans; he failed to do even basic research to verify the claims he would be soon presenting as fact. Merribaker plainly states Bagans never asked for proof; he simply accepted the story as it was told. And if Bagans had requested proof, he would have learned quite quickly that none existed. This is a major failure from someone who promotes themselves as “one of the world’s leading researchers on ghosts and demonology” in his Demon House film (Bagans 2018).

The lesson here for sincere ghost hunters and investigators is to slow down and do proper research; ask for names, dates, paperwork, news articles, etc. to verify a story and/or ownership of an item. There are thousands of “haunted/cursed” items for sale on eBay, Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, and more. They all come with claims of paranormal activity, along with origin stories that are purposely vague so that us evil skeptics can’t ruin the fun.

 

 

As I approached the end of this article, I discovered the guitar was already on display in Zak’s museum. Posting to social media, Bagans announced: “The Satanic Six String is now on display daily as part of the Haunted Museum’s RIP experience. We invite you to observe the instrument and report any activity during your RIP experience and/or late night flashlight tour” (Bagans 2021). The majority of comments ignore the lack of credibility of the guitar’s “rumored” past, which is exactly the problem I anticipated would happen. In the case of the haunted guitar—like many other items in Bagans’s haunted museum—the truth didn’t stand in the way of a good story. It’s possible, even likely, that Bagan himself didn’t believe a word of it and didn’t care whether it’s haunted or not, because that wasn’t the goal. He paid $666 for a guitar but got tens of thousands of dollars in publicity by making sure the press heard about it. Bagans is more P.T. Barnum than Sherlock Holmes; his business is selling stories, not investigating ghosts or solving mysteries.

References

Bagans, Zak. 2018. Demon House. Freestyle Digital Media.

———. 2021. Zak Bagans’ The Haunted Museum. April 26.
https://www.facebook.com/ZakBagansHauntedMuseum/posts/797928597508117.

McCarter, Reid. 2021. We dared to speak with the seller of a “haunted paranormal ghost guitar.”
https://music.avclub.com/we-dared-to-speak-with-the-seller-of-a-haunted-paranor-1846447256.

Merribaker, Eddie. 2018. Haunted Paranormal Ghost Guitar.
https://reverb.com/item/10967219-haunted-paranormal-ghost-guitar?sid=guitarworld-us-3603372266267218400.

———. 2019. Eddie Merribaker.
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCDmCh4_FRAeqQQZXWBOgrqg.

———. 2021. Personal correspondence.

Wynne, Kelly. 2021. Zak Bagans Buys $666 ‘Satanic Six String’ Haunted Guitar That Supposedly Killed a Teen.
https://www.newsweek.com/zak-bagans-buys-666-satanic-six-string-haunted-guitar-that-supposedly-killed-teen-1575830.