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I’m not sure why Knoxville is home to so many Ripperologists. It’s no London. Heck, it’s certainly not even a Baltimore. Strangely, though, I keep encountering local Ripper enthusiasts in places other than Knoxville.
At the 2006 Ripper Conference in Baltimore, someone said to me, “There’s a guy from Knoxville here.” “No there’s not,” I said, and ignored it. I tend to be skeptical about anything without overwhelming evidence that is reported by the masses. I’m not from Missouri, but you still have to show me. Must be a guy from Nashville, I reasoned to myself. These people don’t know towns in Tennessee. I started suspecting there might be something to the rumors after the third or fourth report.
Later that night, I was surprised to see a man I recognized as one of the conference delegates playing harmonica with the bar band. Besides the one he was playing, he had an array of them on the table nearby. I was later introduced to him. His name is Jim: he’s interested in Jack the Ripper, he blows a mean harp (and takes them everywhere), and he indeed lives in Knoxville.
Two years later in Wolverhampton, someone again approached me and said there was someone else from Knoxville there. I knew Jim wasn’t there, not even in disguise, as there had distinctly been no harmonica playing at the bar. Nope, this time it was Joanna, a super-enthusiastic Knoxvillian who has attended several UK conferences but no US ones as yet.
Where are these people coming from? And if they’re all over Knoxville, why don’t I encounter them in my daily life? Time to do something about that, I decided. I placed an ad in a local rag, announced a time, date and location for a “Jack the Ripper reading and discussion group”, added an email contact for further information, and waited.
Will anyone show up, or are Knoxville Ripperologists content to lurk in shadows, only emerging when conferences are held outside the city? We shall see.
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