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or this story, we asked our readers “What questions do you have about Memphis?” We got back a fantastically varied group of queries, too many to answer in one issue. Then we scrambled to find the answers. What follows are the answers to some of your questions in what we’re calling the Flyer’s first Questions Issue. — Toby Sells
Was there really a crystal skull placed in the top of the Pyramid?
May 6-12, 2021
It’s Memphis’ weirdest urban legend: Soon after the Pyramid was opened in the early 1990s, someone found a box containing a crystal skull attached to the apex of the arena. The story periodically bounces around the internet, and was picked up by InfoWars’ Alex Jones as proof of the existence of a sinister Illuminati conspiracy. According to Tom Jones (no relation to Alex), it is true — just not the Illuminati part. In 1992, Jones worked in the office of Shelby County Mayor Bill Morris. The public/private partnership between the city and county and developers Sidney Schlenker and John Tigrett had collapsed, leaving the governments holding the bag on a halfcompleted arena of questionable utility. “We were put in charge of putting it back together,” says Jones. “We were renegotiating all the contracts, trying to get the building open in time for the first event. It was a pretty chaotic time.” Soon after the arena’s opening, Jones recalls, “The company that managed the Pyramid called and said they had found a box at the top of the Pyramid, welded to the superstructure. ‘You want to come over and see us take it down?’” Jones and four other people climbed the stairs to the glass top of the building where a maintenance man named Joe went up on a ladder and pried the box loose. “Then we took it back down to a conference room, inside the Pyramid, to open it.” Paul Gurley from the city mayor’s office opened the box. “Inside the metal box was this blue velvet box, kind of a hinged box.” When the velvet box was opened, a burst of dust flew out that smelled like incense. 10 Inside, covered by a velvet cloth “… was this
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You had questions. We found answers. little skull. It was made out of crystal, and was about the size of your fist.” The find baffled all present. “Why had someone put it there? What was the belief that led them to put that there? What did they think was going to happen as a result of it being there?” Jones was put in charge of the skull. “I took it over to the Shelby County administration building, now, the Vasco A. Smith administration building, and locked it up in a safe in the finance department.” Soon, Jones learned that Isaac Tigrett, founder of the Hard Rock Cafe and House of Blues, was responsible. Tigrett was a devotee of Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba, whom he credited with saving his life after a
probably send it to the Pink Palace.” The Tigrett family appealed to thenMayor Bill Morris, who eventually relented. “After a while, I got a call from the head of finance, saying, ‘Just wanted you to know, the mayor told us to turn the skull back over to the Tigretts.’ So, it went back to where it had come from.” Although the unboxing was allegedly captured on video, and the skull photographed, no authenticated images of it are known to survive. Inquiries to Isaac Tigrett regarding the skull were not returned. But something else Tigrett said has stuck with Jones for 30 years. “He also said, ‘Well, they found one of them.’” — Chris McCoy
PHOTO COURTESY BASS PRO SHOPS AT THE PYRAMID/FACEBOOK
The Memphis Pyramid — tourist attraction or home to a crystal skull?
serious car accident. Baba had given Tigrett the skull along with specific instructions on how it should be aligned. “He had it affixed up there because of the cosmic impact it could have at the top of the Pyramid.” When Tigrett heard that the skull had been removed, he reportedly said, “They have no idea what they have done.” Tigrett immediately asked that the skull be returned, but Jones disagreed. “The contract we had with Schlenker and Tigrett said anything that was permanently affixed to the building became the property of city and county government. So, I took the attitude that it was now property of local government. I don’t know exactly what I thought we were going to do with it —
I keep hearing about copperheads in Overton Park. How worried should I be on my runs? Overton Park is a century-old piece of Southern hardwood forest set in the middle of a modern city. It’s a rare treasure for an urban area, and the attendant wildlife is included. The park is home to hundreds of species of birds, mammals, amphibians, insects — and reptiles, including the eastern copperhead. They are poisonous but reclusive, so how worried you should be depends a lot on how far off the beaten path you get. Copperheads tend to hide under logs and in leaf litter, and mostly avoid high human-traffic areas
— except in the spring, when males go looking for love and are more often seen on public pathways. Snakes and other grounddwelling animals also become more visible when the earth becomes soaked and dens get flooded after heavy rains. “All snakes, venomous or not, are shy, secretive, and definitely afraid of humans,” says Dr. Steve Reichling, the Director of Conservation and Research at the Memphis Zoo. “It’s rarely a good day for a snake if they cross paths with one of us.” In July 2016, a joint study conducted by the University of Memphis and the Memphis Zoo counted and tagged 73 copperheads in Overton Park. A recent study over three or four years found about 250 copperheads in the park, Reichling said. He said the snakes are “abundant” in the park and there are likely more in the Old Forest than other natural sites. If he had to guess, Reichling would put the number of copperheads in Overton Park at 350-400. Sounds like a lot, but a Google search brought up no reports of a human being bitten in the park. “I know of only one time when someone was bitten,” Reichling said. “Think about how many people walk those forest trails every year and you get an idea of how peace-loving snakes are.” The Overton Park Conservancy offers the following advice: “If you ever encounter a copperhead, just give the snake its space. The only time you’d be likely to step on one and trigger a defensive response is if you’re walking off-trail, which is just another great reason to keep to the paths.” — Bruce VanWyngarden
How did Germantown get its name? Not, as people presumably think, from some influx during its settlement of immigrants from central Europe (though one such did occur), but from a 19th century American surveyor who laid out the town, a gent named N.T. German. Before Mr. German did his thing, the place had been called, briefly, Pea Ridge, and, before that, “Neshoba” (the Chickasaw name for “wolf.” You know, like the river that flows through the town?). In 1825, and for the next three years or
