In this video, Jeremy Abbott (Jeremy Xplores) walks through the castoffs of a deceased, elderly lady:
Geolocating this was simple:
The decedent’s name and city were revealed at 0:53 on a peach envelope:
It didn’t take much searching to get the property address and find other information that confirmed that Jeremy’s back story on her was mostly correct. She passed away at a hospital in September 2022.
But Jeremy made one claim that I suspect is way exaggerated, that Mary had a “hoarding addiction“.
Sure, the house had more “stuff” than optimal. It’s still playing a few divisions lower than “hoarder”. If you’re living independently at 101, I can forgive you for not being focused on keeping up with all your mail.
I also see what appears like evidence that people have ransacked the house or gone through her estate to salvage what is important. This is not unlikely countless other properties. That, too, is not evidence of hoarding.
To wrap up, the true story is likely simpler: We’re seeing what was likely once a reasonable house that has been picked through in the months since the resident’s death. “Hoarder” is used as an incentive to watch a 40 minute walkthrough of worthless debris.
In this video, Carter Banks “explores” an allegedly abandoned $2.5 million mansion:
It didn’t take long. A name was visible, which through a little searching helped me locate it:
Before I go into the false claims, let me be clear about something: The prior owners are living, so I will be cagey about details.
Now for the false claims:
False claim 1, “surrounded by other mansions”: Not really. The property’s back side is lined with a new residential development.
False claim 2, “built in 1973”: Off by one year. 1974 per county records.
False claim 3, “John, wife, two children, and mother”: Pseudonym, understandably, but children count is wrong. (I’ll give credit: A pseudonym may be smart.)
False claim 4, “John suffered a heart attack at the age of 54”: No, “John” appears to still be alive and thriving.
False claim 5, “$2.5 million”: County records say the property was sold in 2021 for $985,000.
False claim 6, “abandoned”: The likely story is that the house had collected so much deferred maintenance, the retiree owners decided it made more sense to downsize to a newer home. Rather than abandoned, the home was sold to a developer in 2021 and is waiting to be scraped.
(Likely) False claim 7, suggesting a foreclosure: I am rating this claim as unlikely. The story is that the tragic death caused financial instability, requiring a sale. No evidence of that is apparent. Also, the prior owners appear to have lived in it for almost 50 years and moved to another home. An ordinary sale for proper reasons is almost certain.
Seriously, if you’ve retired, would you want to renovate a ~7500 square foot home? Or would you prefer to downsize? It looks like some some minor renovations were started, but they changed minds and chose to cash out and downsize. Great choice!
It is true that the property was bought by a developer, Northpoint Realty Investments. Given other nearby, infill developments, it makes sense that the property is slated for scraping and redevelopment, as Carter suggested.
Once again, multiple false claims are suckering people into watching a 30-minute walkthrough of worthless, left-behind debris in a large but undistinguished house ready to be scraped.
Third, this is no secret. Right by Segonzac, France, it’s on Rue du Cheateau. In other words, Chateau Street, which is a commonly-enough traveled road that even Google Street View covers it, showing the front entrance to this chateau:
Jeremy got one thing right: This is just one of many poorly maintained manor houses that litter the French countryside. They reflect an obsolete model of governance repudiated by the French Revolution. They are enormously expensive to keep up, which I touched on in my prior article about a walk-through of another French manor house.
We can put on rose-colored glasses and concoct a dreamy narrative of some fiction-fueled past, but why? This place appears to have little historical significance, instead just reflecting extravagance of a dying model. Let’s face forward. There’s so much life in front of us.
In this “explore” video, actor Jeremy Abbott’s latest set is a large, rural house:
I found it. Here’s how.
An industrial facility is in the distant background:
At first, I thought it was roofs in a a housing development, which threw me off, causing me to review too many urban areas.
This high-tension-power-line pylon was in the background (the clock image is because it is a crop of the top-right of a paused video):
It substantiates that this property is adjacent to a high-tension-power-line clearing. Also, the model of pylon can be matched, as there are a few different types.
Due to the combination of shadows on the house and a background scene, it is apparent that the clearing generally runs on a latitudinal axis (east to west).
First, the clearing:
And the shadows, which generally will protrude to the east or west:
Another crucial clue is this HomePages, a Yellow Pages-like book, which is for the Mt. Juliet, Tennessee area, reinforced by the Busy Bee company and the Mount Juliet in the yellow banner near the top:
There were other clues pointing to the Mt. Juliet area, including a UPS address label. Even if Mt. Juliet is wrong, other clues place this in the vicinity of Nashville. But another clue sent us right back to Mt. Juliet: Tennessee Cheesecake boxes in the freezer. That company is in Lebanon, TN, just east of Mt. Juliet.
Through this, I can focus on areas by these power lines. Fortunately, only two of the lines near Mt. Juliet match the pylon type in the photo! This is one of the matches:
I landed on the property after not too much searching:
A constant with these “explorer” actors is they create a phony story based on something seen at the property. Yup, once again, phony baloney.
First, Jeremy claims that a doctor and his wife built this as a retirement home in 2014. The date is fake. Wilson County’s parcel details for this home reveal it was built in 2006. The current owners bought it in 2010. The current owners live a few miles away, and stuff clearly from them appears in the video.
The current owners appear to be living, and neither appears to be a medical doctor.
Second, the million-dollar value, embedded in the video’s title, is fake. Per the county records, the property’s post-construction sale, when the house was 4 years old, was for $430,000. At almost 4000 square feet, it is an impressively sized house, but it’s far from a million dollars!
Back to the original premise, did some doctor build this house but get diagnosed with terminal cancer, preventing him and his wife from moving in to an almost-completed, almost-fully-furnished house? Probably not. First, one of the current owners, while not a doctor, works in oncology, and some materials around the house are related to a specific oncology company or the oncology field. For example, Diatech was an oncology-related company in the area which later became Pierian Biosciences:
The cancer story is likely a fabrication derived from oncology-related materials in the house.
Still, it’s weird that such an apparently nice house, mostly furnished and mostly complete, appears to have been at the verge of occupation yet never occupied.
You might suspect some severe fault with the house that made it unoccupiable. That doesn’t seem likely: the dwelling remains assessed at $471,900, even in its decaying state.
My theory is someone built it in 2006, brought it to near completion and mostly furnished, then a mind was changed, and it was never occupied.
And that is probably true. Additional searches turns up an Eric M. Gruenberg, who used to live there. It appears he is who built the house, and it was foreclosed in 2009. My guess is that Eric ran out of money, occupied the house for about two years while trying to make money, but he couldn’t make it work and had to leave. The “this was almost occupied” patina is likely because Eric and his wife took essentials when them before they vacated.
As is typical, this appears to be yet another phony story. Instead of some tragic, sympathetic tale of a dying doctor and his mourning wife, you likely have a profligate spender who drove himself into foreclosure, whose attempts to bail himself out resulted in criminal charges. As for why the current owners don’t occupy it? Maybe the property is more valuable to them for the agricultural uses? Maybe they intended to but changed their mind? Who knows.
What we do know is you spent an hour watching someone look at debris, junk, and knick-knacks, all because you thought they were part of a sympathetic narrative. Sorry, once again, you’ve been duped.
Fun fact: This property is on Tater Peeler Road. Yes, Tater Peeler Road! What’s with the name? According to Nick Beres, a local TV reporter:
Years ago, I’m told, this was a curvy, rough dirt road. Farmers would load their potato harvest into the back of a pick-up for the trip to market.
It was such a bumpy ride — lots of jostling — that by the time they pulled into the market all their potatoes in the back were PEELED.
In this video, Jeremy Abbott (Jeremy xPlores) visits an old house full of stuff:
I was once again able to geolocate it.
What helped was this label:
It describes a Scott Meyers at 50 Dickens Field Road. That checks out per Dun and Bradstreet.
While this does not correspond to an actual address, it narrows down the vicinity:
Maybe he’s also known at Coot Meyers?
A search on Scott’s company’s phone number turns up a property on Broad Street, a hair south of the western terminus of Dickens Field Road. That is owned by Sharon Joyce.
Well, glory be, Sharon turns up later in the video!
OK, so this is likely on one of her properties.
Using various references in the video, I narrowed it down to this building:
Now for today’s episode of uncovering the misinformation.
First, this is not abandoned. Rather, it’s an old home that is economically unviable to restore. It has new life as a storage facility.
Who’s storing stuff? Likely either the resident of the mobile home adjacent to this house or the house just south. Both are owned by the same person as this old house.
Finally, some commentary on the Confederate stuff: This crap is not uncommon in rural, southern homes. In more recent times, Confederate memorabilia is (correctly!) understood to usually be racist. But that understanding is due to an open, public discussion in which society is gradually coming to understand the Lost Cause of the Confederacy for what it is: a false narrative concocted to whitewash Confederates, who were simply traitors and bigots.
Years ago, Confederate crap was just something Southerners tended to have in their homes. It does not necessarily connote hardened, bigoted views. That this crap is still lying around in a storage building full of accumulated debris is not remarkable. It does not support Jeremy’s narrative.
While it is possible Jeremy spoke with Sharon or someone else, Jeremy’s well-trod pattern is to see something in a house and make up a phony narrative. Given this pattern, the narrative about the children finding new ways different than the parents is probably phony.
Yet again, a phony narrative dupes viewers into watching a lengthy run-through of worthless debris in an almost worthless building that is serving its last economic use.
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