Geolocating Carter Banks’s explore of a French “murder” chateau

For this episode, Carter Banks (BigBankz) explores an abandoned home in rural France:

The big reveal comes around 18:14:

On that, you can make out 37310 Che-something. A quick Google search resolves that to 37310 Chédigny. That’s a small area!

From the beginning of the video, it’s clear that the home is loosely surrounded by woods. I guessed the home is not in the city at the center of this area, I went clockwise around the edges of the area, eventually coming across this:

Google Maps shows the name La Touche associated with the home. Oh, that’s the line on the address label right above 37310 Chédigny! This is it!

Google searching reveals little significant about this mansion. It may have some mild historicity due to several postcards featuring it.

Per Chédigny 2020, it was probably built in 1872 by Edmond Delaporte. Edmond sold it to Robert Delaunay in 1919. (This is after Edmond’s death, so I am guessing this is a mortgage or sale record that reflects a sale from Edmond’s estate.) In 1926, it was sold to a Mr. Soluet. A Levilain family purchased it in 1962, and that family apparently still owns it. And that makes sense: A Jacques Levilain appears to own the home and the property and runs a poultry farm on it. Or maybe not? It appears he died in 2014 at 83. That may explain the assistive devices found around the house.

With a little Googling, I can find no evidence of a murder or African living there. While lack of evidence is not proof it did not happen, it makes it unlikely. And what makes these ideas even more unlikely are the easy ways to explain Carter’s theories.

The allegation of a murder seems to be concocted from a chair with a stain. It shows starting around 24:19:

You know, if you were murdered in that chair, the stain would be in a perfect oval pattern behind your head. Certainly gravity would not pull it down. (Sarcasm alert.)

The allegation about African millionaires might be because, of the many photographs of fair-skinned people found in the home, a handful were of dark-skinned people, including one family photo and a calendar.

The murder and African millionaire fit a pattern of phony narratives that Carter and his colleagues use to market these explorations. The real narrative is that the owner died in 2014, and this was possibly when the house’s use ended. Compounding things are that 90% of French chateauxes, which includes large manor houses like this, are not maintained properly. Also, this home was built well after the rationale for rural manor houses was already receding.

The appearance is the property’s current owner is permitting the house to gradually return itself to the land. The same practice is not uncommon in the rural USA.

Some details: Google Translate says that La Touche means The Key. Also, France has several La Touche homes or areas. This is the La Touche near Chédigny.

Geolocating Carter Banks’s and Jeremy Abbott’s explore of the Alabama “died on the couch” house

In two videos, Carter Banks (BigBankz) and Jeremy Abbott (Jeremy Xplores) do walkthroughs of an abandoned residence in Alabama. Here’s Carter’s explore:

And here’s Jeremy’s explore:

This one took more sleuthing.

First, Carter revealed a rough location with this, at 21:24:

This refers to Dr. Michele Saint Romain, who was abducted in 1991 near Birmingham, Alabama. Her body was not found until 1999. This semi-corroborates his allegation that the house’s last resident died in 1992.

It was difficult to hone in much more with Carter’s video, so I went to Jeremy’s video, where he gives an invaluable clue at 4:32:

This likely reveals the owner, Mrs. Ted Turner.

At 4:35, we see that her first name was likely Nellie:

The name didn’t help much. Also, the address threw me off.

First, Route 3, also known as Cherokee County Road 3, is east of Collinsville, but Lebanon is northwest of Collinsville, so that’s likely not it. Next, I found a Lebanon Road, a stretch of road west of Lebanon that doesn’t appear to go all the way to Lebanon. We still have an issue in that I lack a precise address for Nellie’s home. Going up and down the part of Lebanon Road in the 35961 ZIP code bears no fruit.

Back to the drawing board.

Other important clues are found in outside shots of the house:

  • There are other houses nearby.
  • When looking at it from the front, the roofline will be a bit different to accommodate the balcony, and the back right will have a partially collapsed carport.
  • You can hear the drone of a nearby highway, so it’s not far from Interstate 59.
  • You can hear vehicles going by, so it’s close to a road.
  • The road is viewable in some shots, and it has no striping.

OK, so it’s not on Lebanon Road, but we have some more info to track it down. Maybe Route 3 refers to some postal carrier route, not a road. And maybe Lebanon Road means some road that goes to Lebanon, not literally the road named Lebanon Road by the county? Also, given the proximity of other structures, I guess it could be on the outskirts of a small town.

And a particular building in the background of Jeremy’s video at 0:11 really helped. It had a distinctive chimney on the side:

I went back to Lebanon and reviewed some more. After crawling its streets on aerial view for a few minutes, I noticed a familiar roof shape:

Hmm, let’s look at the front:

Jackpot!

DeKalb County has tax history for this property going back to 1996. Interestingly, Lela Everett was the owner. She died in 2006 at 92. It’s likely that she is the person on the return address of the above envelope.

Why is the house in this shape? First, since Lela was born in 1914, she was almost certainly not Nellie’s daughter. Why would the property have gone to her, then? From what I can infer, Lela’s husband Glysco was born in DeKalb County, Alabama, so I assume there is some family or childhood connection.

I do not know the circumstances of Nellie’s death. I do know that Carter and Jeremy routinely buttress phony narratives with fake or grossly exaggerated claims. A claim in this video is that stains on a particular couch are fluids emitted by Nellie’s corpse before she was found one week later. Whether Nellie’s body emitted those fluids depends on morbid factors not revealed in the video. These could simply be garden-variety stains.

Is this house a time capsule? Of course not. As with virtually every house they visit, anything of value has already been removed, and the scene has changed considerably since the house was last occupied. What is left are worthless things, like used clothes, knick-knacks, or well-used furniture.

Nellie’s land is in use. Aerial photos make clear that it’s being used for agricultural purposes. Since the current owner lives several states away, it’s likely Nellie’s land is being leased out.

Given low land values in the countryside, it is often not worthwhile to renovate old homes. Once their economic life is done, it is not uncommon to let old houses rot away.

So instead of a mysterious abandonment and a time capsule, it’s likely this house is full of worthless junk and is intentionally being subjected to benign neglect.

Geolocating another Carter Banks funeral home urbex

In this video, Carter Banks (BigBankz) does another walkthrough of an abandoned funeral home:

Let’s start with a major oopsiedoodle at 12:13:

I got the easy button!

Boatwright Funeral Home is at 113 Harlem Street, Bishopville, South Carolina. It may have closed no later than 2015, when Hubert Boatwright, its 91 year old owner, died.

The video has several clues. At 3:46, you see these garage doors:

This matches the garage door visible on the back of the property:

At 11:58 and some other places, you see inverted-V curtains:

These match the style visible from the front: