Peter Ragnar (placeholder)

Peter lives on a 12-acre parcel of land adjoining the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. A parcel of land that had somehow been “overlooked” by realtors and city officials until he showed up 20 years ago to buy it. He built a spacious three-story, 24-room house on his mountaintop with his own hands, often taking a piece of wood and cutting it to the exact length without ever measuring it (much to the discomfiture of those friends who accompanied and assisted him).

It is his friends, many of whom have moved to Tennessee to be near him, who will tell you why he is called “The Magic Man.” Miracles and psychokinetic effects seem to trail him like an invisible circus. His friends tell of countless healing, candles that puff out and re-light themselves, a violin that plucks its own strings, and of wine that pours from his hand. I myself observed half-full wine glasses tipping over by themselves at dinner to punctuate our conversation. We laughed as though it was the funniest thing in the world while Ann, his companion , gave him a mock scolding for staining the tablecloth. These could be dismissed as musician’s tricks, perhaps, but there are myriad “coincidences” as well, like the “overlooked” parcel of land, or the swarm of honeybees he wanted that arrived the day after he said he would be getting some bees as a “present from spirit” for the help he had given to someone who had been sick. His friends have gathered these stories together in a book entitled “The Magic Man.”