On Second Thought For Monday, October 31, 2016

It's a Halloween themed On Second Thought!

We first pay homage to the Kroger supermarket on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Midtown Atlanta. It's about to face the wrecking ball. After 30 years, the grocery store -- which many call by the controversial nickname “Murder Kroger” -- will be torn down and replaced by a $190 million office tower, with a brand new Kroger on the ground floor. We look back at the store’s checkered past, which includes the killings of three people and the discovery of a dead body. 

Plus, every month, a group of people meet at the Oakland Cemetery to eat cake and talk about death. They’re not there to grieve but to break the stigma about death. It’s called Death Café Atlanta, and we speak with the founder and host Mark LaRocca-Pitts about why talking about our mortality helps us live life. In honor of Halloween, we share spooky tales told by local storytellers. And ‘tis the season for ghost tours! We sent producer Sean Powers to the Fox Theatre in Atlanta to learn about spirits that refuse to leave...even after the curtain comes down.

Then, we look back at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia. It was once among the largest psychiatric facilities in the world. Today the patients are gone. What’s left is an abandoned building that some say is haunted. What’s also left is a hole in the local economy. An effort is underway to fill that hole by selling and redeveloping the Central State campus. But some are asking -- what could we lose in the process? GPB’s Grant Blankenship caught up with some former hospital employees at a recent reunion picnic.

Finally, ghosts aren’t just individual people who were once alive. They can also be entire towns – thriving communities that now only exist in memories, historical documents or the remnants of old buildings. We learn more about some of these communities from Lisa Russell, author of the new book, “Lost Towns of North Georgia.”