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Mike Ellis

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Michigan
As seen in: City Pulse, MSN, Yahoo Life, Golfweek, USA Today, Yahoo News, U.S. News and World Report, Yahoo Finance, The Weather Channel, Detroit Free Press, The Boston Globe and
Covers:  crime and court, long-form features, crime, local politics, local news, online journalism, clemson university, anderson sc, easley sc, south carolina
Doesn't Cover: nothing
Watchdog reporter @lsjnews, @usatodaynetwork in Lansing. Prior: @IndependentMail, @greenvillenews People. Faith. Civil forfeiture #TAKEN mellis@gannett.com
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Fire destroys Anderson apartment building

Fire destroys Anderson apartment building

www.independentmail.com — Burns Windley heard a noise that sounded like someone pounding on the outside of his apartment building. "Then it sounded like someone was climbing, crawling up the side of the building," he said. And then he saw the intruder, a column of flames. Windley grabbed his 4-month-old daughter and his two dogs and they flew down the stairs with his mother, who had been feeding the baby. They watched from a distance Wednesday afternoon as the 24-unit apartment building was consumed by fire. "It's just a shell of a building now," he said.
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Walter Alley pleads guilty to killing 86-year-old Craytonville man

Walter Alley pleads guilty to killing 86-year-old Craytonville man

www.independentmail.com — Wearing nothing but a T-shirt, 86-year-old Glenn Craft woke to the sight of burglars the night he was killed. Craft was sleeping on the first floor of his Craytonville farm house in the hospital bed where his wife had recently died. Four people had gone that night, July 18, 2011, into Craft's unlocked home, where a note on the door invited guests inside if Craft did not hear the doorbell, according to court testimony this week. Craft was awakened and beaten hard enough that several teeth fell out.
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Petroglyphs uncover buried stories of prehistoric era

Petroglyphs uncover buried stories of prehistoric era

www.independentmail.com — The pictures appear like magic. With the proper angle of a flashlight in the dark, images dug into rocks a thousand years ago can be lifted from their premature graves and brought to life once more. The pictures are petroglyphs, rock carvings made by prehistoric people. They tend to be geometric figures or animals, circles and snakes. One rare rock in Pickens County has 17 human figures that reach out through the centuries, asking questions that will never be answered. Thousands of these carvings have yet to be unearthed in the Upstate, hidden on farms, fishing holes and hunting camps.
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A look inside Clemson University's carillon

A look inside Clemson University's carillon

www.independentmail.com — A carillon player is to the piano what Animal the Muppet is to drums. There's a lot of over-the-head arm swinging with a carillon and a Jerry Lee Lewis intensity rarely seen in staid recital halls. A carillon is several tons of swinging bronze bells hooked up through mechanical wires to a piano-like keyboard with wood pegs. It tolls several times a day and, with a quarter-mile range, most everyone who has visited Clemson has heard it. But seeing it played is something else. There's no Quasimodo swinging from ropes.
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After 71 happy years, 96-year-olds renew vows

After 71 happy years, 96-year-olds renew vows

www.independentmail.com — Victor Rampey took his girlfriend Hazel Crowe out for a Sunday afternoon ride through the country when he asked her if she would mind visiting a preacher friend of his. She didn't mind. The pastor asked Hazel, "Do you consider Victor your friend?" She, innocently enough, said, "Yes, I do." "Do you think you'll be his friend forever?" "Yes, I do." Victor was asked the same questions and gave the same answers. Next thing Hazel knew, she and Victor were pronounced man and wife. "I didn't know we were getting married," Hazel said. "He did, I didn't."
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Business is picking up

Business is picking up

www.independentmail.com — Gary Benjamin says there's nothing in his store that anyone needs. But for the guy who needs - or at least is convinced that he needs - an 8-foot wooden airplane propeller hanging in his den or a Civil War grindstone for the porch, Benjamin's got the goods. There's also nothing in his store that's sold at Walmart. Big-box stores don't sell rust, and good luck finding something with hundred-year-old character inside a national chain store. "People want something different," Benjamin said. He's a picker, owner of Upstate Pickers in Easley.
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Sounds of days gone by

Sounds of days gone by

www.independentmail.com — Long before there was Justin Bieber, Madonna or the Beatles, there were the "Virginia Minstrels" and there was "P-Nut, Esquire." During the Civil War, funny and sad songs by slaves and soldiers alike were diversions on and off the battlefields. There were tear-jerkers like "Just Before the Battle, Mother," and fun songs like "Goober Peas." And, of course, there was "Dixie." During the war, the emergence of minstral music started it all for America, a country that had tired of European music and wanted its own home-grown sound.
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Hundreds turn out to honor fallen soldier

Hundreds turn out to honor fallen soldier

Independent Mail — The reds, whites and blues flapped eagerly in the driving wind as a microphone picked up the gusts, sounding like thunder claps when amplified through portable speakers at Hillcrest Memorial Park. No rain, only tears fell to the ground.
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Branching out as Clemson's The Vine church grows

Branching out as Clemson's The Vine church grows

Independent Mail — An alternative service with weekly communion and modern music, The Vine is an offshoot of Clemson United Methodist Church, meeting in a new gym with hidden basketball hoops. Peek inside a service with the Independent Mail and Mike Ellis.
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An ePIc Pi Day

An ePIc Pi Day

Independent Mail — Edited on the fly on an iPhone, this video shows students at an elementary school who celebrated Pi Day (March 14, or 3-14...) by nailing their assistant principal with cream pies, purchased to help school programs.
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Concert of Hope

Concert of Hope

Independent Mail — A choir of 152 voices, many affected personally by cancer, will perform the music of The Beatles in a benefit concert Saturday at Boulevard Baptist Church in Anderson. Video was edited on an iPhone.
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Faint shadows from centuries ago will be made public Saturday

Faint shadows from centuries ago will be made public Saturday

independentmail.com — Driving around Pickens County back roads with his wife on a lazy, rainy New Year's Day a dozen years ago, Michael Bramlett stopped suddenly at Hagood Mill. He'd never been to the tourist attraction - a working water mill alongside a blacksmith shop and cabins - and it was closed but he saw a hint of something on a nondescript, half-buried boulder. The boulder's secrets - small, faint lines hidden for centuries until Bramlett's rediscovery - are a far older and even rarer attraction than a functioning 1845 grist mill. "In the rain, I stood on the rock and boom, I spotted two or three prehistoric carvings," Bramlett said.
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Mike Ellis

Mike Ellis

youtube.com — I tell stories. Sometimes it's long-form journalism, features or investigative work. Sometimes I tweet or take videos or shoot pictures. It's all about the s...
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