Here’s a fun story about Weaverville resident Wallace Shealy, who was recently declared the 2010 Bold-Faced Liar Champion at the Third Annual Southeast Liars’ Competition, held January 23 in Laurinburg, NC.  If you want to hear his tale, Shealy will be telling it on Friday, February 5, 2010 as part of the Reuter Center’s Fab Friday program.  The program begins at 11:30 a.m. at the Center, located on the University of North Carolina-Asheville campus (#16 on this Campus Map).

On January 23, 2010, the Storytelling Arts Center of the Southeast declared Western North Carolina resident, Wallace Shealy, the 2010 Bold-Faced Liar Champion. Shealy said, while accepting the award, “I am not sure if this makes me the biggest liar in the southeast or simply that I told the most original tall tale today.”

Shealy, who coaches other pastors on church planting, told a story based on the biblical account from the fifth chapter of Mark about Jesus casting out a legion of demons. With a twinkle in his eye he said, “of course I embellished the story slightly.” Maybe more than slightly, when the text says that Jesus sent a legion of demons into a herd of 2000 pigs that fly off a cliff, Shealy quipped, “that of course this is the first recorded case of Swine Flu.” He also suggests that this text might explain legionnaire’s disease. And as the pigs crash on to the rocky waters below, in the name of full disclosure, mentions that he heard the Underwood family got the hazardous waste clean-up contract resulting in the origins of deviled ham. Shealy told me, “it is all in good fun” but, I bet no one who heard him ever forgets that Bible story.

“I am not sure how I am going to explain to the church, public, or my real estate clients that I am now officially the Boldest Liar in the Southeast, “said Shealy. I bet he could put quite the spin on the beauty of those harvest gold counter-tops from the eighties and you certainly want him in your corner to negotiate your next home deal, even if at that point he is ethically bound to tell the truth.

Wallace has been involved with the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee for many years. He is also a member of the Asheville Storytelling Circle, whose membership includes a number of prominent regional and national tellers including Michael Reno Harrell, a judge and featured teller at the liar’s contest.

The 2010 Bold-Faced Liar Champion is already booked to tell his tale at the Reuter Center at The University of North Carolina-Asheville on Friday, February 5, 2010 and has been invited to be a master of ceremonies at The Storytelling Festival of Carolina. Beyond that I am sure we have not heard the last of Wallace Shealy’s tales.

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