A ghostly Figure hanging in a churchyardicy fingers that run up your neckthe Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp. From the swamps of Kershaw County to an abandoned graveyard underneath South of the Border, the South Carolina Pee Dee is home to a rich heritage and a sometimes frightening past. In this volume, storyteller and author Tally Johnson investigates the truth behind the ghostly legends of counties that have seen revolution and war, tragedy and triumph. With an attention to history and a passion for the truth behind the legends, this fascinating glimpse into the Pee Dees past reveals that it is far stranger than anyone ever imagined.
“A fantastic job of storytelling to the point that it literally sends shivers down the reader’s spine . . . entertaining and informative” (YES! Weekly). Don’t be fooled by the scenic beauty of North Carolina’s Piedmont Triad—the ghosts of the past haunt these rolling hills and unique cities. From the smallpox-stricken ghost that haunts Salem Tavern in Winston-Salem to the slain Revolutionary War soldiers who linger in the park surrounding Guilford Courthouse in Greensboro, these phantoms all have a tale to tell. Some ghosts even support education. Take Jane, the lonely spinster who haunts Aycock Auditorium at the UNC-Greensboro campus, or Herschel, High Point University’s ghost of the former Memorial Theater. And though Spookywoods Haunted Attraction in Kersey Valley often frightens and astounds, some of the resident ghosts aren’t just special effects. Join Camel City Spirit Seekers Michael Renegar and Amy Spease as they reveal the eerie and chilling stories from the heart of the Piedmont. Includes photos! “If you want some spooky ghost stories to get you in the mood for Halloween, Triad ghost-hunters/authors Michael Renegar and Amy Spease may have just what you’re looking for.” —The News & Record
Tradition meets tragedy in the chilling local lore of the Rio Grande Valley. Hidden in the dense brush and around oxbow lakes wait sinister secrets, unnerving vestiges of the past and wraiths of those claimed by the winding river. The spirit of a murdered student in Brownsville paces the locker room where she met her end. Tortured souls of patients lost in the Harlingen Insane Asylum refuse to be forgotten. Guests at the LaBorde Hotel in Rio Grande City report visions of the Red Lady, who was spurned by the soldier she loved and driven to suicide. Author David Bowles explores these and more of the most harrowing ghost stories from Fort Brown to Fort Ringgold and all the haunted hotels, chapels and ruins in between.
Stories of ghosts and strange happenings at these historic Southern homes—with photos included. Louisiana plantations evoke images of grandeur and elegance, but beyond the facade of stately homes are stories of hope and subjugation, tragedy and suffering, shame and perseverance and war and conquest. After sixteen workers axed most of the Houmas House’s ancient oak trees, referred to as “the Gentlemen,” eight of the surviving trees eerily twisted overnight in grief over the losses wrought by a great Mississippi River flood. An illegal duel to reclaim lost honor left the grounds of Natchez’s Cherokee Plantation bloodstained, but the victim’s spirit may still wander there today. A mutilated slave girl named Chloe still haunts the halls of the Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville. In this book, Cheryl H. White and W. Ryan Smith reveal the dark history, folklore, and lasting human cost of Louisiana plantation life.
With a history that stretches back to the earliest years of America, it comes as little surprise that the Upstate region of South Carolina is home to many ghosts and to hundreds of intriguing legends. In Ghosts of the South Carolina Upcountry, librarian and folklorist Tally Johnson introduces us to some of the area's most colorful specters, from Major Ferguson, a British officer in the Revolutionary War who still haunts the grounds of his last battle at Kings Mountain, to the Hound of Goshen, a demon dog who has been chasing passersby in Union and Newberry Counties since the mid-nineteenth century. Among these stories Johnson weaves the local lore and history of thirteen upstate counties, drawing upon sources as varied as historic records, newspapers and personal interviews.
In the 1949 classic Killers of the Dream, Lillian Smith described three racial "ghosts" haunting the mind of the white South: the black woman with whom the white man often had sexual relations, the rejected child from a mixed-race coupling, and the black mammy whom the white southern child first loves but then must reject. In this groundbreaking work, Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr., extends Smith's work by adding a fourth "ghost" lurking in the psyche of the white South -- the specter of European Fascism. He explores how southern writers of the 1930s and 1940s responded to Fascism, and most tellingly to the suggestion that the racial politics of Nazi Germany had a special, problematic relevance to the South and its segregated social system. As Brinkmeyer shows, nearly all white southern writers in these decades felt impelled to deal with this specter and with the implications for southern identity of the issues raised by Nazism and Fascism. Their responses varied widely, ranging from repression and denial to the repulsion of self-recognition. With penetrating insight, Brinkmeyer examines the work of writers who contemplated the connection between the authoritarianism and racial politics of Nazi Germany and southern culture. He shows how white southern writers -- both those writing cultural criticism and those writing imaginative literature -- turned to Fascist Europe for images, analogies, and metaphors for representing and understanding the conflict between traditional and modern cultures that they were witnessing in Dixie. Brinkmeyer considers the works of a wide range of authors of varying political stripes: the Nashville Agrarians, W. J. Cash, Lillian Smith, William Alexander Percy, Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, Carson McCullers, Robert Penn Warren, and Lillian Hellman. He argues persuasively that by engaging in their works the vital contemporary debates about totalitarianism and democracy, these writers reconfigured their understanding not only of the South but also of themselves as southerners, and of the nature and significance of their art. The magnum opus of a distinguished scholar, The Fourth Ghost offers a stunning reassessment of the cultural and political orientation of southern literature by examining a major and heretofore unexplored influence on its development.
The author, folklorist, and noted storyteller provides brief summaries of US Civil War in South Carolina and the various putative hauntings related to that war. Told in an accessible, folksy narrative, the stories are sure to entertain and enlighten.
From goat men to witch ladies and spooky little girls, dive into the haunted history of Plano, Texas. Plano's old homes and businesses are rife with haunted history. Explore eerie urban legends like the Goat Man, the Clown Threat, and Ranch 111, where devil worshipers performed their rituals. The Evaporating Apparition spooked the staff at the Art Centre Theatre, while the grumpy spirit of an old rancher stalks the Masonic Lodge. Some specters are harmless, such as the Giggling Ghost, a little girl in the Cox Building with a penchant for peanut butter and pranks. Other figures own a more sinister reputation. The Witch Lady of Plano was feared by city youth and monitored by the FBI. Mary Jacobs examines the ghostly fallout of Plano's darkest moments, from the smallpox epidemic to the gruesome Muncey family murders.
"At the close of the nineteenth century, Chicago offered the world a glimpse of humanity's most breathtaking possibilities and its most jaw-dropping horrors. Even as the White City emerged from the ashes of the Great Fire, serial killers like H.H. Holmes stalked the sparkling new boulevards and tragic accidents plagued the factories, slums and railroads that powered the churn of industrial innovation. Demons, mesmerists and birds of ill omen preyed on the unwary from the shadows. Ship captains spoke to the dead, while undertakers discovered reanimated corpses no longer requiring services. From posh mansions built on massacre grounds to the drowned quarries of a forest preserve, Ursula Bielski follows the dark undercurrents beneath the electric lights of the World's Fair."--
