The Haunted South

In this book Tiya Miles explores the popular yet troubling phenomenon of "ghost tours," frequently promoted and experienced at plantations, urban manor homes, and cemeteries throughout the South. As a staple of the tours, guides entertain paying customers by routinely relying on stories of enslaved black specters. But who are these ghosts? Examining popular sites and stories from these tours, Miles shows that haunted tales routinely appropriate and skew African American history to produce representations of slavery for commercial gain. "Dark tourism" often highlights the most sensationalist and macabre aspects of slavery, from salacious sexual ties between white masters and black women slaves to the physical abuse and torture of black bodies to the supposedly exotic nature of African spiritual practices. Because the realities of slavery are largely absent from these tours, Miles reveals how they continue to feed problematic "Old South" narratives and erase the hard truths of the Civil War era. In an incisive and engaging work, Miles uses these troubling cases to shine light on how we feel about the Civil War and race, and how the ghosts of the past are still with us.

The Old South comes to supernatural life in this classic collection of chilling tales from the “custodian of the twilight zone” (Southern Living). Nancy Roberts, known as the “First Lady of American Folklore,” is a topnotch storyteller and one of the few who both write and tell their own stories. For more than two decades, Ms. Roberts has documented ghost stories and interviewed hundreds of people throughout the United States. A nationally known author of twenty-three books, Ms. Roberts began her career with a series of ghost stories written for The Charlotte Observer. Carl Sandburg sent her word that her stories were good, suggesting “they should be a book.” Since then her books have won her a certificate of commendation from the American Association for State and Local History and a nomination for the Great Western Writer’s Spur Award. The Haunted South includes tales about . . . An angel sighting in the North Carolina mountains A poltergeist occurrence that drew trainloads of spectators to Jessup, Georgia A ghostly warning in Atlanta presaging a major plane crash A North Carolina tavern where unsuspecting travelers were murdered An omen of death brought by South Carolina’s “Gray Lady” The apparition of an Alabama Railroad Robin Hood A ghost ship off North Carolina’s Outer Banks Praise for Nancy Roberts “Ghost hunter/author Nancy Roberts has put together as shivery a selection of other worldly tales as you’re likely to find anywhere . . . And whether you believe in ghosts or not, these tales are guaranteed to give you a chill, especially before you go into a dark room alone.” —Southern Living

For those looking to deepen their appreciation of Flannery O'Connor, Wood shows how this literary icon's stories, novels, and essays impinge on America's cultural and ecclesial condition.

Venezuela may be home to a whistling ghost! El Sibón wanders the country, gathering bones for his collection. If you hear his whistle, run away! This is one of three creepy ghost stories introduced in this book about the haunted tales of South America. Additional features show off the origin of each story, introduce a possible explanation, and highlight another similar story from another part of the world.

In Haunted Bodies, Anne Goodwyn Jones and Susan V. Donaldson have brought together some of our most highly regarded southern historians and literary critics to consider race, gender, and texts through three centuries and from a wealth of vantage points. Works as diversive as eighteenth-century court petitions and lyrics of 1970s rock music demonstrate how definitions of southern masculinity and femininity have been subject to bewildering shifts and disabling contradictions for centuries.

Nancy Roberts has often been described to as the "First Lady of American Folklore" and the title is well deserved. Throughout her decades-long career, Roberts documented supernatural experiences and interviewed hundreds of people about their recollections of encounters with the supernatural. This nationally renowned writer began her undertaking in this ghostly realm as a freelance writer for the Charlotte Observer. Encouraged by Carl Sandburg, who enjoyed her stories and articles, Roberts wrote her first book in 1958. Aptly called a "custodian of the twilight zone" by Southern Living magazine, Roberts based her suspenseful stories on interviews and her rich knowledge of American folklore. Her stories were always rooted in history, which earned her a certificate of commendation from the American Association of State and Local History for her books on the Carolinas and Appalachia.

A shackled West African tribe drags themselves off a slave ship while singing, drowning in a Georgia creek to avoid being sold. Mysterious letters from a long-ruined church near Mepkin Abbey solicit a man to join faith. A French teacher disappears from a school after marking final exams in blood. An Egyptian mummy triggers a heart attack in a city museum. These stories and more are wrenched from the gravest parts of America's past--real lives of people on plantations from Savannah and the coast of the Carolinas. Most deal with the hub of the East Coast slave trade, Charleston, South Carolina. All are richly illustrated with both historic and contemporary images. Dwelling in the affairs of plantation life is to tread the fires of emotionally raw history. Sifting through the folklore and legends, the old hushed embers of the south ignite once again in this collection. While these stories relate encounters with the supernatural, readers will find that what actually happened here doesn't always need a ghost to be disquieting.

Ghost stories from various southern states in America.