week of 10/2/02
 
 
 

Young folklore
Austin lends a new quality to traditional Southern tales
By Gary Carden

Mariah of the Spirits and Other Southern Ghost Stories by Sherry Austin. Johnson City: The Overmountain Press, 2002. $14.95 — 181 pp.


Over a decade ago, the Appalachian writer Lewis Green published an essay in the Appalachian Journal lamenting the fact that ghost stories didn’t seem to thrive in our region. Certainly, we had a generous number of tales about “boogers and haints,” but when it came to quality — a story that not only raised a reader’s hackles but also contained style and narrative power — well, Appalachia appears to be poorly represented. Green noted that one of the significant reasons (he gave several) for this dilemma had to do with America’s relatively “young” history, or a lack of tradition. Certainly, Europe has the distinct advantage of having a rich past that stretches back to the Druids, not to mention a host of mythologies filled with gods, devils, ogres and monsters — such tradition provides a fertile soil for the folktales, legends and myths about the supernatural.

I heartily agree. The ghosts of Shakespearean England, the demons and wraiths of Ireland and the vampires of Transylvania are born of ruined castles, ancient folklore and superstitions that predate the Christian era. In America, with a history that barely exceeds three centuries, our ghosts and demons are drawn from a history that is too recent to qualify as “ancient tradition.” But, we are improving with age — we are acquiring a a stock of supernatural beings that can claim American citizenship. The South, with its foggy marshes and deserted mansions, and Appalachia, filled with haunted coves and moon-washed mountain tops, contain a wealth of dark tales.

Unfortunately, our favorite Southern spooks are becoming a bit shopworn (trite) — grieving specters who haunt ruined plantations, crossroads or churchyards; headless slaves bearing lanterns; the cries of drowned babies; phantom hoof beats at the site of Civil War encounters; vindictive witches; graveyard dogs, mysterious lights and belled buzzards. The major problem with much of this ghostly lore is not that it lacks the power to terrify — it has rich potential for that — but the tales are poorly served by mediocre talents.

These oft-repeated tales need gifted storytellers — someone who can delve beneath the surface and find the magical details, the words and phrases that makes the reader’s blood tingle, wakens the sleeping nerve ends and quickens the heart. Yes, the tale may be worn and familiar but the treatment can be new and electric.

Well, dear reader, such a writer has come calling. Her name is Sherry Austin, the recipient of Artist Fellowship for Literature from the North Carolina Arts Council. In the collection of 14 tales of the supernatural, Austin honors the South’s eldritch creatures by clothing them in a narrative that flickers and shimmers like heat lightning on a stormy night. Consider the subjects.

A murdered slave walks the dark woods and sandy trails of the Carolina Piedmont, searching for her son. On an abandoned plantation near the Waccamaw River, startled visitors report seeing Miss Emmaline Elwood, floating in the shallow waters of an inundated rice field, her hair waving like seaweed. She has been there since 1864. In the window of a New Orleans curio shop, the soul of a headless, armless mannequin burns (literally) with unrequited love for the heedless shop owner. On a fog-shrouded pier in Charleston, a host of the newly-dead wait expectantly for an excursion boat, and on a wind-swept beach near Nag’s Head, a woman encounters the embittered spirit of a long-dead thwarted lover.

Sherry Austin’s ghost-haunted country has a diverse geography. Many of the stories are rooted in the “dark corners” of Appalachia and adjacent regions — places where boundaries and jurisdictions are uncertain, such as the mountains of east Tennessee, remote coves of the Smokies and the hills of north Georgia. Many of the tales contain references to the region’s superstitions and folkways — stopped clocks, broken mirrors, prescient dreams, plat-eyed spirits and “second sight.” Indeed, many of Austin’s most pleasing offerings are “variations on a theme” — wonderful reworking of traditional tales. Most notable in this group, “Strange Things Happen,” is tale of the fey child of Sliding Rock (Pisgah Forest) who appears to be a direct descendant of the traditional “Vanishing Hitch-hiker.” (However, Bo is more appealing than a lonely teenager in an evening gown thumbing a ride on a dark road — Bo is the tangible manifestation of an aborted childhood.)

Especially memorable are the stories that come wrapped in hand-made quilts, smelling of apple butter and mountain laurel. “Come, Go Home With Me” deals with the “beckoning dead.” Winfred, an aging widower, sometimes looks up from sanding furniture in his woodworking shop, to see a gathering of departed relatives and friends either observing him from the other side of a nearby river, or standing in his doorway. “Come on, Winfred,” they say, “We are waiting for you.” The invitation is neither sinister or chilling, yet the old man is reluctant to go...until the right face appears at his doorway.

The dead also extend an eager invitation in “One Winter’s Tale,” in which an entire congregation in a snowbound Kentucky church — a church that burned long ago — entreats Agatha Prymme to join their choir.

The dearly departed are a variable sort in this collection. Sometimes, they are harbingers that cajole and entreat; occasionally, they merely come for a visit, wishing to stand again in quickened flesh and feel the sunshine on their faces — as Louis comes each year to the steep hillside in “Something Green That Grows” to help Aunt Mattie on her annual graveyard cleaning day. There are also spirits that are agents of retribution, as is the murdered Ina in “At the Clothesline,” who rises from her kudzu-choked grave to whisper to her lost daughter as she stands among the wind-blown clothes, watching the lightning flash.

It is gratifying to read a book that draws its inspiration from the folklore of this region and accomplishes this feat without resorting to gaudy thrills and gory slaughter. Sherry Austin does it with the power and magic of accomplished writing and the creation of atmosphere that sometimes feels like an icy raindrop tracking down your spine.

This is a good book!

(Gary Carden is a writer, storyteller and lecturer whose book, Mason Jars in the Flood, was recently named Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association. He can be reached at gcarden498@aol.com.)