Shadows and Cypress: Southern Ghost Stories

by Alan Brown

A bewitching convocation of Dixie's most frightening ghost tales From backwaters as dark as a cypress swamp to nooks as mysterious as a musty college library, southerners have conjured spirits and told ghost stories. Shadows and Southern Ghost Stories is a Dixie séance that summons ghost tales from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Collecting more than a dozen stories from each state, this book channels the South's entire panorama of creepy locales into one volume. The limestone caves of Kentucky, the swamps of Louisiana and Florida, the pine hills and hollows of Appalachia, and the plains of Texas -- these are perfect haunts for a host of narratives about visitors from the spirit world. The many cultures that converged in the American South enriched the region's ghost stories. Shadows and Cypress taps African American, French, Hispanic, and Scotch-Irish storytelling traditions to capture the distinctive signatures that each has left on ghostlore. Throughout the region, the southern ghost story is hardly a curio from the crypt. It's still alive and well. Folklorist Alan Brown draws stories from crannies as contemporary as the college dormitory or cars parked on a lover's lane. To give the reader the unique experience of hearing a classic ghost story told, Brown presents these tales exactly as they were recorded in his field research or as archived in the trove of the WPA oral collections. A wide variety of spectres found only in this region arise in Shadows and Cypress . The "fillet" and "loogaru" from Louisiana, "plat-eye" from South Carolina, and "haints" from across Dixie are among the creatures bumping in the night. Beginning with the Revolutionary War and continuing to present day, this generous gathering of tales will chill and delight readers and long haunt shelves as a comprehensive sourcebook of the region's supernatural allure. Alan Brown is a professor of English at the University of West Alabama. He has published several books, including Dim Roads and Dark Nights (1993) and The Face in the Window and Other Alabama Ghostlore (1996).

232 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2000

Reviews

[Sarah Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection of ghost stories and urban myths as recorded in the voice of the teller. This is more about social history than providing scares but is engaging and occasionally creepy nonetheless. The stories are organised by State and are in small, easily read chunks. Worth a look, especially if you are interested in verbal history/storytelling and/or are planning to embark on paranormal research.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had this book for over ten years but haven't read all of the stories until now. Some are more interesting(and more believable) than others, but my favorite is one in the Mississippi section that's a joke.

A shortened version goes like this: A man in town had a girlfriend he would visit every night and to get to her house, he had to pass by the Methodist church. One day the Methodist preacher made a point to stop the man to tell him it wasn't very nice to visit his lady friend like that. The man then admitted that every time he passes the church, he always sees a “critter” on the church steeple. The preacher told him that it was the devil going to get him for “sinnin.” After hearing about the critter a few more times, the preacher got the idea to scare the man. So, he dressed up in sheets like a ghost and hid on the church steeple and when the man passed by, the preacher saw his eyes get real big and run the other way. The next day when the man passed by the church, the preacher asked him if he saw the critter again. The man replied, “You know preacher, it just about scared me to death. I came by the church and I looked up on the steeple and Lord help me, there was two of them this time!”

Also, one of the stories from Louisiana is about the LaLaurie house (currently a storyline on American Horror Story) which includes other horrific details I hadn't heard before.

[Madly Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are not full fleshed-out stories as in fiction narratives, but rather quick oral tales about all types of ghostly experiences. Each one of the stories is related by a particular person and the story is transcribed just as the person tells it. Oral History classes teach how this is done in order to protect the oral tradition and the individuality. I found several of them quite fascinating. "Missouri Larkin" is one of my favorites.