“She walks these hills with a long black veil; she visits my grave when the night winds wail…”
- Lefty Frizzell
It’s that time of year! It’s perhaps my favorite season. The wind picks up, the air is cooler, it’s more crisp and the feel of restless spirits fill the landscape down South. Halloween is upon us and the spirits and haunted souls of the troubled departed give the South a distinct feeling all its own. It’s during this season that I look for books that reflect the so-called spooky mood of Halloween and the fall season itself.
Haunted Pages: Southern Gothic Books for the Halloween Season
Some works of Southern literature and those works set in the South deal directly with obvious dark and Gothic themes. Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice is a classic work set in New Orleans, a haunted city full of the “ghosts” of its fascinating and often checkered past. Louis de Pointe du Lac, a two-hundred-year-old vampire, tells the riveting story of his life to a reporter, identified as Daniel Molloy in later works. Even vampires can be great storytellers because they’ve lived long enough to see a lot of stories in the making.
Many Southern works with a Gothic element possess truly spooky settings that lend the story an eerie feel. That’s not unusual in that a central theme of this genre is decay and that decay can be interpreted in many ways. In recent years John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil told a more modern tale of Southern eccentrics, voodoo, murder and scandal in the decadent Southern city of Savannah, Georgia. Though panned by some and beloved by others, this novel, which blended true crime and fiction, inspired me to begin regular sojourns to coastal Georgia and the city of Savannah. I have grown to possess great affection for the strangeness of the town and enjoy its haunts every chance I get. Literature can have that curious effect on a person.
Some works by Southern writers come to my mind this time of year because of the haunted characters who live upon their pages. Such works don’t always have haunted houses and zombies roaming the countryside at night. Sometimes, the work is more subtle. Whether it’s the shrunken mummies, fanatics or questionable prophets of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood or the social outcasts and perceived deviants of Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms, I find myself compelled to read dark Southern works this time of year. In the latter novel, Capote gives us a character named Idabel Thompkins, a tomboy, and who is based on Capote’s childhood friend, none other than Harper Lee. What more can you ask for?
Sometimes we simply want to read novels whose characters are haunted in their souls and personalities. William Faulkner provides dark characters whose sins include illicit love, excessive drinking and fatalistic impulses such as suicide. From a personal perspective, I crave characters whose lives are messy, destructive, foreboding and, yes, haunted in spirit and mind. William Gay’s Twilight comes to mind when I think of twisted and troubled characters this time of the year. Whether your taste in literature finds you picking up Michael McDowell’s The Elementals or a recent work such as Del Sandeen’s This Cursed House, the South and Southern writers will readily provide you with literature to fit your needs.
From Hundreds of Pages to Lyrics: Ghost Stories in Southern Country Songs
So much for novels, there’s still the music of the region during the Halloween season that can arouse one’s appetite for the Gothic and the darkly entertaining. From my own personal perspective, I find great value in the literature of music. Sometimes, a better story can be told through the few lines of a song than in the hundreds of pages of a novel. So many good songs fill my ears when I think of the ghosts of the South.
Growing up in Tennessee, I listened to some of country music’s greatest artists, and some of those musicians gave us songs befitting the season. As a young adolescent, I enjoyed the humorous and explicitly spooky tunes I heard on country stations. I learned about the ghost of Lucius Clay from the Charlie Daniels Band when I first heard The Legend of Wooley Swamp and Bobby Bare warned me about being a “Handsome Jack” and ending up in the grasps of spooky Marie Laveau. A Voodoo queen had a certain erotic quality befitting the imagination of a healthy young man in the South.
While these songs were upbeat, I later was exposed to those that seemed to slow me down and listen to a story that was a warning. One of my favorite country music outlaws, Waylon Jennings, told me the story of a jealous banker and a missing lover and a flower that grew in the wintertime and bloomed in the dead of night in his Rose in Paradise. Lefty Frizzell, and later Johnny Cash, spun the story of the Long Black Veil and the woman who mourned as she walked the hills and countryside after her lover was hanged by the executioner.
My all-time favorite storyteller in song was Tom T. Hall. He said, facetiously and to make a point, that we should hang everyone in his song, Hang Them All. His song about widespread paranoia and vigilante justice also carries an important message. Storytelling is arguably often at its best when put to song. The music and the rhythm enhance the experience.
Two truly spooky tales are told by two vastly different musicians. Red Sovine, who was a regular on my maternal grandfather’s radio as he hurtled down the highway driving his 18-wheeler, became one of my favorite storytellers. As a youth spending time with my truck driving grandfather, I listened with rapt attention to Red’s tale of Phantom 309. I often wondered if my grandfather and I would cross paths with Big Joe and his legendary semi-truck, Phantom 309 as they gave otherworldly rides to wayfaring strangers and hitchhikers. Later in youth, I listened to David Allan Coe’s ghostly tale of Hank Williams, Sr. giving him a midnight ride in his Cadillac in The Ride. While I was never a fan of Coe’s, for many reasons, I found the tale fascinating, nonetheless.
Southern storytellers spin yarns in so many ways, but those of our novelists and songwriters fascinate me and leave me wanting to read and hear more. During this fall season and on Halloween, treat yourself to a good story. Listen to a spooky song, read a ghostly story and soak up the damp, chilled air and allow yourself to wonder if you’re truly alone, as you feel the hair on your neck stand just a bit. Listen to a noise somewhere off in the otherwise lonely house or the snap of a twig deep in the darkness of the woods and maybe you’ll end up having a tale of your own to tell. Happy Halloween!
