“From ghoulies and ghosties,
and long-leggedy beasties,
and things that go bump in the night,
good Lord deliver us.”
— 18th Century Scottish prayer
I grew up with ghost stories. But in our family, all the ghosts were considered kin.
As a Charleston native, perhaps my Southern DNA predisposed me to believe almost from birth. Hauntings were as much a part of the landscape as Spanish moss and mosquitoes. “Haint blue,” that vivid shade of blue thought to dissuade ghosts from entering your home, was a common color for shutters and porches and doors.
My people took no such precautions. We knew who haunted our homes or the homes of friends and cousins. For us, they were still people — even if they didn’t have bodies any more.
One such disembodied spirit was Henry, more widely known as John Henry Rutledge, the ghost of Hampton Plantation north of Mount Pleasant. Decades before I was born, my great grandfather, Isaac Dennis Auld Sr., used to spend weekends at Hampton duck hunting with his friend, Archibald Rutledge.
In a high-tech world, old-fashioned ghost stories still scare, fascinate and entertain
Dennis slept in Henry’s old bedroom and in the years that followed, spoke of waking up to find the empty rocking chair rocking or open windows that should’ve been shut or shut windows that should’ve been open.
Dennis always reckoned it was just Henry, keeping him company. And, while he said the experience was sometimes startling, he never reported being afraid. Perhaps it was because the home in which he was born, Youghal on Porchers Bluff in Mount Pleasant, had its own ghost.
I’ve never seen a ghost, but I do believe there is something to encounters with the uncanny that so many people across so many cultures and geographies report experiencing. The unknown fascinates and scares us, and ghost stories tap into that.
Still, you won’t find me poking around the Poinsett Bridge after dark — at least, not alone.
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In many Southern families (including mine) ghosts are people, too - Greenville Journal
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