Kentucky Hauntings

While the interest in ghost stories seems to spike around Halloween, story telling couple, Roberta Simpson Brown and Lonnie E. Brown claim that they heard many of their family stories while huddled around the hearth during the winter. Their just released collection from University Press of Kentucky entitled Kentucky Hauntings: Homespun Ghost Stories & Unexplained History is somewhat scholarly in that it gives more than a nod to the sources of each story. The Browns categorize their collection into three types of tales:  those learned from history, those learned from headlines, and those heard through homefolks.

I was able to read the entire collection in one afternoon, but know that I will go back and reread some of the ones that I found most fascinating. Where was this book when my niece and nephew demanded scary stories around the campfire and all I had in my arsenal was a re-telling of  Poe short stories?  Many of the stories in this collection will delight those who crave a good scare.

In the history section, "A Chivaree Gone Bad"  explains an old country custom while terrifying the reader with its unexpected outcome.  Another story based on history and custom is "Telling the Bees," which owes much of its structure to an old custom of telling the bees if their keeper dies so that the bees will not abandon their hive. I enjoyed learning about the old customs almost as much as I chilled from the eerie details of these stories.  Other interesting customs no longer practiced in rural life like turkey drives, the burning of tobacco beds, whittling, and the initiation of a new hunter involving a creature called a Swamp Booger provide the basis for some of the more frightening plots.

In the headlines section, the Browns explore stories from the newspapers.  One I had heard before while visiting Mammoth Cave investigates the ghost of Floyd Collins, an explorer who was trapped in the cave and died in 1925.  I had also heard about the Lover's Leap at Cumberland Falls, but had no idea that there was an actual accident at the park that resulted in that popular reference for one of the cliffs. An amusing story about the ghost who haunts the Paramount Art Center, a tale of a politician who did not want a grave stone, and the eerie goings-on at Waverly Hills Sanatorium are also entertaining and noteworthy.

I found myself most interested in the section entitled "Stories from Homefolks."  In these tellings, the authors seem to find their most authentic voices since the tales  were passed on to them personally.  In fact, I read a couple of them aloud to my husband--mainly because he'd followed me down to my reading spot next to the lake and I thought it only polite to share.  There is a story about a bathtub ghost who saves a man's life, a story about how killing a forbidden bird, the dove, makes a permanent circle in the ground that snow cannot cover, a tale about a shadow boy helping a young girl find her way home in a storm, a heartwarming yarn about a devoted neighbor who completes his mission to bring medicine to those in need, even though he's dead.  But my favorite from this section, "The Red Thing"  has some elements of the tall tale to it that my husband and I discussed and laughed about afterwards.  Was great-great uncle Lightel Simpson pulling some legs, or did some horrible creature really come to his cabin one night to devour his newly shot deer and frighten his hounds?

I'll leave that for future readers to decide.  Roberta Simpson Brown and Lonnie E. Brown are part of the Corn Island Storytelling Festival Community, so it makes perfect sense that the last story in their book recounts the final days of their dear friend, Joy Pennington, and her grace at facing the ravages of cancer. According to the Browns, "storytelling brings us together as a culture. We are close to our families and our neighbors when we sit together, tell stories, and then discuss our feelings about them."  I enjoyed reading Kentucky Hauntings: Homespun Ghost Stories & Unexplained History, both by myself at the edge of the lake and with my husband when we shared our theories about "The Red Thing." In fact, I think I finally quit looking over my shoulder at that point.

***This review originally aired on WVXU 91.7 during October.  You can listen to the review here.

Kentucky Folktales

I was crossing a hot college parking lot in Tennessee, on my way to a CREATE Conference, when a man came up along side me to introduce himself as a storyteller from New Mexico. "What about you?'  he asked me, as we kept up the brisk pace toward the opening session. "I'm a songwriter and singer from Kentucky," I countered. "Kentucky!" He seemed delighted.  "Then you must know Mary Hamilton."

This wasn't my first experience with a storyteller from another state assuming that we all know Mary Hamilton. She is that well-known among storytellers. So, when her first book from the University of Kentucky Press, Kentucky Folktales: Revealing Stories, Truths, and Outright Lies, was published this month, I was only too happy to give it a read.

The fact is, I have known Mary Hamilton since around 1999, when she and my trio Raison D'Etre were both juried into Kentucky's Performing Arts Directory.  Plus she and I have spent many summer training sessions together as part of Kentucky's Teaching Artist Roster. Mary is well-respected in the storytelling world and was instrumental in organizing Kentucky's Storytelling Association. I suspected her book would be more than just a collection of tales.

And, I was right.  The book offers a personal introduction to Mary, who openly proclaims herself as "a professional storyteller since 1983."  Following each of the 26 tales in the collection is an essay that discusses either variations and origin of the story--many gleaned from Mary's 2010 Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship at Berea--or some description of how Mary adapted the tale to fit her way of telling.  Truly, the book offers a glimpse into the artistry of the teller.

That Mary began her volume with scary tales could not have pleased me more. Stories like "Stormwalker," "Promises to Keep," and "The Blue Light" are eerie enough to hold a reader's interest on their own. But, the essays following each story explain how Mary uses song, repetition, and various hand motions to add to each tale's power. She also shares with the reader where she encountered each story and the process she used to make the tale part of her repertoire.

It would be hard to pick out favorites from this collection, but I especially enjoyed the one entitled "Some Dog" from the section entitled "Tall Tales and Outright Lies." Anybody who's had a particularly wonderful dog will appreciate the embellished deeds of this hound. And the trick tale called "The Fortune Teller" has some physical humor and surprise in it that made me want to try telling the story to an unsuspecting family member. Mary credits a Kentucky middle school teacher with telling this story to her for the first time. She includes the trick story in the "More Kentucky Folktales" section.

Another great story from the "More Kentucky Folktales" section is "Rawhead and Bloody Bones."  Despite it's less than savory title, the story has some enchanting repetition passages that truly create images in the mind's eye of the two main characters' kindness and cruelty. Following the tale, Mary discusses why she decided to include certain phrases like "she acted ugly" to help the listener form the necessary images for a full understanding of motivation.

The section called "Beyond Kentucky Folktales" introduces stories that do not come from Kentucky, but since they are now being told by a Kentucky teller, will no doubt become more Kentucky-like when filtered through both her technique and her listeners. The author shares examples from India, Scotland, and Japan in this section along with her amusing stories of how she acquired and adapted each tale.

In the final section of the book, Mary Hamilton shares some family stories, including one about her when she was a baby,  and several on the theme of family mistakes. I want to share just one of these with you, so you can get the hang of how Mary's family life has been important to her becoming a storyteller:

It's called "Jeff Rides the Rides." (p.169)...

Mary Hamilton's first book--a collection of tales and her commentary on each one--is a must-have for anyone considering telling a good tale. And for those of us who mostly sit and listen, Kentucky Folktales provides some really good stories along with a little peek behind the scenes at the mind who tells them.

This review aired on the July 1st broadcast of Around Cincinnati. Listen to the entire review at this link:
Listen to the review here.