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Haints and Hags on Halloween

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Halloween’s around the corner. Here’s a little haint tale for the occasion from Putnam County, Tennessee.

About one mile and a half east of Cookeville the Buck Mountain Road is crossed by the old Sparta-Livingston Road. Turning to the left here and going about a quarter of a mile in the direction of Livingston one reaches the scene of the noted ante-bellum mystery. The large and dismal swamp that once covered several acres on either side of the road is now only a memory, due to the propensity of modern man to clear, drain and cultivate the soil. But the name, “Booger Swamp,” still clings to the spot after nearly three-quarters of a century.

One dark night in the early fifties a well-known minister of the gospel, whose name is not essential to our story, was passing this lonely spot on horseback, when suddenly an apparition appeared before him—or, at least, he said it did. After a great deal of discussion and several futile efforts to induce the spook- seeing brother to retract his story, he was finally arraigned in a formal church court and tried, convicted and expelled from the ministry. According to his story, the apparition was a pure white body floating about a yard above the ground and “about the size and length of a weaver’s beam,” to use his exact language. It made some effort to communicate with him, but his horse became unruly and dashed away.

A History of Putnam County, Tennessee by Walter S. McClain, Cooksville, Tenn., Quimby Dyer & Company [c1925]

illustration of black cat sitting inside a jack o lantern

A “haint” is an unsettled or angry dead spirit; the term, like “hag,” is of Germanic-British origins. A haint can range from a ghost to an undefinable something that scares the bejeevers out of you. In the same way a haint tale covers everything from a ghost story to a yarn about an odd event. A haint tale doesn’t even have to be scary; some are quite funny. But there are two common ingredients shared by every haint tale. One is that it must involve frightening a character, the listener, or both. The other is that it must include the supernatural, or supernatural overtones. Sometimes it can be a normal event perceived as supernatural, but the paranormal must get mixed in there somehow or other.

source: A History of Putnam County, Tennessee by Walter S. McClain, Cooksville, Tenn., Quimby Dyer & Company

More articles on Halloween:

Death, witches and superstitions(Opens in a new browser tab)

Halloween’s coming! Time for an Appalachian Ghost Story(Opens in a new browser tab)

The three restless spirits of Sarah, Will, and Clem(Opens in a new browser tab)

4 comments

  1. my granny was form Harlan County Ky & she always spoke of haints & such!! Wouls care the crap outta us kids!! We’d stay w/her while the others would work the fields or strip tobacco at was always the best times we had…. shed get us all around the old fireplace & tell her”stories”!!! Love haint stories!!!

  2. My mom is from S.E. Tennesse and lived on the Cumberland plateau until 18 and she swore up and down a haint was after her brother one time and tried to open the doors of his car while driving. Scared me senseless as a kid. Took me 46 years to think “I wonder what that haint really was?” Thank you for this. I’ve truly have came to appreciate and adore my Appalachian heritage
    along with the sayings and stories. My dad was full czech from Omaha and settled here and married my mom(literally country mouse and city mouse.)I knew more about his side than moms until something clicked one day about how special Appalachian culture actually is started researching Sadly, it’s something she isn’t proud of but really should be. The culture is something that we are losing here in S.E. Tn and Nw Ga.I’m trying to document it all so o never forget. So glad to find this site and feel connected in a kindred way to others. Love it. Thank you so much.

  3. I grew up on hearing my folks talk about haints. My parents like many other people in Peoria, Illinois migrated from Arkansas and many visitors to our home told hainty tales as if they were real. Maybe they were but today I enjoy writing about haints mainly to preserve that tradition.

  4. Pingback: Haints & Orthodoxy

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