In North Carolina, a state known for quirky local legends like the Brown Mountain Lights or the Beast of Bladenboro. In fact, in the western part of the state, and specifically in the Appalachians, superstition and old wife’s tales are so deeply ingrained into people that it is common place to believe in ghost and otherworldly beings. Every single town in North Carolina has at least one haunted place, or has had an inhabitant experience a ghostly encounter. These legends are a sense of pride and are most often told not around a campfire but through a dramatic play or most commonly, through song. Folk songs are widely popular in the smaller towns, and even with the rise in modern music every good ol’ country son or daughter has heard a song dealing with a local superstition. In Chatham …show more content…
county the main legend has nothing to do with some batty old ghost, a mythical creature, or an alien encounter. No, in Bear Creek there is something completely different, something that even people from other states have heard of, The Devil’s Tramping Ground. The Devil's Tramping Ground is considered one of the most haunted places in North Carolina.
It's said that there is where The Devil himself walks at night. It is a perfectly round circle somewhere around forty feet in diameter in the extensive pine woods. In the past few hundred years nothing has grown within this circle, not a single tree, nor a flower, not even a blade of grass will grow within the circle’s limits. The area around the circle is full of pine trees and plenty of underbrush, yet within the circle nothing grows. And, what's potentially stranger is that any object left in the circle overnight, come morning it will have either been moved outside of the circle or disappeared completely. Dogs will tuck their tails between their legs and whimper when brought near the circle, they will dig their heels into the sand, and outright refuse to go into the circle. Many people will try to spend the night in the circle, and while they set up camp in the circle they will either leave before the night is through, or will have been moved outside of the circle. It is said that every night just after dusk the circle opens up and forms a gate to hell, and from it the Devil himself
emerges. The Devil is said to spends his nights pacing around and around in a circle, planning new ways to seduce human souls towards eternal damnation. The scorching heat of his cloven hoofs is said to be the very thing that kills any form of vegetation and has made the soil barren. In his circling he will brush aside anything left in his path, and can easily toss aside even the heaviest of objects, and any object that interest him will be taken with him. When he walks in this private spot The Devil will drop the form he takes to lure humanity, and takes his natural form. It is his broken and torn body, once considered to be the most beautiful of angels, now horribly corrupt and diseased that will drive any person who sees it insane. And perhaps the most frightening part is any person that went missing around the Tramping area is said to have been pulled into hell by the Devil himself as he went back.
In Washington Irving’s story, The Devil and Tom Walker, Irving uses his imagination to convey his thoughts about the truth of life through symbols and characterization. In one specific instance in the story, the main character, Tom Walker, is walking home and “he took what he considered a shortcut homeward, through the swamp. Like most shortcuts, it was an ill-chosen route.” The path being “thickly grown with great gloomy pines” symbolizes the path of wrongdoings, bad decisions, and darkness. By taking this path, one then strays off the path of
building to descending into Hell. He comments that his “hole is warm and full of light... I
The children of Salem did not have many forms of entertainment, especially during the winter. There were no movies or radios, and the adults were always busy with work. Many took to reading as a form of entertainment. The young people of the town became interested in books about fortune telling and prophecies. Some formed a circle led by Tituba, slave...
Hysteria took over the town and caused them to believe that their neighbors were practicing witchcraft. If there was a wind storm and a fence was knocked down, people believed that their neighbors used witchcraft to do it. Everyone from ordinary people to the governor’s wife was accused of witchcraft. Even a pregnant woman and the most perfect puritan woman were accused. No one in the small town was safe.
Irving uses imagery to help readers imagine the past and also impact the theme of supernatural. Irving writes, “The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; star shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols. The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head” (Irving 3-4). Once again, Irving makes a reference to the hessian soldier, the Headless Horseman, which brings back the past of the revolutionary war, he does this by using imagery in explaining what he looks like. This also ties in with the theme of supernatural. Irving also describes, “ There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land” (Irving 1). This helps us readers imagine the atmosphere and the theme of supernatural within the town. The mentioning of the hauntings brings up the past once
“Home. I want to go home,” the story begins of a Confederate prisoner of war. A friend’s grandmother, age 76 and a worker at the historic society, tells a story of Point Lookout. During the Civil War, the Union had a prison for captured Confederate soldiers near Point Lookout. With a warm and friendly voice that shows the sign of age, the storyteller joyfully recollects the story. She has the tale in book, but recalls it from memory. She knows the story so well that one could hardly tell it was not being read word for word. When speaking the voice of the ghost, she softens her voice, making the voice sound afraid and evoking sympathy for the unfortunate boy.
Can you imagine yourself locked up in a room with no doors? Similar to a room with no doors, there is no way out of hell if it was one's destiny. In the short story "The Devil & Tom Walker" by Washington Irving, the main character's fate is hell because of his wrong decisions in life, accepting a deal with the devil for earthly benefits. Irving reinforces his message about not making decisions that may damn your soul with the use of literary elements and figurative language. Wisely, Irving combines characterization, mood and point of view to perpetuate the theme of the story in the reader's mind.
A major aspect within ‘Ghost Dances’ is the characters and how they reflect the meaning of the story and what they resemble. There are two different groups of characters within this work, the Ghost Dancers and the Peasant Villagers. Each group acts o...
An old man is sitting on an leather armchair, dressed in black and very expensive suit, smoking a cigarette and sipping his old whiskey from his goblet glass.He is short, squat, massive-skulled man. He was indeed a man to frighten the devil in hell himself. His presence sent out alarm bells of danger. His face was stamped into a mask of fury, the eyes were brown but with none of the warmth of that color. His mouth was not so much cruel as lifeless; thin and with the color of veal. He did not fear the police, he did not fear society, he did not fear the God or hell, he did not fear or love his fellow man. This old man was sitting all day on his armchair and offering his friendship to everyone who needed it because he is the only one who can help, he is the boss, he is the Godfather.1
Much of the literature written by Native Americans from the Southeastern U.S. draws from traditional tribal myths. Many of these myths have been transcribed and translated into English by various ethnographers and folklorists, and, in the case of the Cherokee, myths have been collected and published in acclaimed books. Anthropologist James Mooney, an employee of the federal government at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, collected a large number of mythological stories from informants during his years of fieldwork among the Eastern Band of the Cherokee in western North Carolina; Mooney incorporated that material into the important compilation Myths of the Cherokee (1900). A century later, folklorist Barbara R. Duncan, a researcher employed by the Museum of the Cherokee...
Built in 1910 by Hezekiah Eastman Hatch, Hatch’s Camp (later named St Ann’s Retreat, but most commonly known as The Nunnery) has had plenty of time to surface mysterious tragedy information. Many of these stories are told by local teens/young adults to visitors, many of which attend Utah State and are intrigued by the information given. The variations of the story ranges anywhere from Nuns bearing devil children, to Ghost Dogs chasing you if you trespass or even the children born to the Nuns being killed or scarified in the pool or fireplace. Though they make great ghost stories while camping up in the canyon, the facts behind Hatch’s Camp will make this story seem less spooky.
Moonshining is an important part of the daily lives of Appalachian people because it was a way to bring the people together to tell stories and make Appalachian literature happen. Moonshining has been a solid tradition in the mountains of Southern Appalachia. In his article “It’s All Legal until You Get Caught: Moonshining in the Southern Appalachians,” Jason Sumich states that moonshining “was a prime source of income for generations of mountain people. Historically, it was one of the few ways to earn cash in the subsistence-dominated mountain economy. It is the basis for many local stories and an important part of the mountain myth of individualism and resistance to outside authority. It has thrived in spite of legal and religious condemnation.”
As major historical events produced new eras, so did folk tales evolve with time. Jack Zipes in Breaking the Magic Spell believes that in order to fully understan...
After Satan is worshipped by the other fallen angels, he begins his journey to the new land. He notices that there are nine gates of Hell and approaches the one guarded by Sin and Death. After convincing them to open the gate , he continues on to find Chaos, Night, Confusion, Discord and a few others. He once again uses his rhetorical skills to convince Chaos to show him the way to Earth. Now that he knows where he is going he continues the difficult journey : " So he with difficulty and labour hard/Mov’d on, with difficulty and labour hee;" (1021-1022). Satan will stop at nothing to get to Earth. Milton 's description of Satan 's journey shows us his determination and his intelligence . Even God takes account of Satan 's drive and mentions it to the Son
Bottigheimer Ruth B. Fairytales Folk Narrative Research and History “Social History” JSTOR 14, 3 (1989). 343-357, Taylor & Francis, Ltd.