Haunting Experiences Diane Goldstein, Sylvia Grider, Jeannie Banks Thomas
Haunting Experiences Diane Goldstein, Sylvia Grider, Jeannie Banks Thomas Published by Utah State University Press Goldstein, Diane & Grider, Sylvia & Thomas, Banks. Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2007. Project MUSE., https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/9397 No institutional affiliation (2 Feb 2019 09:46 GMT) Introduction Old Spirits in New Bottles Bottle Trees and Cell Phones Bright wind chimes composed of enticing, candy-colored, pastel bits of glass are for sale at the Winchester Mystery House gift shop (fi gure 1). Some of the glass is formed into colorful bottles reminiscent of those in the southern supernatural tradition of bottle trees, a custom depicted in movies such as Ray (2004), a biopic about African American musician Ray Charles, or Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), a children’s fi lm about a beloved dog. The famous southern writer Eudora Welty photographed them. A contemporary southern author, Dennis Covington, describes them: “If you happen to have evil spirits, you put bottles on the branches of a [bare] tree in your yard. The more colorful the glass, the better, I suppose. The evil spirits get trapped in the bottles and won’t do you any harm. This is what Southerners in the country do with evil spirits” (1995, xv). Bottle trees are a product of southern African American cul- ture. Jim Martin says that glassblowing and bottle making existed as early as the ninth century in Africa. The practice of hanging objects from trees to ward off evil spirits is also African, and the bottle tree itself is Kongo-derived.
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