We took a ghost tour last night in downtown Charleston. The ad in the yellow pages proclaimed it to be “The Best Ghost Tour in Charleston!” I’m pretty sure it’s the only ghost tour in Charleston.
Myself and some 20-odd people wove in and out of alleyways in the cold dark, led by a white-haired gentleman wearing a baseball cap. He was fond of bad puns and had a flair for the dramatic, often leaning into us and dropping into hushed tones to ask if we could “feel the overtures of the spirits.” I was most enthralled by the end of the tour, when our guide left us to wander back to our cars, ostensibly, through a graveyard. My fingers were numb from the cold, knuckles buried deep into my coat pockets as we stared into the dark of the headstones. One of us commented he wouldn’t mind sleeping in the cemetery were it not for cold, as he’d done many times in his youth. I shivered.
We walked back between the old buildings, flickering torches marking each entranceway: a tavern, a defunct dungeon, an apartment building lit by candlelight. The apartment windows overlooked the side yard, headstones cropping up from the grass. It seemed every available spot of grass had a burial plot, and the caskets were buried end to end to make use of every last corner of land.
I knew when I first drove through the city that it was filled with the dead, but I didn’t know I was being quite so literal.
Our tour guide ended with a list of safeguards against ghosts, borrowing from the traditions of Gullah, apparently practiced by the black folk in Charleston. He told that one could paint their archways a deep indigo blue – “haint” blue-- and paint old glass bottles blue and hang them from the trees in the yard to keep spirits away.
...
I met a man with hooks for hands, who sold flowers on the street. As he passed me, he dropped a cutting of yard flowers, and they fell at my feet. He stopped and turned to me, and I handed him the flowers, realizing too late he couldn’t take them. He held out his hook to me, and I tried several times before finally slipping the stems over the sharp metal.
Later, I would think of Blackbeard the pirate, and how he died in the Charleston dungeons, and wonder if the hooked man was real.
sometimes I feel i have hooks for hands. people try to give me love but I never I can't/ won't receive it.
Posted by: lee tillman at January 15, 2005 10:51 AM