Hi guys. First of all a big thank you hug to Bella in particular and to all of you who have visited the site on her recommendation. I'm inclined to do my justly celebrated Sally Field impression, but Willard recommends we do the more dignified Joe Pesci: It's our privilege. Thank you.

Passim, I have never written a movie review before so please allow me a few eccentricities. And now our feature presentation.

Note to self: Always remember that when Sci Fi channel proclaims an original movie is "inspired by actual events," they mean that in the loosest possible sense.

On Thursday night I got a treat: a fairly old-fashioned ghost story called WRAITHS OF ROANOKE, "inspired by actual events." Roanoke was a dead giveaway; inspired by the tragic 1587 Lost Colony, an early attempt to establish permanent English settlement in North America that ended in the colonists' disappearance. Any connection to actual events ended some fifteen minutes into the film with the August 1587 birth of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in America.

The plot turns around the revelation, late in the film, that half a millenium before the English colonists arrived, a shipload of Vikings was blown off course, landing on Roanoke, far to the south of their destination. (Just how far off course they could be blown is illustrated by the theory that the Aztec god Quetzlcoatl was originally an out of place Viking--a fact the blond blue-eyed Castilian Spanish followers of Cortez exploited centuries later.) While they were on Roanoke, a Viking woman and her sons were tortured and executed as witches and never received proper funeral rites. They haunt the forests of Roanoke as wraiths--spirits who feed off the souls of the living.

The wraiths pick off the colonists until their leader, Ananias Dare, finds some bones and an inscription in Old Norse in an island cave. Ananias--conveniently--has traveled in the north and not only speaks Old Norse but has studied Viking funeral customs. He decides to give the bones a proper sendoff, the legendary shipburning ritual, of necessity not a pyre on a longboat but a corn shock on a raft. In one last hurrah the wraiths--identifiable from their first appearance by their anachronistic horned helmets--kill the remaining settlers, save for wee Virginia Dare, but are dispatched in the flames of the corn shock. Virginia is adopted by the tribal chieftain Manteo.

Oddly, there were later North Carolina Native Americans with gray eyes, fair hair and, significantly, freckles, suggesting a far more plausible fate for the colonists; but damn the plausibilities. In this highly unlikely but entertaining film I got a twofer: the delectable Adrian Paul of HIGHLANDER fame in the role of Ananias Dare, and Vikings, for whom I have always cherished a secret lech, even though I know they were not cute cuddly Hagar the Horrible types.

Flashback: Winter Olympics, Lillehammer, Norway, 1994. Blond giants striding around playing fiddles or reciting skaldic verse. Since I don't understand a word of Old Norse, I could pretend it was erotic instead of celebrations of smashed skulls, lopped limbs, and Blood Spatter 101. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

Paragraph in Praise of Middleaged Men: I gather that for a cougar I'm a bit strange; with the exceptions of Willie Geist and Peyton Manning, I prefer men of my own age or thereabout.Got it bad therefore for the likes of Mike Rowe, George Clooney, the aforementioned Adrian Paul, and Keith Olbermann. (How sad that last thinks any woman over the age of twenty-five is a hag.)

In closing, let me say I was able to suspend my disbelief quite willingly for Adrian Paul's sake, in spite of hammish acting, historical howlers (nobody said "okay" in 1587, okay?) and cheesy special effects. If I have a major quibble with the film, it's that nobody found occasion for AP to take his shirt off. He's one of the few men on the planet who can give Mike Rowe a run for his money shirtless.

And on THAT profundity, until next time, fair thee well.

PS another note to self: threaten Miss A with lawsuit. Get your own signoff, you ornery brat!

Back for more? Let’s get right to it.

"Ghost Riders in the Sky": recorded too many times to count. A short list would include Gene Autry, Vaughn Monroe, Frankie Laine, and Johnny Cash. My favorite, though, is by the Sons of the Pioneers, a group of B-western film singers who once included Roy Rogers (under his birth name of Leonard Slye). The song is loosely based on a Texas tale from the 1880s. The Sons of the Pioneers did it justice, with a lead vocal by the inimitable Bob Nolan and gorgeous silky western harmonies over a deceptively spare guitar and accordion accompaniment.

"The Devil Went Down to Georgia": In folklore of all cultures there are tales of mortals who beat the Devil at his wicked games, but most of them resort to trickery. Not so in Charlie Daniels’s fiery romp, in which a Georgia boy named Johnny goes head to head with fiddle man Satan in a contest for Johnny’s soul. Naturally Johnny kicks ass. The History Channel slyly used this blazingly fast piece in commercials for their recent special about General Sherman’s 1864 March to the Sea.

"Bringing Mary Home": one of several variations on the Vanishing Hitchhiker motif, this was recorded by bluegrass greats The Country Gentlemen in 1966. It begins on a Bulwer-Lytton dark and stormy night, when a driver picks up a shivering deathly pale waif named Mary. He agrees to take her home, but she vanishes into thin air before they arrive. It’s left to Mary’s mother to explain it’s the anniversary of her daughter’s death, ending the song on an eerily matter-of-fact note: "you’re the thirteenth one who’s been here bringing Mary home."

"See You in Hell, Blind Boy": An instrumental jewel from Ry Cooder’s 1986 score for the film CROSSROADS (no, no, not the Britney Spears one—God forbid). The film, which starred the late great Joe Seneca and Ralph Macchio of THE KARATE KID fame, is loosely based on the legend of Robert Johnson and his pact with the Devil. This little minor-key piano blues plays behind a sepia-toned flashback to midnight at a crossroads, where the deal was made. Chilling in context, it can give you the willies out of context too, as I learned driving home late one summer night. Low clouds, distant thunder, harsh lightning, an icy breeze off a needling rain, and this playing on the tape deck as I reached a crossroads; no wonder I got the shivers! The "blind boy" of the title refers to the fact that many of the early bluesmen, including Robert Johnson, were either blind or severely visually impaired, probably from prenatal malnutrition.

And my favorite spooky song of all time:

"Simon Crutchfield’s Grave": Written by the brilliantly eccentric Damon Black, recorded by the Wilburn Brothers in 1972, and a standard in the bluegrass repertoire since the mid 1970s. There’s nary a ghost in this song; just a story about a grave in the woods and a man with a guilty conscience. It begins meditatively:

Now I remember very well a tale my daddy used to tell
about old Simon Crutchfield and a friend

The friend, Riley Harper, seduces Simon’s wife Mary, then—so the lyrics imply—murders Simon and buries him in the woods. Riley has a conscience, though, and it eventually gets the better of him. He and Mary are stranded in Simon’s remote cabin after a blizzard, with the only way out "a wagon road that wound around and through the woods past Simon Crutchfield’s grave." Riley and Mary starve to death; the old fur trapper who finds their remains after the spring thaw swears they wrote their epitaphs on the floor. Riley’s is starkly self-revelatory:

Here lies Riley Harper
cause he couldn’t drive by Simon Crutchfield’s grave.

The cold inexorability of a Greek tragedy, building on an initial unease, in under three minutes. In the early 1980s my brother, our dad and I played in a band with some guys from the mountains. Dad and I loved to sing "Simon Crutchfield’s Grave" but the mountain guys pointblank refused to learn it, arguing the chord changes were too difficult. That wasn’t a problem with any other songs we performed; we figured this one simply gave them the creeps. It’s not outside the bounds of possibility that this one actually happened, you see—as any hillbilly, Appalachian or Ozark, could tell you.

And on that bonechilling speculation, fair thee well.

You know me, I’m gonna find a way to work music into the mix, even at Halloween. Country and bluegrass aren’t exactly rich in songs about the supernatural, so I considered researching death metal, but the thought made me feel suicidal, if not murderous. Eventually I came up with ten songs, and didn’t attempt suicide once, or kill Willard in a fit of mania. (Willard would come back to haunt me, sure as shootin’.) A few of these aren’t strictly country or bluegrass, but they’re all spookily beautiful, or funny, as the case may be. Enjoy.
In reverse order:

"Restless Spirit, Wandering": from Tim O’Brien’s CD TRAVELER, this begins as a story about Oglethorpe, a teenage Civil War fatality who’s said to haunt O’Brien’s home (and whom O’Brien, alas, has never encountered) and goes on as a meditation on O’Brien’s wish to tell in music the stories Oglethorpe and other spirits could tell. He captures the plight of ghosts in one crystalline line: "You won’t admit your life is taken, to your death not yet awakened." The melody haunts the ear too; a sweetly wistful folk-bluegrass fusion you can’t quite forget.

"The Highwayman": a musical setting of British poet Alfred Noyes’s melodramatic 1906 poem about doomed lovers, from Loreena McKennitt’s l997 CD THE BOOK OF SECRETS. One might be forgiven for thinking this selection is flawed; it clocks in at over ten minutes and only becomes a ghost story at the very end. It’s here because the instrumentation and vocal are so ravishingly romantic. An observation: when the snare drums begin a military tattoo, in this or any other song, somebody’s gonna die. That simple.

"Hellhound on My Trail": Seventy years after his appalling death from strychnine poisoning, the legendary Delta bluesman Robert Johnson is still dogged, you should pardon the pun, by whispers that he sold his soul to the Devil for his musical prowess. That said, this dark lament would seem to add credence to the legend. Listen to it like I did for the first time, on a moonless humid summer night with hounds baying in the distance (true story). Never did quite lose the goosebumps.

"The Ride": Alan Jackson and David Allan Coe both have recorded songs about the ghost of Hank Williams. Jackson’s "Midnight in Montgomery" is essentially a mood piece, and stories abound that the crew who filmed its companion video were plagued by paranormal phenomena. Coe’s "The Ride" is surely the godchild of Red Sovine’s "Phantom 309." A hitchhiker bound for Nashville is picked up by a spectrally pale man in a Cadillac, but it’s not until song’s end that he learns that "there was somethin’ strange about that ride." For sure—when the hitchhiker gets out on the outskirts of Nashville and tells the man "Mister, many thanks" the man replies, "You don’t have to call me Mister, mister/The whole world calls me Hank."

"Keep Them Cold Icy Fingers Off of Me": This comic bluegrass song was recorded by Ralph Stanley and his brother, the late Carter Stanley, a good half-century ago. It tells the humorous tale of Bill Johnson, a hillbilly "who believed in haints and sights." Ghosts don’t especially scare Bill, but he doesn’t like the idea of being touched by one: "I don’t mind them nekkid bones, I can stand them holler groans/but keep them cold icy fingers off of me." The vocals and instrumention alike an irresistible chortle to them. Great stuff.

Five down, five to go. Tune in next time when we’ll hear Cousin Willard say "Boo." Till then, fair thee well.

Willard here again with another true ghost story for your deliberation.

Many years ago when I was in college there were two stories about ghosts that haunted the campus. One was that of a beautiful Indian maiden that died more than a hundred years before the school ever existed and the other was the story of the oldest building on campus.

That building was used as a hospital during the war between the states. It was an old three story brick building that had four classrooms on each floor and at different times in the 1860’s was used to house sick and injured soldiers from the Union and the Confederate armies.

The legend goes that when the Union hospital was there several men were gravely wounded during a battle and later died.

Many years later, students began seeing lights up on the top floor in the winter despite the building being closed and locked. Somehow the ghost-light only appeared in one corner room.

Over the years the building was searched many times. The light always disappeared before those entering could get to the far back room on the top floor. At first it was declared to be pranksters but with only one set of stairs to enter and exit that theory fell by the wayside.

One night in the winter of 1980, a friend of mine was walking across campus. Because the parking lot closest to the building her class was in was full she had been forced to park all the way on the other side of campus—on the other side of the oldest building on campus.

It was after 9:30 at night and most everyone else had either gone to their dorms or on to their cars. She was walking alone on the unlit path between buildings that led toward the distant lot.

"Momma?" She thought she heard a faint voice calling. She was sure she had heard a voice. "Momma?" She was right beside the corner of the old building and looking up she saw a light in the window of the corner room.

Lee (name changed to protect her identity) thought someone was playing a joke on her since it was well known she believed in ghosts and the story of the ghost-light was also well-known.

She stood there for a little while, getting colder each minute, before the light went out and the plaintive voice stopped calling.

The next morning she visited a department head who knew a lot of the school’s history. And quickly learned more of the story than was widely known among the students.

One of the boys who died in the hospital was only a teenager, hardly more than a boy really. With a gut wound, he lay dying crying out in his fever, for his mother. Apparently nobody ever knew his name or even where he came from. He was buried in a little unmarked grave which has since been lost. The cemetery that is believed to house his remains hasn’t been found since the WPA did a cemetery search in the 1930’s.

The professor was fond of ghost stories. Despite many attempts she never saw the ghostly light nor heard the heartbreaking cry for "Momma". She often said she would like to witness this phenomena.

Somehow, somewhere in time, I hope the young soldier boy has found his mother. No one deserves to die far from home alone and unknown. At least he is remembered by a few even if we shall never know his name. Rest well, my fine lad. Be you Yankee or Rebel you were some mother’s son—her pride and joy.

‘Til next time, fair thee well.

My favorite all time ghost story is one that has been around since at least 1890. My grandmother always said she heard it from her grandmother and step-grandfather (Grandpap) when she was young. I’ve seen variations on Videos put out by WBIR TV in Knoxville called the Heartland Series, and read variations in ghost story books and on the internet. All but the Heartland series claim the story began during or after the Great Depression and took place in some town. Fairweather reminds me that her father heard a version of this story as a schoolboy during WWII.
Let me tell you the story as my grandmother told it.
"It was autumn here in the mountains when the woman first appeared at an old farmers barn. It had that coolish sharp snap in the air that promised a cold winter. The farmer had just finished milking his small herd of cows. There were two or three of them. He was fixin’ to take the milk up to the house when he heard a small noise at the door.
A thin sharp-faced woman in a dark linsey-woolsey dress was standing there holding a small dinner pail.
"Can I help you ma’am?" the farmer asked.
The woman slowly nodded and pointed at his milk buckets and her small tin pail.
"You’d like a little milk?"
She nods slowly and wearily smiles as he pours as much as the little container would hold. She silently turns and walks away. He looked out the door but didn’t see which way she went.
This happens every day for a week. The farmer was a good man and he started wondering if the woman’s family was new to the area and possible sick. There had been a lot of people dyin’ from different things this year. So he decided to follow her when she left that evening.
She came like usual and left just as silently as always. The farmer hastened out the door just in time to see her heading toward a nearby knob. For a half hour he followed her before seeing the church cemetery up ahead. He watched as she went slightly over the top of the hill and was gone in the evening fog. He followed stepping lightly on the holy ground. There were lots of new graves but no sign of the woman. He turned away thinking she had most likely moved on to the other side of the graveyard.
Suddenly he hears a sound like the mewling of a kitten. It was soft and hard to hear. He was a kind man and he thought maybe someone had tossed a young cat out here. His old one had disappeared so he thought maybe this kitten could grow into a good mouser if he found it.
He looked around and couldn’t find the cat. As he turned to leave the sound came again louder as if something had made the animal cry out. Where was it coming from?
The noise he found was coming from under the fresh dirt of a recent grave. He raced back to his barn and grabbed a shovel and hollered for his wife and sons to come help him. In his mind he knew there was something wrong.
They got to the graveyard as the moon rose high and clear lighting the small church cemetery as bright and clear as day. The farmer and his sons dug quickly each one hearing the small pathetic cries. The wife stared on in horror as the men opened the lid to a pine box.
Inside the box was the woman in the dark dress. One hand clutching the little dinner pail now only half full of milk. The other hand holding close to her heart the small body of a crying babe.
The farmer’s wife gently tore a piece of her own petticoat to wrap the cold child in while the men looked at the small piece of wood at the head of the grave. She warmed the child up as the men re-covered the grave of it’s loving mother.
The woman had been the sole survivor of a family that died from the cholera. When she died it had looked like the baby was dead too so the people of the church buried them together never realizing the little child was still alive. Only a mother’s love kept it alive until someone else came to bring it to safety."
My grandmother said the family raised it as one of there own.
Now was it true or just another mountain story? No one alive knows. I do know it has now dwindled into urban legend and folklore. I’d like to think a mother’s love can live on to protect and wrap itself around a beloved child.