By Olga Sibert
haint: Southern colloquialism
def., ghost, apparition, lost soul.
We Orthodox believe a lot of things, we are defined by our beliefs, but perhaps we are also defined by what we don’t believe in. We don’t believe in ghosts stalking graveyards or rattling chains down dark hallways.
The only ghost we believe in is the Holy Ghost.
However, here in the South, there’s just about nothing folks like better than a good “haint” story!
Haint stories are deeply Southern. Some Dixie ghosts are hundreds of years old and are more Southern than a plate of biscuits and gravy. Southern Orthodoxy will have to answer a big question country folks will have and that is, “What about our beloved haints and haunts? What’s to become of them as we turn our hearts and souls towards Orthodoxy?”
Some Southern haunts are as dear as family members. Perhaps that’s why we have our own name for the spooky ones, haints. Many old haints have been passed down through generations in the same family home or community site.
Traditions surrounding them abound in the South such as folk remedies for drawing them close or making them disappear. Even certain colors will supposedly drive ghosts away such as our famous “haint blue” porches protecting the entryways of our homes.
Local legend says that spooky things cannot cross water (maybe because Christ walked on water, it was assumed unholy things could not?) so Southern folks would often paint their porches, entry ways, and window sills a water-colored pale shade of blue-green now known as “haint blue.”
The haints may be scared off our porches but they seem to be everywhere else. In Abbeville, Alabama, don’t stay out too late after dark or you may run into Huggin’ Molly. Molly has been scaring folks for over a hundred years now. Wearing a long shroud, she appears only to young couples out past curfew. She will run up to these youngins and give them a giant hug, and then scream in their ear!
Former First Lady and Southern woman, Dolly Madison, is said to have been seen chasing workers from her rose garden for a few centuries, and the Bell Witch supposedly still roams Northeast Tennessee rattling, knocking and shouting.
Nearly everywhere you look in the South, someone has a story. Their great-grandpa is still heard falling down the stairs where he met his demise. Women in white stalk graveyards. Ghost dogs run along long forgotten trails, wells sing, and forests play music all on their own.
As with anything, a much loved haint tale is a tremendous jumping off point for something else Southerners love: a chance to rock on the front porch and visit a spell! Why not let that visit be in the spirit (pun intended) of rooting Orthodoxy in Dixie? Let’s cultivate a love for real “haints” and use these local tales as an opportunity to ponder what really happens to the soul after death.
Where do we begin? We can break most haint tales down into several different parts. The spooky spirit is thought to be active in some way; it travels around near or through a specific location, and local folks interact with it (or avoid it!) in certain ways. Often tied in with these stories are the superstitions surrounding death and lingering fragments of Orthodoxy you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find.
Activity
The starting point for a haint story is the haunt’s activity. Whether he or she comes as a barking dog, a woman in white, a knocking spirit, or a crying baby, all haints are active. That’s how you know they’re there!
In Orthodoxy ,we know that after the separation of the body and soul, the soul is still active and aware of what is happening both in their surroundings as well as on earth. The soul is not in some sort of suspended state, frozen and unmoving, totally unaware and awaiting resurrection, like a cytogenetic tank in a Sci-fi film.
In the Lord’s parable of the “Rich Man and Lazarus” (Luke 16), the rich man and Abraham discuss sending Lazarus to the brothers of the rich man in order to keep the brothers from the hell. This passage shows that departed spirits can discuss earthly situations and make plans. They are aware of goings on.
At Mt. Tabor in Matthew 17:3, Mark 9:4, and Luke 9:30, the prophets Moses and Elijah speak with the Lord of His coming suffering. They are conscious, aware, and holding a heavenly conversation.
The Book of Revelation, chapters 5 through 9, tell of the souls in heaven reacting to the events taking place here on earth. Our dearly departed see us, know of our doings, and can rejoice or weep with us. Truly, we don’t have need of believing they occupy the same house as us in an invisible form if we know the truth of the Bible.
Our grandfather’s spirit may not be falling down the stairs on which he met his demise like some folk believe, but his soul is still quite active. They all are! Our separation from our mortal bodies when we fall asleep in the Lord is not the end! What a glorious thing to know that we go on with our faculties intact and operating, and what a relief to know we need not walk the hall at night in rattling chains to do so!
The road traveled
Once we have established that souls are aware after death and have placed that activity within the Orthodox context, the next step is to establish the “where” of the soul. Haunts by nature are thought to inhabit a certain location or travel an area. Whether it’s the railroad tracks, grandma’s attic or a lonely stretch of dirt road once traveled by Civil War soldiers, a ghost has a home spot.
Our souls have a home spot, too, but you can’t find the location of the Great Hereafter by using Google maps. There is no “up” to heaven or “down” to hell in the strict earthly sense of direction. In Orthodoxy, we know that the place where souls reside after falling asleep in the Lord begins here, but it reaches further than our comprehension.
While we do know that our souls don’t haunt places like cemeteries or old farm houses nor do they go up into the sky or down into a pit, we do know that once a soul has left the earth, it must travel some distance between where it was and where it is going. Often this journey will include obstacles and demons attempting to trap it.
This simple truth about that road traveled after death can turn a popular spook into a cherished local metaphor as we begin to bring haints into better focus using Orthodoxy to understand that the souls of the departed are not literally left wondering the dark night, lost for all eternity; rather, they are traveling a road of sorts between this existence and the next, and that journey isn’t instant but is instead a very real process and that they need our prayers along the way.
In fact, no one’s soul embarks on that journey alone. We know that the soul is always led to heaven by angels. We all need, and we all receive, guidance on our way.
St. John of Chrysostom tells us:
The soul does not go into that world on its own for that it cannot do. For if we travel from one city to another, we have need of a guide, how much greater then is the soul’s need in a guide having been taken from the body and presented with the life of the world to come.
Our souls once departed are certainly active and aware. They are journeying from this world to the next accompanied by angels, so how can we have that interaction with our beloved dead that comes so natural to the Southern tradition?
Prayer
We Orthodox pray to and for our dead. How Southern is that? If you asked a Baptist preacher, he’d look at you in horror at the notion, but how quickly he will go home to a wife who shouts at the haint in the attic to be quiet or that same preacher will tell you a story about when he was a boy and how his grandpa called through the trees to be met by otherworldly mountain music in return.
Southerns don’t always understand that within much of their tradition they are already communicating with what they believe are spirits, so why not do it properly, biblically?
Give graciously to all the living; do not withhold kindness even from the dead.
— Sirach 7:33
In the Bible, St. Paul prays for dearly departed Onesiphorus:
The Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain; but when he arrived in Rome, he sought me out very zealously and found me. The Lord grant to him that he may find mercy from the Lord in that Day – and you know very well how many ways he ministered to me at Ephesus.
— 2 Timothy 1:16-18
Saint Monica took no care for the thought of where her bones may lie, but while dying asked that prayers be made for her soul:
Lay this body anywhere, let not the care for it trouble you at all. This only I ask, that you will remember me at the Lord’s altar, wherever you be.
Prayers for the dead are of great service to them, as well. As Fr. John Whiteford explains:
If someone dies in a state of repentance, but without having had a chance to bring forth all the fruits of repentance, we believe that they are not ready to enter immediately into the presence of God, but that at some point, through the prayers of the Church, they will be. By praying for the dead, we strengthen our own faith, and come to better entrust our loved ones to God’s mercy.”
God’s mercy. Isn’t that what we are ultimately talking about when we dive into our faith? Isn’t that what the old Southern haints are seeking? Isn’t that what you’re seeking?
Originally published September 22, 2021, at Eastern Chestnut.
Olga Sibert is a 14th generation Southerner born in Appalachia. She is the mother of 7 children. Her line was reunited to Orthodoxy in 2019 when her family was baptized and chrismated. Every Sunday, Olga turns down the Alan Jackson before whipping her minivan up the gravel driveway to her ROCOR parish. You can follow her at her blog Eastern Chestnut: Restoring Strength to the South Through Orthodoxy and on Instagram.
