Southern Spirit

In the South, we cherish our stories. We have a long tradition of pulling them out and showing them off like collectible commemorative NASCAR plates. We are a clannish folk, most of us a blend of Scots-Irish with a drop of German or English now and then. We may be millworkers, or Wal-Mart greeters or laid-off software designers. We maybe doctors, attorneys, or office workers. We might be the first in our family to graduate from college. We may, like my brother, be land rich and cash poor. But true Southerners have a wealth of stories that include personal family dramas and local histories. The stories are passed on like recipes for sweet potato casserole or cracklin cornbread. They are altered, added to, and passed on again. And everybody loves them. They are the true currency of Southern culture.
As a conquered region, still a country, in places, of the bleakest poverty, unemployment, and racism, we are rich in faith. For many, an inherited unquestioning Christian faith runs through our characters like salt through a country ham. What is the Bible after all but a collection of family stories? What is the resurrection but a ghost story to comfort the living? For a populace that believes in a God that intervenes daily in their doings, a belief in the supernatural is as easy as pie. A demographic that can believe anything can believe that death is not end. Those who have died continue in the stories we tell about them.
Sometimes the stories are hidden and it takes a little work to have their guardians bring them to light. But as in the Ouija, if you ask the right questions, each person becomes a mysterious oracle, a source of story and collective wisdom. Ghosts or communication from the dead are as ubiquitous and welcome as lightning bugs on a summer night.
Whether ghosts exist or not is beside the point. The people here believe that they do. They believe in relationships and conciousness that continues after the loss of life. If some ghosts are ornery and don’t come when called, won’t answer the door to strangers like me, well, why should death be any different than life? The Southerners do in death as they did in life. Just as they please.