Southern Spirits

What is it about the south that makes it such fertile land for tales of the supernatural? I can say, and feel pretty safe about it, that no matter how big or small every town or city in the south has at least one house, building or piece of land that has it's tale of ghosts or other paranormal activity. In the city I live in I know of at least a dozen such places in a ten mile radius from where I sit right now. The neighboring city has it's share also, including a theater that where I myself have noticed strange occurrences when driving by on my late night trip to Wal-Mart.

An ex-girlfriend told me of a time she and her (then) husband were redecorating a house they had bought. They had spent the day sanding down all the walls so they could paint the next day. The dust from the sanding was all over the wood floors and when they left for the night, they padlocked the front and back door. The next day they entered the house to find the footprints of a barefoot child going to the stairs and to the windows and back to the stairs.

When I was in high school, my friend was spending the night and when we woke up the next morning we walked to an old family cemetery about a mile away. We were just going to look at some of the dates on the remaining headstones (which went back to the earlier part of the 1800's) and then to the store to pick up some sodas. We thought we were in the cemetery for about fifteen or twenty minutes. When we got to the store we looked at a clock and somehow we had lost over two hours we were never able to account for.

Whatever the reason, the south has a grand history of paranormal activity. Whether it is ghosts, vampires or whatever, it seems that the mantra of "the south shall rise again" has more to it than most people think.