I'm feeling grateful for this class, without which, I would have never blogged or created a website.
I'm thinking beyond this week that I'll remove the homework posts and keep the ghost ones and try to encourage people to send me ghost stories to post or to comment on these stories with their own similarly archetypal experience.
Ever seen a ghost?
Dead Club House
Haunted House in Cambridge
Sunday, December 5, 2010
The Dead Wife Returns
Here's another bit o' rocking good ghost folklore from Dredging the Choptank:
A magnificent bit of flood folklore from the southern end of Dorchester County in Hoopersville, a town on the southern chain of Dorchester islands, tells the wild tale of a very wet internment right before the storm surge of Hurricane Hazel.
An old fisherman had just buried his wife of many years in the family plot next to their house by a creek. As a fast and violent hurricane whipped the storm surge up over the family plot and to the steps of his groaning house, the grieving fisherman was convinced that his friends would come to rescue him, and, indeed, in middle of the howling wind, he heard a knocking at the door. He opened the door and there was his wife’s coffin, floating on the rising floodwaters, its lid loose and the water holding her up in a seated position. The water fanned out her hair and lifted one arm out to the fisherman. She had found her way back home. Feeling the house rock on its foundation, the old fisherman grabbed onto the coffin as his home sunk under the waves, and he rode the flood in the coffin with his dead wife until morning when he landed on high ground several miles away.
In [Thomas] Flowers’ version, the old man ditched his wife’s body and rode the coffin alone. In the Chesapeake Book of the Dead, the old fisherman is an old woman.
Dead deer at Blackwater Refuge, Dorchester County. Hoopersville is just south of there.
A magnificent bit of flood folklore from the southern end of Dorchester County in Hoopersville, a town on the southern chain of Dorchester islands, tells the wild tale of a very wet internment right before the storm surge of Hurricane Hazel.
An old fisherman had just buried his wife of many years in the family plot next to their house by a creek. As a fast and violent hurricane whipped the storm surge up over the family plot and to the steps of his groaning house, the grieving fisherman was convinced that his friends would come to rescue him, and, indeed, in middle of the howling wind, he heard a knocking at the door. He opened the door and there was his wife’s coffin, floating on the rising floodwaters, its lid loose and the water holding her up in a seated position. The water fanned out her hair and lifted one arm out to the fisherman. She had found her way back home. Feeling the house rock on its foundation, the old fisherman grabbed onto the coffin as his home sunk under the waves, and he rode the flood in the coffin with his dead wife until morning when he landed on high ground several miles away.
In [Thomas] Flowers’ version, the old man ditched his wife’s body and rode the coffin alone. In the Chesapeake Book of the Dead, the old fisherman is an old woman.
Dead deer at Blackwater Refuge, Dorchester County. Hoopersville is just south of there.
The Legend of Big Liz
Here's my favorite Dorchester County legend from Dredging the Choptank:
During the Civil War, Big Liz’s plantation owner, John Austin, forced her to bury some ill-gotten, Confederate booty in the densely-thicketed Green Briar Swamp. After she dug the treasure’s watery hole, he decapitated her, and she still haunts the marsh and guards his abandoned gold. According to local legend, the treasure’s still buried in the swamp. If you drive to the DeCoursey bridge, honk your horn and flash your headlights, then the wind will blow, and you’ll soon hear her shuffling step. The car engine will stall as she limps into view, shoulders stooped, cradling her head in her arms, her eyes glowing. You’re trapped, frozen, and can’t move as she draws closer and closer.
"A swamp monster. That’s more like it," I said.
Blackwater Refuge that backs up against the Green Briar Swamp, Dorchester County, Maryland
"A swamp monster. That’s more like it," I said.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Different POV Rules
Hey writers!
So, here's another rumination: why can POV switch in film but not in short story? I was watching The Quiet Man (and I love that film) but the priest Ward Bond kicks off the story with a voiceover but when Shawn Thorton (John Wayne) sees Mary Kate Danaher for the first time, the camera switches to his perspective.
Is it because film has the great asset of the visual? It's easier for a viewer to understand a perspective jump in film than reading it in story?
So, here's another rumination: why can POV switch in film but not in short story? I was watching The Quiet Man (and I love that film) but the priest Ward Bond kicks off the story with a voiceover but when Shawn Thorton (John Wayne) sees Mary Kate Danaher for the first time, the camera switches to his perspective.
Is it because film has the great asset of the visual? It's easier for a viewer to understand a perspective jump in film than reading it in story?
Blog Directionals
Hey bloggers! What directionals we use in language is a reflection of how a culture orients itself in the world. When referring in one post to an older post on the same blog, does one say the older post is below? Underneath?
I did figure out how to internally link between posts but it's an interesting thought. Is this post above the Thanksgiving post?
I did figure out how to internally link between posts but it's an interesting thought. Is this post above the Thanksgiving post?
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