The Haint

This week, we headed down to the Lowcountry to dig into one of the South’s most fascinating and frustrating paranormal entities — the haint — which depending on who you ask is a ghost, a demon, an evil spirit tied to the earth, or honestly all of the above, rooted in the rich and deeply important traditions of the Gullah Geechee people and a blend of African, European, and Creole folklore that stretches from Wilmington all the way down to St. Augustine.

We broke down everything from haint blue paint on porch ceilings to brooms hung above doorways to bottle trees to iron and salt, because apparently the best thing about haints is that they’re compelled to count every bristle on a broom before they can touch you.

Then we got into three stories from the book Haint Country plus a personal account from our friend Elayna over at What About Weird podcast, who spent years being visited by a tall black smoke figure with yellow eyes that showed up every time life got hard.