"This booklet, which contains sixty-six stories selected from several thousand manuscripts totaling over 2,6oo pages of folk materials, gives a good cross section of the tales told about animals and supernatural beings in South Carolina." From a review by: Thelma G. James, California Folklore Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Jul., 1943), pp. 235-236.

A collection of fantastical and macabre Gullah-inspired folklore that illuminates African-American life in nineteenth-century South Carolina. You ask for a story. I will tell you one, fact for fact and true for true. . . . So begins “Crook-Neck Dick,” one of twenty-three stories in this beguiling collection of Charleston lore. John Bennett’s interpretations of the legends shared with him by African-descended Charlestonians have entertained generations. Among them are tales of ghosts, conjuring, superhuman feats, and supernatural powers; accounts of ingenuity, humor, terror, mystery, and solidarity will enchant folklorists, students of Charleston history, and all those who love a good ghost story. Julia Eichelberger, the Marybelle Higgins Howe Professor of Southern Literature and an executive board member of the Center for Study of Slavery at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, provides an introduction. “A collection of folk story, myth, drolleries, macabre unreason . . . old tales of death, mystery, bizarre incredibilities, diabolic influence, demanding ghosts, buried treasure, enchantments, miracles, visitations, and the dead that are not dead.” —Kirkus Reviews

South Carolina legends, mysteries, and tales drawn from interviews and folklore.

History, Mystery, and Romance in the Carolina Lowcountry! A haunted necklace, a trickster rabbit, an ingenious slave, a shrieking droll, and a fianc returned from the dead all come to life in Lynn Michelsohn's new collection of Carolina Lowcountry ghost stories and folklore from the four historic rice plantations making up Brookgreen GardensSouth Carolina's popular tourist attraction near Myrtle Beach. These enchanting folktales, tied to specific plantation locations and historical events, enrich the enjoyment of any visit to the Lowcountry for tourists, armchair travelers, or devotees of ghost stories and folklore. Lynn Michelsohn, a tenth generation Carolinian, is clearly drawn to history, mystery, and romance wherever she finds it, as her previous book, "Roswell, Your Travel Guide to the UFO Capital of the World!" explores intrigues of a different kind. Now, in "Tales from Brookgreen" her charming retelling of these sometimes-eerie, sometimes-sad, sometimes-humorous tales engages readers in characters and folkways unique to the Carolina Lowcountry.