On a hot summer night, around a campfire, people gather together to tell spooky stories about creatures in the woods of Choccolocco, ghost trains on the Chief Ladiga Trail, or spirits haunting Dugger Mountain. What they don’t realize is that they are participating in the lost art of folk storytelling.Renee Morrison, a native of Piedmont who specializes in stories about the area, said that in a time when most people get their entertainment from iPods, the Internet and television, the once seemingly forgotten art is making a comeback.
“[People] are so overwhelmed with electronic media,” said Morrison. “There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s refreshing to just relax for an evening and not have to have any electrical devices around.”
Morrison practices the art of storytelling to small groups and sometimes thousands of people at storytelling festivals. “It has been a magical experience to be a teller and just to look at the faces of the people that are listening,” said Morrison.
Susan Sellers, an English instructor at Jacksonville State University, said folk tales are more than just good stories, they are a way to share experiences and remind each generation about the way things used to be.
“They are entertaining, but it’s a form of history, and for particular areas, you’re recording history,” said Sellers.
Julia Wooster, who also teaches English at JSU, said that folk stories are a way to pass on history that might have been overlooked by historians. “Some are just spooky stories,” said Wooster. “But we can learn personal histories and stories of individual lives from a first-person perspective, rather than from a formal history textbook.”
Morrison said as a child she experienced this first hand sitting at her grandfather’s knee and listening to his stories. “He was a farmer for a century,” Morrison said. “It was very interesting to listen to him and soak it all up.”
Morrison said some of the best storytellers are those who heard the story passed down through generations.
“That adds another layer of, ‘did that really happen?’” she said.
Morrison said the question of whether or not the stories actually happened isn’t important. “The important part is the person who is telling it, it’s their experience and what they believe,” she said. “Out of all those legends and lore there is a grain of truth.”
Morrison’s book “Calico Ghosts” is a collection of stories from the Piedmont, White Plains and Choccolocco area set in the fictional town of Calico, Ala.
The stories range from shape shifting Native American spirits, to stories about ghosts who push cars over railroad tracks.
Morrison said these were the stories she loves to tell to groups of people. “I’ve had so many people listen to my ghost stories in the daylight, or even at night and they get into it and it’s scary, but they say ‘oh that’s just a story,’” Morrison said. “But then I get letters, e-mails and phone calls about what happened after they got by themselves later that night and were thinking about the story.”
Morrison said that the rich history of storytelling in the South is something to be proud of. “I’m finding people are proud of our heritage, real or imaginary,” said Morrison. “It is a pride in our strong Southern heritage and the way things were and the way things were done by our grandparents.”
Wooster agreed that folk tales provide a link to the past. “The continual telling and re-telling of our
stories also says something about us as human beings,” Wooster said. “We like the connection we feel to our forefathers through these tales.”
