The Granny Curse and Other Ghosts and Legends from East Tennessee [Paperback]

Randy Russell (Author), Janet Barnett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1999

From the Blue Ridge to the Cumberlands, from Pigeon Forge and Cades Cove to Warrior Path State Park and Roan Mountain, East Tennessee offers a plethora of stories about haints and spirits. Twenty-five tales, all based in historical fact or tied to an actual location and intertwined with regional folklore, are included in this collection.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Folklorists Randy Russell and Janet Barnett are the authors of Mountain Ghost Stories and Curious Tales of Western North Carolina. They live in Kansas City, Missouri.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Then they stopped and there was one big THWACK! It was a loud, hard thud. Allie thought the house shook just a little with the last sound.

Allie's mouth was wide open. She breathed as hard as if she'd been running.

Her cousin touched her gently with a reassuring hand and whispered, "Grandma Mac. It's Grandpa falling down the stairs."

Allie didn't say a word.

"He does it almost every night."

That's how their grandfather had died. It was a fact. He slipped in the middle of the night at the top of the stairs and fell all the way to the bottom. He broke his neck.

"Grandma says people born on Old Christmas don't completely die," Madelyn told her cousin. "She said a person's spirit keeps right on doing whatever it was doing when he died. So Grandpa falls down the stairs about every night. Nothing else happens."

"Was he born on Old Christmas?" Allie asked.

"I suppose. When is it, anyway?"

"In January," Allie said. "Twelve days after the real Christmas."

The next morning Allie asked her grandmother if she, too, had heard the noise last night.

"About every night he falls down those stairs," the old lady said. "Been meaning to do something about it. I think he does it louder on purpose. Seems like he does it louder every time."

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: John F. Blair Publisher; 1st edition (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895871858
• ISBN-13: 978-0895871855
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #313,630 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #32 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Horror > Ghosts
  • #50 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Folklore & Mythology

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Stuff for Storytellers!, April 18, 2000

By 

Randy S. Russell (Asheville) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Granny Curse and Other Ghosts and Legends from East Tennessee (Paperback)

First of all, I like ghost stories rooted in history and place. All 25 stories in this collection are wonderful examples of folklore and of the people of the Cumberland and Blue Ridge mountains of Tennessee. You can almost touch the trees in the forest and hear the water moving over rocks. Did you know you can tell your future by counting the number of seeds in an apple? One story here tells you how. More importantly for me as professional storyteller, I found the authors had a very good ear for dialogue and *voice*. I havealready used two of the stories, Footprints in The Snow (Pigeon Forge)-- and the title story Granny Curse, and both met with very good success! Great for reading aloud -- but don't read them alone at night.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gives you the creeps!, February 19, 2006

By 

Payton Lockett (Champaign, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Granny Curse and Other Ghosts and Legends from East Tennessee (Paperback)

I have other books on Appalachia folklore, and this is at the top of the list. It's fun, colorful, and gives you the creeps! Like the late Charles Edwin Price, Randy Russell and Janet Barnett have compiled a rich array of stories from East Tennessee; the perfect book to read -- whether to yourself or to others -- on those "dark, stormy nights."

1.0 out of 5 stars Not creepy or entertaining., July 20, 2010

By 

Rick Dooley Sr. - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Granny Curse and Other Ghosts and Legends from East Tennessee (Paperback)

When I saw this book I really wanted to get it. I was born in Kentucky and we used to go back there every summer to visit our relatives, on those occasions the subject of ghosts sometimes came up and the stories started flowing. Those stories were so creepy to us kids we'd have to get someone to walk us to the outhouse , with more than one person if a ghost showed up you had a 50-50 chance of making it back to the house.

After reading this I couldn't understand the rave reviews , until I saw that one reviewer was the books author , go figure!, I wouldn't be surprised to learn the other reviews were from friends.

If you're looking for good Appalachian folk ghost stories like I am , then look somewhere else. These stories aren't scary or particularly entertaining , the title story The Granny Curse is like a Twilight Zone reject , which says a lot since they put out some episodes that were really lame.

So far the only good folk ghost stories I've found were in one of the Foxfire books , it was only one chapter, but these were really good word of mouth ghost lore. Thats the type of stories I'm looking for , not this mess which is now sitting in the donation pile.