Sunday, February 13, 2022

African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Headless Haunt and Moaning Bones

I'm going to start the week with a genre of story that is incredibly important in the African American storytelling tradition: ghosts and the supernatural! Here are two books by James Haskins which are just a click away at the Internet Archive: The Headless Haunt and Other African-American Ghost Stories and Moaning Bones: African-American Ghost Stories.



Here are the stories you will find in each collection:

Headless Haunt. Ain't I Got to Believe / Wait Till Emmett Comes / It Vanished Like a Shadow / The Deserted Village / Little Nero and the Magic Tea Cakes / The Ghost in Black Silk / The Ghost Log Cabin / Uncle Henry and the Dog Ghost / I Was Born With a Caul / Daddy and the Plat-eye Ghost / Two Boys and a Plat-eye / Sometimes They Come in a Whirlwind / A Night at Pickey's / Strange All Through / The Ghosts of a Jealous Man / Her Husband's Ghost / Calvin Copley and the Widow / The Saturday-night Fiddler / A Treasure-hunting Story / The Headless Haunt / I Don't Want to Fool With No Spirits / The Girl and the Plat-eye / The Half-clad Ghost / The Spirit of a Friend / How Jack Became a Jack-o'-Lantern / The End of Hock / The Ghost in the Stetson / Hold Him, Tabb / The Ghosts of Cedar Creek / The Ghost of the Yankee Soldier / The Ghost of a Man the Yankees Killed / I See Spirits / Dead Aaron / Protection Against Ghosts, Spirits, and Haunts


James Haskins was a prolific author who wrote over a hundred books on African and African American themes and topics; you can find MANY of this books at the Internet Archive: books by James Haskins


For more about his life and work, see Wikipedia, and you can find his obituary in the New York Times; he died in 2005. This photo is from the James Haskins Collection held by the University of Florida Library.


So, a full moon is coming in just a couple of days. You can curl up with one of these books and read yourself a scary story by the light of that full moon... if you dare!



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