009: The Mourner's Curse

The stories of Charleston, South Carolina are composed of a tangled web of dreams and memories. They’ve been passed through historians, artists, writers, and tour guides, twisting into a new shape with each retelling.

Deep within the historic city lies a graveyard. Cloaked in ivy and wildflowers, the cemetery is a tranquil spot for a walk and a popular sightseeing destination... as long as the sun is shining. In the dark of night, the graveyard belonging to the Unitarian Church of Charleston transforms from peaceful to terrifying, leaving late-night tour participants shrieking in fear at the ghostly woman lurking behind tombstones. Are the stories surrounding the graveyard’s mistress a true account of a pair of star-crossed lovers still searching for each other beyond the grave, or are they nothing but a spooky story to tell in the dark?

Where does fact begin and fiction end?

Episode Highlights:

• Mike Brown’s graveyard
• The history of Charleston, South Carolina
• Ghostly residents of King and Queens Street
• The curse of King’s Street Gate at the Unitarian Church of South Carolina
• A scream in the graveyard
• What is folklore?
• Life and times of Edgar Perry
• Star-crossed lovers
• Annabel Lee
• Folklore, facts, and fiction

Resources:

• Doctor to the Dead: Grotesque Legends and Folk Tales of Old Charleston by John Bennett
• The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe
• Kingdom By the Sea, Mark Robert. Jones, East Atlantic Publishing, 2013
• The Journal of English and Germanic Philoligy. Vol 21, No. 2 (April, 1922) Robert Adger Law
• Southern Cultures Vol. 22, No. 2 Summerville 2016 Scott Peeples and Michelle Van Parys

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!