The Dark Side

Hauntings

Who is watching us

Poor ellen smith, how was she found Shot through the heart, lying cold on the ground Her body was mangled and all cast around Blood marks the spot where poor ellen was found ………………………19th-century murder ballad

I will come back home

When by your hand, I am dead

My ghost by your bed

As a child, I would listen to my father and his mother sing what they would call “mountain music.” For years they had heard songs by The Carter Family, whose music drew on the older tunes found in their mountain home in East Tennessee. There was a dark, eerie strain within the 19th-century folk music of eastern Tennessee, with the area’s geography and culture deeply rooted in Appalachia.

Betrayal, murder, ghosts, and death ran through the songs. The vocal style and instruments, fiddle, banjo, guitar, and mandolin, were unique and to the unaccustomed ear unsettling.

The Child Ballads, collected from England and Scotland in the 19th century by Harvard professor Francis James Child, were rich in murder and mayhem, and many accompanied the immigrants who came seeking a better life and settled in the mountains of East Tennessee.

The settlers also had a strong storytelling tradition that they interwove with the legends and stories they found in their new home in America. They sometimes retold actual events, like the song of “poor ellen.”

Murder ballads are a subgenre of the traditional ballad form dealing with a crime or a gruesome death. Their lyrics form a narrative describing the events of a murder, often including the lead-up and/or aftermath. The term refers to the content, and may be applied to traditional ballads, part of oral culture. Wikipedia

I took these photos when we visited the Carter Family’s gravesite, church, and old home, where musical gatherings were still held.