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Short Stuff: Haint Blue · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Chuck Jerry's kind of hanging around us like an unwanted spirit.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: But we doused here in blue paint as if she
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: were wearing for in New York and nineteen five and
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: she's taken off. Wow. Mm hmm. That sounded almost scripted.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: It was not, man, it was it. It was right
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: off of the the cerebral cortex, the executive function a
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: k a. The old cuff. Yes, the problem is I
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: just diverted so much brainpower to the cerebral cortex that
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: my brain stem made me pee my pants. Have you
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: ever heard of this uh haint blue tradition? Sure, Okay,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I didn't know how much people knew about this. This
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: is something I was familiar with because, um, well for
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: many reasons. But one of my good friends, Meta has
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: is from Charleston and has a haint blue porch ceiling,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and I sort of like the tradition in now I
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: know a little bit more about it. Yeah, I mean
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Atlanta is not exactly like in the low country, like
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: along the Georgia coast or South Carolina coast, but it's
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: close enough that you could see it kind of trickling in,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and I think it does, agreed. So what you're talking
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: about is a specific kind of paint color that you
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: very frequently see in those areas in the southeastern Southeast.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Doesn't get much more southeast than that, you end up
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: in the Atlantic if you keep going um that you
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: will see on people's ceilings of their porches like this,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: very pretty like light blue, one of my favorite shades
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: of blue. Not necessarily Hain't blue. I'm not like I
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: hain't blue is my favorite color, nothing like that, but
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: any kind of like light blue, pale blue, Robin's egg blue,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: all those are very very pretty colors. There's a purpose
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: to this this though, Like this paint color on the
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: ceiling though, right. Yeah, So the word hain't they think
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: it may have come from the word haunt. But a
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: haint in the this low country culture, which we'll get
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: into more in a sec is a is a restless ghost.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: And it's a ghost like I thought all ghosts were
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: sort of like this that has not moved on to
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: whatever world lies beyond and is still here to haunt
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the living. Yeah, And it's this is haints are specific
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: to a culture of um slaves. Imported from western Central Africa,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: whose ancestors has kind of formed this community along those
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the Low Country and who still have this this very
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: robust culture that believes in haints. Um. The thing. The
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: difference to me is um between like ghosts as we
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: understand them and hainte is haint seemed to be much
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: more like all up in your business kind of thing,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: and they like to mess with you a lot more
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: than like a ghost who's tied to a house and
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: is replaying their murder over and over every night at midnight. Yeah.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I've spent a little bit of time, uh this one
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: weekend with some gechy folks and they are really awesome
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: and rich with tradition and have this really really really
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: cool accent. Dude, I'll bet their food is amazing too.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: And the food was terrible. I'm kidding. I was genuinely surprised.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Now it's like some of the best food I've ever
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: had in my life, I would guess. So, I mean
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: low country boil. You just have me right there. Yeah,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: So who do There's you know, a specific type of
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: voodoo that goes on the Low Country called hoo do
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: or root work or conjure, and that's a practice where
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: they use a lot of herbs uh in this case
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: haint blue to protect people from these evil haints coming
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: into h I mean sometimes it's a little lighter, sometimes
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: it gets pretty heavy and scary. Yeah. So there's a
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: boo Hag, which is one of the best names for
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: a haint. Ever, booh haggs are um. They seem to
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: be like, uh, what is that that? Um sleep paralysis
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: tradition from Ireland or Scotland or somewhere over there. Um,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: I can't remember. There's like a tradition of a old
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: witchy woman standing on your chest while you're sleeping and
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: we I don't think so, but related maybe the wife
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: of the bob a duck. But the we talked about
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: in the sleep paralysis episode that that's probably where that
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: came from, was that was having sleep paralysis. And this
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: sounds very familiar because the boo Hag will stand on
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: your chest while you're sleeping too and try to suffocate you. Yeah,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: and also steal your skin and where your skin during
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: the day so they can blend in. And why there
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: hasn't been a modern horror movie called the Boo Hag
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: yet is beyond me. I don't know either right or
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: even just haint. Yeah, so that's one kind of hainte.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: And uh, there's things you can do like using hoo
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: do or root work or whatever. People won't wander around
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: like carrying little bags of roots and talisman to ward
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: off haints. But if you actually have a haint that
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: you're having to deal with in your everyday life, that
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: you've attracted somehow, um, one of the things you would
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: do specifically with the boot hag is they have like
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: an obsessive compulsive disorder according to the Goliguchi, and they
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: um have to count. So if you do things like
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: throw rice on your bedroom floor or whatever, the boot
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Hag might come to set on your chest and suffocate you.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: But instead she's gonna end up sitting there counting rice
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: all night and then the sun's gonna come up and
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: she's gonna be toast. Where have we talked about this before?
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Because I have a very very distinct memory about something
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: being distracted because they had to count whatever you threw.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: It was the Eastern and Central European vampires that had that, say,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: wasn't I believe? So? Yeah, I knew it sounded familiar.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Should we take a break Yeah, was that sudden? That
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: was like a left hook. All right, go gather yourself
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: and we'll be right back. Okay, yea, all right, we're back.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about more haints. There's another haint called a
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: platt i, which also sounds very scary. They are shape
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: shifters and they can be anything, um it says here
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: in the House Stuff Works article, anything from a beautiful
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: woman to a two headed hog. And the scary thing
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: about a plaid i is that there aren't a lot
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: of defenses against the platt i save maybe leaving some
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: whiskey out and or pouring it on the ground or something,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: and the plat i may stop to lick that upright,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: But otherwise you're out of luck with the platt i. Yeah.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: They say that once the platt i is attached to itself,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: to your there's not a lot you can do. You
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: can maybe search yourself and see what kind of um,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: as this one expert put it, what kind of grave
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: spiritual offense you've committed? What have I done? And try
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: to make it right? You know? Yeah? Um, But the
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: the I also saw that you might end up with
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the plaid i attached to you if you go looking
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: for buried Confederate treasure, because they say that plaid eyes
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: are frequently ghosts of people who were murdered and improperly
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: buried by a Confederate treasure in order to protect it.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Indefinitely interesting. Yeah, so be careful if you're gonna go
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: looking for Confederate treasure buried in the Low Country, take
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: a little whiskey with you and pour them out for
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the plaid eyes. That's right. So that sort of brings
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: us to this paint blue. Uh. And I'm sure you're
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: wondering when you guys going to talk about the title
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: of this podcast, and it's now and we we did
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: a great show on indigo, uh and so we don't
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: need to go over all of that again. But indigo,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: just very briefly, was a plant that thrived in the
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Low Country and slaves were used to to cultivate the
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: end Togo and it was a big, big cash crop
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: for the South. It's the reason Georgia legalized slavery. Remember, Yeah,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: that's right. So this blue was available to the Gulligichi people,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: even though the color and the spiritual power of this
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: blue is sort of all over the world, but they
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: would have this blue and it sort of became the
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: color that they would use because it reminded them of
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: the sky and of the ocean, and the idea was
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: that you paint this on your porch or on a
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: door maybe, and it tricks these spirits into thinking that
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: they're in water, or they can't cross, or they're in
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: the sky or something like that. Yeah, because there's one
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: thing you can say about haints, and that is that
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: they're kind of gullible. It sounds like, at the very least,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: they have a lot of um uh faults and flaws
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: that can be manipulated by people who know what to
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: look for. Yeah, they're dumb. The problem is is if
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: you're visiting somebody on their porch and they have a
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: haint blue see laying on their porch, there might be
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: a haint hanging out in there. So they didn't make
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: it into the house, they could still be on the porch.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: So f y, I never visit your neighbor. And uh,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: you know, we should point out that this is has
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: got a rich tradition in this low country culture, but
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: it has very much become part of the mainstream and
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: a very kind of h color for front porch ceilings
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: and stuff. Like that, and there's nothing wrong with that,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: but I think you know, educate yourself, know where it
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: comes from, know a little bit about the tradition. If
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: you're going to do something like that, I think yeah, totally.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, at the very at least be able to
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: say what what that is instead of like that pretty
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: blue who knows where it comes from? Who cares? I
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: had a Volkswagen Beetle that was Robin's egg blue. Such
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: a great color, man, it was gorgeous. It's tough to
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: beat a good Robin's egg blue. Agreed, So way to go,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Goligichi people. That's pretty awesome as far as traditions go.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: And keep up the good work. Battling haints you anything else?
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Nothing else? All right? Well, if you want to hear
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: more about this, start this episode over because short Stuff
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: is out. H Stuff you Should Know is a production
• 10:12
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