Haints, Hollers, and the Blue Above the Porch

I was sittin’ on the front porch of the Martha Washington Inn a few weeks back, waitin’ for Chris to pull the car ‘round. The night air in Abingdon had that kind of weight to it that only October brings — crisp, but thick with stories. You can feel ‘em in the bricks, in the old gas lamps, in the hush that hangs between one breath and the next.

Now, I ain’t sayin’ my recent injury had anything to do with ghosts — though if it did, I figure they were just tryin’ to get my attention. (That’s a tale for another time.) But as I sat there with my coffee cooling and my knee aching, my eyes wandered up to that ceiling above me a soft, weathered shade of blue. It wasn’t just pretty. It was intentional. And right then, that color whispered its story to me.

The Color That Keeps the Haints Away

Folks around here call it haint blue. The word “haint” — that’s an old one. It’s a cousin of “haunt,” handed down through dialect and time, likely born from the tongues of the Gullah people along the Carolina coast. They painted their porch ceilings this watery shade to fool the restless spirits — haints, they called ‘em — into thinkin’ they’d already crossed the sky or drifted over water, which no ghost worth its salt would dare do.

But when that custom traveled into the hills and hollers, it took root in the Appalachian soul. See, mountain folk already had a notion about paintin’ things blue. The Scots-Irish who settled these ridges believed in Granny Witches — women who carried herbs in their aprons and old prayers on their tongues. They’d tell you blue was the color of protection. The Picts of Scotland once painted themselves blue before battle, believin’ it kept ‘em safe. Maybe those same spirits followed their kin here, tucked between the mountains like secrets.

So in Appalachia, haint blue became more than a superstition it was a blessing. A quiet prayer brushed onto wood.

When the Woods Start Watchin’

Now, you and I both know these mountains have their own way of lookin’ at you. Step too far from the porch when the fog starts to slide down the ridge, and you’ll feel it, the woods watchin’. They say the forest here holds more than deer and bear. It holds memory. It holds the kind of quiet that hums like a warning.

It’s like the German Black Forest across the sea — deep, ancient, and full of things best left alone. Old-timers’ll tell you not to go wanderin’ after dark, not even with a flashlight. “There’s more out there than you can see,” they’ll say, and they’re right. The haints may be gone with the dawn, but what moves in the timberline — that’s something else entirely.

Maybe that’s why our porches glow blue. Maybe the Granny Witches knew the woods had ears. They painted that sky above their heads not just to trick the spirits, but to mark a line. A way of sayin’:

“This is our place. Whatever walks the ridge, it stops here.”

The Martha’s Restless Souls

That night on the porch, I thought about all the haints that don’t stay outside. The Martha Washington Inn has its share, the violin playing nurse who never left her patient’s side, the Confederate soldier who bled out on the floor, the horse that still clops by long after midnight.

Maybe they never had a haint-blue ceiling to hold them back. Maybe the grand houses of history, with their gilded halls and heavy drapes, forgot the simplest kind of protection — a little sky over your head, a color to remind the dead they’ve got no business crossin’ the threshold. The porch is painted a watery color now….

Where Sky Meets Porch

When Chris pulled up that night and I rose to leave, I took one last look at that blue above me. It wasn’t the Martha’s ghosts I felt, but a thread one that runs from the coast to the mountains, from the Gullah people to the Granny Witches, from Scotland to the Smokies.

That’s the kind of story paint can tell.

So if you stop by The Wayfarer some cool mountain night, lean back under our Starlight Porch (No Ceiling to paint). Maybe you’ll hear the wind shift. Maybe you’ll feel the woods hold their breath. We will have Smore’s and Fire for storytelling.