Boogers and Boo-Daddies: The Best of Blair's Ghost Stories

Introduction

On a small circle in a commercial section of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, sits a nondescript brick building on a shaggy lawn. A young man not long out of college came to work as an editor there. One of his duties was reading the book manuscripts submitted for publication at the company. Proud of his education and self-assured in his sensibilities, he took a certain joy in the task.

Hey, look at this! he would say. Here’s a guy who compares himself to Faulkner.

Or he’d say, This lady claims her poems are popular with everyone in her circle at church. I bet that’s a tough crowd.

If he came across a sentence of particularly awkward construction, he’d go from office to office reading it aloud to his co-workers.

When he was in a generous mood, he rejected manuscripts with a form letter notable for its terseness. When he wasn’t so kindly disposed, he threw them in the trash and didn’t reply at all.

It so happened that the young man was given the desk of the company’s late founder, known as one of the last great gentlemen in publishing. In fact, not many years previous, the aged gentleman had been found dead at that desk, slumped over the unruly piles of paper residing there. A neat desk is a sign of a sick mind read a placard posted for all to see. The young man took it down.

The new editor had been running roughshod over submissions for two or three months when he arrived one morning to find that a manuscript had been pulled out of his trash and set on his desk. Atop it lay an old-fashioned onionskin sheet that hadn’t been run through a computer printer but apparently typed on an ancient manual, the lowercase a appearing half a line above the other letters. Dear Mrs. McGee, the letter began, While your novel does not fit with my current line of books, I wanted to tell you that it brought me several hours of pleasure. It went on for three paragraphs, discovering value where the young man had seen none.

The following morning, and the morning after that, he found that more submissions had been similarly rescued from the trash. At first, he paraded the onionskin letters around to his co-workers, but as a week passed, then another, he began to feel chided by the writer’s generosity and grace. He asked, then demanded to know, who it was who felt they could do his job better than he did it. When no one admitted responsibility, he searched the supply cabinet for the onionskin sheets and the dark corners of the building for a discarded Royal or Smith-Corona. He accused the woman from the cleaning service of pilfering his trash, then started taking his can and emptying it directly into the dumpster. But every morning would bring more submissions risen from the grave.

Though it would make a better story, it would be disingenuous to claim that the young man ran screaming into the night or that he began to see visions or hear voices. But he did leave the company within a year, returning home to live with his parents and work dead-end jobs. Perhaps it is he at the carwash sponging your hood or at the late-night window handling your burger and fries.

No more onionskin sheets have shown themselves at the office, though the staff does occasionally come across some gravy-stained napkins and unexplained takeout boxes from the K & W Cafeteria, the old gentleman’s favorite.

Is the above story true? No self-respecting folklorist would answer that question. It’s true as far as I know, they’d hedge, or That story has been handed down through several generations, or It came to me from a respectable person whose word I trust. Or they’d take refuge behind the old Mark Twain saw: It may be only a legend, a tradition. It may have happened, it may not have happened. But it could have happened. Charles Harry Whedbee, the beloved raconteur of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, had a couplet he liked to recite when someone inquired about the veracity of his tales: I do not say what I know to be, / I only tell what was told to me. Whedbee saw his stories as being divided into three categories: those he knew to be true, those he believed to be true, and those he knew to be fabrications. But he would never say which stories were which. Many of his readers guessed—and they generally guessed wrong.

Worrying oneself about the truthfulness of folklore misses the point anyway. Folk tales are intended partly to inform and partly to carry on tradition but mainly to entertain. But that is not to say they should be dismissed as lightweight fare. Folklore, as the saying goes, is the true mother of history.

You hold in your hands a collection of twenty folk tales, one each from the twenty collections published by a certain firm on a small circle in a medium-sized Southern town. They are arranged in the order in which they were published. The oldest collections came out nearly forty years ago; all remain in print today. You’ll note a general progression in style from the old-time tales of Charles Harry Whedbee to the more modern tellings of Elizabeth Robertson Huntsinger, Daniel W. Barefoot, and the husband-and-wife team of Randy Russell and Janet Barnett. You’ll also notice that some of the folklorists have a strong regional identity—like Fred T. Morgan and the Uwharrie Mountains—or a special interest in a certain type of lore—like Nancy Roberts and her pirate tales. Some folklorists capitalize on their long association with a particular place—like Nancy Rhyne and the South Carolina Low Country—while others are relative newcomers captivated by a signature place—like Charles Edwin Price and the mountains of upper East Tennessee.

This collection is a tribute to those folklorists who deserve a large share of the credit for keeping the company founded by gentleman publisher John F. Blair in business for half a century.

Boogers and Boo-Daddies

Lady in Distress

from Legends of the Outer Banks and Tar Heel Tidewater

by Charles Harry Whedbee

Many and varied are the tales that are told of the lady Theodosia Burr Alston. Some are dull, and some exciting, but all of them end in tragedy. That she was an actual historical figure, there is not the slightest doubt. That she was a most pitiful and appealing person is also apparent. For years her fate was unknown and was the subject of much speculation, but, with the perspective of time, the pieces of the puzzle seem to fall into place. With the corroboration of several deathbed confessions by persons who should have known whereof they spoke, one can now deduce a fairly accurate picture of the beautiful, headstrong, and star-crossed lady.

Theodosia Burr was born to Aaron Burr and his wife in the city of Albany and raised in New York, then the capital of the young United States. While she was still a small child, her mother died, and Aaron determined to be both mother and father to her. He set out with the avowed intention of creating in his daughter his ideal of what the perfect woman should be. He himself was active in the highest circles of the national government of his country. His ambition and his political vision seemed to be unlimited, and his rise into political fortune seemed almost meteorlike in its dramatic brilliance.

Into the rearing of his child, this near-genius poured all the love and devotion he had felt for his wife, and out of his loneliness he drew the strength and dedication to do a superlative job. Burr envisioned his daughter as the perfect wife for some lucky man. She was to be so highly trained as to be a model of intelligence and charm, completely without the vacuity that characterized so many belles of the day. She was to be warm and understanding and able to be a real helpmeet to her husband at any and all levels of his life. Latin and Greek Burr taught her, as well as dancing and the harpsichord. She was as good at a game of chess as she was at working a pretty sampler.

Theodosia’s eagerness in this training was matched only by her father’s delight in her progress. She literally worshiped her talented father and wanted with all her young heart to be everything he wanted her to be. By the time she was twelve years old, this precocious child was already an accomplished hostess. By the age of sixteen, she was presiding at many of the most important receptions and other functions in the nation’s capital.

Many suitors paid court to this remarkable girl. The scions of wealthy and influential families tried their best to win her hand in marriage; but to Theo, none of them could compare with her brilliant father. He outshone them all.

Then she met young Joseph Alston. Son of one of the finest families in South Carolina, he was reared in a tradition not unlike her own. He was intensely interested in politics and government. His future seemed bright and assured, and without doubt he loved Theodosia with all his heart. Youth called unto youth, and the distinguished troth was plighted.

In one of the most dazzling social functions of this country, Theodosia Burr became the bride of the Honorable Joseph Alston. After their wedding trip, the couple removed to South Carolina, where, true to the promise of his youth, Alston rose rapidly in the political world and became governor. One son was born, and he was promptly named Aaron Burr Alston. According to all reports, he was as lovely and charming a child as one could well imagine.

Then the shadow of tragedy began to move across the scene, and the family fortunes fell on darker days. Aaron Burr, outstanding young statesman that he was, became involved in a great political scandal. Alexander Hamilton, another giant of the times, opposed Burr at every turn and seemed to be his nemesis. Burr and Thomas Jefferson were opposing candidates for the presidency of the United States, and the contest had ended in a tie vote. Hamilton redoubled his efforts against Burr, who, strangely, made no concerted effort to overcome the tie with Jefferson. Jefferson and Burr, therefore, each had seventy-three electoral votes, with Hamilton doing all in his power to bring about Burr’s defeat and Burr remaining strangely silent. Ballot after ballot was taken, and, finally, on the thirty-sixth ballot the tie was broken. Thomas Jefferson became the third President of the United States, taking office in the year 1801.

Burr remained silent no longer. Bitter in his disappointment and goaded by the memory of Hamilton’s opposition, he challenged Hamilton to a duel to the death. Hamilton did not want the duel and had it delayed several times, but Burr was adamant, and the two finally met on the field of honor on July 11, 1804, at the little town of Weehawken, New Jersey.

Now remember, Hamilton was the statesman who had insisted on the construction of lighthouses along the North Carolina coast. The lighthouse at Hatteras had been the direct result of his efforts and influence. To this day, many of the old-timers refer to it as Hamilton’s light.

As Hamilton and Burr descended from their carriages in the dim dawn and took their places on the greensward, the seconds asked each if the duel could not be averted and the matter settled without the drawing of blood. Burr shook his head, and Hamilton remained silent. As the signals were given, each of the antagonists raised and aimed his pistol. At the final signal, both fired almost simultaneously. Hamilton’s shot went wide; but Burr fired with deadly accuracy, and Hamilton fell, mortally wounded. Thus was brought to an abrupt end the career of one of the most courageous and able statesmen of the young republic, and the Outer Banks lost one of its first and best friends.

A shocked and outraged citizenry demanded retribution for this act. Burr heard the political pack in full cry for his public life.

Rumors began to circulate that the onetime Revolutionary colonel was engaged in trying to stir up rebellion in the territories west of the Appalachian Mountains. Quickly the word spread that the former patriot was now bent upon the destruction of the country he had served.

History leaves us no room to doubt that Colonel Aaron Burr did, indeed, nourish ambitious and fantastic dreams of a secession of Kentucky and Tennessee from the United States, as well as a revolt of the Mississippi Territory and of the huge area later to be known as Alabama, Louisiana, and part of Texas, which had only recently been acquired by the young republic in the Louisiana Purchase.

Burr envisioned himself as the chief executive, possibly even the king, of this new nation, with the capital to be located in the city of New Orleans. Here he would preside (or reign) over a court of such brilliance as to put to shame the rather plain surroundings of President Thomas Jefferson in Washington. Even a military campaign to wrest Mexico and Florida from the Spanish was considered. Colonel Burr’s vaulting ambition knew no bounds, and he was most indiscreet in talking about his dreams to people who he thought might be helpful.

Word of Burr’s plans soon reached President Jefferson and the members of his Cabinet, and the time seemed ideal to lay a trap to catch the killer of Hamilton. Thus it was that when Burr took a boat from Pittsburgh to travel down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers for New Orleans, one John Graham, an agent of Jefferson, trailed Burr in the hope of catching him in some overt act of treason.

The further south Burr progressed, the greater became the public support for his plans. This so alarmed Jefferson that he sent word ahead that the firebrand was to be arrested on sight for high treason.

Arrested in the Mississippi Territory, Burr willingly gave himself up to the civil authorities, claiming that he only intended the good of the western territories and the defeat and confusion of royalist Spain.

Tried in a Mississippi Territory court, Burr was acquitted of the charge of treason by a three-judge panel and released. Regardless of