Wednesday, November 6, 2002
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Wednesday, November 6, 2002 |
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Author of southern ghost stories to sign her book at area bookstores this weekend By MICHAEL
BOYLAN
Though Halloween was last week, ghost stories can be enjoyed year round. For fans of spooky tales, author Sherry Austin will be in the area this weekend signing her book "Mariahof the Spirits and Other Southern Ghost Stories." Austin is a native of Charlotte, NC and is well versed on the southeast and its spirituality and folk tales. "The South is rich in rituals and folkways that have strong spiritual origins," said Austin. "The practice of placing colorful bottles on tree limbs to attract spirits has African roots and is preserved in the coastal Carolinas and the Georgia sea islands. The Celtic belief that reflective surfaces are portals into another world, traditions such as shape-note singing and graveyard workday - all ideas preserved in Appalachian folk culture - inspired other stories in the collection." The stories in the book deal with a variety of topics. The story "Mariah and the Spirits" deals with a phantom slave woman in Coastal Georgia, while "The Other Woman" is about a woman who is haunted in the Atlanta suburbs and the North Georgia Mountains. Other places in the southeast that are featured in the book include Louisiana, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Though her specialty is the literary ghost story, people rush to tell her their personal experiences with startling energy and conviction. She says that the idea of the spirit existing outside of the body is an ancient and enduring belief and she discusses it on her website, www.sherryaustin.com. "Ghosts are, at the very least, artifacts of our search for meaning, what one scholar has called our 'hunger for the infinite'," she says. "Some people say we love ghost stories because we are desperate to believe there's a world beyond what we see. I say it's because, on some level, we know there is." Sherry Austin will autograph copies of "Mariah of the Spirits and Other Southern Ghost Stories." at Barnes and Noble Southlake, 1939 Mount Zion from 7-9 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 8. Call 770-471-2227. for details. Austin will also sign copies of the book during the Grand Opening of Books-A-Million, 285 City Circle, Suite 1-A in Peachtree City from 2-4 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 9. Call 770-632-1296 for details. Visit www.sherryaustin.com for more information on the author and her books. |
