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Category: Halloween Stories

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Spooky Stories for Halloween 2022 on the Folklife Today Podcast

Posted by: Stephen Winick

It's October, so it's time for a new season of the Folklife Today podcast, and a new Halloween episode!  In this Season 5 opener, John Fenn and Stephen Winick talk about the new updated Halloween and Dia de Muertos Research Guide. Then we introduce some of our favorite spooky stories: a witch story told by singer and activist Aunt Molly Jackson from Kentucky, a ghost story told by songster and blues musician John Jackson from Virginia, and the story of Jack O Lantern told by folklorist and International Man of Mystery Jack Santino. And of course we included the stories! Sound good? Very well then...Get your podcast here!

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Aunt Molly Jackson Tells Witch Tales for Halloween Season

Posted by: Stephen Winick

This is the 10th Halloween we have celebrated at Folklife Today with stories and songs about ghosts, witches, spirits, death, and the Devil. As usual, this year we'll feature several Halloween posts leading up to the big day. We're starting with this one, presenting some fascinating belief stories about witches from early 20th century Kentucky. The speaker is Mary Magdalen Garland Stewart Jackson Stamos, known by the professional name Aunt Molly Jackson. In the post, you'll find embedded audio of Jackson telling the stories, along with complete transcriptions of the texts. Happy Halloween!

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

La Llorona: Storytelling for Halloween and Día de Muertos

Posted by: Stephen Winick

La Llorona, the Weeping Woman, is a spirit that haunts the folklore of Mexico and other Latin American countries. In some versions she's a ghost, but in others she's an immortal wanderer, not dead but not really alive either. So far in the series, we've introduced the legend, given some of its history, explored songs related to La Llorona, and discussed the story's role in growing up. Now, we present a telling of the tale. The post contains audio and a transcript of a performance by Joe Hayes, one of the best known storytellers from the American southwest. Hayes's bilingual Spanish-English storytelling has earned him a distinctive place among America’s professional storytellers.

A woman in Día de Muertos makeup

La Llorona on the Folklife Today Podcast

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Halloween and Día de Muertos are almost here! So, believe it or not, Season 4, Episode 1 of the Folklife Today Podcast, our 2021 Halloween and Día de Muertos episode, is ready for listening! It features interviews about the Weeping Woman, La Llorona, a spirit from Latin American folklore, plus related songs and stories. The people interviewed are Juan Díes, leader of the Sones de Mexico Ensemble, Camille Acosta, who wrote her masters thesis on La Llorona before interning at AFC, and Allina Migoni, AFC's Latinx subject specialist. This blog contains links to download the podcast, background on our guests, and links to full audio of the songs.

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Growing Up with La Llorona

Posted by: Stephen Winick

This is the fourth blog post in a series about La Llorona, the Weeping Woman, a spirit that haunts the folklore of Mexico and other Latin American countries. We'll present comments on the legend by the writer Rudolfo Anaya, the scholar Domino Renee Perez, our former intern and Llorona expert Camille Acosta, pioneering Costa Rican writer Manuel Argüello Mora, and Esperanza Sernas, a restaurant worker interviewed in 1977 by fieldworker Philip George for AFC's Chicago Ethnic Arts Project. This blog also contains one of the most gruesome traditional descriptions of La Llorona we've seen so far! The whole series will be published in time for Día de Muertos (aka Día de los Muertos) 2021, so stay tuned....

Portrait of Bessie Jones

Halloween Songs and Stories on the Folklife Today Podcast AND in No Depression!

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Time is getting short before Halloween, so we’re combining two announcements in this one blog post! First of all, as our readers may remember, we’ve been working with No Depression, The Journal of Roots Music, which is published by the nonprofit Freshgrass Foundation. They’re publishing a column called Roots in the Archive, featuring content from the …