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