Read This, If You Dare

Whispers of tales not to be forgotten

Arthur Barnwell House, Pleasant Point Plantation, Lady’s Island, Beaufort, SC

 An abandoned white-columned plantation house sat on a bluff by the Beaufort River at the far end of Lady’s Island, an island surrounded by green undulating marshes where shrimp boats pass by each day, and crabbers set their pots early each morning. This is a place of hushed beauty and fragrant gardens. Peaceful and serene, there was something eternal and indestructible about this house and the tide-eroded shores. It wasn’t long before we made it our home.

Once darkness fell upon the land, there was a threatening silence throughout the swamps. Only the melodic cadence of whippoorwills and cicada and the gentle splashing of waves against the shore broke the stillness of the night. Most nights, I’d sit on our dock watching the moon come up. One evening, as the tide rolled in, I began to hear the rhythm of drums drifting through the marsh. It must have been the drums from nearby Broomfield floating across the farmlands as a reminder of things that must never be forgotten: those tales told by fathers and grandfathers to their children of the spirits and the darkness of voodoo, the black magic known here as “Root.”

Along with the tens of thousands of captured slaves from Sierra Leone who poured into the Lowcountry came their customs and beliefs.

The fact that they were now in South Carolina did not change what they had been taught to believe. Concepts taught by their ancestors survived until the end of slavery, the decades that followed, and many to this very day.