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    Thirteen Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey: Commemorative Edition
    Thirteen Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey: Commemorative Edition
    Thirteen Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey: Commemorative Edition
    Ebook126 pages1 hour

    Thirteen Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey: Commemorative Edition

    By Kathryn Tucker Windham, Margaret Gillis Figh, Dilcy Windham Hilley and Ben Windham

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    About this ebook

    One of the best-known and widely shared books about the South, Thirteen Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey has haunted the imaginations of generations of delighted young readers since it was first published in 1969. Written by nationally acclaimed folklorists Kathryn Tucker Windham and Margaret Gillis Figh, the book recounts Alabama’s thirteen most ghoulish and eerie ghost legends.
     
    Curated with loving expertise, these thirteen tales showcase both Windham and Figh’s masterful selection of stories and their artful and suspenseful writing style. In crafting stories treasured by children and adults alike, the authors tell much more than ghost tales. Embedded in each is a wealth of fact and folklore about Alabama history and the old South. “I don’t care whether you believe in ghosts,” Windham was fond of saying. “The good ghost stories do not require that you believe in ghosts.”
     
    Millions of readers cherish memories of being chilled as teachers and parents read them unforgettable stories like “The Unquiet Ghost at Gaineswood,” about the ghost of Evelyn Carter, who fills this Demopolis antebellum mansion with midnight musical lamentations because her body wasn’t returned to her native Virginia, and “The Phantom Steamboat of the Tombigbee,” about the wreck of the steamboat Eliza Battle, which caught fire on the way to Mobile and sank one February night in 1858. People who live along the river say the flaming steamboat wreck still rises on cold nights, its cotton cargo blazing across the waves while its terrified survivors cry for help from the icy water.
     
    The title’s “Jeffrey” refers to a friendly ghost who resides in the Windham home and who served as Windham’s unofficial collaborator in this work and the subsequent books in this popular series, all of which are now available in high-quality reproductions of their spooky originals.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity Alabama Press
    Release dateJul 15, 2014
    ISBN9780817387051
    Thirteen Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey: Commemorative Edition
    Author

    Kathryn Tucker Windham

    KATHRYN TUCKER WINDHAM (1918-2011) grew up in Thomasville, Alabama. She graduated from Huntingdon College in 1939, married Amasa Benjamin Windham in 1946, and had three children before being widowed in 1956. A newspaper reporter by profession, her career spanned four decades, beginning in the shadow of the Great Depression and continuing through the Civil Rights Movement, which she observed at ground level in her adopted home town of Selma. In the 1970s, she left journalism and worked as a coordinator for a federally funded agency for programs for the elderly. She continued to write, take photographs, and tell stories. The storytelling was an outgrowth of her 1969 book, 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey. More volumes of ghost stories, folklore, recipes, and essays followed; she has now published more than twenty books. Her reputation as a storyteller led to thirty-three appearances over an eighteen-month period on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, which introduced her to an even larger audience. She has written, produced, and acted in a one-woman play, My Name Is Julia, about pioneering social reformer Julia Tutwiler, has narrated several television documentaries, and is a regular interviewee for national and international journalists visiting Alabama in search of the Old or the New South. It is a testament to the good humor, keen intelligence, and life-long curiosity of one of the region’s best known public citizens that she can guide visitors unerringly to either mythical place.

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    • 4/5
      I grew up enjoying hearing Kathryn Tucker Windham tell storied in my elementary classrooms! She got me hooked on storytelling, and maybe even on ghost stories too. Since I grew up in Alabama, this book was the first of Windham's that I read, so it holds a special place in my heart.
    • 4/5
      I have always loved this book since I was little. This book was legendary among schoolchildren in Alabama in the 70s and 80s. Such fun to read some of the ghost stories from state history.
    • 5/5
      Can I just tell you that I LOVE Kathryn Tucker Windham. Hers were the first ghost stories I ever read and had the distinction of being the only ones that earned my Mum's approval. This book was in my house growing up and was a favorite of mine. Ms. Windham has an amazing talent for making history come to life with her stories; I remember more history from her books than I do my Alabama History class. Maybe it was the touch of mysticism that found its way into her stories. Each story is well-written and vibrant and her talent shines through.

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