Folk magic and folklore from Southeastern Ohio

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Happy Friday Scribbers,

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Today I have the joy of speaking to Edward Karshner, Associate Professor of English at Robert Morris University, who teaches courses in writing and Appalachian Literature. Today I speak to him about religion, power and the gothic, ahead of his story being published in ‘Modern Gothic’! Enjoy.

Mini summary of "Dark Water: An Appalachia Ohio Story" by Edward Karshner:

Set in 1920s-30s Ohio, Reverend Hanson feuds with Ella Marie Peabody over church land rights. Hanson believes Biblical law grants the church custody, while Peabody offers to renew her late father's lease. Tensions escalate as Hanson vilifies Peabody and her friend, folk healer Granny Kessler. One night, Peabody is found lynched and her baby missing. Hanson becomes tormented by fouled water, believing it's a curse. He seeks help from Kessler but rejects her advice to right past wrongs. But Hanson is haunted by a mysterious boy and the "dark water" he summoned through his own pride and refusal to accept accountability…

1. What inspired you to write a story set in rural Appalachia in the 1920s-30s?

This is a great question. My writing partner and I have been talking about why so much of Appalachian literature takes place in the past and, specifically, like you point out, in the 20s and 30s. Even stories set in the modern world feel more “old timey” like they are from the 50s. So, thanks for calling me out!

My story, “Dark Water,” ended up in this “haunted age” as a result of revision. I am currently working on a novel set in modern times, and it included a series of flashbacks to the early history of the fictional town.  As I revised, I realized that the flashbacks were mostly scaffolding so I cut them; however, it was good stuff! So, I put the cut material in my compost folder. That material is what became “Dark Water.” So, the short story is a prequel to my unfinished novel.

This is a much bigger question, though. So, let me take a stab at it. I’m a huge fan of Mark Fisher and his idea that, in hauntology, we aren’t so much haunted by the past but by “lost futures.” I find that idea fascinating. That our imagination and our art constantly go back to a moment where we lost our purpose or chance to create an ideal future. For Fisher, it’s the 1970s. A great example of this is the work of David Southwell and his “Hookland Guide.” David reimagines a lost English county and it is full of that haunting loss.

The 1920s-30s were a time of great social and economic change in Appalachia. There was the railroad bringing outsiders in and taking Appalachian resources (including people) out. There were the Mine Wars, Prohibition, the radio (again opening an isolated region up to the outside), the fight for workers’ rights and unionization. All of these presented an opportunity for change and having purposeful control of all those possibilities in change. But through corporatism, greed, craven self-interest, that possible future was lost. So, maybe, we go back to that moment and try to reclaim it, like Old Hamlet’s ghost, by reminding us of our “almost blunted purpose” expressed in art.

2. The story blends elements of gothic horror, historical fiction, and Appalachian folklore. How did you approach weaving these different genres together - was this a conscious choice?

It was both a conscious choice and a natural inclination. Appalachian storytelling is a fluid cobbling together of history, folklore, and the supernatural. My friend Byron Ballard calls this “hill-folk Gothic,” the using of story to pick through all the layers and layers within layers to get at some sense of meaning and order. Rodger Cunnigham calls this a “cosmovision” and I think it’s about using story to speak purposefully about a particular place and time from a particular place and time. So, in that sense, I just let the Appalachian storytelling tradition do its thing through me.

It’s also a conscious craft decision. I am in awe of the contemporary writers who can blend and bend genre to serve a story. Writers like Meagan Lucas, Laurel Hightower, I mentioned H. Byron Ballard, Gabino Iglesias, Stephen Graham Jones, Oscar Hokeah, Ilyn Welch, and Elizabeth Hand…to name a few, are great studies in how I, as a writer, can blend elements of horror, crime, literary fiction and use genre not as a framework but as I tool to craft the story.

So, even as I rely on tradition, I’m reading these amazing writers who are teaching me how to be a better storyteller.

3. Water plays a central role in the story, both physically and symbolically. Can you discuss the significance of water imagery in the narrative?

I’m going to work really hard to not folklore nerd out on this question. I love the idea that water represents the subconscious or dreams. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that, in mythology, water, the source of all things, pure possibility is always feminine. In the Ancient Near East, Tiamat/Tehom represent the watery deep that creation emerges from. In Norse mythology, the Norns (three women) weave “being in time” at a pool at the foot of the world tree.

There is an idea in flood narratives that water, as it destroys completely, also purifies. And there is that idea, put forth by Mary Douglas, about our fascination with purity and danger. That clean water is refreshing, but there is nothing more horrifying than stagnant polluted water.

Reading my story, I think you’ll see me, through Hanson, going through all these ideas. I hope, though, that I’m a better person than the Reverend Hanson!

4. The character of Reverend Hanson undergoes a dark transformation over the course of the story. What were you trying to explore through his moral and psychological decline?

When I was writing and revising this story and thinking about the “Hansons” I’ve known. I was working out some ideas I have about responsibility and power. We put so much emphasis on this or that person being “powerful.” When really, power is a construct, an agreement, an illusion. This is why “powerful” people get so upset when some nerd tracks their private jet or they pass weird laws to protect their power. If they were really that powerful, well, their genius or money or power should be able to protect them. Why are powerful people always so afraid?

Not that having power is bad. But there’s the responsibility. Power is an agreement for the person to use the station of power to do good. Protect. Be kind. Nothing is more powerful than genuine kindness.

Hanson’s decline begins when he starts to realize that his power is an illusion. It breaks him to think that while he controls a community, other men, it’s the women pushing back that break him. He can’t stand the idea of a woman not capitulating to his power. He’s a monster. A monster from the past that, really, is very much a part of our present. I see this all the time. These self-proclaimed tough, powerful “alpha males” who suddenly become these special snowflakes crying about the integrity of their souls the minute a woman pushes back on their nonsense.

So, I think Hanson’s transformation isn’t so much a decline as it is a revelation of his own smallness. The one thing these pitiful jerks fear the most.

In the story, we all get to bear witness.

5. Granny Kessler is an intriguing character who practices folk magic rooted in Christianity. How did you develop her character and approach to healing?

Granny Kessler is based on my great-grandmother Mazzie Waits. I never knew her. She died when my Dad was a kid. But I knew her from stories and legends which is even better. She was an herbalist and folk healer. When I was working my way through college at a glass factory, one of the old guys who worked there told me he knew my Granny Mazzie and that she was a witch. I asked my Dad about it and he said that after my great-grandfather died, in the late 30s, she isolated herself with her kids (including my grandma) up on a hill because she was afraid. And that reputation as a witch was one way she protected herself. That has really stuck with me.

When I was writing the Granny Kessler character I was trying to understand, again, those ideas of power, safety, kindness and, really, violent, idiotic misogyny. 

Her folk magic is based on Braucherei, a Pennsylvania German tradition. I’m from the Salt Creek Valley in Southeastern Ohio, an area settled by Pennsylvania “Dutch.” So, a lot of our folk magic and folklore comes directly from that German tradition. The “cure” she uses on Hanson is an edited (it’s a long ritual) version of a “work” from Der Lange Verborgene Freund (The Long Forgotten Friend), a book of cures. My great-uncle told me a story about how, when he was a baby, a Braucher (healer) cured his fever by tying a string around his wrist, saying prayers and spells, and then cutting the string off and burning it.

However, the main thought as I developed this character, was to make a distinction between organized and folk religion. Hanson sees religion as something that serves him. Granny Kessler sees herself in the service of religious beliefs. Once again, getting to that idea of power and responsibility.

6. The story touches on themes of patriarchal power, superstition, and man's relationship to nature. What key ideas were you hoping to convey?

Oh, this is a great question, too. I think you have to start with “superstition.” I don’t believe in “superstition.” I think every culture, place, time has, again, a cosmovision. And I think that superstition is a way of demeaning someone else’s cosmovision. Everyone has a unique understanding of their place in the world and how that works. I also think that a cosmovision is never “true” in the sense of being universal and unchanging. There’s a flow to it. In Appalachian scholarship, this is called having a “natural orientation.” That as the seasons change, so does everything else. And we have to adapt to that change. When I went to college, I realized that a lot of the ideas I had growing up with were close to animism. There are many ways to define animism, but I really like Althaea Sebastiani’s definition of animism as being marked by a lack of separation between all things and this understanding leads to an equality in diversity.

Right away, you can see that animism is antithetical to patriarchy which is based not just on male control over women but male control over nature and other men. There is no equality or community possible in a patriarchy. Everyone is either denied power, trying to get power, or trying to keep power. It’s a mess. What I think is even more ridiculous with this idea of power stratification is that the result is that everyone is so concerned about who is getting what or getting something over on someone else, we completely lose sight of our own lives. We have no idea who we really are outside of these power dynamics. And we only know other people by their place in the power structures. It’s in how we talk. It’s “That’s Heather my boss” not “Heather who is an amazing fiddle player.” And even if you start with what they do, we eventually come back to where they are in the power dynamic. So, a mess.

And that plays in with nature because we see nature as an inert thing to serve us, Hanson sees everything and everyone as existing to serve him. And, while not as dramatic as in folk-horror, the result is the same. Because we see nature as serving us, whole neighbourhoods get burned in the mountains. Beach communities wiped clean by hurricanes. And then someone will say, well those people shouldn’t live there. The consequences of not seeing our deeper, animistic relationships come for us all. It’s July here in Ohio and yesterday I was sitting outside in a jumper and wool socks. Again, a Hanson will say “So what?” A few summers ago, Ohio lost almost it’s entire corn crop to crazy rains. To return to an earlier point, power is reveled to be an illusion when you are starving to death. No handshakes, deals, or political ideology is going to get food to grow in a drought one year and floods the next.

If I had to nail down all this into one point, it’s that we need to be better citizens with a broader definition of community.

7. There are some ambiguous supernatural elements in the story. How did you balance realism with more fantastical or unexplained occurrences?

I really played on the Appalachian idea that the difference between the supernatural and the “real” is a matter of perspective. You spend time with the old timers in Appalachia and you really get a sense of how the natural orientation, I talked about, treats the supernatural as something pretty natural. I think that’s why haints, witches, and boogers permeate ever aspect of Appalachian life.

Here’s an example. My grandfather died nearly fifty years ago. My aunt says that his ghost still comes to visit her. Now, I tell people “Off” (outside Appalachia) this and it sounds quaint at best, maybe foolish, at worst. But I told this story to an Appalachian friend of mine, who’s a professor at Oberlin College, and his response was “There is no greater love than one who won’t remain a stranger.” I love that.

When I write folk-horror, especially folk-horror set in Appalachia, I work hard to get this cosmovision of the porous nature of the real and the fantastical right. I want to both pay homage to this way of thinking, but also try to demonstrate how it’s an alternate point of view. So, how do I balance? I just try to think like my grandparents would have. Think up an event that seems fantastical and then write about it as I imagine they would have seen it.

8. The writing style evokes a strong sense of place and atmosphere. What techniques did you use to bring the setting to life for readers?

I’m so glad you think the story evokes a strong sense of place. Having a strong sense of place as a main character is one of the defining characteristics of Appalachian literature. When you read Appalachian literature, you shouldn’t be able to separate the story from the place. It’s important, I think, to explore how the setting affects the characters and the plot.

The main technique I used was not, necessarily, a matter of craft. The bones for this story started during the Covid lockdowns. I was used to running “home” from where I live about once a month to recharge. When I couldn’t, there was a lot of daydreaming about home. So, I started this story to combat homesickness.

Craft wise, I started with the places I know intimately. Real places. The model for the church in the story is a church that figures heavily in my family’s folklore. The cemetery is where my grandparents are buried. Orchard Hill is a combination of a place called Tar Hollow, a state park that also is rich in family folklore, and Spud Run where I was born. So, I let all the details percolate in my head. Because I was stuck Off, where I live, I started to incorporate aspects of this place. The woods in the story, the path to Granny Kessler’s, is a trail at the end of my street where my daughter and I walk when we need a quick getaway.

It's like jazz. To improvise, to make something new from the familiar, you really have to know the source material. And that becomes a matter of paying attention. For characters to be affected by a place, for that to be in the writing, the writer has to really understand their relationship with where they are writing from. Once I figure out where I’m writing from, the place becomes a character and all the other characters start responding to it and, hopefully, that sense of place becomes the real inciting incident of the story.

9. Without spoiling too much, what can you tell us about the ending and what you wanted readers to take away from it?

This question gets to many of the ideas I’ve been talking about in the other questions. This story is about power, responsibility, and how we live our lives. How we live our lives and direct our lives toward other people really has an influence, I think, on how we experience the end.

My Dad died in April after suffering through brain cancer for 10 months. Dad believed that power was found in service to others. At the end, when he was hallucinating, his dying world wasn’t scary. His “seeing things” fell into two categories: him helping others and the people he loved the most helping him. I don’t pretend to know what comes after, but I know from watching Dad that we go out as we lived. Death doesn’t care how much “power” you had in life. Death is humiliating, lonely. Emmanuel Levinas called death an utter violation of our existence.

Reverend Hanson, in the story, lives a life of resentment. He uses social power structures to insulate himself from having to be responsible for himself. So, he never gets to know the value of life, neither his own nor others’. I would like for readers to take away the idea that, no matter what your metaphysical system is or even if you have one or not, it’s a hell of a thing to discover at the end, when death humbles you, that you have nothing to comfort yourself with and there’s no time left to do it over. And I don’t think that a meaningful life needs to be full of grand gestures. Not being a jerk is enough.

Thanks so much Ed! You can grab a pre-order of Modern Gothic here.

See you next Friday,

Isabelle x