Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1912 — Meant to Rout the “Hants” [ARTICLE]

Meant to Rout the “Hants”

Why Looking Glasses Are So Generally Placed on Graves In South by ■ Colored People. It would be very difficult at this late day'to discover anything new In the way of negro superstitions, but one has been unearthed in Raleigh, N. CL, which may or may have not have wide prevalence, according to the New York Herald. A negro graveyard—for they do not use the word cemetery at all—is often a strange sort of place. There is something barbaric about IL In a cemetery there a great many of the graves are covered with bright objects, and In one case, where a man died of consumption, the eagh xpound

Is almost covered with triangular bottles, which once contained medicine, bits of looking glass being set here and there, so that the effect Is really dazzling. In another case a grave is covered with broken bits of looking-glass of all sorts and shapes, and it is this particular grave which developed the fact of the superstition. An aged negro was’ met very near it, and conversation began, taking quite a range. There was some discussion of “hants" and a story is told regarding the appearance of one of these specters in the suburbs of Raleigh, ah aged negroes declaring that a little before dusk she had seen the "bant.” Here is what she told about it:

"I wuz standin* in my poach when I seed er sort uv twinkle In de element (meaning the sky) and right dar and den er hant dropped. He flung hisself all erbout on er little grass mound ’side an ole well what ain’t got no top, tuk off his bald, put It under one arm and den jump’t over a road into er graveyard. He didn’t go by er place whar a whole lot of horseshoes Is nailed up on er house do.’ Hants an* no other kind ur sperets kin stan* horseshoes.** The old darky listened to this story very intently; his eyes rolled and he said: "Bless Gawd!** several times. Then he looked about and sag: “Niggers shorely is feared uv bants. Bat’s why dey puts lookin* glasses on dese here graves. Er hant cums er long; er floatin*, and when be sees hisself in dem glasses be goes on. He thinks

dater bigger hant dan he is er guardin’ ginst him.”