- Have you ever looked up at a porch ceiling
and wondered why it's painted a light shade of blue?
That color is called haint blue
and there is a story behind it.
Well, a few stories.
(energetic rock music)
Haint blue is rooted in the African oral tradition
of the Gullah/Geechee.
The Gullah/Geechee people are descendants of African slaves,
brought to Charleston in the late 1500's.
And today, nearly 500,000 Gullah/Geechee people
inhabit the 500 mile stretch between Jacksonville,
North Carolina and Jacksonville, Florida.
Many Gullah traditions and beliefs
are still being practiced today,
and one of them is painting their doors
haint blue in order to warn off evil spirits,
also referred to as haints.
We talked to Kim Johnston,
author of Haint Blue: The Rockford Haunting,
to find out more on the spiritual aspects of haint blue.
- A haint blue color of paint is one
that is particularly prevalent in the southern history,
the folklore of the area.
A lot of people think this is a misspelling
of the word haunt, but it's not.
Haint is an actual word that they came up with
in their language to describe this spirit
that was in between the world of the living and dead.
Something that was very angry.
But their belief was that they couldn't cross
water though, so this particular blue color,
it's many different shades of color of blue
but anything that appeared to be water-like
in its color would be used to paint the windowsills,
the doors, the porches,
to prevent the haints from coming in.
- [Lisa] But as the haint blue tradition
made its way from the low country
to Alabama and the rest of the South,
it evolved into something else.
Here, haint blue was not just a repellent
for evil spirits, but rather had more earthly applications.
We traveled to Greensboro, Alabama,
where we met with Ian Crawford,
to learn more about porches, paint, and the practical uses
of haint blue.
- One of the key things to understand
is what people had when they were building and paints
in the 19th century were different than the paints
that you get at Lowe's, Home Depot today.
They would have used lime-based paint
and there's a range of hues and pigments
that were available.
One of the stories of why ceilings are painted blue
is for insects and they said, well, it would confuse
the insects, because they'd think it was the sky
and they wouldn't build their nests up there,
they wouldn't go up there.
And in a sense, that that seems to work,
because a lot of people say, oh, I painted
my porch ceiling blue and I didn't have the insects,
but insects see color in a different wavelength
than we do, so I don't think that they thought
it was the sky so much as the lime in the lime-based paint
is poisonous to insects. - Ooh.
- So if they did go up there, they didn't stay there
for very long. - So it was accidental
bug repellent. - Exactly.
It was 19th century insect repellent
and so it protected the wood,
and even years later after that paint has gone,
it's still in there. - Hm.
- And so it's wonderful preventative.
You'll find a lot of old houses that have a lot of coats
of lime-based paint protect from termites,
from all sorts of other insects as well.
- Hydrated lime is also called calcium hydroxide.
This substance was mixed with water
and sprayed over plants as a basic pesticide
for many years.
And for a time it was used in paints.
In The Natural Paint Book by Lynn Edwards
and Julia Lawless, lime wash and lime paint
are both described as having "mild antiseptic,
"and insect repellent qualities."
They also provide a "vapor-permeable finish that lets
"buildings breathe, preventing
dampness, condensation, and mold growth."
In other words, a perfect and very practical paint
to use in the extreme humidity and bugginess
of the South.
But what's keeping this old porch folk practice alive?
Paint isn't made with lime anymore.
And for better or worse, pesticides
have come a long way since this tradition began.
Yet the practice continues.
And it seems as if many don't really know why.
But who's keeping this story going and how?
People like Keith Sherrill at Haint Blue Brewery in Mobile.
- I'm a Alabama native.
I was livin' in Washington, I was in the army
for a very long time and there came a time
when I wasn't gonna do that anymore,
so I had the idea of openin' a brewery
and movin' south.
Top five houses I was lookin' at had
a haint blue porch ceiling.
And my wife actually mentioned that it had a story.
Sometime that evening I was trying
to find the end of the internet and figure out
why these porch ceilings were blue
and came across haint blue.
And that led into some later eureka moment of, that's it.
When I was trying to figure out what haint blue was
and how colloquially Southern it was,
it had to be the name of this brewery.
In true folklore fashion, it came
with the people. - It traveled, yeah.
- In storytelling, and this story,
the conversation we're having now,
would almost ensure that it outlives me.
- Yeah. - It's this elegant color
that everyone puts on their porch,
but it's more than that at the same time.
It's multidimensional, the same thing is for the South.
It's elegant, it's romantic, but just under the surface,
there's a lot more to that.
There's a lot more stories.
And haint blue is the same way,
and it doesn't make sense anywhere else.
I think Southern people are the only people
that would latch onto this story in this way.
You know what I mean?
We're kind of suspect of outsiders
and other things, and that's what this haint is.
It's like unwanted spirit that we didn't invite
and we keep 'em away with a beautiful, elegant color
on our front porch.
There's nothin' more Southern than that.
- Like so many things in the South,
haint blue has a story that's complex.
A spiritual practice of a once-enslaved people
has now become a folk practice of an entire region.
And while some may or may buy into one story more
than another, there's no denying that a haint blue ceiling
makes a sit on the porch much more pleasant.
(gentle music)