If you were not born in the low country of South Carolina or Georgia – or other coastal areas of the the south, then you’ve probably never heard of Haint Blue – it’s a southern thing.
But if you ever travel in the south, especially in coastal towns, you will often see porch ceilings painted a special robin’s egg light blue color. This is not because we like blue; it is because of our folklore and heritage.
Haints are restless ghosts who haven’t departed from the earthly realm. These spirits linger to haunt the living, often with harmless tricks, but occasionally they have more sinister intentions.
The lore of haints in the U.S. traces back to the low country, a coastal region spanning 200 miles in South Carolina and Georgia. Here, the Gullah Geechee people – descendants of African slaves – believed in haints. They used these Haint Blue colors to combat “haints” and “boo hags”
Haint Blue is not just for fancy houses in the garden district of Charleston. You will see these blue ceilings on fishing shacks, tenant houses, row houses – all over the coastal south.
There is no one color that is Haint Blue but paint companies like Benjamin Moore, Sherwin Williams and Behr offer quite a few Haint Blues.
The color was believed to trick these malevolent spirits into thinking they had stumbled into water (which they cannot cross). This is the same idea behind bottle trees – the marauding spirits are lured to the pretty blue bottles and they fly into the bottle. They cannot escape. And, yes, we have a Haint Blue ceiling here at Big Mill Extended Stay B&B.
Big Mill Extended Stay B&B:
Raleigh, NC – 100 miles
Greenville, NC – 27 miles
Outer Banks – 98 miles
Big Mill Bed and Breakfast in Williamston, NC
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