Dolly Parton grew up within the mountains of East Tennessee, the proper backdrop for scary tales. She remembers being advised her justifiable share of terrifying tales as a child. Listed below are a few of the tales that scared the “Coat of Many Colors” singer.
Dolly Parton was scared to get away from bed for concern that Uncooked Head Bloody Bones would get her
Parton’s mom, Avie Lee, used to inform her youngsters tales about “ol’ Scratch Eyes” and “Raw Head Bloody Bones” to scare them into moving into mattress at night time.
“Mama would tell us that Raw Head would get little children who didn’t go to bed when they were supposed to,” Parton wrote in her first memoir, Dolly: My Life and Different Unfinished Enterprise. “Even those among us who were old enough to suspect she might be making all of this up didn’t want to risk it.”
If the youngsters have been ever sluggish to get to mattress, their mom would sneak out again and scratch on the window—”we might all hit the covers like floor squirrels diving into their burrows.”
It’s no surprise that Parton and her siblings would usually moist the mattress. They have been too scared to rise up to go to the toilet in the course of the night time!
“In all my life I have never seen or heard of anything more horrifying than the image I used to have of Raw Head Bloody Bones,” wrote Parton.
Haints and bobcats
Avie Lee wasn’t the one particular person telling Parton and her siblings scary tales. Dwelling within the mountains lent itself to scary tales.
“I can remember hearing some of the old folks talk about ‘haints’ and tell some of the old tales that had been passed down through generations,” wrote Parton. “Maybe parents always had trouble getting their kids to go to bed. Or maybe it was just human nature to create horrifying stories so the real horrors of survival in such a place didn’t seem quite as frightening.”
Although not all of the tales have been made up. Folks quietly, cautiously spoke of the bobcats within the woods letting out blood-curdling screams in the course of the night time.
“I later learned that those screams are quite often a part of the bobcat’s lovemaking,” wrote Parton. “Of course, knowing that gave them a completely different kind of fascination for me.”
Parton recollects the ‘painters’ who’d steal youngsters
Along with the bobcats have been the panthers, or as “mountain folk” would name them, in accordance with Parton, “painters.”
“I don’t know how many of them actually exist, especially these days, but there were stories of how they had reached through cracks in the wall and grabbed babies from their cribs,” wrote Parton. “Certainly some of the old houses had cracks in the walls big enough for that.”
Even the grow-ups appeared afraid of the panthers within the mountains, which made all of them the extra scary to younger Parton and her siblings.
The “Down From Dover” singer doesn’t know the way lots of the scary tales from her childhood have been true, if any. However they certain saved her on her toes.