It’s time to get spooky for Halloween, and the festivities have already begun. The Southern Cultures journal hosted a pop-up museum called “The Things,” which featured the stories of haunted objects.
The event took place at the Love House and Hutchins Forum, which houses the Center for the Study of the American South. The event was in honor of Southern Cultures’ fall issue.
“The issue is about material culture,” said Ayse Erginer, executive editor of the Southern Cultures journal. “Material culture, in folklore, refers to objects and artifacts that we live with everyday that have personal meaning to us. So, we thought we would do a quick pop-up museum for one day of personal objects.”
The objects in the exhibit were owned by local members of the community.
“When we were thinking about how we wanted to celebrate this issue, we felt like everybody we know has objects and mementos that are meaningful to them," Erginer said. “The objects come from any number of friends of ours.”
Some of these objects might feel spooky or just straight-up funny to certain people.
“There is a range in emotion and in 'hauntedness,' and that could mean something 'spooky,' but there is not a lot of that,” Erginer said. “If nothing else, they are haunted by memories, in some ways nostalgic, in some ways funny and in some ways more of a fraught memory — there is a lot of emotion.”
Many of the objects on display were normal, household items, but some were more unusual.
“I love the Evan Williams bourbon bottle because it’s owned by the owner of the Crunkleton, which is my favorite bar in Chapel Hill,” said Reagan Petty, a first-year graduate student studying folklore. “I also thought the snowflake fossils were really cool. Those are just fascinating, and the story that goes along with them is really interesting, too.”
