Though Halloween

was last week, ghost stories can be enjoyed year round. For fans of spooky

tales, author Sherry Austin will be in the area this weekend signing her

book "Mariahof the Spirits and Other Southern Ghost Stories."

Austin is a

native of Charlotte, NC and is well versed on the southeast and its spirituality

and folk tales.

"The South

is rich in rituals and folkways that have strong spiritual origins,"

said Austin. "The practice of placing colorful bottles on tree limbs

to attract spirits has African roots and is preserved in the coastal Carolinas

and the Georgia sea islands. The Celtic belief that reflective surfaces

are portals into another world, traditions such as shape-note singing

and graveyard workday - all ideas preserved in Appalachian folk culture

- inspired other stories in the collection."

The stories

in the book deal with a variety of topics. The story "Mariah and

the Spirits" deals with a phantom slave woman in Coastal Georgia,

while "The Other Woman" is about a woman who is haunted in the

Atlanta suburbs and the North Georgia Mountains. Other places in the southeast

that are featured in the book include Louisiana, Kentucky, Virginia and

Tennessee.

Though her

specialty is the literary ghost story, people rush to tell her their personal

experiences with startling energy and conviction. She says that the idea

of the spirit existing outside of the body is an ancient and enduring

belief and she discusses it on her website, www.sherryaustin.com.

"Ghosts

are, at the very least, artifacts of our search for meaning, what one

scholar has called our 'hunger for the infinite'," she says. "Some

people say we love ghost stories because we are desperate to believe there's

a world beyond what we see. I say it's because, on some level, we know

there is."

Sherry Austin

will autograph copies of "Mariah of the Spirits and Other Southern

Ghost Stories." at Barnes and Noble Southlake, 1939 Mount Zion from

7-9 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 8. Call 770-471-2227. for details. Austin will

also sign copies of the book during the Grand Opening of Books-A-Million,

285 City Circle, Suite 1-A in Peachtree City from 2-4 p.m. on Saturday,

Nov. 9. Call 770-632-1296 for details.

Visit www.sherryaustin.com

for more information on the author and her books.

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