In South Carolina, the air smells of salt, moss, and something sweeter — something rotten just beneath the bloom. The graveyards lean into the streets, and the magnolia trees hold their breath as you pass, their perfect white flowers heavy with the weight of a thousand forgotten names.

The plantations crumble slowly into the soil, sinking under the sins they were built on. In the marshes, the Gullah legends stir: Boo Hags slipping their skin to ride the living, spirits swimming through the mist with soft, terrible laughter. The swamps murmur at night, full of promises wrapped in silver fog. The windows of Charleston’s oldest houses flicker with candlelight where no hands should be, and the stones in the graveyards are worn so smooth by time that the names slip right out of memory — but the dead still know who they are.

This isn’t just South Carolina, it’s Old South Carolina — slow as honey, dark as grave dirt. And here, the past doesn’t chase you.
It waits for you to sit down and stay awhile.

Ghost Stories and Scary American Folklore from Across the United States